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

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

#241

Post by Starwatcher2001 »

beat wrote: post #49

For 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…

You've got some great advice here, but I went the opposite way from paper to electronic notes. I had about five years of project notes on paper that became totally impossible to manage or search. I've been doing it electronic now (simple text files) for about a decade and find it much more valuable.

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

#242

Post by mdpopescu »

dctoedt wrote: post #165
pmarreck wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of substituting books with URL's... Do you have any to any of these concepts? For example I just tried googling "eikasia, pistis, dianoia, episteme, techne, phronesis, noesis" and I didn't, eh, come up with something precise enough to read. EDIT: Someone down in the thread did the kindness already!

> At the risk of substituting books with URL's It's substituting URLs for books — either that or replacing books with URLs . [0] This might seem pedantic, and I know that language evolves, but: 1. We risk confusing, and therefore we disserve, non-native speakers if we use the language in ways opposite the accepted standard meanings. (One could think of language as an API, and no matter what the API, precision and acc…

> people who use language in non-standard ways are often judged harshly — and silently — for it

Yes. In my culture, the people who can't speak or write correctly are the ones who are uneducated - usually primary school or less. It's basically the local equivalent of rednecks.

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

#243

Post by jtwaleson »

When I have to pick between good enough alternatives, and more information to make a more informed decision is not readily available, I just pick a random option as quickly as possible and don't look back.

This goes for peanut butter vs Nutella as well as React vs Vue for the next big project. Momentum is important and decision fatigue is real.

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

#244

Post by tvladeck »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #215

“If I’m getting upset, I’m probably wrong.” It’s a specific kind of feeling, when my brain starts protecting itself against information that proves me wrong. Kind of like a real threat. It feels like I’m under attack, and I’m losing. I get subtly upset (because I’m a know-it-all and I want to be right), which is itself quickly reframed as anger, probably by that same mechanism. Probably much easier to admit that I’m…

One thing Phil Knight wrote in Shoe Dog that has stuck with me is something similar:

"If all you see are problems, you're not seeing clearly"

There are often times when I feel like "every way is up" and that there are only bad outcomes; this quote leads me to re-think whether or not I'm seeing the issue clearly or not.

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

#245

Post by hathawsh »

cm11 wrote: post #212
cdicelico wrote: post #78

My top 3, in order of how I try to apply them (i.e., if 1 doesn't help, move on to 2, etc.). I learned these all from reading various philosophy works, by the way, so perhaps cognitive hack #1 should be "read books". 1) Suspension of judgement (from Sextus Empiricus, Zhuang Zi, Ecclesiastes): avoid forming an opinion at all about things that are not evident. The way I do this is by thinking through an opposing argume…

These are forms of adjusting for bias and one should be cautious when they (or anyone) think they're good at accounting for them. That said, there are times we do feel justified in our decision because we feel we have adequately looked at "all sides." At times the process of taking a neutral approach and/or vocalizing that neutrality demonstrates weakness. "Plan X makes sense because of A and B, but it does have this…

You're right, but for many people it's difficult to become a thought leader until they have first improved their skills in reserving judgment and combating bias. I've met people who seem to have a strong opinion on everything, and they convince some people, but their opinion meets an unfortunate end when they present to a more discerning group.

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

#246

Post by resters »

cm11 wrote: post #212
cdicelico wrote: post #78

My top 3, in order of how I try to apply them (i.e., if 1 doesn't help, move on to 2, etc.). I learned these all from reading various philosophy works, by the way, so perhaps cognitive hack #1 should be "read books". 1) Suspension of judgement (from Sextus Empiricus, Zhuang Zi, Ecclesiastes): avoid forming an opinion at all about things that are not evident. The way I do this is by thinking through an opposing argume…

These are forms of adjusting for bias and one should be cautious when they (or anyone) think they're good at accounting for them. That said, there are times we do feel justified in our decision because we feel we have adequately looked at "all sides." At times the process of taking a neutral approach and/or vocalizing that neutrality demonstrates weakness. "Plan X makes sense because of A and B, but it does have this…

I think the post was referring to individual projects, not group dynamics, but your point is certainly true of group situations. Sometimes aspects of the group harm the group's ability to reason or behave rationally.

I'd argue that even in a one person project, information becomes available gradually and one must learn to re-consider old conclusions again in light of new information, even to re-consider old questions that might have been easily dismissed earlier.

Human rationality is biased by our use of the heuristics that take a few milliseconds of brain time and work pretty well, but have failures when trusted too much when we have the luxury of more time to consider the information. Even things like a member of the group asserting something confidently can throw off the rational faculties a bit.

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

#247

Post by anoncake »

moretai wrote: post #41

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.

The only way to find out if something works for you is to try it. It makes sense to first try hacks that worked for other members of your species.

However, you shouldn't follow other peoples' solutions to problems you don't have.

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

#250

Post by Whitespace »

Here are some tips for mentoring or pairing/collaborating with fellow engineers:

- Use whiteboards to discuss anything. This way you're solving an abstract problem without being bogged down by implementation (which should be very straightforward once the solution exists on the whiteboard

- Take notes liberally for everyone's benefit. During interviews and other whiteboarding sessions I write "Notes" down on the side with bullet points listing the requirements, keywords, or questions I have for future discussion. Of all the things I do, this gets the most praise from just about everyone: "this over here is really awesome!"

- Ask lots of questions in the beginning so you don't inadvertently make assumptions that they're too afraid to address. Often times it'll take 30 minutes for them to properly phrase it in a way that gives me enough context so I can start helping.

- Do a teach-back afterwards: "we spoke about X, Y, and Z, and tried 1 and 2. We saw that although 1 works, it is too clever to maintain because of A and B, so 2 is a better solution."

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