Dishwasher Tasks

 I do not enjoy unloading the dishwasher. Every time I do, my brain goes into overdrive trying to figure out how to automate this task. But there isn't really any way. You just have to take each dish out individually and put it away. Okay, you can combine some, sometimes, but for the most part it's matter of just doing it. Repetitive and not very improvable.

This is a "dishwasher task".

At my work, an example of this when we need to clean up data from a new merchant. They've tagged each case with one of 41 different reason codes. Internally we use (say) 8 different labels for our ML algorithm. There's no shortcut here; we just have to look at each of the 41 different codes individually, one-by-one, and make a decision of how to translate them into our own schema.

In mathematics, this reminds me strongly of the distaste many people have for case-based proofs. Where all the clever tricks are applied and still we end up with 17 different fundamental cases, each of which is proved a different way, so that the whole thing is proved.

With the right mindset, I actually do enjoy unloading the dishwasher. I have to keep in mind that I'm accomplishing a dishwasher task. Don't let my mind dwell on the futility of automation; focus on the visceral feeling of pleasure I can get from taking a step which must be taken to complete the overall task, rather than focusing on the (again pretty visceral) feeling of frustration I would get from noticing that none of my steps are building on each other.

But don't take my announcement of pleasure at the steps of unloading the dishwasher to mean I want to unload yours.

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