Wrestle the pig first, every day. Whatever is your worst, most unpleasant, annoying task for the entire day, do it before you do anything else. It minimizes your stress and worrying and puts it in the rearview mirror.
I don’t think “waking up early” counts, but it’s definitely the most unpleasant and annoying task of my weekdays, followed closely by actually getting to work.
I have some paperwork to do that will likely result in $2000. It’s been over a year and i cannot just sit down and do it. I stress over it every day but continue to put it off.
Today. Let’s both finish our paperwork today. The sense of freedom and achievement will be good.
Ok. I have a 2 hour car ride this afternoon. I will get everything ready this morning and do it in the car. Thanks! Good luck!
Excellent. I hope you did OK. I got mine done! It wasn’t as bad as I thought. If you haven’t finished yet, don’t give up, pick up the pieces and carry on. Thanks for being my Internet buddy on this.
Congratulations! I didn’t finish, but did get a good start on it. Thanks for the encouragement!
Well done. Starting is the hardest part. Are you going to do a bit more today?
I’m on vacation until Wednesday so I will finish it on my flight home. Getting started really was the hardest part. Now it’s just putting numbers into boxes and adding them up. By gathering info and starting on it, i find that the expected $2k gain is closer to $10k. That’s some great motivation to get it done!
For a second I thought you were talking about masturbation.
Well yeah crank your hog first of course
SPEAK UP BROTHER, I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MY CRANKED HOG
AROOOOOO
Alternatively, if you’re neurodivergent you may have a better time doing the easiest tasks first to build momentum and motivation.
Yeah, everyone’s neurochemistry is different and should be experimented with.
I didn’t know this for so long, that I needed a few easy wins to set the pace, that I feel like I could have been way more productive throughout my 20s haha
But where will I find a pig?
They’re easy to spot. They’re typically wearing cute little uniforms & driving fun little cars with lights on top.
Best advice ever.
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Or soda. Or sugary drinks in general.
I hate the talk about soda. It’s a flavored carbonated drink and carbonation isn’t killing people. When schools banned sodas from vending machines, they replaced them with yoohoo and other drinks that had as much or more sugar than the carbonated drinks they removed. -stepping off my soapbox-
Fruit juice is notorious for this.
‘but its fruit juice! Its 100% natural!’
Most still have added sugars on top of the fact that most of the fruit has been squeezed out only leaving… Sugars.
Even on their own, the natural fruit sugars aren’t enough to make drinking fruit juice “healthy” when all the fiber has been squeezed out.
But the one two punch of sugars is just as bad as any other sugary drink.
Same with cans of Arizona or Snapple or anything else. It’s all terrible.
People don’t realize that ultra processed food is basically everything they eat and drink. There are very few things that aren’t, and they’re mostly whole food adjacent.
If it’s not straight up water and plain vegetables, fruit, and grain equivalents, it’s more than likely ultra processed no matter how healthy it claims to be.
So much of non-genetic cancers comes from what we ingest willingly. A large portion of it would stop if everyone ate a well rounded whole foods diet. But shit is expensive, takes time and kwh to make, and people are busy trying to enjoy life.
Conventional Cereal? Terrible. https://www.livestrong.com/article/13774827-is-eating-cereal-every-day-bad/
Certain processed fiber gives you liver cancer Ffs lol.
Depends on the person. I’m content only have 1 at a time. I don’t have an addictive personality though. For some people this is great advice. Others, it doesn’t affect.
I feel like there’s a subtlety here. Ocassional Glass of wine with dinner versus binge drinking.
Of course the problem is that the first drink makes then next one more attractive and degrades impulse control… so YMMV.
One is too many and a thousand is never enough.
Edit: I do get the irony of someone with my username posting this. I understand what’s wrong with binge drinking and me in general, I’m just not ready to fix it.
You and I are in the same place.
Well, I’m not in Texas, but I’m with you otherwise.
I’ll fix it sometime. Hopefully soon.
We’re gonna be alright, buddy.
Thank ya. We definitely are. My problem is, drinkin’ makes everything SO MUCH FUN. If it just wasn’t so damn fun, it wouldn’t be an issue
Wow. This thread got pretty real, pretty quick. I feel you though (you too, Texas).
You’re gonna be alright, too.
Having a glass of wine every day is not healthy.
I drink pretty much only on the weekends and that’s pretty seldom.
Is one glass of wine really that bad though? Like compared to a glass of grape juice? Because of the sugars and calories and is alcohol in this percentage range (approx 14%) enough to cause damage to your liver over time?
Again I’m talking about one glass
I’m going on holiday to Greece next month, so have decided to forgo my usual weekend ales until then. Partly to be a little more comfortable in my swimming shorts, but also because £10/15 a weekend adds up to a few cold pints of Mythos by the beach.
But I was amazed at how fresh I felt last Monday morning after not having drunk any beer over the weekend.
I had better seafood in Greece than anywhere else in Europe. Fresh grilled octopus with a squeeze of lemon, fried sardines, squid salad, everything just perfect. (Note: I haven’t done Nordic countries, and they might do cod/coldwater-fish/etc. better, but that’s be a different style.)
You can just pinch the end of a banana to start peeling it. The effort required is far less than trying to overcome the ripping force of the stem.
Monkeys peel bananas also like this.
Bananas are the way they are through millenia of selective breeding, so there’s no reason to think that monkeys know anything we don’t. If pinching the bottom is easier than bending the stem, your banana isn’t ripe yet and doesn’t want to be eaten until later.
Have you ever tried opening a banana from the bottom like described in the comment?
Yes. Every time, it’s gone less well than opening a banana from the stem end, unless the banana was horrendously underripe. I’ve never had the problem the alternative approach is claiming to fix unless I’ve intentionally opened the banana badly on purpose to prove a point about the problem really being people opening from the stem end incompetently.
A) that seems backwards: an under ripe banana will be stiff inside so you can snap the peel around the stem when you bend it, while a riper, softer banana will mush inside when you bend the stem. And,
B) like I give a fuck what a banana wants
A) The peel becomes easier to tear faster than the inside gets softer. You don’t need to snap it, it doesn’t need nearly enough tension to count as a snap once it’s ripe.
B) The banana’s been selectively bred to want to be as delicious as possible. It only wants you to be happy.
I’d like to apologize for my remarks regarding banana
I love how it skillfully peels the banana and then eats the peel anyway. Amazing.
Buying lots of identical pairs of socks massively reduces the amount of time you need to find matching pairs after drying them.
I did this, and it was great at first. Then I needed more socks, so I bought another batch. Then I had a mix of worn socks and brand new socks. They might look the same at first, but if you take a closer look, the older ones are a little lighter in color and the texture isn’t the same. I later bought a third batch. So now I have a mix of new, old, and really old socks. It actually takes more effort to match socks now than when I had many different socks.
I see this advice posted all the time, so I guess most people don’t care if their socks on each foot are a different level of worn, but it bothers me.
One time I was in Mexico with my wife while our daughter was still a baby and the lady at the front desk of the hotel where we were staying offered us a crib we could borrow. It was a kind gesture, but I was a little concerned because the crib seemed wobbly. I realized there were some screws loose but though I had a multitool on me, the holes were stripped.
So later, I was talking with a local and he’s like “I can fix that.” He comes over and pulls a pack of toothpicks out of his pocket. He sticks one into each hole and breaks it off so that it’s not sticking out anymore. Then he drives the screw back in. I shook the crib after that and it was rock solid!
Now I always keep some toothpicks handy. Fast-forward to just this year. My daughter is now an adult living in a condo, and was complaining the screw popped out of a kitchen cabinet door when her roommate yanked on it too hard. “I can fix that.”
To stop infinite scroll on social media, quickly scroll 2-3 screen lengths down without looking at the posts. Now read the posts scrolling up. Eventually you’ll reach where you started and most probably the laziness to go all the way back will prompt you to exit the app.
Not really a “hack” but I don’t know why most people get into phone contracts.
Since college, I have always just bought unlocked phones with cash and then used the carrier’s prepaid plans and set it to auto pay.
I pay so much less than most people I know, I get all the same service, and my phone isn’t tied to a contract or carrier, so I can cancel my plan whenever I want and switch to another carrier by just buying their SIM card for ~$20.
My current phone is an unlocked Pixel 6a that I got on sale new for $300. I have unlimited talk, text, and data for $45 a month. And if I get sick of my current carrier or they bump my cost, I can just switch to anybody else for just the cost of a $20 SIM card.
I have so many friends and family members that complain about their phone bills being super high and their service sucking, but they can’t cancel their contracts without paying off their huge balances plus the interest and usually cancelation fees. Plus, because their phone is tied to the contract/carrier, they can’t even keep transfer the phone to the new carrier and have to get sucked into a “phone trade-in” deal and the cycle continues.
And for the folks saying that most people can’t afford to save up and buy a phone outright, there are a lot of places that offer payment plans for the phone, or you can buy it on credit and pay it off that way, which would likely be less interest over time. Or you could buy unlocked used/refurbished phones for 25-50% off their normal price.
Maybe it makes sense if you get a stipend from your company, or you bundle it with a bunch of other packages like cable TV or internet, but for just a cell phone, I just don’t get locking yourself into a crazy contract.
This seems like an American problem. This used to be the case in the Netherlands as well but over the years people have learned that SIM-only subscriptions are so much easier and cheaper that the majority of people now use SIM-only. In fact I know of no one around me that does it differently.
Also $45 per month is still expensive lol. I pay €12 a month. Sure, not unlimited but I never call or SMS so the 100 a month I get for that is way more than enough and I never finish the 10GB of data a month either. I can make either unlimited for really not that much more.
Also in the Netherlands and I have recently extended this concept to my home internet. Since 25 Mbps download / 10 Mbps upload is enough for my use, I no longer have an internet subscription and I make use of $25 LycaMobile unlimited data sim cards for home internet using a sim router. The IMEI of the router can be easily modified, which is also a plus.
Do you have a static or dynamic IP though? For some applications one would want a static one iirc
The IP is dynamic, but for my self-hosted services that require a static IP I make use of a WireGuard tunnel between my raspberry pi and a virtual private server. The VPS has a static IP, so my domains point at the VPS and then the VPS re-routes the packets via the wireguard tunnel. In a wire guard tunnel only the server needs a static IP, so the VPS can route packets to the client even if the client’s ip is dynamic.
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If you go prepaid for a year you can get service for even cheaper. I don’t need unlimited data so I buy a year of Mint Mobile’s cheapest plan for about 200 dollars which gives unlimited talk and text and 5gb data for only around 15 dollars a month.
Right on. I do need unlimited, as my job requires me to be on the road a fair bit and accessing lots of data.
But that’s a good idea, I’ll see if my carrier offers that option.
I should clarify that mint mobile also has “unlimited” and “unnecessary” plans for 30 and 40 dollars a month respectfully. (When prepaying for a year)
Quote: Unlimited plan incl. 40GB high-speed data w/10GB hotspot. Unnecessary plan incl. 60GB high-speed data w/20GB hotspot. Video @ 480p. Data speeds reduced after monthly allotment. Taxes & fees extra.
I scrape CVV number of my credit card and save it on my smartphone because if I lost my credit card nobody will be able to shop on line
Smart
Drink water instead of soda, alcohol, other sugary drinks. Eventually you’ll find yourself to be an expert water connoisseur and prefer water over pretty much all beverages.
Almost all bottled water is loaded with microplastics. Ideally, drink water from a filtered tap.
Filters are usually made out of plastic :)
There’s a difference between high quality plastic performing filtration while it’s cold plastic and cold water vs crap plastic that’s regularly exposed to high temperatures during transport and storage with the same water contained the entire time.
Maybe, I’m no expert. But, I’ve seen a test showing a consumer water filter increasing microplastics by 1000%. Could just be only that specific filter or filter type. I believe it was a Zero filter, which I think uses resin beads for ion exchange.
Interesting, I used ZeroWater for a while … and know others that do. But yeah, searching around it seems it’s only ConsumerLabs.com that came up with that result and all other filters were removing (at least some percentage of) microplastics.
I’m not sure how much I trust that ConsumerLabs.com test: https://www.consumerlab.com/methods/water-filters-review/water-filters/
Repeatability isn’t really established by testing one device, one time. I’m not an expert either, but that result seems quite surprising.
I have a reverse osmosis system now personally…
You can cut up a sponge to have a set of reusable pads for removing nail polish.
Keep a set of swimwear in your car. If you go to a place and forgot your swimsuit? Got the backup. Go to a hotel and find out they had a pool you didn’t know about? Backup in the car. Accidentally shit yourself? Got at least something on you. Do I shit myself enough to worry about it? Not since I was a baby but now I know I got swim trunks in my car just in case.
This works for so many occasions too. At a watermelon eating contest? Backup in the car. Going to a funeral? Backup in the car. Need to bury a body? Backup clothing, right there.
Not recommended for lycra or spandex suits, or any suit that has elastic closures, particularly during the summer months. They will rapidly degrade in the heat of the car. My wife left hers in the car after a vacation (never used it). It was tucked in the trunk. Found it a month later and it disintegrated in the wash.
To live a hate free life, don’t spend time hating things and people.
Hate is not a feeling it’s an action. Just stop, and then you’re not a source of hate any more.
Put $20-50 behind your phone in the phone case.
If you ever forget / lose your wallet, you’ll have a little cash.
With so many places now taking credit over cash, I’m not sure how relevant this is anymore.
I actually tried doing the opposite for a while. I’d leave my phone home and just leave the house with cash, keys, and a notebook. Lots of places gave me the stinkeye paying with cash and some places refused to accept it. I wish this weren’t the case. The percentage every business pays per credit card transaction hasn’t helped with inflated prices.
Not sure why someone would downvote your opinion and relevant story there…
It still seems relevant enough though for the time being. Getting the stink eye isn’t a no, and maybe you’ll have to be a little picky on where.
Still better than not having it at all though.
When I was in the end of my PhD, everything except writing my thesis made me feel guilty. I ended up learning to find joy and peace in doing laundry and washing dishes. They became my guilt-free breaks — I had to do these things. FYI - I didn’t enjoy washing dishes before.
Washing dishes has become a really powerful part of my day, haha. Not only is it still a guilt-free break but it is a daily reminder to be mindful. I’ve noticed that whenever I drop and break a dish, my mind is not present. In fact, in those moments my mind might actually be drifting somewhere negative.
Maybe not so much a “hack” as a … lesson? Or something? But yeah, the whole cliche about having the right attitude and being present and mindful. I try to apply it in other parts of life, not just the dishes.
You have discovered the subtle art of procrasticleaning
everything except … made me feel guilty learning to find joy guilty free breaks
How‽ This is perhaps the single most impactful problem I’ve in my life. I just don’t know how to beat this. I don’t end up doing anything else because I could be doing my thesis. But I also don’t do my thesis. Could you talk a bit more about how you got out of this line of thinking? Between this and ADHD I feel like I’m going suicidal. I haven’t had a vacation/gap/break ever where I’ve felt free and happy to enjoy.
Honestly, I still haven’t fully solved the problem. I wish I could give you a great answer.
Sometimes I have no struggles working and taking breaks, other times I fall into this same trap you’ve just described. I think it amounts to a lot of different factors — some weird paradoxical mix of procrastination, fear, insecurity, passion, displeasure, and overconfidence.
I’ve learned, though, to accept certain tasks as completely necessary in life (like doing the dishes) so that I am able to do them guilt free. At least I can do that. I feel you though. In a general sense, I still struggle with the problem.
I think part of it amounts to making a decision and sticking to it rather than being on the fence. Maybe that’s discipline? E.g., “this morning I will go on a run, make a nice breakfast, wash the dishes, get started on laundry, read or play music for a bit, and then finally I will sit down to work.” Then, when actually executing the first part of the plan, just ignore the ever living fuck out of any feeling of guilt. But, again, I am still putting that into practice.
Good luck to you and me.
Thanks for the reply :)
Yeah, I think it does boil down to accepting the situation and just doing it. Or forcing the self to do it after rounds of negotiations and arguments. One problem that I see with this- at least for myself- is that it leads to me doing just the bare minimum and then subsequently getting mad. I don’t really know, I’m also trying to figure things out for myself. Maybe medication is the answer
If you have a goal to find something (eg. buy a car), write your goal down, including details like make and model. You’ll start to see adverts, special deals and cars of the model you want parked with for sale signs. There’s nothing mystical about this - you’re surrounded by things like that, but the specific act of writing it seems to tell your unconscious mind to bring it to your attention when you pass them.
