Meditating Things Done

I like accomplishing housework, but I often have trouble convincing myself to start. There are too many distractions, too many pleasures, too many things I'd rather be doing. 43 Folders has an excellent article on dealing with these distractions called Run A Dash, in which the idea is to set a very short time limit in which to get something done, some absolutely minimal first action towards accomplishing a goal. With it being that small any complaints about how much you dislike it are simply not valid. Dashes require limits: either ends-based or time-based, and often the best solution is both: either when I finish this task, or ten minutes, whichever comes first. For these, one needs a timer.

I've been doing dashes for a long time, and I have long searched for the perfect timer, and have long ago given up. There is no one perfect timer for every need. But I have found two that I like. Because of the need for intrusive interruptions I still carry a Palm M500 which will chirrup as needed, but the Palm scheduler timers just don't work for dashes. Here are two programs for the Palm that do.

( Two Timers )

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I loathe Chutes and Ladders. Of all the children's games that Kouryou-chan owns, it has to be my least favorite. Chutes and Ladders combines the very worst of moral lecturing with the very worst of the human inclination towards fatalism.

The game is one hundred squares broken up into a 10x10 square, numbered sequentially going back and forth, rising up. Each player tosses the die and moves ahead that many spaces. If you're fortunate enough to land on a virtue, you take a ladder up to your reward; if you're unlucky and land on a vice, you fall down the chute to your punishment. There are little pictures that accompany the vices and virtues: a little boy reads a comic book hidden behind his history book in one square, and that chute drops him down to a square showing him with a dunce cap.

Players never make any choices in the game. It could just as easily be played by a computer. You never get to choose to commit a vice or practice a virtue: the game implies you have no free will. If you commit a bad act, it's the roll of a die. The winner is determined completely by the luck of the draw: losers the same. Because it's easy to get shuffled backwards and forwards, you can even repeat the same vices over and over: you haven't even got operational, compatibilist free will. Because virtues put you ahead, it's unlikely you'll repeat them: you're much more likely to be vice-ridden than virtuous.

Since the game takes no brain power, my mind drifts while playing. What would an adult version of this game look like?

• Little Suzy tried meth and her heart exploded.
• Billy had unprotected anal sex with fifty men in one night and now must take AZT four times a day
• Little Jimmy rode his motorcycle without a helmet. Now he rides a wheelchair
• Cammy had five shots of Jack Daniels and then drove her car into a tree at 90MPH
• Dougie ordered kiddiepr0n off the Internet and now must be kept in solitary for his own protection
• Sam went to Vegas and lost his self-control. Look at his kneecaps now!
• Angel ate at fast food every day for twenty years and can no longer reach parts of herself to wash them
• Little Greg thought big muscles would attract women, but steroids made him impotent
• Jill liked her boyfriends to be wild. Her daughter will need therapy for years