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Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

#111

I keep this on a small card in my office: SYSTEMS INBOX ZERO - Delete, Delegate, Respond, Defer, Do ALWAYS BE KNOLLING - Put away tools, group like objects, align to surfaces FOCUS - Work on one thing FAST TASK SWITCHING - Work on the top of the heap PERMISSION TO FAIL - Persist for 15 minutes Continuous Improvement by SUBTRACTION WRITE IT DOWN to relieve pressure STRATEGIC PROCRASTINATION - Ignore your big audacious…

"Always Be Knolling" reminds me of "Discipline of Do Easy" by Gus Van Sant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoOUBETTyMI

Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

#112
post #41

Be wary to follow any of these. These are people's owns. And some may say oh, it's inspiration. be careful. You are looking for an authority to solve your problems. This is just a gallery of others brain hacks. Understand your own brain, and make your own hacks.

The greatest advantage of culture is not having to learn everything, through brutal life experience, ourselves. Often, we only learn some bit of truth or wisdom after suffering its absence.

Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

#113
1. Troubleshooting - I'm not sure if this counts, but my troubleshooting method involves cutting problems in half recursively. I think that's basic troubleshooting, but it seem like many people do not understand it.

2. Understanding that there is an emotional impact to actions. One reason I procrastinate is because of negative feelings when I approach work. Often I sit down to mentally make a list of things to do, and then I will immediately think of all of the roadblocks and problems. Knowing that these are emotions helps to deal with them.

3. Long walks. Taking long, boring walks helps me to unwind and also to reconsider problems that are hard in the present tense.

Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

#114

My top 3, in order of how I try to apply them (i.e., if 1 doesn't help, move on to 2, etc.). I learned these all from reading various philosophy works, by the way, so perhaps cognitive hack #1 should be "read books". 1) Suspension of judgement (from Sextus Empiricus, Zhuang Zi, Ecclesiastes): avoid forming an opinion at all about things that are not evident. The way I do this is by thinking through an opposing argume…

I liked this too, and given the sister comment asked for a more colloquial description, I came up with my own:

1) Instead of using firm statements attached to yourself like "I know" or "I think" use statements that are easier for you to contradict and discard without feeling like you are attacking or discarding yourself, like "it seems that..." or "it appears that...". Then you can say "it seems that X but in contrast it appears that Y". That is better than "I know X but I could be wrong because Y".

2) Don't immediately describe things as good or bad or the right way and the wrong way, that will prevent you from seeing an alternative solution because you will have automatically labelled it as wrong when you labelled something else as right. Instead of "that is bad" or "that is the right way" to "I feel this way because...". It is easier to change a decision based on knowing how you feel and have felt than when you have "money in the game" as having said (even to yourself) that something was the only right way.

[Note: In general, being able to step back and pick the right thing because it is right is useful, but only after you have honestly considered the situation in a fair and impartial way. Being too partial too quickly cuts off your ability to think and accept better solutions. If you already knew it, you could just choose, but the point is you are trying to think through it, which means you don't know but are evaluating how you feel and how things seem to be, but trying to uncover more.]

3) Understanding your current state of mind, and what state of mind would work better for the current task is important, so you can match those up, or at least understand more deeply. These are things like the appearance of things or imaginative situations (eikasia), good faith and trust or persuasiveness (pistis), discursive thought (dianoia), theoretical thought (techne), practical knowledge (phronesis), or intuition (noesis). [Note: my comments on the meanings of the Greek terms are probably wrong, but...] You could combine multiple of these to reach your goal; and you will often have a sequence of thoughts that are in different ones.

Introspection is _huge_. If you can understand and evaluate how you think and feel; you can start to move past that, or use it to your advantage, or see the flaw in your own reasoning, or be more observant, or form new habits, etc.

Personally, I like yoga for this reason; it helps to accept your feelings as they come and to observe them without immediate judgement. I think it helps in developing intuition, controlling your thoughts and emotions, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

#115
Coin Flip Rule: If I think about a tough decision for too long, it's a sign that the decision may be tough because the choices are really close and additional thinking is likely not worth it (the added value of making the "correct" choice will be very small). In this case, choosing at random is OK.

Just start: If I feel unmotivated, I'll wind up a Pomodoro timer and just try to knock out one. Usually, I will feel a lot better/more motivated once I get going on a task.

Stupid/evil rule: If I disagree with someone, I recognize that I will often shortcut this to the other person knowing less than I do, or to having ulterior motives. When I see I am doing this, I ask why they might disagree, other than explicitly being stupid or evil. Since people are very rarely stupid or evil, this helps me to understand the perspectives of others.

Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

#116

Two things: I use brown/white noise a lot to quiet my ADHD and general mental chaos. Whenever possible I steal myself away and just bask in the low, dull roar of the noise in some earbuds. The other, cannabis.

I'm glad to see someone else mention cannabis. It honestly has helped me so much with slowing down and making sure I put in the time to search for answers. It's helped me creatively and passionately. It's helped me calm down my anxiety in stressful situations and be clearheaded with my thoughts. It's not for everyone but for those that do use it, I sincerely believe it works.

ADHD here too. I used to have a huge problem with switching to new tasks. It was like mental inertia. I found that listening to podcasts made that go away and I was able to get a lot more done. Now I put one on whenever I'm faced with something mundane.

Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

#117
My hacks:

* Productivity: every day do at least one measurable thing that puts forward your project, even if very small.

* Expectations: don't care about the outcome of your work, as long as you tried to put a lot of good efforts into it. Focus on trying to do the thing instead of focusing on the result it will have, or what people will think.

* Stress: instead of being preoccupied about things, try to take care of them. During stressful situations, enjoy the small things of life, like eating or drinking a glass of wine, or playing with your daughter.

* Socialization: let your inner person go out in every occasion in order to immediately push away people that don't like you. Never try to fake being different (compared to what you are). This way you don't have any filter, which is great, nor you have any doubt about people staying around having different expectations.

* Life: it's too short to hang out with people you don't like or doing activities you don't like. Focus on what you want.

Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

#118

My hacks: * Productivity: every day do at least one measurable thing that puts forward your project, even if very small. * Expectations: don't care about the outcome of your work, as long as you tried to put a lot of good efforts into it. Focus on trying to do the thing instead of focusing on the result it will have, or what people will think. * Stress: instead of being preoccupied about things, try to take care of t…

I like the idea of this:

Productivity: every day do at least one measurable thing that puts forward your project, even if very small.

But a bit confused on the "measurable" piece, if you write code, make a new feature or fix a bug, how can it be measurable?

Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

#119

I never go through a door without touching my keys. Must have saved me hundreds in locksmith costs.

That sounds like it could develop into unhealthy behavior. Glad it works for you though. Personally I do the 3 pocket pat down every time. Left, right, back. Keys, phone, wallet. If either pocket is empty then something is seriously wrong.

You should probably stop keeping your wallet in your back pocket, though. I downgraded to a smaller one so I could keep it in my front pocket with my phone.

Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

#120

My top 3, in order of how I try to apply them (i.e., if 1 doesn't help, move on to 2, etc.). I learned these all from reading various philosophy works, by the way, so perhaps cognitive hack #1 should be "read books". 1) Suspension of judgement (from Sextus Empiricus, Zhuang Zi, Ecclesiastes): avoid forming an opinion at all about things that are not evident. The way I do this is by thinking through an opposing argume…

I like this advice a lot, but the references and the formalized taxonomic names are a severe hindrance. Do you know any description of these ideas that uses more colloquial, modern terms for the taxonomy?

Initial reading

* eikasia -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eikasia

* pistis -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistis

* dianoia -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianoia

* episteme -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episteme

* techne -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techne

* phronesis -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudence (latin: prudence)

* noesis -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy_of_the_divided_line

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