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Ask HN: What habit have you dropped or picked up that improved your life?

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Re: Ask HN: What habit have you dropped or picked up that improved your life?

#61

Post by amasad »

vojant wrote: post #42
alejantrot wrote: post #2

Quitting smoking. Best habit I ever had. It improves my life every time I pick it up.

How did you quit? I really want to quit right now, I even switched for e-cigarettes but I came back to normal after one week.

Program yourself to hate smoking. Continue to smoke but try to be conscious of it. Feel the smoke while you inhale, try to think about what's happening to your gum, teeth, throat, lungs, hands etc. look at yourself in the mirror and notice the negative effects of smoking. If you're in a city that bans smoking indoors then feel sorry for yourself everytime you go out to have a ciggeratte, because this habit is controlling you and making you do things you won't necessarily do. Start thinking about how the not smokers have a better life and how they're better for not letting this happen to them. Eventually if you keep thinking like that, just negative things about smoking, you'll start hating it and naturally cutting down until you find the right moment to go cold turkey and then just do it.

Hope that helps, it worked for me.

Re: Ask HN: What habit have you dropped or picked up that improved your life?

#62

Post by VMG »

kszx wrote: post #38

(1.) Eat well, drink well, sleep well, work well. (2.) Quantified self: Targeting productive and unproductive time with RescueTime, and committing to explicit targets with Beeminder. (3.) Less but better. Less input but better input. Less output but better output. Afford the luxury of being slow and having time for introspection and inspiration. (4.) When you can't sleep, don't try to.

funny, I'm having positive results with the inverse of (3)

Re: Ask HN: What habit have you dropped or picked up that improved your life?

#65

Post by sentinel »

vojant wrote: post #47
sentinel wrote: post #20

Picking up the habit of working regularly on side-projects. I am lucky enough to have a couple of friends interested in working on the same project as myself. The habit of all of us getting together for a couple of hours during the weekend has tremendously advanced the project. It helps to work with friends or people in general, because it rarely happens that none of us are in the mood for working. And when we are, w…

That's really cool. When I've been trying to work with someone else on side projects, someone always wanted to quit. It's really hard to find people who will do that regularly.

I can understand. Maybe it's more important to find a project that motivates everybody. I usually want to quit projects that don't appeal to me very much as well.

Re: Ask HN: What habit have you dropped or picked up that improved your life?

#66

Post by kszx »

alexenko wrote: post #56
kszx wrote: post #38

(1.) Eat well, drink well, sleep well, work well. (2.) Quantified self: Targeting productive and unproductive time with RescueTime, and committing to explicit targets with Beeminder. (3.) Less but better. Less input but better input. Less output but better output. Afford the luxury of being slow and having time for introspection and inspiration. (4.) When you can't sleep, don't try to.

Never heard of Beeminder until now. Out of curiosity, what targets do you have that work really well for you?

I have the best experience with targets where data logging works automatically, i.e., where I don't need to bother with manual data input.

- RescueTime: Productive and unproductive time, or specific software/website categories, automatically logged by the computer;

- Draft: Words written every day (just started, but looks promising);

Also successful: binary variables (1 or 0 every day, either done or not done).

Re: Ask HN: What habit have you dropped or picked up that improved your life?

#68

Post by kszx »

VMG wrote: post #62
kszx wrote: post #38

(1.) Eat well, drink well, sleep well, work well. (2.) Quantified self: Targeting productive and unproductive time with RescueTime, and committing to explicit targets with Beeminder. (3.) Less but better. Less input but better input. Less output but better output. Afford the luxury of being slow and having time for introspection and inspiration. (4.) When you can't sleep, don't try to.

funny, I'm having positive results with the inverse of (3)

Maybe you're referring to something like the 80-20 rule, "Pareto principle"? More productivity by abstaining from perfectionism?

I just find it much more satisfying to produce small amounts of (what I consider to be) good output rather than large amounts of mediocre output. This isn't appreciated in all contexts, which is why I've called it a luxury.

Re: Ask HN: What habit have you dropped or picked up that improved your life?

#69

Post by bjourne »

davidcollantes wrote: post #24
bjourne wrote: post #21

I stopped using shampoo and conditioner. It's the best fashion advice I've ever had and it's funny that it came from a hn article. Better looking hair, better protection against cold, no more dandruff, much smaller dry scalp patches and so on. Thanks HN!

If you do not use shampoo, what do you use to wash your hair? Genuinely interested, I can't live without Head and Shoulders.

I just spend more time rubbing my scalp with my fingertips to get rid of dead skin cells or what have you. My non-scientific opinion is that that is what is important to keep your hair clean and shampoo mostly helps to lubricate your fingers and dry out natural oils.
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