Week 9 Evaluation – Decluttering, Dog Training, and Mastery

Pushups (modified): 365/1500

Sit-ups (modified): 367/1500

Weapon form: 2/25

Hand form: 2/25

My numbers are not near my goal for the week but I’m still happy because with the slowly increasing energy I have also slowly increased the number of repetitions each day for the push-up and sit-up equivalents, and that’s progress. More will be done today.

Can’t be certain if I’ve read all the blogs but I caught up on a lot of them.

Completed my art homework but didn’t get any more sketches done in my sketchbook. There may still be time today.

I read chapter 15 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, as well as another chapter of Four Thousand Weeks.

Finally finished the big declutter project that was supposed to be done the end of last November. YAY! It’s done! It’s gone! While there is still a lot of physical decluttering left to be done my next big declutter project is the digital declutter.

With the digital declutter being my next big declutter project it seemed appropriate to start reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, as it is directly related to the task at hand. While I’ve only just started the book, I’m finding it quite interesting as it relates to what I’ve learned about dog training as well as mastery.

The book talks about how technology, particularly smartphones and social media, are now designed to be behaviourally addictive, to the point that it refers to smartphones as being “the new cigarettes”. As with what happened with cigarette companies, whistleblowers have come out to state how technology companies specifically design their products to be addictive.

How does this relate to dog training? Have you ever heard of dog trainers that say they are “positive only” trainers? I always find that a strange statement because, in dog training (and it works with humans too), there are four quadrants of Operant Conditioning.

1. Positive reinforcement

2. Negative reinforcement

3. Positive punishment

4. Negative punishment

To put it another way, it’s MATH! It’s not good versus bad. If it’s positive you are adding something, like giving a treat to a dog that just sat on command. That is positive reinforcement. You are adding something, the treat, to make the desired behaviour, sitting on command, more likely to happen again in the future.

If its negative, you are taking something away. Probably the most basic example in dog training would be teaching kennel manners. The dog wants the reward, which is getting out of the kennel, but they try to barge out and so you take away the reward, by closing the door. While some people may disagree with the idea of putting dogs in kennels this can be a life-saving skill for them when it comes to travel (for example). They are safer travelling in a kennel, and you don’t want them barging out into traffic as soon as you open the door of the car. This particular scenario of dog training is called negative punishment. You took something away, in order to make the behaviour less likely to happen again.

Punishment: what’s done to make a behaviour LESS likely to happen in the future

Reinforcement: what’s done to make a behaviour MORE likely to happen in the future.

Do you see why I find the idea of “positive only” dog training puzzling?

Now, there’s another concept that I use in dog training, the JACKPOT. This is when the dog gets a food reward that is several bits of food one after the other in rapid succession (play can also work as a reward but I won’t get into that here). This is far more rewarding, and exciting, to the dog than getting the same amount of food in one handful. This is done randomly (though I especially like to do it when they come right away when called), and this is very similar to the addictive nature of slot machines. For some reason we are more likely to repeat a behaviour if the reward is random than if it’s consistent – same reward for the same behaviour, every time, versus a random jackpot added to the mix. Our psychological response to the random jackpot is why some people refer to smartphones as being a slot machine in your pocket. The apps are designed to elicit a similar response in us humans (especially social media). The jackpot could simply be “likes” and “tags”, preying on our desire for reward and social acceptance.

I’m not against the use of this technology but, just as we study weapons in Kung Fu to understand them, I want to understand my use of this technology. I want to have the technology serve me and not the other way around (it is said that when it comes to social media it’s the user that is the product). In Kung Fu class we are often told to ask ourselves “where am I, and what am I doing?” so that we maintain our intent, focus, and keep ourselves in the present. When using these technologies I want to do the same thing. Are we doing something with such technology by our own choice, or are we being manipulated into doing it by skillful design to make us addicted?

There is another thought that has been lingering in my mind for quite a while with regards to my path to mastery. Can I use Operant Conditioning, with intent, to promote my own mastery? What would that look like? How is operant conditioning happening now even though it wasn’t purposeful on my part?

Seems fair to say that, this week, I did better than my performance last week.

Numbers for the Year:

Pushups (modified): 6166 / 50,000

Situps (modified): 6116 / 50,000

Weapon Form: 209 / 1000

Hand Form: 134 /1000

Random Acts of Kindness: 64 / 1000

Sparring: 50 / 1000

Kilometres: 184 / 1609

Memorize “Mastery”: 3

Nurture Relationships: 1

Blogging: 18 / 52

Art Like it’s My Job: 34 / 252 days

Declutter my life: 17 days this year where some decluttering was done

Greatcoat project:

Improved flexibility: 13 days of doing something