Spend ~20 hours a week actually interacting in the same physical space as housemates (at least a subset)
I’m curious why this is so important to you, unless that it’s just something to try out. I currently live alone and I like it that way, and I see no reason why spending more time with other people would be such a great thing.
You seem really rigid about excuses though. I think the tendency will be that people will come up with an excuse which one finds it unpleasant or difficult to dispute. For example, when I was in the data science bootcamp in Berkeley, people would very frequently say, “I’m sick and I will be working from home today.” Now a lot of people were in fact sick precisely because of so much physical proximity. But it was very obvious in many cases that the basic reason they were staying home was that they were tired of all the company and felt the need to get away. They did not however feel comfortable saying, “I just feel the need to get away.”
The same thing was true when I lived in a monastery. You could not say “I just feel like sleeping in this morning,” so people said “I didn’t come this morning because I didn’t feel well.” We all knew that this simply meant they were tired and felt like sleeping in. But no one is comfortable confronting someone with the fact that they’re not really sick if they say they are.
The focus on physical presence is a combination of research showing that it matters (there’s some stuff I’ve collected from Dunbar, for example) and strong personal intuition from past experience. In many ways, it’s the core of the thing being tested out, but I have a lot of weight on “it turns out to matter more than just about anything else.”
re: excuses, the intention of the house is Not To Do The Stupid Thing.
Clearly, “mental health” days are a real phenomenon—I’ve taken some myself. And on a larger scale, psych blockers/motivational issues are also real. So it’d be stupid to a) pretend they don’t happen, and b) push directly against them all the time, and never look at undercutting them or working around them. This plan pushes directly against them some, with commitments to just show up anyway, but that’s not the only tool—one of the things I hope to do is increase the candor of all housemates, at least within the context of the house. This will take some practice and reinforcement, but I much prefer a norm of “Huh. I notice I just really didn’t want to show up today” --> figure out what’s going on and address it systematically, to a norm of “little white lie that nobody calls out.”
It’s also worth noting that the house has a pretty high introvert quotient, so there will be a lot of us (myself included) who are motivated to safeguard systems giving one the ability to get away from people for a while.
I’m curious why this is so important to you, unless that it’s just something to try out. I currently live alone and I like it that way, and I see no reason why spending more time with other people would be such a great thing.
You seem really rigid about excuses though. I think the tendency will be that people will come up with an excuse which one finds it unpleasant or difficult to dispute. For example, when I was in the data science bootcamp in Berkeley, people would very frequently say, “I’m sick and I will be working from home today.” Now a lot of people were in fact sick precisely because of so much physical proximity. But it was very obvious in many cases that the basic reason they were staying home was that they were tired of all the company and felt the need to get away. They did not however feel comfortable saying, “I just feel the need to get away.”
The same thing was true when I lived in a monastery. You could not say “I just feel like sleeping in this morning,” so people said “I didn’t come this morning because I didn’t feel well.” We all knew that this simply meant they were tired and felt like sleeping in. But no one is comfortable confronting someone with the fact that they’re not really sick if they say they are.
The focus on physical presence is a combination of research showing that it matters (there’s some stuff I’ve collected from Dunbar, for example) and strong personal intuition from past experience. In many ways, it’s the core of the thing being tested out, but I have a lot of weight on “it turns out to matter more than just about anything else.”
re: excuses, the intention of the house is Not To Do The Stupid Thing.
Clearly, “mental health” days are a real phenomenon—I’ve taken some myself. And on a larger scale, psych blockers/motivational issues are also real. So it’d be stupid to a) pretend they don’t happen, and b) push directly against them all the time, and never look at undercutting them or working around them. This plan pushes directly against them some, with commitments to just show up anyway, but that’s not the only tool—one of the things I hope to do is increase the candor of all housemates, at least within the context of the house. This will take some practice and reinforcement, but I much prefer a norm of “Huh. I notice I just really didn’t want to show up today” --> figure out what’s going on and address it systematically, to a norm of “little white lie that nobody calls out.”
It’s also worth noting that the house has a pretty high introvert quotient, so there will be a lot of us (myself included) who are motivated to safeguard systems giving one the ability to get away from people for a while.