Half-open loops

[Jay Levitt]

Following on from this I decided to put my groceries on the belt at random -- took a little effort but it was amusing to watch my internal reactions to doing this.

LOL! Of course, as an obsessive mathematician, it must secretly bother you that your arrangements are only pseudo-random, and that human-generated pseudo-random sequences are affected by - well, I forget if it's really the gambler's fallacy, or the sample-size fallacy, or one of its cousins. Or maybe you're carrying the Rand book around with you.

I confess to organizing my groceries on the belt as well, though not by category (but I've never tried intentionally un-categorizing things either). I do try to face the bar codes down, so the cashier doesn't have to twist the products as much (RSI prevention), and I try to pack the belt as tightly as possible so I can get started bagging while the cashier's still scanning.

If this stuff is really obsessive you could try the behaviour modification technique: look at the torn chair and say out loud `I need to repair that rip'. Count how many times you have to say it until your mind gets bored and wanders onto something else. Repeat that many times as often as needed.

I think that's "exposure-response prevention"; it's supposed to be highly effective, and researching it' is one of the 170 things in my inbox to do once I process and organize them