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

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

#321

Post by RankingMember » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

wtracy wrote: post #150

orwin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That reinforces my suspicion that taking even mildly psychoactive substances (pot, alcohol) when you are depressed or "in a funk" is generally a bad idea. Those are the times when substance abuse is most likely to rear its ugly head. If you possibly can, limit your use of those substances to the "good times": celebrating accomplishments, or winding down after a long successful day. That's my two cents; I'm open to he…

I agree with you. When you use them in bad times to get by, they become coping mechanisms that you NEED. The problem is sometimes bad times are REALLY bad and, in those instances, a drug is better than the alternatives. The trick is to use it during that time but hang onto some semblance of moderation in the future.

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

#322

Post by frob » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

drpgq wrote: post #220

antirez wrote: post #117

My hacks: * Productivity: every day do at least one measurable thing that puts forward your project, even if very small. * Expectations: don't care about the outcome of your work, as long as you tried to put a lot of good efforts into it. Focus on trying to do the thing instead of focusing on the result it will have, or what people will think. * Stress: instead of being preoccupied about things, try to take care of t…

I found for my PhD thesis that getting one thing done a day even if small was a big help, along with not beating yourself up if you didn’t get a lot done.

100% agree. I had a rule that I needed to write at least 1 page a day. 1 page sometimes became 10, but it always started with 1.

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

#323

Post by i_cant_speel » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 2:38 PM UTC

metamicah wrote: post #285

chess44 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I don't want to be who I am and I want to change myself? Apparently I am a very feminine man and I don't want to be like this at all. I can't stand how people treat me. When I am being myself I'd much rather not socialize at all than try to meet people.

I share in your pain. This world is openly cruel to men that don't follow gender norms, and we often have to wear uncomfortable masks to keep ourselves safe from all the jerks out there. It is exhausting to wear those masks all day, and sometimes we just can't take it anymore and have to withdraw from everyone. But there are also lots of people out there that know better than to mistreat someone for their gender expr…

I think it depends a lot on where you live. I live in a bigger city and, while I don't personally act in an overtly out of the ordinary way, there are tons of people here from all walks of life acting in all sorts of ways who are generally accepted by society. Of course there will always be the occasional asshole, but it certainly doesn't stop most from being the person they want to be.

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

#324

Post by beat » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

Starwatcher2001 wrote: post #241

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.

For a focused project, electronic is almost certainly better (and if you initially write on paper, it's worth transcribing). But for my purposes, I'm mostly journaling my day-to-day activities. I don't think I'll ever want to search for that time I needed to get caffeine free Diet Coke and had to push it forward for three straight days (that would be today...)

A really nice thing about bullet journaling, relative to other forms, is the index. I can keep my old journals (labeled by date range) and look up stuff that might actually be interesting in the future, like "Jim Campignolo workshop notes".

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

#325

Post by lamby » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 4:39 PM UTC

mdpopescu wrote: post #242

dctoedt wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Romania?

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

#326

Post by Starwatcher2001 » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

screaminghawk wrote: post #195

all2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Care to share? I have a lot of anxiety about my mortality and I've been looking for (non-religious) ways to counter act this fear.

Think of the billions of years that passed by before you were born. Were they bad for you? Was there any pain? Do you worry about them, or even pay any attention to them?

Perhaps things will be identical to you after you've died, and therefore absolutely nothing to worry about.

As a non-believer, I believe that we have just this one life, so make the best of it and enjoy it without worrying.

Oh, and try to leave the place a bit better than when you arrived ;-)

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

#327

Post by nf05papsjfVbc » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

prab97 wrote: post #316

pytyper2 wrote: post #298

Avoid negativity, Learning to recognize toxic people and situation would be the hack. Then exiting quickly not to return. My life is an order of magnitude better after cutting off two toxic friends and actively avoiding new toxic people and situations.

What are the red flags to quickly bucketize relations into toxic?

My benchmarks are these:

- They'll try to make you feel guilty about something that is otherwise not a big deal

- They tend to be negative about almost everything and invite drama from all spheres of their life

This is in contrast to:

- When you mess up, they'll either call you out on it or let you know without really making it personal (it's about what you did and not about you). I believe a true friend is one who tries to make you hear what you need to hear and not just what you want to.

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

#328

Post by RootGenerated » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

Here are two that I use regularly: 1) In order to stay focused, every day I put: [X] No internet At the top of my to-do list. I pre-check the box, that way if I end up wasting even a minute of time on the internet (unless it's during a break time, like now) I have to actively remove that check from the box. Something about the immediate feeling of failure from removing the check keeps me from doing it.

2) When I need to remember to take care of something, I take a trick inspired by ideas like the memory palace. As an example, if I need to remember to do something before I leave the house, I visualize approaching the door to leave, and imagine myself in a semi-panic state and think "I almost forgot to !" Without fail, when I go to leave the house (or another choke point event) I remember what I needed to do. It's almost like putting a mental sticky note on the door.

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

#329

Post by gnulinux » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

plainOldText wrote: post #274

gnulinux wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is lonely there?

Good question! Perhaps because loneliness points to the difficulty of reaching out and the lack of other people who might give you a different perspective.

I don't know if this makes. I think we live in a culture that fetishizes socialization. I've never decided on anything in my life with my friends, it even feels weird to do. I think not deciding on anything while emotional (sad, angry, happy, excited, frustrated etc) is a good idea, but ultimately a decision should be taken when alone, I think.

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

#330

Post by geekraver » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

Aspos wrote: post #131

sdoering wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Initial reading * eikasia -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eikasia * pistis -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistis * dianoia -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianoia * episteme -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episteme * techne -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techne * phronesis -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudence (latin: prudence) * noesis -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous Further reading: https://en.wiki…

Nassim Taleb covers some basics in his Black Swan and provides some practical suggestions. Nice read, btw.

The irony is he is one of the most closed-minded people around, if you see him on Twitter etc.