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Tips for a Better Life

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21–30 of 488 posts

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#21
post #3

> Cooking pollutes the air. Opening windows for a few minutes after cooking can dramatically improve air quality. is this based on the assumption that I am using a gas stove, or is it more generally true? I would be surprised to learn that, eg, simmering a tomato sauce is itself harmful to the air quality in my apartment.

Any cooking will decrease it.

I have several air sensors and even using the oven will change the air quality from "green" to "yellow".

Even just frying veggies with a bit of oil on an electric cooktop sends my air quality into "red". Overheating oil sends it into the "purple" level which is "unhealthy".

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#22

> Steeping minutes: Green at 3 I just leave the bag in. Anything wrong with that?

Overcooking and oversteeping your tea releases extra unwanted tannin. This is what makes the bitter taste. This can be hard on an empty stomach and for people prone to nausea.

High presence of tannin lowers the absorption of iron:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/106/6/1413/4823172

It also increase the oxalates:

https://www.urologyofva.net/articles/category/healthy-living...

All of that being said, many people aim for teas high in tannin for the taste. There are also studies that will show the potential health benefits of tannin. As with many things, moderation is probably the answer.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#24
I think the compassion section has the most wisdom in it, especially the reasoning behind the recommendation:

82. Call your parents when you think of them, tell your friends when you love them.

83. Compliment people more. Many people have trouble thinking of themselves as smart, or pretty, or kind, unless told by someone else. You can help them out.

84. If somebody is undergoing group criticism, the tribal part in you will want to join in the fun of righteously destroying somebody. Resist this, you’ll only add ugliness to the world. And anyway, they’ve already learned the lesson they’re going to learn and it probably isn’t the lesson you want.

85. Cultivate compassion for those less intelligent than you. Many people, through no fault of their own, can’t handle forms, scammers, or complex situations. Be kind to them because the world is not.

86. Cultivate patience for difficult people. Communication is extremely complicated and involves getting both tone and complex ideas across. Many people can barely do either. Don’t punish them.

87. Don’t punish people for trying. You teach them to not try with you. Punishing includes whining that it took them so long, that they did it badly, or that others have done it better.

88. Remember that many people suffer invisibly, and some of the worst suffering is shame. Not everybody can make their pain legible.

89. Don't punish people for admitting they were wrong, you make it harder for them to improve.

90. In general, you will look for excuses to not be kind to people. Resist these.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#25
Sorry, but a lot of this advice makes no sense or is pretty bad.

26. Are you on the fence about breaking up or leaving your job? You should probably go ahead and do it. People, on average, end up happier when they take the plunge.

Seems illogical. Presumably the reason that people are happier after leaving their job is because, on average, they wait until they are ready. That doesn't mean anyone with the inclination to quit should do so.

27. Discipline is superior to motivation. The former can be trained, the latter is fleeting. You won’t be able to accomplish great things if you’re only relying on motivation.

This is a meme that seems pretty unhealthy to me. Discipline and motivation are not interchangeable things. They exist in a balance. If you regularly do things that you don't feel any motivation to do, you're on track to have a midlife crisis where you realize that you wasted your entire life trying to impress others without listening to yourself. Ideally, good discipline will nurture motivation, and motivation will help to maintain discipline.

If you find that your motivation to do something disappears, maybe you should question why you're doing it rather than just telling yourself that motivation is fleeting.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#26
> 7. Don’t buy CDs for people. They have Spotify. Buy them merch from a band they like instead. It’s more personal and the band gets more money.

What? Now I’m a bit more curious about the life of the author lol

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#27
> 48. Keep your identity small. “I’m not the kind of person who does things like that” is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing.

This is one I've been trying to emphasize with a few friends for a while. The act of labeling yourself is the act of restricting yourself to what you think fits that label. And unless that makes you happy, it's probably not what you really want, so change your perception of yourself by relabeling or (better) delabeling.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#28
post #19

These are really great! I imagine one could write a paragraph (or more) on each, and one could setup a whole process of following through with all of them. In fact, this is inspiring: I'm going to put these in a list and review them regularly and try to take a (small) action on each. Anyone wanna try it with me? BTW - only two that I disagree with: > 13. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find bet…

I'd like to search videos for recipes. It's reassuring when I can see whether the author is capable of cooking, and whether the result looks appetizing (to me subjectively).

For instance, I've found that Jamie Oliver, despite his big names, makes food that doesn't make sense to me. If I only read the recipe, I might not figure that out. But watching him cook and seeing the product, I'm pretty confident that I won't like it.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#29
post #25

Sorry, but a lot of this advice makes no sense or is pretty bad. 26. Are you on the fence about breaking up or leaving your job? You should probably go ahead and do it. People, on average, end up happier when they take the plunge. Seems illogical. Presumably the reason that people are happier after leaving their job is because, on average, they wait until they are ready. That doesn't mean anyone with the inclination…

If you quote instead of giving numbers then people can follow what you're saying.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#30
> 5. If your work is done on a computer, get a second monitor. Less time navigating between windows means more time for thinking.

I really don’t do well with a second monitor, because humans suck at multitasking. Invariably slack or email end up on the second monitor, not real work.

Better advice IMO: don’t task switch, stay in the shell as much as possible. Serialize your work to the limitations of human attention

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