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.
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.