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Hoarding

michaelsamsel.com

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Re: Hoarding

#21

Post by UncleOxidant »

phaedrus wrote: post #13

I grew up in two hoarder houses (parents and grandparents). I disagree with many of the things said in this article. First of all the thing about hoarding being triggered by loss: I think this has more to do with psychoanalysts looking for an explanatory reason of that sort. (I.e. Freudian bullshit.) From my observation it is more of a genetic personality trait that the person has already had the inclination to hoard…

> Here's the key: it's an inability to make decisions.

I think this is spot on. I definitely have hoarder tendencies. A look at my office would easily confirm this. I also tend to hoard code - I'll often comment out old code that no longer applies just in case it might be needed later, or in case I'll need to remember how I did something before. This gets pointed out in code reviews.

Re: Hoarding

#23

Post by BXlnt2EachOther »

m463 wrote: post #15

I think everyone has hoarding behavior wired into their psyche. Some people have it trained out of their behavior, but many have had it trained in. Lots of retail and software companies train you to make money. Free to play gaming companies monetize by creating collections of things, and making you jump through hoops to complete them. Retail does it. Clothing companies make clothes that work as a set. Power tool comp…

regarding the Marie Kondo approach being tough -- now with three kids, she feels so too and has adjusted

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/entertainment/marie-kondo-sto...

Re: Hoarding

#24

Post by resolutebat »

m463 wrote: post #15

I think everyone has hoarding behavior wired into their psyche. Some people have it trained out of their behavior, but many have had it trained in. Lots of retail and software companies train you to make money. Free to play gaming companies monetize by creating collections of things, and making you jump through hoops to complete them. Retail does it. Clothing companies make clothes that work as a set. Power tool comp…

> everyone in japan does it

Nope, not even close. Quite the opposite, in fact, as Japanese offices and apartments tend to be full to the brim with crap. Partly this is by necessity, since both are also tend to be quite small and cramped by Western standards, but being well behind the curve on moving away from paper to digital also contributes.

https://i1.wp.com/www.allaboutlean.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

Re: Hoarding

#25

Post by jrockway »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #21
phaedrus wrote: post #13

I grew up in two hoarder houses (parents and grandparents). I disagree with many of the things said in this article. First of all the thing about hoarding being triggered by loss: I think this has more to do with psychoanalysts looking for an explanatory reason of that sort. (I.e. Freudian bullshit.) From my observation it is more of a genetic personality trait that the person has already had the inclination to hoard…

> Here's the key: it's an inability to make decisions. I think this is spot on. I definitely have hoarder tendencies. A look at my office would easily confirm this. I also tend to hoard code - I'll often comment out old code that no longer applies just in case it might be needed later, or in case I'll need to remember how I did something before. This gets pointed out in code reviews.

Maybe software engineers are just paranoid. Our best practice is to take hoarding to the extreme; keep every version of every file that ever existed, add a note about it, and push the entire history to each new checkout.

It probably does stem from some sort of loss aversion. We have all wished for longer undo history, things like git take that to the extreme. Now that we can't lose things, we're free to work without that fear.

Re: Hoarding

#26

Post by drewcoo »

phaedrus wrote: post #13

I grew up in two hoarder houses (parents and grandparents). I disagree with many of the things said in this article. First of all the thing about hoarding being triggered by loss: I think this has more to do with psychoanalysts looking for an explanatory reason of that sort. (I.e. Freudian bullshit.) From my observation it is more of a genetic personality trait that the person has already had the inclination to hoard…

tl;dr I agree with you and think the author mis-assesses the psychology of collecting, too.

I grew up in a family of collectors. By the age of 10 I'd spent countless hours scouring antique shops and shows and flea markets for my items of hyper-focus: metal litho advertising, mostly particularly tobacco cans, because I was working with an allowance and the age of tobacco tins was not long in our past then. I was really introverted, but learned to haggle, to "dicker," before I learned to swim. I spent even more hours in my public library, looking up whatever information I could find about my collection and similar pieces and why some were valuable and others not.

Yes, I kept everything up well. But . . . I only kept collecting. It was almost some kind of mania. Even when I branched into antique yo-yo collecting, it wasn't doing anything for my ability to socialize as a teenager. Collect, collect, collect!

Until my parents got divorced and sold their collections. My brother and I opted to also sell our collections. No coercion - it was a choice: I was an adult by then and my brother was 18 but still finishing high school.

And soon after that, I wasn't looking at everything as a collector anymore, I wasn't trying to put a value on things. I also didn't have a lot of stuff that just took up space. Eureka! I'd discovered some new state of being: collection-free.

I think collecting can be a problem. I think the author misses that in the analysis, too.

Re: Hoarding

#27

Post by sheepscreek »

phaedrus wrote: post #13

I grew up in two hoarder houses (parents and grandparents). I disagree with many of the things said in this article. First of all the thing about hoarding being triggered by loss: I think this has more to do with psychoanalysts looking for an explanatory reason of that sort. (I.e. Freudian bullshit.) From my observation it is more of a genetic personality trait that the person has already had the inclination to hoard…

I’d fail every time to word it as well as you did. I suffer from a familial dysfunction with “things”. It isn’t hoarding for the sake of hoarding. It’s a complex mix of genetic and socioeconomic nuances of my parents’ upbringing (scarcity of resources), truly knowing the value of things and an inability to throw something broken away that we can fix - yet don’t have the time or willingness to. Along with ADHD (out of sight = out of mind).

Then there’s the part of convenience. The likelihood of hoarding something is directly proportional to how hard is to to get rid of.

Edited: for clarity

Re: Hoarding

#28

Post by bombcar »

jrockway wrote: post #25
UncleOxidant wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's the key: it's an inability to make decisions. I think this is spot on. I definitely have hoarder tendencies. A look at my office would easily confirm this. I also tend to hoard code - I'll often comment out old code that no longer applies just in case it might be needed later, or in case I'll need to remember how I did something before. This gets pointed out in code reviews.

Maybe software engineers are just paranoid. Our best practice is to take hoarding to the extreme; keep every version of every file that ever existed, add a note about it, and push the entire history to each new checkout. It probably does stem from some sort of loss aversion. We have all wished for longer undo history, things like git take that to the extreme. Now that we can't lose things, we're free to work without…

There's a very particular pain you get when you know you had something and you lost it; or worse, you know you threw it away.

It may be related to too good of a memory, or autism, or whatever, but there are parts of my life where I have way too good a memory for everything I have and had, and other parts where I'm like "yeah I got a lot of something like that, but who cares".

Re: Hoarding

#29

Post by bombcar »

javchz wrote: post #9

I think should be a balance. I went full digital Marie Kondo a few years back, and I regret it. I'm into a lot of niche media, like covers or small indie band scenes. And at the beginning having everything in Spotify or YouTube seems nice... Until there is a rights issue or something worse (like an artist being doxed) and the song it's deleted and became lost media. Now I backup everything in a 2x2TB HDD just in case…

There's a real value to digital hoarding, because external forces are operating against you, and it will all crumble to dust.

It's also nice that you can digitally hoard billions of megabytes in the space of a small shoebox.

Re: Hoarding

#30

Post by bombcar »

resolutebat wrote: post #24
m463 wrote: post #15

I think everyone has hoarding behavior wired into their psyche. Some people have it trained out of their behavior, but many have had it trained in. Lots of retail and software companies train you to make money. Free to play gaming companies monetize by creating collections of things, and making you jump through hoops to complete them. Retail does it. Clothing companies make clothes that work as a set. Power tool comp…

> everyone in japan does it Nope, not even close. Quite the opposite, in fact, as Japanese offices and apartments tend to be full to the brim with crap. Partly this is by necessity, since both are also tend to be quite small and cramped by Western standards, but being well behind the curve on moving away from paper to digital also contributes. https://i1.wp.com/www.allaboutlean.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

People get impressed by Japan fitting everything in a small space, but often you realize that small space is incredibly packed.
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