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Tips for a Better Life

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391–400 of 488 posts

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#391

Post by jethro_tell »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #53
bonoboTP wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people value that they can get stuff done for themselves. I've grown up helping with various renovations around our home (floor tiling, wallpapers, building kitchen furniture etc), and they are fond memories and it makes a difference to how you feel living in a place. I know today mobility and renting is everything, but there is quite a distinct feel of living in actually your own place that you've worked on ove…

"If you eliminate all hassle, you could just as much pay people to live instead of you." I take your point, but don't worry, I'm living with the saved time. The CSS example was probably not as good as it could have been. Instead I'd probably be visiting my kids or something like that. I don't think "super productivity" is healthy long term as well. "I wonder if there will come a new celebrity-backed fad (following mi…

I think that's just DIY. Does doing the dishes increase happiness? Unlikely. But fixing something or cooking a new dish is going to venture into learning and thinking and hopefully some level of increased awareness of how other parts of the world work.

With that said, there can be real value to walking mindlessly behind a lawn mower for a few hours.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#392

Post by dcastm »

stared wrote: post #362
NortySpock wrote: post #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 yo…

I really like it. Used GPT-3 to expand it (T=0.7, the first trial). [PROMPT] Compassion 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…

lol 92 could lead to some pretty weird situations

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#393

Post by jethro_tell »

starpilot wrote: post #257
powersnail wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not enough professional firefighters in some places.

There are too many in others. They mostly do housecalls, serving as ambulances, since house fires are rare today.

Too many in cities but in rural areas, there are never enough. And they are never close enough. Lots of those places, the volunteers train once a month and carry a pager. They are all spread out over the county. When the page goes off, they leave work or home and go to the scene to be useful.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#394

Post by abustamam »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #254
jiggawatts wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've applied this a lot in my life. For example, holidays: Every day that I'm overseas, I lose about $1,000 because I'm a contractor and I'm not getting paid, plus the base expenses of the flights and hotel rooms. If I'm not getting a thousand dollars worth of value from a day, that money is wasted. Spending $50 at a normal restaurant is not "saving money", it's actually a waste of a day! Once you've sunk days into f…

I agree with the end point you made but I think it's really unhealthy to think about any time not spent working as losing money.

I don't think parent means "every hour I'm not working I'm losing money", I think they mean "every day I spend on this vacation is a day I would normally be getting paid" so they need to make the opportunity cost assessment.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#395

Post by [deleted] »

0xffff2 wrote: post #261
andreilys wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people have spent thousands of hours perfecting their craft. To think you can produce the same output with a few hours of YouTube tutorials is laughable. I’m happy to pay these experts because I know I will get my moneys worth. It’ll also free up my time to explore things I have a higher interest and affinity for

How do you know you're hiring an expert? It's easy to find people claiming to be experts who are willing to take your money. It's virtually impossible to evaluate whether they're any good or not when you're not an expert either. If I do it myself, I might take three times as long, but at least I know what I'm going to get.

[deleted]

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#396

Post by jethro_tell »

ddlatham wrote: post #232
munificent wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's also important to be precise about what "it" is. Most MP3 players at the time had around an hour's worth of storage. The Creative NOMAD was 64 MB. That means those products were from a user experience perspective in the same category as Walkmen and Minidisc players. It was a writable music player that held about an album. It let you make your own mixtapes, but selecting media while at home was a fundamen…

I totally agree that having enough storage space for your full collection was an important differentiator. But the thing is that the iPod wasn't the first to market for that either. I remember having the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Jukebox and loving it before the iPod came along. I don't think it was just the storage size that was the difference. It was the combination of a well designed simple UI togethe…

I can't tell you any other mp3 player commercial from that era. They were all kind of relegated to bestbuy fliers. The iPod was advertising with the colored background and the white headphones. It was good clear advertising and it was playing during the superbowl.

There's always been better mp3 players but normies don't know about them.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#397

Post by daave »

Deputy_Cartman wrote: post #228

Treat your credit card like a debit card. Pay it off every 1 to 2 weeks. After getting caught with a maxed out Amex and being laid off, that's how I treat credit cards. Saves me TONS of grief and money not going to the credit card companies' coffers. Oh, and go looking for cards with the best APR and reward points.

If you're paying off every month, why does APR matter?

Agree with finding good rewards and I'd substitute low APR for low/no annual fee.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#398

Post by hnracer »

NortySpock wrote: post #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 yo…

#84 is especially good advice. Bandwagon criticism and demonisation is very common in the workplace and pretty much every group environment I've been in, although to varying degrees. Definitely a deep-seated psychology/biological phenomenon at work.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#399

Post by neogodless »

bonoboTP wrote: post #47
redleggedfrog wrote: post #16

"8. When buying things, time and money trade-off against each other. If you’re low on money, take more time to find deals. If you’re low on time, stop looking for great deals and just buy things quickly online." I'm finding, as I've gotten older, that almost every time I've chosen money over time I've made a bad decision. And I see this among my family and friends, too. There's a mentality that emerges when exchangin…

Some people value that they can get stuff done for themselves. I've grown up helping with various renovations around our home (floor tiling, wallpapers, building kitchen furniture etc), and they are fond memories and it makes a difference to how you feel living in a place. I know today mobility and renting is everything, but there is quite a distinct feel of living in actually your own place that you've worked on ove…

There are ripple effects from discovering that you're capable of doing things that professionals get paid to do.

Good ripple effects.

My wife has not only embraced me doing more things around the house (and to me, this is getting to do more things) as she's seen what I can do, but she's also embraced her own capabilities more as she's discovered what she can do.

There's also cases where professionals have different skill levels, or just a bad day, and make mistakes working on your issue. But when you did the initial build or repair yourself, you often learn enough to come in and troubleshoot an issue that arises, without having to schedule a troubleshooting session (or five, as is the case of my brand new roof that still has a new leak after quite a few visits and failure to identify the cause.)

The more capable you find yourself, the more you can readily learn to shape your immediate environment to be the world you want to live in. And arguably, there's more satisfaction in that than paying others to shape the world for you.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#400

Post by GoblinSlayer »

duckmysick wrote: post #92
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this was good advice in 2015. This is terrible advice in 2020. Reddit is astro-turfed up to it's eyeballs and the parts that aren't are people with little to no experience in niche X giving generally bad and nuance-free advice on niche X. The more niches you develop proficiency in the more you will see this.

What would be a better advice?

Look for proofs, details and independent sources. If you see something short, flashy, buzzwords, slogans, it's probably not very solid. Propaganda still follows Goebbels' scheme, you can simply reverse it.
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