The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I'm addicted to housework (cough)
As none of you might know, I've been trying to kick a legal, infamously moreish habit for the last several months/years, sometimes quitting easily and for months, sometimes struggling to get through the first few days. I was recently reattempting the latter of those two strategies (with minimal cheating, mostly) when I came across gwern's piece on nicotine. It's a good article, my main interest was the idea that nicotine isn't especially addictive, but rather extremely habit forming. Even with nicotine supplements like gum or patches, smokers will chew toothpicks and suckers to simulate a cigarette. Other drugs don't do this; recovering alcoholics don't swig from a flask of tap water imagining it's vodka, methadone patients don't poke sewing needles into their arms pretending it's drugs (unless they do, correct me if I'm wrong on these). [the article has more and I might be misinterpreting things but it works]
With that in mind, and a substantial tolerance break, I decided if I could get myself addicted to self-improvement and/or the feeling of accomplishment. Subconsciously preparing for the role, I'd carefully gained twenty pounds, reduced exercise to ten moderate minutes two or three times a week (plus walking), and steadfastly defended the virtue of the packing tape around 25 U-Haul boxes from my recent move (more than six months ago). I decided to reward myself with my addiction after doing what I felt was an appropriate amount of work (starting with about twenty minutes of cleaning or a couple sets of any exercise, lifting or bodyweight).
I've never cleaned like this before in my life, and it's never felt so easy. I'm always been a slob, I like to keep my place a comfy four (give or take). I never focused and half-assed everything. Now I'm cleaning and unpacking almost all day through and feel like I'm in a trance the whole time. I've never had the attention span for hypnosis but I have to imagine this the next best thing. Interestingly, the activity of cleaning feels nearly as rewarding as my original compulsion, in a similarly satisfying way. I'll often forget if I've indulged because I'm content cleaning, and instead of rewards every twenty minutes I'm going well over an hour as I get distracted by new things to wash and put away. I've been trying to get through some fun articles and videos all day but I can't spend more than a couple minutes seated before I start looking for things to put away or move around.
I'm engaging in the original addiction much less than normal and I'm not even slightly bothered. This wasn't supposed to be a plan to quit but my cravings are weaker, less frequent, and easier to manage. A switch flipped and now it's easy waiting to earn it.
Developing the urge to exercise hasn't been as successful, but I just started this program and haven't had as much reinforcement time. It's easier to reward myself after exercising rather than before, but I've started mixing the reward in between sets to build a stronger connection between habits. I used to lift a lot and I think it will be easy to get back into that groove as I build discipline and diligence. I was initially planning on rewarding myself whenever I felt especially hungry to recapture the fun of my wannarexia days, but now I'm taking the power seriously and worried the effect could be too strong. I'm tying the reward to positive, productive behaviors in general (I hope you think this post qualifies, because it does) so I'm hoping to see improvements over time in multiple areas. So far this project has exceeded expectations dramatically, and the benefits are immediate.
Of course, I've just started, so it's possible I crash, relapse, and give up the scheme entirely. The easiest way for this to happen would be engaging in the reward without practicing a good habit, thus weaking the reinforcement. This is the value of the exercise component. I might mentally bargain my way out of twenty minutes of housework, but forty pushups are quick and keep the reward honest. The new positivity and confidence will help a lot.
I know this post isn't especially useful since I'm only a couple days in, so if there's interest I will try to post an update in the future.
I'm a bit curious, how are the rest of you stacking up against that chart?
I've never been above a 2 and I'm a bit of a slob. I don't even think I've been in a home that's at a 4 and I can count the number of threes on one hand.
1, occasionally reaching 2 (when unpacking after trip or in a big hurry)
but even 1 is horrifically depressing room, not for trash reasons
I never seen trash on floor like 3 or worse. I seen paper pile like 4.
(OK, I seen 9 but it was in a service room for garbage dumpster that was emptied too rarely)
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I consider myself a terrible slob, and I'm probably a bit below a 2. Even the worst of my friends don't get close to 3.
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If you swapped the newspapers for cardboard boxes I have a box room that's at roughly 3 and that's after over a year of using it as a staging area for de/cluttering projects.
I clean the house to floor level roughly once a week and leave the kitchen clean every night.
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In a kitchen? Never anything above 1.
I will say my basement and garage can get towards a 2 or a 3, maybe, when I'm getting lazy about it or for project reasons or because I rapidly moved a bunch of stuff out of the upstairs to make room for something. But the kitchen/living room/bedroom floor of my house (essentially a 3br apartment) is always a 1.
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Same, 2 at worst. I could go weeks without cleaning anything at all and still not reach 3.
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I'm willing to bet that chart is used to diagnose hoarders, and it gives that much variation to trick people into being more comfortable saying, "I'm a six," because six is towards the middle and there are worse options. My grandparent's house had rooms that were between 5 and 10. My grandmother had Alzheimers and would purchase things for her 'baby' (all her children were grown adults) and stuff them in one of the vacated bedrooms until you couldn't enter the room, then start over again in a different bedroom.
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Somewhere below 2. I would not describe myself as tidy, I definitely do a crappy job keeping my floors and counters as clean as my neater friends, but I can't imagine just casually leaving pants in the middle of my kitchen. I admittedly do that in the bedroom, but... well, it's the bedroom and the containment of things is just a bit different. I do have a few books and some mail on my desk that I could stand to clean up. But again, there's some measure of containment that I settle into where those are still in the range of "where things go" even if it's not as tidy as it really should be.
Having literal garbage just laying around is, to me, a sign of a slide into complete degeneracy. I am well aware people live that way and yet I still can't believe people just live that way.
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Same here. Glad OP is doing more chores, but I can't imagine living over a 2.
There's something about smaller apartments and longer term tenures though.
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That chart actually shocked me. I've always been a huge slob, noticeably more so than others I've lived with except my parents who were also (lesser) slobs. And the worst I've lived is a 3, occasionally flirting with 4. To be honest, I feel like 4 and up all fit in a small range of 2 or 3 tiers, and 1-4 there could be expanded to be more like 1-6 or 1-8.
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Probably a 2 myself.
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