The diarrhea-diaper cycle
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
Today is the first official vacation day for me, and never before have I felt such an urge to work! But wait a minute, isn’t vacation supposed to be about NOT working? Yes, but there is a difference between work and work. Running on and beyond the cognitive red-line for months on end has consequences and results in cognitive fatigue. No matter how much fun you have at the office. But this summer is unique. I just became a father for the second time and oh boy have I looked forward to all the “work” that follows. However, I would never call it work. Changing diapers on a screaming furious infant is relaxation. Pair it with a dog suffering from diarrhea during the worst thunderstorm I have experienced, and it is like a mental spa-treatment to me. I am now blessed with well-defined problems in abundance, something very different from the cognitively demanding role as an engineer.
Taking care of an infant is something I would consider an extremely well-defined problem with a well-defined goal. Problem: Kid is screaming. Goal: Make him content again. You get instant feedback when the problem is solved. And you never have the luxury to drift off to another place or procrastinate. It puts your mind into a very different place. When we encounter problems and challenges in life, there are often many solutions to them. Some better and some worse. But the catch is, the less defined the problem is, the more potential solutions you can choose from. And if the problem is diffuse, it becomes very difficult for me to prioritize accordingly between all options of actions that are available to me. Let us compare the design of a wooden floor structure with an infant who has pooped himself. The former problem can be solved in an infinite number of ways whereas the latter basically only has one solution. The cognitive load differs like night and day between these two examples.
Instant feedback is another parameter worth mentioning here. When designing that wooden floor structure, we are talking about a time horizon measured in years before you get feedback, i.e. when the tenants have moved in and no-one complains. The feedback you get from changing a diaper is instantaneous. And that results in a wonderful feeling of progress. I also realize now, that the feeling of progress is also related to the self-assessed importance of the task at hand. With an extremely noble goal, every little step towards it will feel significant, whereas a mediocre goal will struggle to give you any dopamine rush at all. Because you really don’t care about the destination. I DO care that my son is happy, and that is a very noble and important goal. Thus, a simple task such a changing a diaper gives a significant feeling of making progress. And you do it a lot. Our current record is 3 diapers in 3 minutes.
To top things off and make them even more fun, one of my dogs has acquired diarrhea, which means that he has to go out once every hour. But only during night-time for some inexplicable reason? 😂 So, I am now in my third day with hardly no sleep at all. It is one thing to awake in the night and change some diapers and go back to sleep. It is a completely different thing to get dressed and take your dog on a diarrhea walk every hour during the night, while Mother Nature sends us a massive thunderstorm with hail large as green peas. That’ll wake you up good. And when you get back inside, dry and clean yourself from the rain, crawl back into bed and start counting sheep until you finally are about to fall asleep again – The kid poops himself. And so, the diarrhea-diaper cycle begins another iteration.
I love it.