Low hanging fruits (LWCW 2020)

post by Arthur Milchior (Arthur-Milchior) · 2020-09-15T18:15:54.745Z · LW · GW · 11 comments

Contents

  Water watering bulbs
  Before work time
  Ad block on smartphone
  Kalimba
  Better sleeping
    No device at night
    Light
    Melatonine
    Morning
    Day / night separation
  Neater writing
  Note taking
    One note
    Recalling fact about friends
    Relate knowledge
    Bullet
    Notebook
    Idea catcher
    Password manager
  Win time while writing
  Water stone
  Emails
  Chat
  Light
  Sex life
  Back pain
  Lost wallet
  Extra lists
None
11 comments

During Less Wrong Community Week-end (Europe), in one event people share low-hanging fruit they used. I chaired it this year and defined low-hanging fruit as something that can be easily bought or done that improved the life. Here is the list of fruits shared in 2020. All typos are mine. "I" usually reflect the one who gave the message and not the author of this blog post.

Water watering bulbs

If you don't know how much to water your plants, if you did too much or not enough, let bulbs do it for you. Examples of bulbs are

Before work time

Reserve some time in the morning, before you head out to work, and invest this into something that is important to you. You do this without any experience from the day (bad/good) and with you full physical ability.

Ad block on smartphone

Blokada https://blokada.org/index.html Add blocking for android. Reduce noises, distraction, bandwidth (?), easy to install. added bonus: Firefox + Ublock origin

Kalimba

Playing music is to listening to live music as live music is to recorded music. If you don't want to spend time to learn an instrument, the Kalimba is cheap and directly lead to beautiful musics.

Better sleeping

No device at night

Set all devices to lock at sleeping time.

Light

Get a smart lightbulb, and setting to slowly dim/become red for the half hour before bed - makes going to bed at the right time the default action and makes me feel tired, and signficantly decreases the willpower it takes.

End the day with a paper book to avoid looking at screen.

Two to ten minutes of sun in the morning, or by default strong light

Melatonine

Takes melatonine.

Morning

Schedule things in morning so that you have incentive to sleep.

Having phone 3 meters from bed, to force to go outside of bed to turn it of

Day / night separation

Ensuring you don't see your bed from your workplace (and reciprocally) , to feel the separation between work space and personal space

Neater writing

Switching to using a fountain pen can force you to write slower and therefore neater. Pilot makes very cheap and good-writing fountain pens (the Pilot Varsity) that are disposable just like regular ballpoints, they're around $20 US for a pack of 12

Note taking

One note

Use the software One Note to keep tracks of notes about everything.

Recalling fact about friends

You can use space repetition system to recall fact about friends (who is friend with who, where they moved to, what's the current job...)

Writing a name done help to remember it (some people at least)

Uses Facebook event to remember who went to an event, who you met, and use it to take note (avoid notes from fetlife events)

Spaced repetition also helps to recall birthdays of friends/family!

Relate knowledge

Create your own wiki (e.g. wikimedia) to keep notes and links them together, so that you can revisit them when you want. Pre-commit two hours each month to see if you want to improve the wiki, add links, explanation

Bullet

Bullet journaling, there's a great guide on reddit at /r/bulletjournal

Notebook

carrying a small A5 or A6 sized notebook with you can be very useful

Idea catcher

Have an idea catcher, some place to write idea down to not forget it and not keeping the idea in mind while you do something else

Password manager

Use a password manager to recall general private information you need to generally have private and accessible such as account number, all previous addresses, photo, file

Win time while writing

If there are unicode symbols you expect to use often (e.g. math symbol, foreign letter), save them as shortcut or emoji, so they can be accessed quickly and put in any message

Using autocorrect allow to shorten text you write often. E.g. @@ is automatically replaced by your email adresse, sigma replace by σ )

You can also do this on windows with autohotkey and there are similar scripts for linux/mac

even lower hanging: I find the US international layout helpful"

Water stone

Start with combination stone. low to get better knife, and then cook easier to cut your food. It helps to relax. Allow more flexibility/granularity than standard knife sharpening

Emails

Set up email inbox rules to sort messages from senders you consider low-priority or work-related (if you use a combined inbox) to their own folder so you don't have to look at them all the time. also: if using Outlook Web App there's an option to have a text message sent to your phone as a result of an inbox rule: I have a rule that texts me if my boss's boss (2 levels up) sends a direct email with my name in the To: line

Chat

Use more gif in chat conversation to add more silliness and joy in chat discussions

Light

As your light bulbs in your house burn out convert to LED ones, they use less power and can be softer too! You can buy LEDs with the sun spectrum and same intensity!

Sex life

Keep a list of desire/fantasy, so that if a new relationship ask what new thing you'd want to try, you don't get lost thinking about it

Back pain

Leaning about the back of the chair a few time a day relax. Most office chair allow to do it

Instead of getting a gaming chair spend the same money on a lightly used executive office chair like a Herman Miller or a Steelcase, your back will thank you. also: if you have a dealer that sells those fancy chairs near you, you can go try them to find out what size fits you best before you look for used one

Lost wallet

Have a list of phone number to call in your wallet so that the people can call you.

Extra lists

Neel Nanda shared his personal list of low hanging fruit.

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