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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?

#271

Post by Raidion »

mturmon wrote: post #157
joaomacp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this. Some colleagues don't leave work until they've finished the feature/bug they're working on. If it's 6pm and I'm stuck solving a bug, I call it quits and go home. Often the next day I have a new perspective and check that other place where the bug actually comes from, and solve it faster than if I had just banged my head until late.

With respect, your comment and the GP comment seem to be two different things. (1) Stop work when the immediate path forward is clear, so there is less friction to restarting. (2) Stop work when encountering a puzzling obstacle, with the expectation that ambient thinking will suggest a path forward. I try to do both of these things. I'm more successful with the second. I first read about (1) in a book on writing tech…

I'm OP, and you're right on the money!

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

#272

Post by alan_wade »

Optimize behaviors, not outcomes.

You can directly control the actions you take, but not the results they lead to.

Because there's often luck/uncertainty involved, the results are often not even a good way to measure the quality of your decisions, sometimes good decisions can lead to bad outcomes and vice versa, be aware of this and notice when it happens.

Reward yourself based on taking the right action, use outcomes as analytics to learn from.

Confusing the two leads to anxiety, frustration, and beating yourself up over things you can't change.

Don't burn your mental energy on things outside of your circle of control, instead - try to spend all of it on taking actionable steps.

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

#273

Post by alan_wade »

chess44 wrote: post #226
antirez wrote: post #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 t…

What if I don't want to be who I am and I want to change myself? Apparently I am a very feminine man and I don't want to be like this at all. I can't stand how people treat me. When I am being myself I'd much rather not socialize at all than try to meet people.

Replace "being yourself" with "being your best self". You can still try to improve according to your own values, but don't change who you are just to please others.

Being your best self has nothing to do with socializing by the way, hopefully you would be doing that even if you were alone in your room.

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

#274

Post by plainOldText »

gnulinux wrote: post #259
plainOldText wrote: post #252

I think I've read this on HN once, in one of the comments: Don't make an important decision when you're in a HALT state (Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired). Note: Not to confuse loneliness with solitude.

Why is lonely there?

Good question! Perhaps because loneliness points to the difficulty of reaching out and the lack of other people who might give you a different perspective.

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

#275

Post by alan_wade »

Elte wrote: post #107

I like to keep "writing walls" of whatever problem I need to solve, either in work or outside of it. These are basically Google Docs without rules about structuring of content, it's mostly me type-talking with myself about what the problem is, what some possible approaches are for solving it, or even "arghs" and the occasional profanity if things don't work out. Also I paste in URLs for whatever useful resources I fi…

Completely agree! I use org-mode for this, I start a new * section every day with a date.

I also use hashtags like #link, #question, #note, #todo, #done, so I can easily search through them.

When I encounter some error, I write down the error, add a hashtag by the topic (like #docker or #ubuntu or #stripe), then URL for a solution I found (like stackoverflow), then a snipped of code that solved it with a brief explanation.

At this point my notes.org is 7.7 megabytes long and contains all the notes from every day of the past several years. So when I encounter an error I've solved before I just do the search and immediately find the solution.

Also I mark all the important thoughts and insights with >> at the beginning of the line, so I can search for ">>" and find a summary of all the most important insights I've learned over the past month.

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

#276

Post by danellis »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #233
danellis wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know it’s supposed to be bad for your back or posture or something rather but it feels impossible to stop that habit.

I meant to avoid being pickpocketed! It's easy for someone to yank it out of there. They can even replace it with folded paper to make you think it's still there when you check.

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

#277

Post by ryanmarsh »

Tempo.

I learned this from being in combat and trying to hit on girls way out of my league in highly competitive environments where they would verbally test me.

When tension increases, voices move up an octave, and conflict looms ...breathe... focus, let time slow down, move slowly and with purpose.

You can control the most complex and high emotion situations, the ones where everyone is freaking the fuck out by breathing and focusing your mind. It’s amazing, like watching time slow down. You gain control and can manipulate the situation as desired. With practice you can do this without thinking and can speed up or slow down the tempo at will. It’s like a super power. I encourage you to practice it.

Then you get to a point to where you can artificially accelerate the tempo for others (saying something taboo, challenging someone directly, body language) while you remain in “bullet time” able to control the situation while everyone struggles with the rush of endorphins. It’s pretty crazy. Try not to be too nefarious with this.

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

#278

Post by alan_wade »

nikivi wrote: post #72

I break down hard problems I am working on into steps. https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge/blob/master/rese... And I write down and refine many rules for myself to follow in life. https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge/blob/master/focu... Eating whole food plant based diet, fasting daily for 13 hours and drinking only water and tea also greatly helped my ability to focus. I also do some exercise on my au…

Your second link is probably the most delightful and awesome thing I have read in a long time. I feel such kinship towards this, it's like all the things I've had in my brain but never shared. You seem really cool =)

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

#280

Post by razzimatazz »

Elte wrote: post #107

I like to keep "writing walls" of whatever problem I need to solve, either in work or outside of it. These are basically Google Docs without rules about structuring of content, it's mostly me type-talking with myself about what the problem is, what some possible approaches are for solving it, or even "arghs" and the occasional profanity if things don't work out. Also I paste in URLs for whatever useful resources I fi…

I've also followed this approach a lot, yet I still find myself searching for the right ways to format it and the right ways to 'promote' pieces of my docs to real documentation or public notes. Cue highlighting with bold, red text, etc.

Not actually sure how people design a solution to something without this style or something near to it... whiteboard session with yourself?

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