21–30 of 187 posts
Get good at every system (software or otherwise) you depend on, and stick with them. Don't take on new systems until it hurts too much not to. For me, this means that I run the same GTD/Pomodoro routine day in and day out using Remember the Milk. And I won't evaluate alternatives until I can't help but.
Remember, though, that time is your precious resource. You'll never, ever get it back. All life hacks must either extend your time, shorten tasks, or make your time more meaningful.
Here are a few things that came to mind:
Productivity:
* Make a check list. Once you start, you won't be able to believe that you lived life without one. Can't overstate this one.
* I wrote a script that takes screenshots every half minute and lets me see what I've been doing. Huge time-saver. Check-lists also help.
Mental/Spiritual/Creative Well-being:
* Read an actual book that's actually not on a screen. Don't do anything else concurrently.
* Keep short, creative side-projects/weekend projects that you can be excited about. It'll keep your creative juices flowing.
* If you're in a rut, start saying "yes" to things more. It's too easy to stay in.
Fitness:
* Cold shower in the morning, and/or swimming in cold water. A few minutes of this and you'll feel like you ran 10 miles.
* If you're going to enjoy soda or something bad for you, enjoy it in small sips.
* F.lux for your eyes.
* Eat when you're hungry or low on energy. Don't eat when you're not hungry or not low on energy.
Social interaction:
* "Flirt" with everybody. Men and women. Don't overdo it or be weird about it, but the qualities that are successful in flirting tend to be endearing.
* Pay attention to people. "Being there" mentally can be hard, especially when you're tired or your company is tiring, but you've got to try.
* Low self-confidence is a road to all bad things. You're better than that.
* "I like your shirt/watch/shoes/bag" and get ready to hear a story.
* If you can use someone's name, use it. If you can't (and I forget names _all the time_) see if you can introduce a nearby friend. ->* Need help remembering names? Apparently this is an old sales trick (I haven't tried it but it's brilliant): index names in your phone book by category, as you may know WHERE you know a person from but may not be able to remember their name. So for a guy you know from college and whose number you have but you can't remember his name, you can go through your "College" contacts to find "College Ted." Hopefully the name resonates when you see it; I haven't tried this yet.
Time for sleep, I think, but hope these are helpful to someone...
Use the other door. The next time you're in a crowded place, like a mall, and lots of people are trying to enter or exit, take notice. Almost 100% of the time, most of the people will all be filing through one door that is open because other people are going through it. This is despite the fact that there is probably one or more perfectly good doors to the left or right of it. Something similar for revolving doors. M…
There was a main entrance gate at my old high school. There was four sets of double door that opened out, that allowed students into the campus. These doors are damn heavy and one night I was cruising with my friend and I told him, I got an idea. I refused to answer any of his inquiries.
We arrived at the high school, I climbed up onto the top of the gate. On each door was the little hydraulic system to stop the doors from slamming shut ( know what I'm sayin?) These hydraulic arms were just little planks of metal. I pushed them down with my foot. This created tension when the door closed on the two arms. Instead of sliding freely(and the door closing), the arms rub and create enough friction to hold the door open.
Now instead of the doors swinging close, they remain open daily, until they are closed for the night. Every day I would walk through them, and see every other student walking through my simple little hack that got the doors to stay open all day.
tl;dr: Hacked some doors at my old high school so they would stay open instead of closing.
Edit: My logic is: I used the doors... four times a day average. Took three seconds to open and walk through vs one second to just walk through. So two seconds to open. About 180 days of school times four years.
180x4x2/60= 24 minutes
While not substantial, I just saved a person 24 minutes of their life.
Quit drinking so much soda, and switch to diet when you do. (I lost a ton of weight like this. Seriously, a bottle of Coke is over 200 calories. If you drink multiple sodas a day, you can cut out the caloric equivalent of a Big Mac and fries without altering what you eat at all.)
Buy as many monitors as you can fit on your desk. Consider a bigger desk.
Okay, just life hacks, no tech: Figuring out how to skip boring classes and phys ed in high school (mostly) without getting caught. Ah, good times. Bypassing uncooperative assistants on the phone in order to schedule meetings with their superiors (OK, not my proudest moments actually). Faking attractiveness and social intelligence in order to get girls with all kinds of tricks, including infamous wing man maneuvers.…
Now, this is the part where you elaborate and tell us how you did such things. Honestly, your post is more suspenseful than a cliche horror movie.
Escaping classes: we had these forms where we were supposed to enter our missed classes and then present them to the various teachers for signature at the end of the month. The weakness of this concept was that teachers had gotten so used to the forms that they didn't keep records of their own when people failed to show up. If you simply "forgot" to fill out and present the form 80% of the time, they would happily sign the other 20% without getting suspicious. Of course, after about a year of this, some of them were on to me, but since I always showed up for exams I guess we came to a silent agreement. One time, a teacher figured out what I was doing and asked me point blank; I admitted everything and to my surprise he said it was OK but I shouldn't tell anyone.
Skipping phys ed was harder. We had several sub-groups with different teachers. Turns out, when you left one sub-group for another, but failed to show up at the new one, nobody noticed because the new and the old teacher didn't ever speak to one another. This only worked because I didn't even show up once at the "new" teacher's lessons so she didn't know who I was. It sounds cool, but it almost got me expelled when school administration found out after two years. However, maybe I got lucky, they were simply incompetent, or they just decided to not care, because after the "formal investigation" was announced, I never heard from them again. Maybe they were ashamed that something like that could actually happen and since I never bragged about this exploit they just chose to ignore it.
Getting past assistants: this involves flat-out lying, which is why I don't do this shit anymore (nor do I need to at my current job, thank the gods). I believe assistants are in constant fear of screwing up. They're supposed to screen the calls and weed out people who just want to sell stuff to their boss, but at the same time they're terrified of false positives. So I basically implied that I knew their bosses. It worked almost every single time, the lies just had to be bold enough. Like, "oh, when we were playing Tennis the other week he said I should coordinate with you about getting an appointment in this month". Stuff like that.
Getting girls: leaving aside the classic wingman tactics at parties (most of which involve either distracting a girl's friends in order to isolate her and/or putting on a show to appear cooler), this one is actually more of a self-hack. It involves faking confidence and importance, and saying things that sound smart because they're prepared in advance.
Like I said, pretty stupid things, actually.
When pulled over by the police: Surrender completely, be kind, considerate and honest. Haven't gotten a ticket in nine years. More, if you're curious about the step-by-step: http://blog.danilocampos.com/2010/10/23/how-to-get-away-with... Having a notebook: A notebook large enough to comfortably dump your thoughts into but small enough to be always near your keyboard is awesome. The notebook helps with procrastination…
I have to say the "rules" are a great hack. Thanks to them, I've never gotten a ticket while inside my own district. While I have gotten tickets outside my district, I have had violations ignored or reduced drastically merely for coming across as a "good guy". The police aren't there to mess up your day unless one of you is in a bad mood. You can't control his mood, but don't make your mood the problem. ---- That sai…
Definitely true – I'm assuming we're talking speeding tickets or missed road sign of some sort. If you're transporting drugs or weapons, or driving under the influence, that's a whole other deal.
Hack:
Don't transport anything illegal, including an inebriated driver.
If I am in a conversation with another developer because they asked for my help I will stop talking if it looks like they are 1. either ignoring my advice 2. or have understood enough and are busy doing what they need to do or 3. are busy doing something completely different. This way I don't waste my time, and I can quickly get back to what I was doing. I tend to spend a lot of time explaining concepts even to peopl…
Use the other door. The next time you're in a crowded place, like a mall, and lots of people are trying to enter or exit, take notice. Almost 100% of the time, most of the people will all be filing through one door that is open because other people are going through it. This is despite the fact that there is probably one or more perfectly good doors to the left or right of it. Something similar for revolving doors. M…
My shot at immortality costs me $120/year for membership in the Cryonics Institute and $170/year for $250K of 10-year term life insurance of which $50K goes to CI.
I lost 20 pounds on Seth Roberts's fixed-point diet (aka the "Shangri-La diet") and gained 10 of them back after the diet stopped working, but it's ridiculously easy and works better for some people than others.
An awful lot of the rationalists I know have moved to open relationships.
Sitting next to another person while writing increases my writing productivity by at least 400%. In retrospect it took me way too long to break down and try this. My shot at immortality costs me $120/year for membership in the Cryonics Institute and $170/year for $250K of 10-year term life insurance of which $50K goes to CI. I lost 20 pounds on Seth Roberts's fixed-point diet (aka the "Shangri-La diet") and gained 10…
Why?