100 Tips for a Better Life

The majority of the writing in here is not mine. It’s based on this LessWrong post called 100 Tips for a Better Life. Turns out that the original post is itself based on another post, 100 Ways to Live Better.

100 Tips for a Better Life

Possessions

1 .If you want to find out about people’s opinions on a product, google reddit. You’ll get real people arguing, as compared to the SEO’d Google results.

2. Some banks charge you 20 dollars a month for an account, others charge you 0. If you’re with one of the former, have a good explanation for what those $20 are buying.

3. Things you use for a significant fraction of your life (bed: 1/3rd, office-chair: 1/4th) are worth investing in.

4. “Where is the good knife?” If you’re looking for your good X, you have bad Xs. Throw those out.

5. If your work is done on a computer, get a second monitor. Less time navigating between windows means more time for thinking.

6. Establish clear rules about when to throw out old junk. Once clear rules are established, junk will probably cease to be a problem. This is because any rule would be superior to our implicit rules (“keep this broken stereo for five years in case I learn how to fix it”).

7. Don’t buy CDs for people. They have Spotify. Buy them merch from a band they like instead. It’s more personal and the band gets more money.

8. When buying things, time and money trade-off against each other. If you’re low on money, take more time to find deals. If you’re low on time, stop looking for great deals and just buy things quickly online.

Cooking

9. Steeping minutes: Green at 3, black at 4, herbal at 5. Good tea is that simple!

10. Food actually can be both cheap, healthy, tasty, and relatively quick to prepare. All it requires is a few hours one day to prepare many meals for the week.

11. Cooking pollutes the air. Opening windows for a few minutes after cooking can dramatically improve air quality.

12. Food taste can be made much more exciting through simple seasoning. It’s also an opportunity for expression. Buy a few herbs and spices and experiment away.

13. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find better recipes.

Productivity

14. Advanced search features are a fast way to create tighter search statements. For example:

img html

will return inferior results compared to:

img html -w3

15. You can automate mundane computer tasks with Autohotkey (or AppleScript). If you keep doing a sequence “so simple a computer can do it”, make the computer do it.

16. Learn keyboard shortcuts. They’re easy to learn and you’ll get tasks done faster and easier.

17. Done is better than perfect.

18. Keep your desk and workspace bare. Treat every object as an imposition upon your attention, because it is. A workspace is not a place for storing things. It is a place for accomplishing things.

19. Reward yourself after completing challenges, even badly.

Body

20. The 20-20-20 rule: Every 20 minutes of screenwork, look at a spot 20 feet away for 20 seconds. This will reduce eye strain and is easy to remember (or program reminders for).

21. Exercise (weightlifting) not only creates muscle mass, it also improves skeletal structure. Lift!

22. Exercise is the most important lifestyle intervention you can do. Even the bare minimum (15 minutes a week) has a huge impact. Start small.

23. (~This is not medical advice~). Don’t waste money on multivitamins, they don’t work. Vitamin D supplementation does seem to work, which is important because deficiency is common.

24. Phones have gotten heavier in the last decade and they’re actually pretty hard on your wrists! Use a computer when it’s an alternative or try to at least prop up your phone.

Success

25. History remembers those who got to market first. Getting your creation out into the world is more important than getting it perfect.

26. Are you on the fence about breaking up or leaving your job? You should probably go ahead and do it. People, on average, end up happier when they take the plunge.

27. Discipline is superior to motivation. The former can be trained, the latter is fleeting. You won’t be able to accomplish great things if you’re only relying on motivation.

28. You can improve your communication skills with practice much more effectively than you can improve your intelligence with practice. If you’re not that smart but can communicate ideas clearly, you have a great advantage over everybody who can’t communicate clearly.

29. You do not live in a video game. There are no pop-up warnings if you’re about to do something foolish, or if you’ve been going in the wrong direction for too long. You have to create your own warnings.

30. If you listen to successful people talk about their methods, remember that all the people who used the same methods and failed did not make videos about it.

31. The best advice is personal and comes from somebody who knows you well. Take broad-spectrum advice like this as needed, but the best way to get help is to ask honest friends who love you.

32. Make accomplishing things as easy as possible. Find the easiest way to start exercising. Find the easiest way to start writing. People make things harder than they have to be and get frustrated when they can’t succeed. Try not to.

33. Cultivate a reputation for being dependable. Good reputations are valuable because they’re rare (easily destroyed and hard to rebuild). You don’t have to brew the most amazing coffee if your customers know the coffee will always be hot.

34. How you spend every day is how you spend your life.

Rationality

35. Noticing biases in others is easy, noticing biases in yourself is hard. However, it has much higher pay-off.

36. Explaining problems is good. Often in the process of laying out a problem, a solution will present itself.

37. Foolish people are right about most things. Endeavour to not let the opinions of foolish people automatically discredit those opinions.

38. You have a plan. A time-traveller from 2030 appears and tells you your plan failed. Which part of your plan do you think is the one that fails? Fix that part.

39. If something surprises you again and again, stop being surprised.

40. Should you freak out upon seeing your symptoms on the worst diseases on WebMD? Probably not! Look up the base rates for the disease and then apply Bayes’ Theorem

41. Selfish people should listen to advice to be more selfless, selfless people should listen to advice to be more selfish. This applies to many things. Whenever you receive advice, consider its opposite as well. You might be filtering out the advice you need most.

42. Common systems and tools have been designed so everybody can handle them. So don’t worry that you’re the only one who can’t! You can figure out doing laundry, baking, and driving on a highway.

Self

43. Deficiencies do not make you special. The older you get, the more your inability to cook will be a red flag for people.

44. There is no interpersonal situation that can’t be improved by knowing more about your desires, goals, and structure. ‘Know thyself!’

45. If you’re under 90, try things.

46. Things that aren’t your fault can still be your responsibility.

47. Defining yourself by your suffering is an effective way to keep suffering forever (ex. incels, trauma).

48. Keep your identity small. “I’m not the kind of person who does things like that” is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing.

49. Don’t confuse ‘doing a thing because I like it’ with ‘doing a thing because I want to be seen as the sort of person who does such things’

50. Remember that you are dying.

51. Events can hurt us, not just our perceptions of them. It’s good to build resilience, but sometimes it isn’t your fault if something really gets to you.

52. If you want to become funny, try just saying stupid shit (in the right company!) until something sticks.

53. To start defining your problems, say (out loud) “everything in my life is completely fine.” Notice what objections arise.

54. Procrastination comes naturally, so apply it to bad things. “I want to hurt myself right now. I’ll do it in an hour.” “I want a smoke now, so in half an hour I’ll go have a smoke.” Then repeat. Much like our good plans fall apart while we delay them, so can our bad plans.

55. Personal epiphanies feel great, but they fade within weeks. Upon having an epiphany, make a plan and start actually changing behavior.

56. Sometimes unsolvable questions like “what is my purpose?” and “why should I exist?” lose their force upon lifestyle fixes. In other words, seeing friends regularly and getting enough sleep can go a long way to solving existentialism.

Hazards

57. There are two red flags to avoid almost all dangerous people: 1. The perpetually aggrieved ; 2. The angry.

58. Some people create drama out of habit. You can avoid these people.

59. Those who generate anxiety in you and promise that they have the solution are grifters. See: politicians, marketers, new masculinity gurus, etc. Avoid these.

60. (~This is not legal advice!~) DO NOT TALK TO COPS.

61. It is cheap for people to talk about their values, goals, rules, and lifestyle. When people’s actions contradict their talk, pay attention!

62. “If they’ll do it with you, they’ll do it to you” and “those who live by the sword die by the sword” mean the same thing. Viciousness you excuse in yourself, friends, or teammates will one day return to you, and then you won’t have an excuse.

Others

63. In choosing between living with 0-1 people vs 2 or more people, remember that ascertaining responsibility will no longer be instantaneous with more than one roommate (“whose dishes are these?”).

64. Understand people have the right to be tasteless.

65. You will prevent yourself from even having thoughts that could lower your status. Avoid blocking yourself off just so people keep thinking you’re cool.

66. Being in groups is important. If you don’t want to join a sports team, consider starting a shitty band. It’s the closest you’ll get to being in an RPG. Train with 2-4 other characters, learn new moves, travel from pub to pub, and get quests from NPCs.

67. It’s possible to get people to do things that make you like them more but respect them less. Avoid this, it destroys relationships.

68. Think a little about why you enjoy what you enjoy. If you can explain what you love about Dune, you can now communicate not only with Dune fans, but with people who love those aspects in other books.

69. When you ask people, “What’s your favorite book / movie / band?” and they stumble, ask them instead what book / movie / band they’re currently enjoying most. They’ll almost always have one and be able to talk about it.

70. Bored people are boring.

71. A norm of eating with your family without watching something will lead to better conversations. If this idea fills you with dread, consider getting a new family.

72. If you bus to other cities, consider finding a rideshare on Facebook instead. It’s cheaper, faster, and leads to interesting conversations.

Relationships

73. In relationships look for somebody you can enjoy just hanging out near. Long-term relationships are mostly spent just chilling.

74. Sometimes things last a long time because they’re good (jambalaya). But that doesn’t mean that because something has lasted a long time that it is good (penile subincisions). Apply this to relationships, careers, and beliefs as appropriate.

75. Don’t complain about your partner to coworkers or online. The benefits are negligible and the cost is destroying a bit of your soul.

76. After a breakup, cease all contact as soon as practical. The potential for drama is endless, and the potential for a good friendship is negligible.

77. If you haven’t figured things out sexually, remember that there isn’t a deadline. If somebody is making you feel like there is, consider the possibility that they aren’t your pal.

78. If you have trouble talking during dates, try saying whatever comes into your head. At worst you’ll ruin some dates (which weren’t going well anyways), at best you’ll have some great conversations. Alcohol can help.

79. When dating, de-emphasizing your quirks will lead to 90% of people thinking you’re kind of alright. Emphasizing your quirks will lead to 10% of people thinking you’re fascinating and fun. Those are the people interested in dating you. Aim for them.

80. Relationships need novelty. It’s hard to have novelty during Covid–but have you planned your post-Covid adventure yet?

81. People can be the wrong fit for you without being bad. Being a person is complicated and hard.

Compassion

82. Call your parents when you think of them, tell your friends when you love them.

83. Compliment people more. Many people have trouble thinking of themselves as smart, or pretty, or kind, unless told by someone else. You can help them out.

84. If somebody is undergoing group criticism, the tribal part in you will want to join in the fun of righteously destroying somebody. Resist this, you’ll only add ugliness to the world. And anyway, they’ve already learned the lesson they’re going to learn and it probably isn’t the lesson you want.

85. Cultivate compassion for those less intelligent than you. Many people, through no fault of their own, can’t handle forms, scammers, or complex situations. Be kind to them because the world is not.

86. Cultivate patience for difficult people. Communication is extremely complicated and involves getting both tone and complex ideas across. Many people can barely do either. Don’t punish them.

87. Don’t punish people for trying. You teach them to not try with you. Punishing includes whining that it took them so long, that they did it badly, or that others have done it better.

88. Remember that many people suffer invisibly, and some of the worst suffering is shame. Not everybody can make their pain legible.

89. Don’t punish people for admitting they were wrong, you make it harder for them to improve.

90. In general, you will look for excuses to not be kind to people. Resist these.

Joy

91. Human mood and well-being are heavily influenced by simple things: Exercise, good sleep, light, being in nature. It’s cheap to experiment with these.

92. You have vanishingly little political influence and every thought you spend on politics will probably come to nothing. Consider building things instead, or at least going for a walk.

93. Sturgeon’s law states that 90% of everything is crap. If you dislike poetry, or fine art, or anything, it’s possible you’ve only ever seen the crap. Go looking!

94. You don’t have to love your job. Jobs can be many things, but they’re also a way to make money. Many people live fine lives in okay jobs by using the money they make on things they care about.

95. Some types of sophistication won’t make you enjoy the object more, they’ll make you enjoy it less. For example, wine snobs don’t enjoy wine twice as much as you, they’re more keenly aware of how most wine isn’t good enough. Avoid sophistication that diminishes your enjoyment.

96. If other people having it worse than you means you can’t be sad, then other people having it better than you would mean you can’t be happy. Feel what you feel.

97. Liking and wanting things are different. There are things like junk food that you want beyond enjoyment. But you can also like things (like reading) without wanting them. If you remember enjoying something but don’t feel a desire for it now, try pushing yourself.

98. People don’t realize how much they hate commuting. A nice house farther from work is not worth the fraction of your life you are giving to boredom and fatigue.

99. There’s some evidence that introverts and extroverts both benefit from being pushed to be more extroverted. Consider this the next time you aren’t sure if you feel like going out.

100. Bad things happen dramatically (a pandemic). Good things happen gradually (malaria deaths dropping annually) and don’t feel like ‘news’. Endeavour to keep track of the good things to avoid an inaccurate and dismal view of the world.

100 Ways to Live Better

Meta

1. Any life advice that isn’t given to you personally is not designed to be followed to the letter. Try to resonate with the philosophy that generates it instead. Remember that directional advice (e.g., “be more …”) may need to be reversed before consumption.

2. Collect feedback from everybody. Play games with close friends where you have to give each other constructive criticism and ways to improve. Collect anonymous feedback from internet strangers on Admonymous.

3. Stop lurking; write that comment. You know the saying about letting people suspect you’re dumb rather than opening your mouth and removing all doubt? Fuck that. We know you’re dumb. You get less dumb by saying things and getting feedback.

4. Learn some improv, at least to get the basic gist of it. Take a class or read Impro. Improv mindset is a great way to approach many social situations including most interactions on the internet. A good comment/reply often starts with “yes, and”.

5. Don’t nitpick, that’s the opposite of good improv. You think that the categories in this post are arbitrary? A piece of advice doesn’t apply to your special situation? You’re probably right, but writing this in a comment will just make readers annoyed and make you frustrated when nobody responds.

Mind

6. There are more great podcasts than you’ll ever have the time to listen to. If it sucks after 10 minutes, skip half an hour ahead. Still boring? Delete and move on. Obviously, do the same for books.

7. Free will. The anthropic principle. Solipsism. The simulation hypothesis. Moral realism. They’re fun to argue about through the night but don’t judge anyone too much based on the positions they take and don’t treat any of them too seriously as guides to actually living your life. It should all add up to normalcy in the end.

8. Find a medium of expression and express yourself publicly every day for three months. If you’re good with words, write 100 Tweets. An artist — post 100 sketches on Instagram. Music/dance person — 100 TikToks.

9. Tell a bad joke or a pun as soon as you think of it, even if it’s just to your exasperated spouse or coworker. It takes 20 bad jokes to think of a single good one, and you only start making good jokes once you remove the unconscious filter stifling your generative brain.

10. If you can’t give it up completely, try to constrain the bandwidth of how much you hear about politics. Don’t start your day with the front page of the Times. Unfollow anyone whose posts are more than 20% about politics or the outrage du jour. And don’t jump into online arguments, it’s vice masquerading as virtue.

11. Binge a show/video game for a couple of weeks, then take a break from TV for a couple of weeks. Trying to limit yourself to an hour a day is less fun and more addictive.

12. Should you watch that movie / play that game / read that book? The formula is:

[# who rated it 5/5] + [# who rated it 1/5] – [# who rated it 3/5].

This doesn’t apply to everything, but it applies to many things, including media. There are too many options out there to waste time on mediocrity, and everything great will be divisive.

13. Unless one of them is your friend or boss, you should spend 100x less time thinking and talking about billionaires than you currently do.

14. Facebook is for event invites only, not for scrolling. The people you met offline are not going to be the people posting the best stuff online, so the timeline content is worse than what you’d get on Twitter/Reddit/blogs. And the algorithm is designed to fuck with your brain.

15. Don’t keep watching a bad TV show just because your friends are talking about it, it’s a terrible time trade-off. You can read a recap or even better — bring up richer topics of conversations. And don’t pay money for bad movies just because “everyone is watching them”. Doing so is defecting against your friends since they’ll now have to watch it to not feel left out.

16. Habits are reinforced by your habitual environment. That’s a big part of why retreats work: they take you away from your usual surroundings and people. If you want to start meditating, doing pushups, intermittent fasting, etc, try starting on a vacation where the new circumstances make it easier to integrate new habits.

17. Are you really going to give up on expressing yourself, learning from mistakes, attracting like-minded people, building a reputation, and changing the world because someone may someday try to cancel you? They can smell the fear, you know.

18. You just read 1000 words. Close your eyes and count to 10 to break the dopamine loop and make sure that reading a listicle is really the thing you want to be doing most right now. If not, this post will still be here when you get back.

Body

19. Humans are made to walk. Set up your life to encourage walking by acquiring soft-soled shoes, good audiobooks, and/or a dog. If you’re not enjoying walking and not getting your 10,000 steps you can get there with good design choices.

20. Wrestle while naked and covered in coconut oil.

21. Buy a 20 dollar bar of soap on Amazon just to see how it feels. If it doesn’t do much for you, go back to 4 dollar bars. Liquid soap has a low ceiling, so don’t bother.

22. Shower in the evening instead of the morning. You’ll sleep much better when you’re clean, your muscles are relaxed, and your body cools after a warm shower. And if you don’t sweat at night (keep the bedroom cool) you’ll be clean in the morning.

23. Doctors are fallible humans, they have biases and make mistakes. It’s your job to be educated about your diagnoses and the drugs you are prescribed. If you’re confused, ask for details or a second opinion.

24. In ⚽/🎾/🏓/🏐 , keep your eye on the center of the ball through the hit. The goal/court/table doesn’t move, only the ball does.

25. Keep fresh fruit around. Even if you end up throwing a couple apples out once in a while, it’s hugely valuable to have a tasty fruit closer at hand than junk food.

26. In case you missed it, humanity has fully optimized apples. Snapdragon, Zestar and Cosmic Crisp if you can find them, Honeycrisp or SweeTango as backup, Fuji in a pinch. All other cultivars are a distraction.

27. Get massages, give massages. You don’t have to know what you’re doing to make someone feel great. Use scentless oil, or simple moisturizer if the recipient is not going to shower afterward.

28. The #1 measure of an exercise program should be “is this fun enough to keep me coming back to the gym?” I don’t care how “efficient” HIIT is, it’s for masochists.

29. If you’re not waking up at sunrise on purpose, your bedroom should be dim when you wake. Put up blackout curtains and get rid of all electronic lights.

30. Do you know what a sex toy in your butt feels like? You should at least find out.

31. Most sexually active Americans have two things: herpes (often undiagnosed and unsymptomatic), and fear of herpes (often irrational and unfounded). It’s not part of most standard STD screens because most people get more psychological pain from finding out than the virus itself ever caused. If you decide to check and you have it: congratulations, you don’t have to worry about catching the type you have and getting an outbreak.

32. If you’re not obese, have you considered that losing 20 pounds will not actually solve all your problems? If you can’t lose weight easily, keep your weight stable and work on the insecurities that make you scared to take your shirt off.

33. Once in a while, try eating only a short list of simple foods for several days. For example, carrots+almonds+yogurt+water. You’ll eat less without being hungry, and afterward you’ll savor flavorful foods a lot more.

34. You wouldn’t clean mud off a leather couch with dry toilet paper, would you? The same applies in the bathroom. In a pinch, you can just splash some water on regular toilet paper.

35. Learn how caffeine and alcohol affect you. I know people whose quality of sleep improved dramatically once they stopped having coffee with friends after lunch; it turned out they are metabolizing coffee very slowly and it affected them 10 hours later.

36. When you wake up to a long day on not enough sleep, start with tea instead of a triple espresso. You want to pace your caffeine intake throughout the day instead of crashing at 1 pm.

37. Play a competitive team sport to make friends and practice masculine virtues. But don’t show up if you’re not ready for 100% effort — your teammates can tell.

38. Not a single hungry child in Africa was helped by you finishing a meal you didn’t enjoy.

Stuff

39. If you’re moving chargers and cables around the house, you need to buy more chargers and cables. A girl in every port, a USB-C in every room.

40. Expensive personal lube is worth every penny. Same for hot sauce. Just don’t get the bottles mixed up.

41. Old: buy 20 of the same pair of black socks so you don’t have to worry about matching. Bold: buy 20 colorful pairs and don’t worry about matching.

42. Ask people to stop giving you non-consumable gifts. A physical thing that’s not exactly what you need costs more in storage and opportunity cost than it’s worth.

43. Buy some cryptocurrency, maybe 2-3% of your net worth. Barbell investing makes sense. As a bonus, checking Coinbase every day provides the same excitement as checking social media but takes a lot less time.

44. Every week at the grocery store buy one ingredient you’re not sure what to do with. Try eating it raw if you haven’t been able to figure out where to incorporate it.

45. If you’re meeting a friend for lunch who makes less than half your income, you should pick a place in your price range and pay for both of you. And if a friend who makes double offers to do the same, accept it graciously.

46. Try a much harder mattress. Try a much softer mattress. They all have 100-day free trials now, there’s no excuse for spending thousands of hours on a less-than-perfect mattress.

47. Becoming a tea connoisseur is as fun as becoming a whiskey connoisseur but much much cheaper. Craft beer snobbery is in the middle price-wise but can veer dangerously close to obnoxious hipsterism. Start a tea club at work, it’s an excuse to chill and socialize deliciously.

48. Cars are getting both more reliable and more complicated, so the payoff to learning car maintenance is getting worse. It’s reasonable to buy a second-hand car and own it for years without needing to fix anything yourself.

49. Learn to make one cocktail really well and always keep the ingredients at home. It impresses people, and no one ever expects you to pull off a second one. My go-to: cucumber elderflower gimlet.

50. Any less than $100 purchase that may turn into a hobby is worth it even if the hit rate is low. Sports equipment, a musical instrument, art supplies, etc. If it doesn’t catch on, gift it to a friend.

51. Order weird clothes off the internet. It doesn’t make economic sense for anyone to open a shop of “J-pop streetwear” or “African athleisure” in your town, but someone from South China will send them to you for cheap. It’s easier to stand out by being weird than by spending more on the same style that everyone around you wears.

52. Do blind tastings of wines, then just keep buying the $10 bottle you like best. Novelty is good, but let’s be honest: you can’t really tell different Malbecs apart that much.

53. An espresso machine with all the functions (grinder, milk steamer, etc) not only makes better coffee but also provides you with a meaningful, multi-step ritual to start your day with.

Place

54. Have sex in a public park at 1 am. 10% chance of getting caught = 10x erotic excitement.

55. Do vacations where you just spend two weeks in a city. You’ll run out of touristy things to do and discover the climbing gyms, live shows, art classes that you’ll love. You’ll also be forced to start actually chatting with the locals.

56. Tinder is a terrible dating app in the US but an excellent way to find a dinner buddy while abroad. Make it explicit that this is what you’re looking for.

57. If you love dogs but can’t own one, volunteer to walk a neighbor’s dog once a week. Dogs should be part of the share economy.

58. Put more light in your house. More. Still more.

59. If you’re bored at home on a Tuesday and hate it, move to Brooklyn. If you’re stuck on another crowded subway and hate it – move to a small town in the mountains. The city you live in has a massive impact on your life. And if you’re single, consider also the dating market and gender ratio of singles.

60. Yes, moving to a new city will make you restart your social life from scratch. But is that a bad thing? Are you sure you have the best reputation / social role / circle of friends you could have?

61. Travel with a hiking backpack, not wheeled luggage. You want to be moving freely, not to be tied down to a heavy box dragging behind you.

62. There are way more fruits in the world than you know about. When you travel to South America or Asia buy a couple of each at the market and try them.

63. Put art on all your walls. If you can’t afford originals, buy prints. Can’t afford prints, buy posters. The selection criterion is a piece that you can stare at for at least 10 minutes the first time you see it. When you find better art, take down the old stuff.

64. If you live in a big city it’s fine not to cook. The cooks at the Mexican spot on the corner are better than you and appreciate your patronage.

The Soul

65. Give meditation a 50 hour trial with a good app or guidebook. If it ain’t your thing, give it up

P.S. The best places to meditate are churches and cathedrals.

66. Participate in exactly one riot in your life.

67. Before lying or doing something unethical, consider the real possibility that you and everyone you know will live for hundreds of years with enhanced memory and reputation tracking.

68. Read Emily Dickinson, her poems are both poignant and immediately accessible. Memorize five, they’re quite short.

69. Nice! Keep making this joke, happiness is built up of simple pleasures.

70. Most great music is made outside your country and in other languages.

71. In any giant museum, your goal should be to spend 5+ minutes with 10 amazing works, not 5 seconds with 1,000. If it’s the Louvre, one of those should be Guérin’s “The Return of Marcus Sextus”.

72. When you’re home alone, blast some music and dance. Don’t think about any particular moves, just focus on the music. Then do the exact same thing when you’re at a dance party.

73. Stand in the shower and repeat out loud “My opinions on guns, taxes and immigration have no impact on the world” until inner peace arrives.

74. Once in a while let yourself cry, fight, scream, and eat your boogers. That shit worked in kindergarten, there’s no reason to completely give up on it now.

75. Set a pile of bills on fire. Watch your partner kiss someone. Bomb at an open mic. Observe in precise detail how you feel. You will learn that there is much more complexity to your emotions than “this is bad and painful”. You’ll also surprise yourself with how you react.

76. Take MDMA once a year, at home, with a person you care about.

77. Study an ancient mythology in depth and find a god to channel.

78. Every “spiritual” thing is worth trying at least once: Sunday mass, holotropic breathwork, any sort of ritual. They have purposes and benefits that can’t be explained ahead of time to a skeptic, and that can be enjoyed even if you don’t buy in to any of the underlying ideology.

79. If you’re not having fun then just leave.

Career

80. You won’t get money, status, fun, impact, and career capital at the same job. Pick two, get the rest elsewhere in your life.

81. Don’t put money in savings accounts, let alone CDs, let alone secured CDs. These are all scams. You should own mostly stocks, but if you want a low-yield-low-volatility investment you can get a better rate with no lockup or fees at online brokerages.

82. If you’re thinking about doing that degree, think twice. If it’s a PhD, think ten times. Can you start doing now what you hope to do with the credential and get where you want in fewer years while also making money? Also underrated: dropping out of grad school one year in.

83. It’s fine to eat lunch alone. Catching up with co-workers every day doesn’t do much beyond what you’d get from catching up once a week. A good podcast is more interesting than your best colleague. Also, you don’t want your main friend group to be contingent on everyone remaining employed at the same place indefinitely.

84. If you’ve been waiting for months for someone to create an event and invite you, whether it’s a book discussion or a BDSM orgy, just throw one yourself. Most social scenes suffer from lack of initiative, not excess.

85. You can wear the same outfit to the office two days in a row. Your boss won’t notice. Your colleagues won’t notice. The only people who’ll notice are those who have a crush on you so this is a good way to find out who those are.

86. At work, if someone wants to set up a meeting or call, don’t accept until they send a clear agenda or a list of questions/topics. If you need someone’s time, send a clear agenda and list ahead of time. Meetings should not be about deciding what the meeting should be about.

87. When looking for employers, perhaps your first priority should be whether they’re raking in cash. No friendly culture, creative freedom, or generous package can survive long in an unprofitable business. You’re investing your time and energy in an employer so think like an investor.

88. If someone could really use several hours of your help, ask them to hire you at a fair price. Do the same when you need help. There are amazing win-wins to be had.

Relationships

89. Put a reminder on your phone to call your grandma. Ask her to tell you about some of the dumbest shit she has done in her life.

90. Talk to people on flights, starting at the boarding gate. Everyone is bored and alienated in airports, and you get the chance to meet people far outside your normal circles. Offer people gummy bears to break the ice.

91. If your spouse, friend, or family member has a dumb but not strictly harmful habit, try thinking of it as their artistic expression instead of using facts and logic to fail to talk them out of it.

92. Sex doesn’t have to be symmetrically satisfying every time. Some nights are just for giving, some are just for receiving. Same for relationships in general.

93. Take a tab of acid and hang out with a 5-year-old as equals.

94. Interview people you know, even if they’re not famous or experts in any particular thing. Just write down 10 questions and hit record. You’ll learn a lot and deepen the relationship.

95. If you have too little social life, wake up at 10 am every day to have energy in the evening. Too many people bothering you — wake up at 5 am to enjoy some alone time in the morning.

96. Your parents can handle hearing about your crazy life, dumb mistakes, and weird opinions. How will they learn to respect you as an adult if you don’t believe in your own story enough to share it?

97. If you’re not having fun on dates, think of something you enjoy and do that as a date. Painting class dates, hiking dates, ping pong dates, board game dates…

98. At any big party or event, your goal should be to make 2-3 connections, not to collect 500 business cards or Facebook friends. Throw quarterly gatherings with only the most recent friends you’ve made to consolidate the relationships and get them to meet each other.

99. Unless the guests haven’t seen each other in more than a year, parties with an agenda are much better than general hangouts. Some ideas: silent party, deep question party, touch/cuddle party, relating games party, art/performance party.

100. Promise people you’ll do 100 of something (like writing pieces of life advice) even if you’re not entirely sure you can do it. Then do 109. Overpromise AND overdeliver.

101. Make friends from as many subcultures and worldviews as you can. A Mormon friend, an SJW friend, a transhumanist friend, a crystal healing friend, an 8chan friend, a hard normie friend, etc.

102. Try to meet your online friends offline. It’s always incredibly cool to see in person someone you’ve built a connection with and imagined a lot of things about over the internet.

103. Learn to be OK with nudity and to disentangle it from shame and sexuality. Go to a nudist lodge, or just throw a nude non-sexual party with your trusted friends.

104. Yes, manic pixie dream girls and insouciant bad boys are interesting. But have you tried dating sincere, honest, and responsible people who actually care about you?

105. “I know we were just introduced, but I forgot your name.”

“I saw the email you sent me last month, I just procrastinated and forgot to respond.”

“This is the best effort I was realistically going to make.”

Try it, it’s liberating.

106. If you think you’re running 10 minutes late, text to say you’ll be 15 minutes late. That way the other person gets one disappointment and one pleasant surprise. Most people do the opposite: they say they’re 5 minutes late when it’s 10 and end up annoying the other and looking like total fools.

And Finally

107. Giving life advice to an anonymous crowd on the internet is an act of service, but giving life advice to a single person’s face is often a brash power move. Same for challenging someone’s model of the world. Remember that every act of communication has two sides and a context.

108. Write things online, even if you’re not qualified to write them, even if you think that no one will care. I started this thread on a lark, but ended up making friends, practicing creative brainstorming, gaining followers, and coming up with ways to improve my own life.

109. Follow me on Twitter for more life advice, bad puns, and lukewarm takes.

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date: 2020-12-26 15:49
tags:
- '@?public'
- '@?notes'
title: 100 Tips for a Better Life