1.28.2008

Announcing the big NEXT idea...

As leaked to blog press late last night, today I'm announcing my big NEXT idea. If adopted by a majority of the gimmick starved American work force, not only could it revolutionize how they think about their chaotic lives, it could put me in Fat City with book and software royalties, not to mention speaking fees.

Ladies and gentlemen, you know life has you running helter-skeleter (in the classic sense, not the Beatles or Charles Manson sense), between work, family and other obligations. You do your best, but face it, most days you get up and life hits you like a freight train. You feel completely out of control. By utilizing my system, this will not change...but you can psyche yourself into THINKING you're in control. How? By utilizing microutines.
Rather than feeling like you can't control your life, the microutines system trains you to recognize the moments you are in control, and repeats those moments over and over and over again. For example...

  • For some reason, I shave my head from right ear to left ear, and then my face from right to left. I don't know why, but I've done this for years. The face doesn't look the same as it did 20 years ago, but it still submits to my shaving microutine!
  • I cannot control the price of gasoline or the fact that my SUV has 165,000 miles on it, but every morning at 5:50am, between my house and IHOP, I listen to the same two podcasts - CNN's hourly news update and Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. I know it's only six minutes, but I find it strangely pacifying. Boom! A microutine!
  • When I get to the office before the rest of my team, I never turn the lights on. I use my desk lamp. It feels cozy, if not warm (because the heat quits for weeks at a time). I've got myself a microutine!

What good is all this? By taking aggressive control of 2 minute segments of my life, I am convincing myself that I'm not completely out of control. In my next big NEXT idea, I hope to string together a bunch of microutines into....you guessed it!

A Macroutine! Watch your local bookstores.

2 comments:

Ronni Hall said...

Ah so will you offer spiffy, eyecandy looking software to help us manage our microutines? I am so co-dependent I need a reminder if I'm to stir my coffee counterclockwise 12 times or 10. And do I straighten my cords on my desk from the left to the right or right to left? I can never remember!

Of course the important question... can I get an autographed copy? *G*

Esther Irwin said...

Wasn't there a computer company called NEXT? I seem to recall it was going to be the big NEXT idea... Maybe that term isn't copywritten anymore and you could use it.

Oh, that's right, it was Steve Jobs that had that company. Go ahead, mate; I'm sure he doesn't mind. :)