Today, I got over the pain of a project I had been procrastinating on.

I started a timer and got to work on it. Within just a few seconds, the pain was gone.

I had built the project up in my mind as something worse than it was. I kept bumping it forward on my to-do list, as though my future self would be pleased to see it there tomorrow.

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In the language-learning app I use, like so many games and gamified platforms, it takes an ever-increasing number of points to graduate to each subsequent level.

For example, it might take 100 points of gameplay to go from level 1 to level 2, and 1000 points to get from level 9 to level 10.

This is good game design, taking advantage of the nature of operant conditioning.

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Like many people, my top problem-solving activity is taking a shower.

Less effective but still very useful is a walk around the neighborhood.

There’s something about the solitude and predictability of these routines that encourages lateral thinking. It’s much better than sitting at a laptop.

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I lost some momentum in my life shortly after college.

I spent a few months volunteering full time, then came “home” to my parents’ house where I tried to figure out what was next. As the Beatles’ song goes, “Out of college, money spent/see no future, pay no rent.” It was summertime, and I had a job lined up for September—a job I was dreading—and nothing until then.

I was so used to being busy that I didn’t cope well with all of the free time. I tried to practice music and write songs, which I had always longed for more time to do, but it felt like dropping coins into a bottomless well.

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Explaining is not teaching, but it’s usually a tool that teachers rely on anyway. It comes in handy in some situations, like giving multi-step directions.

But what do you do when you can’t explain something because you don’t speak the same language? It’s one thing to tell a group of kids what’s expected of them in an obstacle course, but what about a mouse?

In that case, you rely on shaping. Essentially, you reward any steps in the direction (sometimes literally) of what you want the training subject to do, even if they bear little resemblance to the desired behavior.

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