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

I'm incredibly fortunate to have a chairman on our board who brings so much clarity of thought to the business.

He's unemotional yet thoughtful. If he doesn't have an immediate answer for something, he instinctively understands how to search for the answer. He has a natural sense of the real priority of work and discussions.

So I asked him for some of his favourite brain hacks...simple tricks he uses when he has a mental challenge to overcome. A couple of his insights were very useful to me, so I thought I'd share them here and ask HN for their personal brain hacks in response.

Artificial deadlines

He has a clever technique for bringing tough choices to a conclusion and avoiding procrastination. This is especially useful for life changing decisions such as moving country or taking that new job.

To put an end to the decision making process he sets a deadline for the decision to be made. Say 6pm on Monday. At five minutes to 6 he usually doesn't know the answer but in those 5 minutes something clicks, and by 6pm the answer is always there.

10/10/10 rule

This is something I've read before but he applies this. The 10/10/10 is the framing of the outcome of a decision across three timeframes:

How will he feel about the outcome 10 minutes from now? How about 10 months from now? How about 10 years from now?

The answers to these questions provide a different perspective and usually help him to find the correct answer without being misguided by circumstances at the time of making the decision.

This will all be over by 6pm

If there's an important meeting with stakeholders, a scary appointment with the doctor or a tough chat with an employee - he simply keeps in mind the fact that by "X time", the thing will have passed and won't matter anymore.

If it doesn't matter after X time, chances are it probably doesn't matter now.

Edit: Formatting.

I turn my phone off whenever I want to get anything done

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 goal

Just start. Even spending a few minutes on a problem you've been avoiding will help make the issue clearer, plus you're more likely to keep going once you've started (see also: pomodoro technique).

1/ Whenever you can’t motivate yourself to start working on something, think about the smallest thing you can perform and make it your only goal for the day. It can be something as simple as « open the ide and compile the project once ». The trick is that after that first step you will naturally begin to do some real work, because the movement started.

2/ when learning a new skill or trying to improve , focus on one or two things only for the duration of the training session. Eg : this tennis game i’ll consider i’ve won if i’ve managed to stay relax for the whole match, on every point.