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

* The ignition (my car plays a chime if I open the door with the keys still in the ignition) * My pocket (self explanatory) * My lap (they will fall and make a racket if I stand up without grabbing them first)

My father's system: Only lock doors from the outside, using a key. It's hard to lock yourself out that way. (Not helpful if you live in an apartment with doors that lock automatically.)

That said, it is very easy to read a list like this, "feel inspired", and then go right back to your old habits.

And that's the big thing that's changed my life around.

Specifically, how I pulled off the first two was with a practice I'd do when I'd hear a word with an antonym. I'd shrug and say "meh.........meh." I came up with this practice because I wanted to learn to suspend/minimize judgment without learning about types of judgments or bothering with distinguishing them. I went as broadly as I could, instead. I noticed different effects that seemed to correlate with sets of words. Right/wrong helped me see other perspectives, stop demonizing others, and realize people do things because that's how they learned to be. Should/shouldn't helped me release shame. Good/bad helped me stay positive and withhold judgment of the moment. Like/dislike I think joined with good/bad to release judgment of things/experiences. What I mean by this is after maintaining this practice throughout each day for 3 weeks, I realized I'd accidentally abandoned my food preferences and things that used to trigger disgust in me no longer did. This effect included enjoying types of music/activities/people I used to hate. I came to regard like/dislike as judgement of something as good/bad attached to feeling enjoyment/disgust. I chose to believe I could enjoy anything I put in my mouth. Yes, even that thing you're thinking. No, I probably haven't tried it.

A question I've gotten about this is: "aren't you afraid you'll start enjoying how rotten things taste?" I can still taste when something's gone bad if I've learned to associate the taste with being rotten, but ultimately if I don't know how to identify if something's rotten I then get an opportunity to see if my system can handle it. I can explore the flavors and textures without swallowing, also, if I don't want to get sick. I can also search for how to identify it. Identifying if something is rotten requires learning stuff; it's not innate to us, or, if it is, there's another way to go about things.

I enjoy my life much more after doing this.

Other useful language hacks:

1. Learning to express myself in the pattern of nonviolent communication: When I , I feel [ because I need ]. Would you be willing to do _____ to help me meet my need(s) for _____?

I used square brackets [] to indicate a list. Emotions with evaluations of others are things like "offended" or "used" or "abused." Each of these implies someone else did something. The idea is to identify what they did in the first portion & separate it from the emotions that followed. This approach is a practice in leaving behind the thoughts I attach to emotions. I highly recommend reading "Nonviolent Communication" to get more clarity on this.

2. Using "I" statements to describe my experiences, as opposed to "you" or "we" statements. By doing this, I maintain my independence.

3. I started using active voice instead of passive voice. In writing this comment, I noticed a few sentences were in passive voice (including this one, which I chose to not change). An active voice version of the previous sentence would be "In writing this comment, I noticed I'd written a few sentences in passive voice." Using active voice helps me take more responsibility for my actions, instead of blaming others.

4. I choose to use "responsibility" instead of "blame" or "fault." I define blame/fault as assigning 100% responsibility to a person or group of people. How people learn to choose their actions is, in part, a function of how they were raised, the cultures they've been exposed to, the rest of their environment. Those things are largely out of their control. Blame/fault denies these facts. I find it easier to take responsibility for my actions and find ways to improve using this concept. It also allows me to more easily see how others contributed to something, which leads me to holding them accountable by expressing gratitude for their part and asking them to either continue doing what they did or to make a change (see: Nonviolent Communication requests)

5. The previous trick is a way I specifically apply the idea that no complex system can be 100% accounted for. Apply it to everything.

6. This goes back to non-judgment. Problem/solution resolved into "learning opportunities." This, combined with an understanding of human needs (see: Nonviolent Communication), led me to realize every moment is meeting some needs of mine. At the very minimum, there's the need for opportunities to learn how to better identify and meet my needs. Since I cultivated gratitude for learning opportunities, the previous sentence means I can also meet my need for gratitude of the present moment, which meets my need for joy. Applying these meets my need for connecting with myself. So every unpleasant moment can now be enjoyable, which lays the foundation for figuring out what else I can learn from what's going on.

I could write more, but that's why I'm writing a book on this stuff. The other things are a bit trickier and require preparation for safety's sake because it's possible to get my brain/mind to do really kooky things. If I wasn't properly prepared, I could reconfigure myself in a way that doesn't sustainably contribute to my life. So I'm not sharing that stuff at the moment.

Suppose a decision needs to be made, and it might not be clear which option is best, due to limited information, trade-offs, different preferences, etc. Solutions A, B, and C are possible. You schedule a meeting, and a lot of time is used up going around in circles because there is no compelling reason why one is better than another.

The hack is to tweak how the meeting agenda is framed. The agenda is no longer to pick a solution. Instead, you pre-select one somewhat arbitrarily, and you call it the strawman proposal. The meeting agenda becomes unseating it with a better one.

Maybe you start with A and everyone quickly agrees that B is better. From there, you can't decide whether or not C is better than B, but people walk away with a feeling that voices were heard and there is some rationality to how the decision was made. Or maybe you start with A and nobody can convince anybody that B or C is necessarily better. People walk away with acceptance of the idea that it's somewhat arbitrary and further discussion would have no benefit.

In either case, it's easier to achieve consensus about whether you have unseated a proposal than it is to achieve consensus about converging on one.

I definitely don't recommend using this to sneak through your personal favorite option unless you want to burn through goodwill.

2. Consider doing your most dreaded to-do item first.

The obvious way to decide which task to tackle next is to do it based on importance. Instead, sometimes it's useful to do the scariest or most unpleasant one first.

The stress of knowing it's still on there can distract you and make you less productive while you work on the other things. By the same token, once you have faced it, you will feel energized, which will probably translate to increased productivity in other things.

Also, if the task is so dreaded that you have some doubt whether you'll do it at all, leaving it to linger can create feelings of guilt or discouragement. Even if there are legitimate reasons it shouldn't be the very first thing you do, it's too easy to feel you're doing it later because you aren't ready to face it.

Obviously you can take this too far. Don't make your to-do list entirely about catering to your emotional state. Being able to put aside worry is also a good thing.

3. With habits that require discipline, define success as being committed to getting back on the horse.

You want to stick to an exercise plan, floss your teeth, be more considerate, etc. So you start doing it but then you get out of the habit. Now you feel like you've failed because your goal was to do X every day but you didn't.

So instead, make doing X every day one of your goals, but don't consider it true failure if you don't achieve it. It should be a very high priority, of course, but the only actual failure is wavering in your commitment to start up X again if you get out of the habit.