Dear The Randomist,
My boyfriend is going through a rough time. He quit his job a few weeks ago with no plan other than “taking some time to get himself together.” Instead of getting together, he is playing video games until 3 or 4 in the morning, eating mostly fast food, and ordering games and gaming hardware online. He’s been to one therapy session but said he hated the therapist and never went back or looked for another one. We’ve been together for five years and I’ve seen most of my friends get married to partners they’ve known for less time than I’ve been with him. He says he wants to get married, but hasn’t offered a ring or any kind of timeline. It’s stressful and depressing to come home to this man-child. He says he’s been “working on his resume” but has only mentioned one job lead in three weeks. How can I make him get serious about being an adult and stop acting like a lazy teenager?
-Am I His Girlfriend Or His Mom
Dear Am,
Tell him he has to move out unless he rolls on this chart every day and does what it says:
- Put on a suit and go out to network
- Find and apply to 10 jobs online
- Follow up with five previous applications
- Reach out to five people you know to tell them you’re looking and ask them for contacts in their network
- Reach out to three people who work in your industry and set up an informational interview over coffee
- Apply to one new job lead and then play video games
And here’s your list; roll once a day:
- Take over his game machine so he can’t play
- Tell him he also has to do your laundry and clean the house
- Start low-key looking for a replacement on dating apps
- Have your girl friends over to painstakingly critique him while he listens
- Reassure him that you really want him to succeed and you believe in him
- BJ when he does his list item
If he still doesn’t have a job in four months, you have to break up with him.
Dear The Randomist,
I’m having trouble keeping my momentum up. Mornings are a slog—I can’t get my kids out the door, my dogs barely respond when I call them, and at work the team I manage moves at a crawl.
But the culture I’m in is anything but slow. It’s competitive, fast, and execution-focused. When I’m with my peers, I feel that energy—I like it. It pushes me. It’s exciting.
And that’s the disconnect. I can run at that pace myself, but I can’t seem to create it in the things I’m responsible for. I’m struggling to generate momentum in my own world. Maybe I never really had that ability to begin with.
It’s frustrating. It drains me.
So how do I actually drive action instead of just wishing things would move faster?
Discouraged and dursative
Dear Discouraged,
A little random reality could really move those around you. Make up a series of punishments for your kids, your dogs, and your team. Each week, pick one of them at random to focus on. Give punishments when your expectations aren’t met. Give rewards when they are. Science has shown that intermittent reward works better than constant reward for behavior shaping. So make it more random and you’ll actually get better responsiveness.
And our lawyer asked me to add, “make sure your punishments are legal.”
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