Or any skill that you deeply value for how it helps you, but maybe easily overlooked by an outsider?
I think exercising atleast 2-3 times a week was good for me. Not that I look much different, but I do feel a bit stronger and that is nice. Neck isometrics and bridges too. They really helped with balancing looking at mobile or PC screens.
Learning some keyboard shortcuts was nice. The major one would be Win key + Arrow keys to manage multiple open windows/apps.
Then, finding that I can add commonly used options to the QuickAccess bar in Excel, Word etc. Libreoffice would probably have similar options too.
Since last summer i put a series of repeating activities on my calendar, one for every day of the week. Their main effect is reminding me that my free time could be spent on personal prpjects that do not necessarily need to lead to something public.
It also encourages intentional boredom, as opposed to scrolling. I don’t know if it improved my life a lot, i end up ignoring the suggested activities most of the times, but it helps me keeping that frame of mind, and it probably allowed me to put effort in a few things i care for.
i moved one of those 8x2 cube storage shelves from next to my front door (where it didn’t get used) to my bedroom where i use it for “worn but not dirty” clothes
pile of clothes on the floor instantly fixed because now putting clothes “away” is the same effort as dropping them on the floor
I started using a journal to write mini goals daily
Thank you.
How is it generally structured?
I do “timed goals” and “untimed”
Timed example: 45 minutes of exercise
Untimed example: eat 2-3 meals
Many years ago I learned to improve my electronics “hygiene” by being strict about how power is connected/transferred from household AC to my gadgets. One too many blown PSUs during thunderstorm season while on a deadline, I guess.
Don’t use power strips, use high-end surge protectors. Cheap ones can still get absolutely rocked and can’t be trusted. Always use high-end OEM charge blocks for phones and for laptop chargers, etc.
No good call to spend thousands on electronics then cheap out at the power-transfer part of the deal. Because that’s where most damage is done. Pay for the good stuff now and it will more than pay for itself in the long term. Fewer blown PSUs/inverters/transformers. Longer lasting batteries.
I feel like electricity is less like magic fairies floating down wires and more like ropes tugging and rams crashing. I always liked to think about it that way.
You can also get a whole house surge protector in your electrical panel. Unless you can install it yourself, it might be a bit pricy to get an electrician out just for that. We had one put in during a panel upgrade for a little over $200.
Ok cool never know about that. At $200 it would be an automatic yes for me!
I use a calendar. I know this sounds ridiculous to mention it, but I am continually astonished at how few people use it to remember tasks and events.
Its hands down my most useful tool, especially as I can both invite people to my events and I can share my calendar with people I choose. Everything goes into the calendar, from appointments to birthdays to holidays to when things need to be renewed. Only time I forget something now is if it hasn’t gone into the calendar.
I especially like being able to send the address of where I am meant to be going straight to my maps program, as I will usually try and work out where I want to park when going somewhere. Saves so much hassle when you actually get to the event.
way back when this was what I liked about tablets as a thing. this went along with google haveing the original affordable nexus one.
Making my phone’s home screen functional. Calendar widget on the left, notes widget on the right, 3 rows of frequently-used apps on the bottom.
Went from having no calendar nor a quick place to jot notes, to having a severely overengineered planner with built-in notes that I didn’t actually use and didn’t fit in my pockets, to now finally having my day organized and my mind clear.
Also centralizing my random notes into a single ~/Documents/quicknotes plain text document for each of my machines with a taskbar shortcut pointing to it.
Thank you.
Which all apps do you use?
Cycling to work. I happen to have a nice and scenic route largely within parks and nature, so starting to use it improved my life quite a lot. It’s a bit faster and more reliable than public transit, cheaper and a good exersice (30km there and back). And the scenery is way better than looking out of the window of a bus on an arterial highway.
I loved my last job because I got to cycle to work. 12 miles in and out. We had showers and secure bike parking at work which made a huge difference too.
So much better than pubic transit and even better than motorbiking which I used to do for decades before getting the pedals out.
I bought blackout curtains
Oh yes black out curtains are a life changer. I added secondary glazing too to cut down sounds.
I play brown noise in my room. It does a good job of blocking out external noise. It also helps me relax.
I also fart in bed.
Do you shit yourself in bed?
Same. Well mine is “space deck” but I don’t think I can sleep without it anymore. Even the smallest of noises interrupt my attention to sleep. Like the fridge on the other side of the house. Or the ps5 in sleep mode on the lounge. Wish there was an off switch for my ears.
Sorry, what’s space deck?
“Alexa play space deck” (it’s by Sleep Jar(free or paid) don’t know if you need to enable it 1st). Definitely My favourite.
I started listening to it whilst reading The Expanse series and I went to sleep thinking I was aboard the Rossi.
Learning how to use AutoHotkey has been life-changing. There are many games I can’t play due to muscle disease, but AHK expands the amount I can play.
I do things like combine a series of inputs into one, map keyboard inputs to hardware the game doesn’t support, and even create mouse controls for games that don’t have any. I also made some GUIs to help me write scripts with fewer inputs.
AHK has the concept of hotstrings which are really handy. For example, if I want to expand an abbreviation as I type, it’s as simple as
::btw::by the wayIt’s not limited to text replacement. You could easily use it to launch programs or whatever you want.
Another thing I did was change the “hold space to continuously paint” functionality on wplace to be a toggle controlled with the mouse. Which allows me to participate much longer before my arms give out.
i use two monitors instead of one
learned keyboard shortcuts and made custom keybinds, installed vimfx on firefox and now i can web browse with one hand, never moving from the keyboard
I first used dual monitors when I was like 12. I could never go back after that. At work I have 2 4k displays, and at home I have 3 displays.
Also a vertical display is pretty neat as a second screen. I have email, chats, and other stuff that I need to monitor, but not interact with a lot. It sucks ass as a primary display though.
When a workflow is bottlenecked I write it down in a list of things to solve in the future and continue with the rest of the work. And one regular schedule I make appointments with myself to solve bottlenecks and streamline things. Its really powerful. Instead of getting distracted during the day. Stay in flow, sort it later.
I use logseq for my notes.
for my dev work and workflow learning how to effectively use the terminal and use it for just about everything.
Once you figure it out and use a good terminal IDE using your computer just becomes faster. It’s faster than using a GUI for everything. Utilizing the terminal and a tiling Window Manager also makes using the mouse obsolete. I don’t use a mouse or touchpad for anything other than gaming now. using the mouse slows me down.
I can manage everything on my computer now and multiple programs with 2 terminal windows. or simply manage everything within DOOM Emacs.
that’s another program I strongly suggest people check out and learn. DOOM Emacs is my go to IDE, Terminal, Email client, Git Manager, and File Manager. does all that and does it all well.
