At any given moment in the day when I’m watching the baby, I don’t know exactly what to do. There are like 20 things I could do, 10 of which need to be done at some point, but none of them are obviously the right thing and so I have to choose. Which is bad. I think too long or not enough and then my choice is often bad in some way.
I turned to GTD years ago to solve this problem. It was a good system, but the difficulties I had with it were not getting solved, so I stopped. I’m bad at regularly clearing the most avoidance-inducing tasks, so any central task list system accumulates those – and then I start associating the system with that aversive accumulation. Also, a lot of my day now is childcare and housework, where urgent small things build up and get cleared quickly – meaning the overhead of maintaining up to date lists is greater.
What I now do when I hit the decision freeze point is choose to enter one of three modes, each of which makes choosing much easier. The three modes are
- Asking myself what the hardest, most avoidance-inducing thing is, and doing that (repeatedly) for about an hour
- (You can do this for an extended period with your friends as a social event.)
- Doing what I want to, what would make me feel good
- This is usually ‘fun stuff’ but also chores I’m unusually in the mood for – c.f. comparative advantage of the present self
- No-queue work, as described in my post about stupid cleaning, where I actively avoid planning, and do the first thing that comes to mind when I am done
It turns out that while making decisions about what thing to do next is hard, making decisions about which of those three modes I should go into for the next hour or so are easy. And once I’ve chosen a mode, decisions within that mode are easy.
All of these work better when I’m working with the rule of “finish what you pick up” as a central principle. If I put something down half-finished, that increases the decision load of my future self, and decision load is the problem I’m trying to solve.
I don’t think I could have taken that rule as seriously as I do now. What changed? Maybe I’m more determined on testosterone. Maybe I’m more desperate – I love my child and I want more. If I don’t get my shit together, I guess I can have two and still have a reasonably happy life. But if I do get my shit together, I think maybe I can have four. So, if I want four kids, I need to stop wandering away after putting away the fridge groceries but before putting away the pantry groceries.
These come with different recommendations for baby care.
When I’m in hard mode, I’m in hard mode with the baby as well. This means when she cries because she’s dissatisfied with all the activities she can do without supervision, I don’t try to put her in the next machine that might solve the problem so I can continue working away from her. I orient completely towards her, drinking in her cues like she’s a cheat sheet I have to put away before the exam starts in five minutes, while adjusting her and playing with her to see what she wants. If I’m on a call to make some kind of appointment, I have to finish the call first before orienting to her, but I will hold her and walk around while on the call unless it’s impossible to hear the person. I’m trying to do the tasks I most want to avoid, while paying a lot of attention to my baby.
When I’m in fun mode, I spend minimal cognitive resources on her. If I play with her, it’s because I genuinely want to. More often I put her in a safe play space and go to the other room to read or write or whatnot. I could also put her in the stroller and walk around the block reading a book, although I haven’t done this yet.
When I’m in auto mode, I’m not that oriented towards her by default, but she’s on my hip a lot as I walk around the house doing chores, and she’s usually happy with this.