Working out when I am feeling emotionally low. Talking to friends and family when I am super stressed.
Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
51–60 of 370 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#52My main "brain hack" is for depression, particularly that arising from my divorce. I tend to think back to happier times and trigger myself (rumination). The hack is simple: maintain awareness of what your brain is doing, and police it: do not allow rumination. Simple and easy are, of course, not the same thing.
Be careful. Avoidance remains effective only for avoiding. I would recommend seeking professional help to work through what you've been through.
If you avoid, you cannot heal. To heal you need to expose, clean, and re-bandage. For most of us, to do this right, we need professional help (note: not drugs).
If you want or need to vent/talk/etc shoot me an email: latham2 (at) wisc (dot) edu.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#53Two 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.
https://rain.simplynoise.com/
If you like white/brown noise, this is one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy it. I saw a link on HN for another one...
Here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18427538
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#54"It will pass." - a kind of a stoic saying of mine. Applies to both nice and bad things, but mostly to bad things, especially to bad things that are growing/happening sharply.
Nothing strong can last for a long time, so it will pass :)
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#55"I may be wrong. I am often wrong." I say this out loud all the time, any time my knowledge/expertise is involved, and I'm trying to be better about saying it in writing as well. It works like an affirmation, only to encourage recognizing my own fallibility, rather than boosting my confidence. Closely related... recognizing that everyone , including me, is just a thin coat of reason smeared on a dumb animal brain. Ev…
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.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#56Earlier 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.
Having never tried it, I'm curious, isn't there a chance that it turns into an addiction ?
Not an addiction like an addiction to nicotine, alcohol, or heroin. However it can absolutely be habit-forming, and habits are difficult to break.
Like any psychoactive substance or even any form of escapism, there is a certain amount of personal responsibility required for safe usage. The user needs to be self-aware enough to be able to gauge when they should stop.
For most people, this shouldn't be a problem. but if you find yourself using it as "an escape" or "a way to cope" on a regular basis, I believe you are somewhat at risk. The same is true for video games, junk food, and collecting baseball cards.
It will never get to a point where you are sleeping in the streets robbing people just to get another hit of marijuana. But it may get to a point where you are smoking too much every day after work, and you start to have a hard time falling asleep without it. Maybe you spend too much money on it. Maybe you stop caring about other hobbies and interests.
Again, most people, especially relatively mature adults who don't have the unlimited free time to be stoned too often, probably don't have that issue. I suspect (without proof) that one is more likely to get addicted to soda or junk food. Like any psychoactive drug, it's not a substitute for mental health resources, whether that be family/friends or a professional therapist. In my opinion, even the temptation to overuse is a warning sign into yourself that maybe you should pause and figure out what's actually causing the temptation.
That said, if you just wanna get a little stoned on Thursday night after the kids go to sleep, you will be fine.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#57One of my favorites is, "If not now, when?" If there's something I should do that I don't want to do now, I have to come up with a specific time or condition when it's really going to happen. It made me realize how much "later" is a fictional time rarely arrives.
"By the time you realize you won't live forever, it is likely your time here is already running out."
"No time like the present."
I've found pondering mortality to be an excellent motivator. Existentially frightening (sometimes), but motivating.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#581/ 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…
Yeah I often find it best to start the day with the easiest jira on my list. Fix a typo or whatever. Once I’m started the harder tasks come easier.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#59I use earplugs when doing work in any environment that is not quiet.
What's nice about earplugs is (1) it seems to cut off only some 'existentential layer' of sound that I find inhibits focus and (2) your hearing adjusts; you can still hear virtually everything happening around you.
Being in the city, I find myself actually sporting ear plugs virtually everywhere I go .. There's just too much noise.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#60Two 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.
https://rain.simplynoise.com/ If you like white/brown noise, this is one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy it. I saw a link on HN for another one... Here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18427538
I'll once again recommend https://mynoise.net. In my eyes, it's the best because you can customize every single sound generator to your liking.