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.
Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
41–50 of 370 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#421/ 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…
You can also help your future self by writing that smallest possible thing on a post-it for the next morning.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#43Two 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.
Getting a little high at the end of my workday once or twice a week has done wonders for my stress levels and my ability to mentally recover from the day. Not only am I better at my job, but I actually have more time and energy for personal fulfillment.
I use small amounts of cannabis and avoid caffeine and sugar. Some people respond well to caffeine, but I don't. Gotta listen to your body and figure out what feels healthy.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
what is the dosage? are you smoking joints mixed with tobacco? do you smoke daily or just once or twice a week. can you elaborate? i've been a daily user for past few years but I think i see only negatives but I am too into to it to quit the drug for good.
For what it's worth, I encourage people to avoid being a daily user of anything. I first discovered this with caffeine. It's really amazing if you have it like once a week. But if I have it every day for a month, not only does it not help much, but when I quit I have to climb out of a hole. But I now apply the principle much more widely.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#45If I'm working on a project I don't have external motivation for, like a personal project, etc. I'll make sure I stop working only when I reach parts that are fun or at least clear. Next time I sit down, I want to either look forward to jumping back in, or not have to sit down and deal with a super weird edge case that had me hating life earlier. This also applies to lots of things, you can quit, just do it after you…
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.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#46Utilize laziness: It works like this: 1. Realize that most of the world is out to distract you. 2. Realize that part of the way to do this is to make distraction, and access to distraction, as easy as possible. 3. Actively set up "friction" to reduce that ease. In practice: I don't install FB on my phone; I have to use the crappier web version. I block reddit on my laptop, so I have to use my phone. Just by making st…
I don't display the bookmarks bar in my browser. Suddenly I'm not visiting 6 different websites for 30 minutes every day. Adding friction is an awesome hack.
One can also 'grease the rails' (the opposite of friction) for difficult to get-to tasks. Set out gym clothes and bag the night before, or meal prep on the weekends (so that during the week, the easiest thing to eat is what you want it to be).
This is front-loading executive function, and I find it very effective in my life.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#47Begin with the end in mind. It's clichéd (from 7 habits) and yet works wonders for getting me to even start, and actually finish.
Simple and recent example - I'm putting on weight for the first time in 40 years. Sure I want to lose the fat, but that's not enough. Thinking about the end is what did it for me.
First, exercise gets rid of the fat. Second, when I'm finished I should have more muscle than I do now. Third, and what I've somehow always thought was awesome, was to reach a stage where I can so a one-handed push-up.
I hate exercising. Every minute of it. But thinking about that/those outcomes make me do exercise to myself.
It's been a very useful technique in all sorts of places. Especially in meetings.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#48Just 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).
100% agreed. I can get very resistant about doing some things. Committing to doing one pomodoro today has been very helpful. At worst, I've broken my not-doing-it streak, and it will be easier to return to later. And at best I'll get into it and charge on through.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#49For work management...
Whatever task management system you use, never ever write down a "task" that cannot realistically be done in a single sitting of work. If you can't do it in an afternoon at worst, it's not a task, and needs broken down further.
Set a ceiling for the number of items in your backlog. When I was using Trello/Kanban to manage my tasks, I had a hard ceiling of ten things in the backlog. If something isn't important enough to rate being on that top ten list, it shouldn't even be formally acknowledged until you have space to acknowledge it in. (And if something sits in the backlog for a while unaddressed while new things come and go, admit it's not that important and drop it.) This doesn't need to be "ten items". Whatever number works for you, as long as it keeps you comfortable. This is about managing anxiety, not managing work. A backlog too large to even count is overwhelming. Don't let that happen.
Write everything down, preferably on paper. The physical act of writing does wonders for memory.
I've recently converted from Trello to bullet journaling for managing my life, and it works a lot better, for me at least. Paper writing, plus the loose-yet-structured nature of the bullet journal, is really powerful for keeping thoughts in order.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#50Two 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.
Be carefull though, even though it's not chemecally addictive (at least the 2 people around me who used to smoke everyday successfully stopped within a two-week period without difficulties), there are some unknowns around cannabis effect when mixed with tobbacco. If you're already at risk for heart issues (genetics, overweight, male, black), you'll want to slow down consomption (cake, pure pot seems to be still okay).
Also, like psychotrops or anything that numb your sensations or slow your brain (alcool, keta, fenta), it might have an effect on developing brains, so don't take too much until you're 24-25. Again, studies are pending (the war on drugs really killed of research at some point).
That said, it is a valid brainhack for anxious people from my experience.