This is the first post in my notebook blog – it’s designed to be a low barrier to entry space to publish writing, without the expectation that it’s polished, taking inspiration from DRMacIver’s Notebook, so that I actually write and publish things, rather than just rotating them in my head.
I’m doing this rather than trying harder, because trying harder is not generally a good solution to problems. In many cases it’s easier to change what you’re trying to do to make it easier – lower expectations or remove obstacles.
This is particularly true for dog training, where you can’t just tell the dog to try harder. If you’re using a reward the dog doesn’t want at all/sufficiently to do what you’re asking increasing the reward might inspire them to actually pay attention to what you want, but if they actually like the reward then sometimes increasing it is counterproductive, because it changes their thought process from “Hmm, how do I get the chicken?” to “STEAK!!!! OMG STEAK!!!!! STEAK!!!!!” which is not a state conducive to problem solving. Much like how just adding pressure on a deadline with no other options can push people into “DEADLINE! ARGH, DEADLINE! DEADLINE!” rather than helping.
To take a concrete example, I used to drop my socks on the floor after taking them off. That’s a mild problem on its own – gathering them up for the wash is annoying – but significant once you add a dog. Unless the dog is trained to leave them alone (which is hard, particularly when they’re a puppy) you risk chewed up socks or, worse, an obstruction which might require emergency surgery. It’s much easier to control the environment in this case and simply don’t have socks within dog reach.
Theoretically this was a simple fix of taking the socks upstairs and dropping them into the laundry basket on the way to the loft-office, but there was usually something else I need to do downstairs afterwards, so the socks would get left in whatever place I put them as a holder. This meant rounding up socks became a pain.
Instead, there is a sock box on the bookcase near the table (and so the chairs). Socks off, socks in box, box grabbed and emptied when doing laundry. It’s very slightly more effort at the time, but that’s repaid at laundry time, and so the socks are out of the dog’s way.
Decluttering helps cleaning in the same way. If everything has a home, with actual space for it (because you have less stuff than space), it becomes trivial to put things away and find them again later (rather than requiring decisions every time you pick something up, and trying to work out previous-you’s thought process to find which pile the cookbook is in rather than just grabbing it off the cookbook shelf).
By not making any claim that the posts are particularly good or polished, notebook blogging has already resulted in more posts than any of my previous attempts.