I never go through a door without touching my keys. Must have saved me hundreds in locksmith costs.
Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
61–70 of 370 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#62Stay off all news, social media and any distracting websites until noon.
This is super helpful and, at the same time, super difficult for me sometimes. The internet is such a bit of brain candy that it's hard to resist, particularly on mornings where there's a task waiting I really don't want to do.
I broke away from these things, in part, by asking myself "what am I achieving here?" or "what is the value here?" After asking enough times, the urge to use faded.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#63Two 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
Here's a good HTML5 one I use:
https://playnoise.com/
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#64Set your "new tab" to a page that has data you should be looking at daily.
I set mine to a death clock. It is sobering to see on a daily basis for the last year that I've got just over 17000 days of life left.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#65I turn my phone off whenever I want to get anything done
I'd suggest going even further by placing your phone out of your reach: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691462
I log off from my apps and social networks. We used to do this all the time before. Now that devices and apps are always on, it really messes with my brain. I feel obligated to be present on those. Logging out calms me so much.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#66For me, it boils down to minimizing distractions and having a low baseline of stress and dissonance.
Default to "no." Simple math: if you say no to almost everything, you are free to say yes to the really important things. This is a skill you can practice and get better at. This is more specific to deals and opportunities than spending time with colleagues, friends, and family. However, if you find yourself constantly in meetings or going out, start saying "no" until it feels special each time, or you get home feeling energized instead of drained.
Determining who you are NOT matters more than determining who you are. It's easier to make a hard decision if you have established your own principles and developed a strong sense of personal integrity. You hear people and companies say what they will do to reach their goals, but you hardly hear them say what they won't do—which to me shows much more clarity in thought.
"Stressbox": Your mail has an inbox that all mail comes through and your brain has a "stressbox" that life keeps adding to. Just as it's okay to delete an email, you are totally fine removing a point of stress from your life. Unsubscribe from things that stress you out so you can have a lower baseline of stress.
"Life Tax": Shit happens... If you are prepared, it feels inconsequential. If you are unprepared, it feels like things spiral out of control or become overwhelming. You can't dodge or defer life taxes—so pay them as they come in. The people you see (or maybe know) who constantly have "bad luck" are likely not paying their life tax on time.
Diet, sleep, exercise, and a means to reflect are needed in combination. Your cumulative diet dictates how you feel next week. Eat generally healthy and you'll feel generally good—don't be afraid of a treat. The highest performers across many professions tend to sleep the most. Exercise helps make better use of the foods you are eating and helps produce the hormones you need to think clearly.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#67Earlier 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 ?
My sister used to be an almost daily user for 3 years, and augmented consomption again after a rape (2 joint a day when she started living at my place).
Still, after a year, familly support, a diploma, a great job, a non-abusive boyfriend and now an appartment, she is "clean" since early november, after her first try at stopping. I'm pretty sure she'll smoke again on some weekends or for new year eve, but it will be for fun and giggles, not because of any addiction.
Imo if you're well, it is not really addictive. Carefull though if you're at risk for heart problems (again: genetics, overweight, male), don't take it with tobacco. And like any drug, do not take it alone the first time.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#68Some of the other comments in here have overlap with mine, but worth sharing nonetheless imo.
I always stop working when I know I have something to continue. Doesn't mean I don't finish anything but I always have something to return to and don't have that paralysis to start working based on a fear of not knowing what to do.
That leads me to the second point, I keep markdown journals of all my projects as a history of what I was thinking and how things developed. I also make reference points in the journal regarding things I 'could' do the next time I open it.
I am a creative, so often the problems look like...
- Find new B-Format for Ambisonics - Re-factor gesture code
That way I always have something (usually small) to attempt when I need to start work the next day and this will help me tackle the bigger problems as I go.
Sitting down to the work is half the problem.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#69I use earplugs when doing work in any environment that's not quiet.
What's nice about earplugs is (1) it cuts off only a '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 earplugs virtually everywhere I go .. There's just soo much noise.
Re: Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
#70For 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…
I should add here that bullet journaling has been a big improvement on the problems of Kanban backlog management. By working from a daily log, I can separate tasks I'm working on today from the general backlog. Theoretically, this works with the "doing" list in Kanban as well, but I like it better in the journal. And I have all my stray thought notes that aren't up to the level of a backlog task in the same place that I'm doing my daily things. The acts of daily and monthly reflection encourage me to go groom that backlog in a more conscious way.