What is a habit/thing/technique that most people would benefit from, in your experience/observation? What are some habits that would be best avoided too?
Thought about it, snce it's near New Year's.
In my opinion, exercising/training/stretching atleast once a week would be a good thing for most people.
Never start nicotine
I'd also like to chip in that alcoholism is sneaky. Be careful with drinking
Yeah alcohol really sucks. It's so embedded into society most people expect you to start drinking regularly as soon as you can. I think it's getting better but still people are nowhere near as cautious about alcohol as they really should be it accounts for 10% of deaths worldwide, that is just mind boggling.
And honestly take it easy on weed. A little for fun is fine, but chronic heavy use can kick off schizophrenia and depersonalization disorder, and literally lower your IQ.
Just use a password manager, FFS it makes all of your online interactions safer.
Once setup, it is easier than not using one.
Which app would you recommend/suggest?
Bitwarden is the best in my opinion
I use keepass XC, and keep it up to date on all my devices using syncthing.
I have considered bitwarden with self hosting, but keepass had always worked well.
Have used LastPass before it was shit, self hosted bitwarden and KeePass synced with nextcloud (whatever cloud service works). I ended up using KeePass with nextcloud and set KeePass to automatically save changes. Use it on Android with KeePassDX that also includes auto fill across apps. KeePass doesn't require much setup whereas you need to setup server with bitwarden. Also had some weird sync errors with bitwarden. Having said that, bitwarden is a great piece of software.
KeePass is open source and is easy to sync via whatever service you use, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or something.
I'm seconding Bitwarden. I'll also say that whilst self-hosting (if one can do it securely) may be more secure than using a service, security is always going to be a sliding scale trade off of convenience and security.
I recommend Bitwarden to everyone, but I'm sure there are options that are probably equally good. But most people could probably benefit from a password manager because we have so many different services demanding we make accounts that I reckon it's next to impossible for any reasonable person to avoid reusing passwords across services (that's one of the biggest security risks that hit regular people).
Start up tips: make sure your master password is strong and memorable. I found Bitwarden's password generator for this. A passphrase tends to be more memorable than an equally long password — a good master pass phrase would have at least four words (four is sufficient for most people). Write this down in a physical place, as a backup, ideally not your wallet. it doesn't necessarily need to be locked away, just make sure you'll know where to find it if you forget it (I forgot mine a bunch at first and had to reference my backup a few times).
Password managers and security in general can feel overwhelming because of the instinct to do things properly, which might include things like self hosting a password manager, or only avoiding biometric sign-in on the phone app version rtc. However, the best password manager is one that you use, and if bits of convenience like this help, then it's a good trade off.
It reminds me of the joke about two people who see an angry Grizzly bear in the forest, which starts charging at them. One of the people starts running away, and the other shouts "Where are you going, you'll never outrun the bear". The running person replies "I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you". That's a bad paraphrase, but the sentiment is that using a password manager at all puts you way ahead of many people, in terms of security. Obviously, you'd feel more secure if you knew you could outrun the bear, but if we spent too long being anxious about our ability to do that, we definitely will get eaten. (Apologies for such a long comment. I always do this when I'm procrastinating going to bed. I hope you have a nice Christmas, if you're celebrating that wherever you are.)
If I could offer you only one tip for the future....
sunscreen...
would be..
it.
The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists.
~ Baz
jokes on you buddy, I don’t go outside
Which was written by Mary Schmich: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_Sunscreen
Absolutely lifting weights has been my all time favorite self improvement thing, would highly recommend it
I second this as a non-sporty person. I bought a couple of barbells (15kg apiece) for use at home and 20-30 minutes of just messing around with them daily has solved so many joint aches, it's almost ridiculous...
Read books.
Really anything, philosophy is great but some don't have the patience for it.
If it's graphic novels or "kids" books, it's all good. Spend a bit of time every day reading.
Couldn't agree more.
Secondly, never ask for book recommendations on Lemmy or Reddit. You'll just get a list of pretentious, wanky suggestions that people pretend to like
The best fiction is sometimes just a trashy, edge-of-your-seat thriller
I wouldn't go that far - oftentimes people actually do like those books that get name dropped for clout.
I would say if you take a recommendation and aren't digging the book, drop it with absolutely no guilt. If something like (for example) Infinite Jest just feels like a slog with no payoff, and you just wanna kick back with something trashy, do it and fuck the haters.
But you may find you dig it - you won't know without giving it a shot.
And to add, if reading just doesn’t seem to work, be open towards audio books. They are every bit as good as the books (unabridged, anyway) but can be a better fit for some.
I have adhd and most of my reading has evolved to be listening. It works well so I can get some stimming while doing boring like dishes or whatever, and this way I actually finish books.
Don’t listen to anyone telling you it’s “not reading”. It is. Whatever works for you.
What I'm getting at, is not about finishing books, it's more about the time.
Slow down, take the time, even 10 minutes, to improve your mind. Reading, any type of reading, improves your thinking.
If you are not used to, at first it may be difficult to pay attention to the audio and understand it. Sometimes for me, the audio becomes background noise.
I listen to several podcasts, while it's not the same as an audiobook I started doing it to practice languages until I found some channels I like and it's now part of my daily activities
Getting an electric toothbrush, and flossing daily. My dental hygienists love me.
Just go for a walk. Calling it exercise scares people into thinking about running, cycling or the gym but for the last month or two i just make it my mission to go for a long-ish walk once a day. Nothing strenuous, some days I walk a couple of kilometres to the nearest big supermarket to pick up some stuff, or i'll get something delivered to a post locker thing or I'll just go for a nice walk around the nearby park and bring my neglected camera with me to take pics of some birdies.
You would be surprised how many calories it adds up to and how much better your well-being can get from some sunlight and fresh air.
I've been trying to motivate myself to go out for walks more. I really enjoy hiking, but especially over the winter, the weather is always an easy excuse not to go out (I'm in the PNW, so winter means rain).
I just bought some nice waterproof hiking shoes that will take away at least one excuse. I'd get wet feet using running shoes, and cleaning mud off was a pain too. Having the right equipment can make going out way more pleasant. (Also it can be exciting to try out new shoes or whatever it is)
That's it! Walking solves so many problems automatically, it's possibly the best general answer.
This is very important. It's easier to do regular "exercise" if it's part of your daily routine than having to go out of your way to go to the gym.
The fittest I've been on the last years has been when I could bike to the office
Learning how to say no, how to do it politely and how to do it firmly. I'm better at the latter but being able to do either is a goddamn superpower, it's incredible how many Americans cannot regardless of their situation, title, age, wealth, etc.
So many people don't care about how their behaviors affect others. They are loud on the public transport, interrupt others when they talk, act like they are better because they got good looks, and a bunch of other things.
I really think people would get along better if all of us were more down to earth and listening and relaxing.
Be the opposite of what you see in reality shows.
I spent all of 2024 tracking my spending and saving. I didn’t “budget”, just had a spreadsheet and wrote everything down week over week.
I would recommend it as a habit people may benefit from just to understand where their money goes.
I imagine it would be useful as a learning experience, even if that level of tracking didn't go on forever.
I'm thinking of how tracking calories feels analogous; the time I spent dedicatedly tracking the calories of my food consumption was super helpful in recalibrating my intuitive understanding.
The first few months were a lot of effort because I had to do stuff like putting a bowl on a weighing scale and add what I considered to be an appropriate amount of cereal, and working out how many calories were in that, then doing similar for the milk. It was shocking to see how many calories were in some of the typical things I ate, but beginning to be honest about that and logging my reality was necessary to starting making positive changes. Because I tend to slip into disordered eating when I try to lose weight via calorie counting, I've found that I need to take a more freestyle approach and go for more qualitative goals like "eat more veg", "cook more meals", "drink glass of water before snacking" — goals that can be specific and towards being healthier, but don't require too much number crunching. However, I wouldn't have made as much progress without having spent a decent amount of time tracking things, judgement free.
The judgement free part is the hardest part, and I imagine that applies for tracking spending too. Did you ever have instances where you saw how much you were spending on a particular thing and cringed so hard that you found it harder to be truthful in your tracking? I know that I struggle with guilt a lot, and that can make it easier to put my head in the sand.
I did a similar thing with food. It was tedious but interesting at first… then it just became tedious. However, by then I “understood “ enough, I didn’t have to actually do it anymore.
Thanks for sharing!!
Yes, track the dollars even if the outflow is greater than the inflow. Then you will at least have an idea of where to start
Also, generally avoid alcohol consumption. It's weird that this drink, when consumed regularly, has the ability to hijack and reprogram your biology so much that stopping can kill you. Just best to avoid it.
This is what I did this year and last one too.
I started tracking my spending to see where my money was going which was very insightful. Patterns emerged I never could have seen if it wasn’t all laid out in one spreadsheet.
For instance, I learned based on a little experimentation that driving 65 instead of 75 on the highway saved me like $50/month. Yeah, I’m that guy and my commute takes another couple minutes but I still do this today. I’ve reframed it in my head as a $50/mo subscription that doesn’t give me much value for the money and only costs an extra few minutes a day. Worth it in this inflation era.
Also realized I was spending money in all these categories that I could be getting some high cash back credit cards for. When you can see your spending averages over time, it’s easy to be confident about getting a strategic 5% card for gas or online shopping that can claw back a decent chunk of the money you already know you’re gonna spend.
It’s definitely useful to track your spending, in more ways than one
Definitely agree with your comments. The more you see the more you understand. The more you understand, the more you can control. Even if just a little bit.
Using a password manager and moving around every hour or so
3 - using an Oxford comma where appropriate
No no, you need to do both at the same time for maximum effect.
Learn to eat healthy, in good portions, not too much, not too little and fast once in a while.
It's a pain when you're younger but gets easier with age because you start losing or degrading your sense of taste (like all your other senses) anyway.
If you get that habit early in life, you'll keep it forever. And if you take care of your system early in life, your older self will thank you for it. Otherwise if you abuse yourself, and you do end up living a long life, you'll be miserable for the last decade or two of your life and probably won't know your name or where you're from.
Reading books on daily basis. It's a qualitatively different experience from reading websites or consuming other form of media. If you have trouble getting into reading, I recommend picking a particular time and place, then reading at least a few pages every day. Eventually, it will turn into a habit and you'll be reading for longer periods. Another thing I recommend is finding books on topics you're interested in, be it fiction or non fiction, and don't feel bad about abandoning books if you find you're not enjoying it.
Floss daily. Brush your teeth twice daily.
Use a tongue scraper.
Checking up on your friends and asking how they are. It never hurts to be there for your friends when they're having a bad day! ❤️
I stopped doing this with some of my friends. They were always happy to hear from me, but the relationship felt one sided. Once I did, I found out I was right.
Not waiting for a day like new years to make a change that helps you.
The best time to do it was probably years ago.
The second best time is today.
Because if you make it about “new years” or some event, then it isn’t about YOU.
Do it for YOU, because you know that you’re worth the same amount of effort and affection as the others in your life.
Would you want this change for your friend? Turn don’t you think you skills care enough about you to give it to yourself?
I quit smoking the day my niece was born.
I quit drinking on April 1st, I've lost track of how many years ago it was, so that's nice.
don't discount the power of a specific date to reinforce a change and don't let the reputation of new years resolutions stop you from setting and crushing them.
Neither of those are New Year’s resolutions.
“The day my niece was born” is actually exactly the type of thing I’m talking about. You didn’t wait until new years, or your birthday, or something else unrelated to your motivations. You picked “now” because that was when you felt the desire.
So yes, special days can matter, but the days that matter to YOU are way more important than a day some guy named “Gregorian” chose 2000 years ago.
Learn stuff, don't eat processed foods and get exercise - gardening and foraging are good places to start for most people. Stay far away from negative, manipulative and lying people.
Keep a journal. Every day just jot down how you're feeling and what's on your mind, what you plan to do/did. Its amazing how helpful this has been for me.
Don't drink alcohol. It's not good for you in any amount.
Set a timer for when you're sitting at a desk and working. Every hour, I get up and do something or go get some water. It helps
Or have ADHD, You'll be all over the place every 5 minutes.
I don't really have a set schedule to be in the office anymore and mine has gotten so bad that I've been halfway out to my car to go home 2 hours before I intended to on multiple occasions before I caught myself and was like... wtf am I doing?
Get in the habit of developing habits.
I’m divided on this.
In one hand, when I haven’t done my habits for awhile it seems like everything goes to chaos.
But many days I dread all the annoying chores I do making everyday feel the same.
when I haven’t done my habits for awhile it seems like everything goes to chaos
Yeah, happens to me too. Sometimes just doing one little thing quickly builds momentum back up again.
But many days I dread all the annoying chores I do making everyday feel the same.
Again, yeah, happens to me too. What helps me is to not do chores but to see how efficiently I can do chores. It's more interesting to come up with processes/procedures/tools that get the job done faster. In the end the chore is done AND the next time it will go even faster because I'm more efficient. HTH
Habit stacking is huge. Add your new habit onto an existing habit, and it's so so much easier to stick with it.
Any good tips habbits are so hard to break/make.
I added above about habit stacking. The idea is to lump a new habit onto an existing habit, which makes it so much easier to stick with. For example, when you brush your teeth in the evening, do your Duo lesson. Or, when you go make a cup of coffee add a new habit in during the three minutes it makes to boil the water.
Here's a random article that explains it: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/habit-stacking
Biased take but you can’t remove meditation and mindfulness from its traditions specific goals. I get they have side benefits but therapy acting like they invested god through spreading it is just watering down what could help so many people
Do you care to elaborate?
I've tried getting into both a few times, to the point of noticing some benefits, but I fall off the wagon bc everything I read about it quickly goes into religious territory.
Since it appears you dislike all religion I’m not sure my main point fits your tastes but I could say many of the various goals of Buddhist meditation such as realization emptiness of self or of phenomena, realization of impermanence, especially dhyana are all absent from whitewashed or medical meditation. I would say these can all be labeled as helpful but not necessarily religious goals but ontological.
To me this does two things, one it presents a false narrative of meditation by displacing it from its thousands of years of tradition. Two, it robs the practitioners of multiple goals and benefits, instead presenting it as simply calming. Which was never its goal, except maybe samatha meditation.
Essentially, I feel western mainstream and medical meditation denies meditations long history, makes up some goals and benefits that are not within the proven one’s, all while acting like they did it themselves.
Reminds me of the Duke University Koru counseling group which gave a talk on how their program came up with walking meditation…
I hope that’s helpful or at least clear. I do prefer traditional what you would call religious Buddhist mediation but even traditional does not have to contain things you dislike. For instance traditional Chan/Zen and vipasana teachers have been quite open to all students while teaching the full meditation
Waking up at the same time every day, no matter if it's a weekend or a weekday and no matter if you stayed up too late and won't be getting full 8 hours of sleep.
As obvious as this might sound, this has really helped me to regulate my sleep schedule, something I've really been struggling with for pretty much my entire life.
Make a list of all the tasks you want to do for the day, every day. This is so important for me if I don't do this I just never get anything done.
Also always plan to do something productive every day even if you just feel like relaxing. You will feel so much better relaxing if you know you've done something your proud of.
Play Dumb, even if you’re the smartest person in the room.
Fortunately for me, this comes naturally to me. No need to pretend.
Bad linked article. Judging by the amount of sets of three bullets
along with the "in conclusion" prepositions and not-very-useful-but-broad headings, it was written by AI. :(
Most online sources about this Schopenhauer suggestion seem to be either AI-generated, mildly superficial (i.e. basically only talks about Schopenhauer's mom calling him an annoying intellectual type), or MBA-manipulator-esque (e.g. Get Rich! 48 Laws of Power! Buy Today!)...
which is a bummer since scaling humility up and down can be a really useful instrument to get things done. Just be agreeably approachable, but be careful if you outshine others, especially if ego gets in the way. Idk, i wish there was a more compelling source for this
Man, I need to read Schopenhauer. I'm not especially well read in Philosophy, but I heard somewhere that Schopenhauer is one of the ones to read if you want to understand polemical writing, and that intrigues me.
From a pure nerd point of view, I will say I got a hell of a lot smarter when I got better at being dumb. By that, I mean that I allowed myself to feel less anxious about appearing smart and I found it easier to enjoy learning from the cool people I knew when I could say "no, I don't know much about that, but I'd love to learn more". I also got to spend more time with my own thoughts, reflecting on my ideas, rather than focussing on acting a certain way.
For me, it's reading or watching philosophies. Philosophy can change how we view things around us.
Memorizing long sequences of numbers and conveying mnemonics for them (e.g. 512 becomes EAB, 3.1415... becomes C.ADAE...). Technology allowed humans to forgot how to memorize, for example, phone numbers. This is not good for long-term memory.
Turning them into letters just seems harder to me, lol
Yeah, indeed it is. And to make things worse, our brains aren't really native to numbers, our brains are native to meanings and emotional correlations and names. We get to memorize a song or a smell better than we get to memorize the 10 first digits of pi.
I sometimes tinker with math, programming (this one used to be my professional field), ciphers and steganography (scientific, logical approach towards the alphabetical positioning), as well as Gematria and numerology (non-scientific, esoteric/spiritual approach towards the alphabetical positioning). This allowed me to memorize the numerical position for some letters (for example, L=12, H=8, T=20, W=23). I got these letters specifically memorized due to emotional/spiritual/meaningful correlations (e.g. Lilith's name can be represented by the sequence 12 09 12 09 20 08).
When some of the letters are memorized, the other letters become a matter of counting from the nearest letter, until they're also memorized. Then, the reverse conversion (numbers to letters) become a bit easier to do (if I managed to memorize that T is 20, with enough repetition, I get to memorize that 20 is T).
I also memorized that 97 is the ASCII code for lowercase a, while 65 is the uppercase A, so this also allows the conversion between a text and its numerical ASCII representation, although it involves a lot more of math than simply converting numbers to letters within the alphabet or vice-versa.
I'm reminded of Plato's argument against writing, in which his position was roughly that relying on writing will make us become less practiced at remembering. I especially love the line, which goes hard.
"What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder."
Though the entire passage where the quote is from is great; It's thought provoking even if I don't necessarily agree with it.
But how does this improve your life? By improving your memory all around?
The brain is like a muscle. it needs to be exercised, otherwise it would become weakened. The more you exercise it, the more it'll be stronger, and the more your thoughts will become clearer. Numbers are especially hard to the brain, because brains aren't naturally designed for numbers, so math is like a gym weight for the brain.
The opposite can be asked: how memory wouldn't improve one's life? I can't see how it wouldn't. The lack of memory skills would surely be problematic, especially when the modern life requires dealing with lots of information. Sure, we can delegate these oceans of information to our little bright rectangular stones which we often carry around with us like they were extension members of our bodies, but we'd be delegating our intelligence to things that can't be intelligent at all (smartphones, which lack the "smart"ness of human brain). To be intelligent is to intellego, to understand, to comprehend. Only living beings can comprehend things. However, in order to comprehend, the brain needs to be used for constant comprehension, the brain needs to be developed through neuroplasticity, which is why improving one's memory is important.
Make your bed as soon as you wake up.
I don't know if the mental benefits are outweighed by not airing out your linen. might depend on the weather.
I work from home and tried to do this, but it’s easier to just wait until lunch. Once you’re in the habit though you won’t know how you ever didn’t do it before.
But I'm still in it!!
Why?
Practicing critical thinking.
Many here have already recommended reading and, particularly, reading philosophy. That's a great way to practice critical thinking and to practice thinking outside of our comfortable or familiar ways. I'd add not to skip reading about logical fallacies and cognitive biases.
Many good things come from being a little cautious with apparent knowledge. To keep a reasonable doubt is also to keep our curiosity going, to keep asking questions, to imagine different ways, to discover new things, to avoid stagnant beliefs, etc. Critical thinking makes us not only less gullible but also flexible. This is valuable to understand everything, including one another, and perhaps in doing so, giving us better relationships and better societies.
Open a Roth IRA and make max contributions to it every year. Most Americans will not be fortunate enough to rely on a pension upon retirement and that employer sponsored 401k will not be enough. They are throwing us to the wolves once they can no longer extract value from our bodies so start preparing now. The sooner the better.
Emotional processing. Just sit or lay down for a moment and let that stuff come. Go straight into all of it. Awkward and painful moments. Frustrations.. It'll feel so much better afterward!
Something to avoid would be letting others set your standard. You set your own standard.