Llamarama drama
Giving some thought recently to interest thresholds and formalising the process of tuning in and out of conversations.
I’m aware that my endlessly banging on about wireless broadband and, topic du jour, microgeneration, is endlessly fascinating and I can see that occasionally friends in the pub are so interested that their eyes sort of glaze over with interest or they become so excited about it that they vanish to the loos for extended periods.
What it may come down to is that wind turbines and generating electricity from pigs may not be everybody’s cup of Bovril. Do most of us then carry round a mental interest threshold which, when the level of comment being addressed to us dips below, trips a switch in our heads.
Formally, I call this my llama mixing desk. Imagine an audio mixing desk with two slide controls. One increases and decreases the volume of the speak, the other controls the volume of any internal monolog that might be ticking along in your head.
So, for instance, somebody appears at my desk and starts talking about something. Sometimes they can get as far as seven or eight seconds in before my interest threshold is tripped and I fade down their conversation i.e. ‘and so you see the problem we have is the financing of the project in the first, second and third quarter, we are hoping that by offsetting the start-up costs we can….’ And find myself fading up on something like, for example ‘llamas are interesting, aren’t they, I wonder if they’re related to camels, I wonder what they taste like. I think you can get llama wool - are they like sheep?...’ and so on, occasionally fading down one conversation and fading up another.
The unfortunate result is that often you have somebody standing at your desk looking at you expectantly and you realise you’ve been thinking about nothing but llamas for the last ten minutes and you’ve just been asked a question.
Luckily, all men who have ever been on a date with a woman are trained to constantly keep free a part of their brain that’s like a solid state recorder that can retrieve and replay the last ten seconds of a conversation. This is often a question. Sometimes it’s ‘…so is that what you think?’ and you can safely go with yes. Sometimes it’s ‘so is that okay’ and things get tricky. Default answer is ‘what would the implications be?’
Visual clues are folders if it’s a business question, never answer yes or they are transferred to your desk and you find yourself helming the PROJECT OF DOOM. If at home, the prop will often be a catalogue full of soft furnishings. Beware, any positive grunting could mean an end to your dreams of a 70 inch plasma telly and the sudden appearance of a new sofa.
I’m aware that my endlessly banging on about wireless broadband and, topic du jour, microgeneration, is endlessly fascinating and I can see that occasionally friends in the pub are so interested that their eyes sort of glaze over with interest or they become so excited about it that they vanish to the loos for extended periods.
What it may come down to is that wind turbines and generating electricity from pigs may not be everybody’s cup of Bovril. Do most of us then carry round a mental interest threshold which, when the level of comment being addressed to us dips below, trips a switch in our heads.
Formally, I call this my llama mixing desk. Imagine an audio mixing desk with two slide controls. One increases and decreases the volume of the speak, the other controls the volume of any internal monolog that might be ticking along in your head.
So, for instance, somebody appears at my desk and starts talking about something. Sometimes they can get as far as seven or eight seconds in before my interest threshold is tripped and I fade down their conversation i.e. ‘and so you see the problem we have is the financing of the project in the first, second and third quarter, we are hoping that by offsetting the start-up costs we can….’ And find myself fading up on something like, for example ‘llamas are interesting, aren’t they, I wonder if they’re related to camels, I wonder what they taste like. I think you can get llama wool - are they like sheep?...’ and so on, occasionally fading down one conversation and fading up another.
The unfortunate result is that often you have somebody standing at your desk looking at you expectantly and you realise you’ve been thinking about nothing but llamas for the last ten minutes and you’ve just been asked a question.
Luckily, all men who have ever been on a date with a woman are trained to constantly keep free a part of their brain that’s like a solid state recorder that can retrieve and replay the last ten seconds of a conversation. This is often a question. Sometimes it’s ‘…so is that what you think?’ and you can safely go with yes. Sometimes it’s ‘so is that okay’ and things get tricky. Default answer is ‘what would the implications be?’
Visual clues are folders if it’s a business question, never answer yes or they are transferred to your desk and you find yourself helming the PROJECT OF DOOM. If at home, the prop will often be a catalogue full of soft furnishings. Beware, any positive grunting could mean an end to your dreams of a 70 inch plasma telly and the sudden appearance of a new sofa.
1 Comments:
I'm sorry...I was going to comment, but I zoned out in the middle of reading your post. I think it had something to do with llamas...or camels...or some type of animal.
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