When I was a teenager, I lived in a nice house with my mother, stepfather and three younger brothers. The contents of the house were what you would expect if you took a normal house, multiplied the number of things in it by ten, then shook it very hard. Almost – a greater proportion of the things were in boxes or containers of some kind than you would expect by chance, and also there were narrow trails cleared along the important thoroughfares. For instance there was a clear path to the first few chairs in the living room, from which the more athletic members of the household could jump to most of the other chairs.
The contents of the house were what you would expect if you took a normal house, multiplied the number of things in it by ten, then shook it very hard.
The new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual may classify this as a hoarding disorder.
Having finally read Kahneman's book, I'd say this disorganized collection growth problem is definitely loss aversion/endowment effect. I apply this insight to verbosity and irrelevance in writing in "Avoiding irrelevance and dilution:Construal-level theory, the endowment effect, and the art of omission." -- http://tinyurl.com/62zwpr2
An analog to the far-mode solution for verbosity probably applies to collection growth.
It's all about search cost. And I suspect that the search cost for some people is higher than for others. For instance my mother had a real knack for rembering where things were.
The Flylady says is more succinctly: " You can’t organize clutter; you can only get rid of it, like a diseased cancerous tumor. Purge it from your life and you will find out what living is all about."
The failure to throw things away is really the heart of the matter. I find the blindness to this the most striking feature of this discussion. The disinclination to delete is a big problem authoring clear text: the failure to realize that less can be more; the failure to delete when editing. The failure to delete seems more important than the tendency to add--to try to prioritize chicken and egg.
Is it sunk costs? Loss aversion? Or the habits of accumulation fostered by the capitalist system?
Also, if more than one person's stuff gets intermingled, then decluttering takes consultation, and that adds a need for coordination which makes clearing space even more difficult.
But surely you should strive to de-bias your heuristics when advantageous. Katja's piece demonstrates the pitfalls of the add-more heuristic, fueled by the availability bias and loss aversion. (Yet, she's rationalized her biases as a principle of "disorganized systems growth.")
There are two critical habits that lead to a chaos-free household. First (as Robin alludes), you stick with the principle of "everything has a place, and everything in its place". Second is that you throw away anything that you don't absolutely need, and you periodically purge even those things that you need, just to see if you really needed them.
For many years, I lived a life of pristine simplicity and intoxicating freedom from clutter by following these two simple rules. I had all the elbow room and space for pacing that I wanted, and I could even do cartwheels in any room of my house if I wanted. That is, until I met my current wife. It started during our first weeks of dating, when she demanded that I buy a bed (the floor is so much better for the back, but I was lovestruck, so I acquiesced).
In the fifteen years we've been married, I increasingly trip over random useless physical objects, pull in my shoulders to squeeze through tight spaces, deftly prance between open spots on the floor, and am continually bewildered by a proliferation of things that I don't even know what possible purpose they could ever serve. One of my wife's favorite places to shop is container stores, and she is always finding amazing shelves, drawers, and nested boxes. Boxes within boxes. What could be more useless than a box, other than a box within a box?
I have identified two factors that cause this state of affairs to become permanent; perhaps both factors were operational with your mom and stepdad. The first factor is psychological: when you're settling into life with a new partner, you don't want to be the only one putting things in their right place, because then you would feel like you are being taken for granted or taken advantage of. And you don't want to be a domineering jerk and nag your partner to do her fair share. So organizing the household becomes a stand-off, where you both play chicken, and *nothing* gets done. The second factor is that clutter eventually accumulates to the point where there is simply too much stuff and too little space to reasonably put everything in a designated space. The first principle becomes *impossible* to follow, short of buying a second house (which we are in the process of doing).
Today on the drive to her summer camp, my daughter casually mentioned that she feels uncomfortable in houses that aren't cluttered. Perhaps that is a third factor -- upbringing can "corrupt" a person to be comfortable only around nested boxes of useless junk. I try not to judge. I can't do cartwheels in the house, I often stub my toes, and I don't understand why we have 90% of the stuff that we have, but it's totally worth it, if that's what keeps them happy.
Some day technology may help with this. You'll be able to throw scissors, pens, etc. into a closet full of smart goo. Then return to the closet anytime, ask for the item, and the closet will spit it out for you.
At a certain level of trickiness, it is cheaper to just buy some new scissors than to find the old ones. So you buy the new scissors.
It seems you buy the new scissors because you don't adequately consider opportunity imposed by future searches. The availability bias caused you to overweight the cost of scissors searches.
In the end I’m still not sure what the dominant problem was, or if there was one.
It's seem that your family failed to adopt a no-clutter ethic. This would serve to moderate the biases that caused them not to consider the search costs in buying another material object.
The same applies to writing style. If you find a piece of writing is too cluttered, you should rewrite it to impose a different organization rather than add to the clutter.
It isn't a matter of being suited for a heuristic, IMO. Everyone should have as many tools in the toolbox as possible. I am a big systems thinker, but sometimes reducing a problem is the way to clarity instead of thinking about it from a systems perspective.
I used a similar strategy with nail clippers as your scissors example. I always kept them in the bathroom and always knew where to find them. I got married and my wife didn't have this same habit, so clippers were often elsewhere. Then we had kids, and finding the clippers became a chore.
So I bought about a dozen nail clippers and put them in my wife's Christmas stocking one year. I thought this would solve the problem, but no, the clipper supply dwindled over time and I still had to go looking again.
Then I bought my own damn pair of nail clippers and forbade everyone, including my wife, from using them.
The contents of the house were what you would expect if you took a normal house, multiplied the number of things in it by ten, then shook it very hard.
The new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual may classify this as a hoarding disorder.
Having finally read Kahneman's book, I'd say this disorganized collection growth problem is definitely loss aversion/endowment effect. I apply this insight to verbosity and irrelevance in writing in "Avoiding irrelevance and dilution:Construal-level theory, the endowment effect, and the art of omission." -- http://tinyurl.com/62zwpr2
An analog to the far-mode solution for verbosity probably applies to collection growth.
It's all about search cost. And I suspect that the search cost for some people is higher than for others. For instance my mother had a real knack for rembering where things were.
The Flylady says is more succinctly: " You can’t organize clutter; you can only get rid of it, like a diseased cancerous tumor. Purge it from your life and you will find out what living is all about."
Time spent organizing is typically time well spent.
The failure to throw things away is really the heart of the matter. I find the blindness to this the most striking feature of this discussion. The disinclination to delete is a big problem authoring clear text: the failure to realize that less can be more; the failure to delete when editing. The failure to delete seems more important than the tendency to add--to try to prioritize chicken and egg.
Is it sunk costs? Loss aversion? Or the habits of accumulation fostered by the capitalist system?
Also, if more than one person's stuff gets intermingled, then decluttering takes consultation, and that adds a need for coordination which makes clearing space even more difficult.
But surely you should strive to de-bias your heuristics when advantageous. Katja's piece demonstrates the pitfalls of the add-more heuristic, fueled by the availability bias and loss aversion. (Yet, she's rationalized her biases as a principle of "disorganized systems growth.")
Overcoming Bias has gone 'meta'...bravo! One of my favorite posts on this site, ever - from a long-time reader.
There are two critical habits that lead to a chaos-free household. First (as Robin alludes), you stick with the principle of "everything has a place, and everything in its place". Second is that you throw away anything that you don't absolutely need, and you periodically purge even those things that you need, just to see if you really needed them.
For many years, I lived a life of pristine simplicity and intoxicating freedom from clutter by following these two simple rules. I had all the elbow room and space for pacing that I wanted, and I could even do cartwheels in any room of my house if I wanted. That is, until I met my current wife. It started during our first weeks of dating, when she demanded that I buy a bed (the floor is so much better for the back, but I was lovestruck, so I acquiesced).
In the fifteen years we've been married, I increasingly trip over random useless physical objects, pull in my shoulders to squeeze through tight spaces, deftly prance between open spots on the floor, and am continually bewildered by a proliferation of things that I don't even know what possible purpose they could ever serve. One of my wife's favorite places to shop is container stores, and she is always finding amazing shelves, drawers, and nested boxes. Boxes within boxes. What could be more useless than a box, other than a box within a box?
I have identified two factors that cause this state of affairs to become permanent; perhaps both factors were operational with your mom and stepdad. The first factor is psychological: when you're settling into life with a new partner, you don't want to be the only one putting things in their right place, because then you would feel like you are being taken for granted or taken advantage of. And you don't want to be a domineering jerk and nag your partner to do her fair share. So organizing the household becomes a stand-off, where you both play chicken, and *nothing* gets done. The second factor is that clutter eventually accumulates to the point where there is simply too much stuff and too little space to reasonably put everything in a designated space. The first principle becomes *impossible* to follow, short of buying a second house (which we are in the process of doing).
Today on the drive to her summer camp, my daughter casually mentioned that she feels uncomfortable in houses that aren't cluttered. Perhaps that is a third factor -- upbringing can "corrupt" a person to be comfortable only around nested boxes of useless junk. I try not to judge. I can't do cartwheels in the house, I often stub my toes, and I don't understand why we have 90% of the stuff that we have, but it's totally worth it, if that's what keeps them happy.
http://www.amazon.com/Getti...
Some day technology may help with this. You'll be able to throw scissors, pens, etc. into a closet full of smart goo. Then return to the closet anytime, ask for the item, and the closet will spit it out for you.
At a certain level of trickiness, it is cheaper to just buy some new scissors than to find the old ones. So you buy the new scissors.
It seems you buy the new scissors because you don't adequately consider opportunity imposed by future searches. The availability bias caused you to overweight the cost of scissors searches.
In the end I’m still not sure what the dominant problem was, or if there was one.
It's seem that your family failed to adopt a no-clutter ethic. This would serve to moderate the biases that caused them not to consider the search costs in buying another material object.
The same applies to writing style. If you find a piece of writing is too cluttered, you should rewrite it to impose a different organization rather than add to the clutter.
Clutter is really excessive near-mode--a failure of far thinking. (http://tinyurl.com/7d2yh6x)
It isn't a matter of being suited for a heuristic, IMO. Everyone should have as many tools in the toolbox as possible. I am a big systems thinker, but sometimes reducing a problem is the way to clarity instead of thinking about it from a systems perspective.
We are not all suited for the same heuristics. But thanks for the suggestion.
I used a similar strategy with nail clippers as your scissors example. I always kept them in the bathroom and always knew where to find them. I got married and my wife didn't have this same habit, so clippers were often elsewhere. Then we had kids, and finding the clippers became a chore.
So I bought about a dozen nail clippers and put them in my wife's Christmas stocking one year. I thought this would solve the problem, but no, the clipper supply dwindled over time and I still had to go looking again.
Then I bought my own damn pair of nail clippers and forbade everyone, including my wife, from using them.
Problem Solved.