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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?

#181

Post by beat »

scarejunba wrote: post #101
MattHeard wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reasoning is often conjured ex post facto as well, with my brain tricking me into thinking I had good reasons to do something before I actually thought of the reasons. Our brains use reason to justify what we already did more than it uses it to choose what we will do.

In The Righteous Mind , in a small section, Jonathan Haidt talks about this with the analogy that reason is a mahout riding the elephant of emotion. After reading that book and some others, I wondered if I could train my feelings so I’d respond instinctually and instantly to things in the ‘right’ way. Often when we see code, we have a feeling of ‘dirty’ or ‘clean’. An internal reaction that pushes us in some directio…

You're on the right path, I think. It's the same thing I do with my "I may be wrong, I'm often wrong" anti-affirmation. I'm training my mind - and training the minds of people I work with - to recognize my fallibility in advance, so it's not such a shock when I actually am wrong. Because yeah, I'm often wrong.

And for my own purposes, recognizing the possibility that I might be wrong in advance, and being comfortable with it, heads off a lot of wasted effort from defending my wrongness.

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

#182

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

wordpressdev wrote: post #98
cdicelico wrote: post #78

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…

Do you blog? It would be great, and beneficial for most of us, to read more about your thoughts and reflections :)

Or can we conference call to connect and explore these things further?

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

#183

Post by nerpderp82 »

cdicelico wrote: post #78

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…

0) Keeping one's mouth shut. Trying to not have an opinion until a) having enough information b) only voicing it if it is important. I am trying to spend more time perceiving instead of broadcasting.

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

#184

Post by 13415 »

1. I do unpleasant things as fast and effectively as possible, so I can procrastinate later.

2. I only use the Get Things Done method when I'm really stressed, so I can suddenly benefit from its effects.

3. I don't work at all after a certain time of day / switch off entirely at the weekends.

4. I avoid problematic people like e.g. hidden narcissists or psychopaths like the plague. If I have to interact with them, I'll keep it as professional as possible and ignore their rants as best as I can. (There is a life outside work.)

Obviously, these tricks only work if you can 'afford' them.

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

#186

Post by bartcobain »

yboris wrote: post #111
jjclarkson wrote: post #5

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

Actually is from William Burroughs, but yeah, a really good technique.

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

#187

Post by mrtobo »

chamblin wrote: post #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 l…

"Stupid/evil rule" aka Hanlon's Razor:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." "https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hanlon%27s_razor

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

#188

Post by pmarreck »

dctoedt wrote: post #165
pmarreck wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of substituting books with URL's... Do you have any to any of these concepts? For example I just tried googling "eikasia, pistis, dianoia, episteme, techne, phronesis, noesis" and I didn't, eh, come up with something precise enough to read. EDIT: Someone down in the thread did the kindness already!

> At the risk of substituting books with URL's It's substituting URLs for books — either that or replacing books with URLs . [0] This might seem pedantic, and I know that language evolves, but: 1. We risk confusing, and therefore we disserve, non-native speakers if we use the language in ways opposite the accepted standard meanings. (One could think of language as an API, and no matter what the API, precision and acc…

Not one to shy from grammatic pedantry, having almost won a spelling bee once:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/substitute

“3) (transitive) In the phrase "substitute X with/by Y", to use Y in place of X; to replace X with Y as in ‘I had to substitute old parts with the new ones.’ (This usage was formerly proscribed.)“

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/substitute

“Traditionally, the verb substitute is followed by for and means ‘put someone or something in place of another’, as in she substituted the fake vase for the real one. From the late 17th century substitute has also been used to mean ‘replace someone or something with something else’, as in she substituted the real vase with the fake one. This can be confusing, since the two sentences shown above mean the same thing, yet the object of the verb and the object of the preposition have swapped positions. Despite the potential confusion, the second, newer use is well established, especially in some scientific contexts and in sport (the top scorer was substituted with almost half an hour still to play), and is now generally regarded as part of normal standard English.”

Who are we to argue with the Oxford English Dictionary? You can take it up with them. lol

Have a nice day :)

(I will say that the “sport” example is bad- the player is not being substituted with the time!)

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

#189

Post by ianmcgowan »

dboreham wrote: post #83
Insanity wrote: post #12

Write down what I'm going to do. It happens that I can't really 'start' with work due to having too many things to choose from, or by not knowing how to really get started with it. What always helps is writing down on a piece of paper a step by step guide of what I will do. this can be very general. But just having the steps written down helps me get started. Kind of like a "todo list" except that I don't update it w…

And the corollary: write down what you have done. It can be (for me) hard to remember, giving rise to the mistaken feeling that you’ve achieved nothing.

I struggle with distraction and procrastination, making it feel like nothing gets accomplished on average, even though there are some small steps each day.

I have a kanban/whiteboard with small post-its and the "done" column is a reminder that things are being completed, even if not always at the pace I'd like. Not so much a hack as a reminder to not be down on yourself - we can't all be hyper-focused life hackers :-)

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

#190

Post by ganzuul »

minkzilla wrote: post #177
ganzuul wrote: post #169

Technical issues don't seem to require as much strategizing as people-issues, so from that category here are a few of my top ones: - A person as you imagine them is likely completely different in truth. Since it is less work to imagine optimistic things about them, unrealistically high expectations can be a viable strategy since people seem to gravitate towards expectation and you are left with more energy to deal wi…

For anyone who hasn't read / listened to David Foster Wallace's This is Water speech, I would highly recommend it. It talks about point 2 of parents comment.

Great find! Thank you.
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