Intention

" The road to hell is paved with good intentions." 

It's a popular variation of the original saying thought to have originated from St Bernard of Clairvaux who said "L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs" (hell is full of good wishes and desires)


Intention can be best described as the specific action or actions that a goal or outcome is aimed at. For those that follow along and are also fans of Freakonomics you will also know about unintended consequences. 
That is - the outcomes that were unexpected or unforeseen.


It would be fair to say I'm the master of those !

I often compare intention to New Years resolutions, you start at the absolute hard line and then quietly adjust it as time and reality creeps in. So for example, when I was younger I would make lists of all the resolutions I had to achieve in that year. Come the end of the year and a variation of the original had been achieved (sort of). So I began to learn that you had to be careful with the original plan.

In our house it goes a little like this :

It was our intention that the new dog would sleep outside at night. The reality was after 90 seconds of howling at the door, The Beloved relocated up stairs for the night with the minions and left me to deal with the noise. The next day a re-design of the "sleep outside" plan was developed. So we will be installing a dog door, which I have to organise.

It was our intention the at the dog would not be allowed on the bed. The second morning he was home he whined quietly and The Organised one picked him up and he was on. Now he knows that if a sleep in is trying to be had he will get some time on the bed by making noise.

Which is what he does now

Image courtesy of jinglegraphicdesign.blogspot.com

Every morning.

It was our intention that we would save money by shopping at the market. With two growing boys the bills were climbing up and the plan was to continue the healthy eating but at a reduced cost. The problem is that there are 2 supermarkets within 300 metres of the house. And you know I hate driving, parking and the rest of the rigmarole. Even with two grandma trolleys it still over flows both and we haven't been to the market yet.

It was my intention that I would teach the boys about bicycle maintenance by rebuilding a bike we found abandoned on the side of the road. I now have 3 incomplete bikes in the shed in various parts and stages.

None of them work.

Image courtesy of  bikedump.com

It was my intention that I would get the beloved a Valentines day gift ( with thought in it and prior preparation) yet there I was - Feb 14th at 3pm scouring around for gifts trying to find something.

So you can see that in our family good intention is discussed , put in to practice even, but  along the way .....

I put it down to life getting in to the way. I try to be a realist, I want for the best to happen but I know that I'll probably end up with some of what I wanted and some compromise chucked in for good measure.

And in the end I think that's what matters. That at least some part of the plan getting achieved and the benefit for me this teaches the boys that you have to be flexible and adaptive - Right ?

Speed Camera Lottery

Now that's some clever thinking.....

My kids and pocket money

When I was a kid, I got 20 cents a week for doing chores around the house, it was great way to earn the money I wanted for the things I desired. As I got older I got increases until I realised that getting a job was going to be a much faster way of getting much needed funds. So a paper boy I became. And life was good.

So what about my two little guys. Well I figured what worked for me would work for them. As a fan of Freakonomics and exploring the hidden side of everything and incentives , we settled on $1 for each year of their age and there is a set of chores that needs to be done to earn the full amounts. I also had set a cut off of 15 as, by then just like I did they will be able to get a job ( I actually was working earlier but that's not the point ). At the start it worked really well.
Freakonomics recently had this short discussion piece on chores and income for them, and it made me think about how I paid pocket money to my two blokes.And more importantly ,

why aren't all the chores getting done ? 

For a start we decided that unless all the chores on the list were completed that the money wasn't paid. This didn't work and as I started to look at other ways to motivate them to do the actual work I find out that it's flawed to try to do so.
Here and Here are just a sample of the evidence on why rewards for effort can be flawed.

So then I thought "what I need is a way to calculate what chores have a real monetary value towards the running of the house and pay the little dudes for those"  Meh, I'm going in circles here.
Then quite by accident I discovered that introducing fun/technology into the task paid dividends.

Example  : Sweeping the leaves up. Very difficult to get interested in this as a broom and leaves are not fun or interesting, until that is until I introduced the leave blower/vac. Now its funny to chase the leaves around and vacuum them up. (Its also funny to take the catcher off and spread mulched leaves all over the back yard !

So now I'm off to try and find fun or unusual ways to get the rest of the chores done. And what do we pay them  as pocket money ? Well I figure it's nice to have some spending money when on holidays and frankly thats the only time they really need it. So that's what we do; give them some spending money at the start of each holiday and encourage them to learn manage their money.