I discovered this accidentally last night, and I thought it was neat.

After reflecting on a 20 year career that constantly shit on my Anniversary it literally just hit me why that happened. The Fiscal Year starts October 1st. That means everyone suddenly has money to spend and all the things get done. I was constantly TDY or in the field for our anniversary…

If you get married while in (or before and plan on going in) aim for August/September. Pretty consistent free time or at least only absolutely mission critical functions are happening.

Edit: we were late October so all the LOAs had dropped at that point.

When it comes time for annual performance reviews, promotion requests, or updating your resume, most people struggle to remember what they did three months ago, let alone a year ago.

Keep a running document (a "brag sheet") and bullet point 2 or 3 things you finished, problems you solved, or positive feedback you received each week. When review season comes or you apply for a new job, you’ll have an exact, quantified list of your impact ready to go without stressing.

Can you help me grab some ice?

Can you come help me with this for a second?

Now you can talk away from everyone without announcing to the whole room that a mysterious private meeting is happening.

Nothing makes people more curious than can I talk to you privately?

Under current USDA regulations, plumped chicken may still carry an “All-Natural” or “100% Natural” label. This is why it's important to check the ingredient list.

Source

I started doing this thing a few months back that have helped slow down rumination and negative thoughts.

Put a note widget on your phone somewhere and whenever you have a negative thought, open it and write it down, but do nothing with it. Doesn’t matter the thought. You aren’t writing it down to rationalise it you are simply putting it from your mind onto your phone.

It does two things. Firstly half the battle in rumination is recognising you are ruminating and separating your self from your thoughts. So when you recognise, I am having the thought that Susan thinks I’m a dork, you write it down instead of getting attached to, well.. I think Susan may actually think I’m a dork.

Secondly I find when I’m ruminating my head is full of noisy thoughts that feels like a mess. Writing it down untangles it and you actually get to acknowledge each and every thought you are ruminating on. When you do this you actually realise there’s a lot less going on up there than what it feels like.

Takes practice at first because you have to start noticing the thoughts instead of being attached to them but after a while it becomes automatic and I find it helps. Hope it can help other people.

When you are on new trails or walking paths that don’t loop, turn around and look at how your return should look. It helps your brain register new routes better. This is especially true when you are on unmarked trails that you are unfamiliar with. It has definitely helped me return safely to my starting point without getting lost.

An easier solution would be to save offline maps if you have your phone, but it won’t hurt to exercise your brain every once in a while to remember newer things.

This works best when you already know exactly what car you want and it’s brand new.

When I was looking to buy my car, instead of trying to haggle in person, I just wrote up a professional email describing the exact car I was looking to buy and asking what’s the best price/deal they could do for me.

I then cc’d about 30 dealerships in my state, so that it was clear that they had competition.

The vast majority of them didn’t even reply to the email, I got several variations of “that’s not how we do business, please come in person to our dealership to discuss further” and only got about 4 replies of dealers interested in negotiating.

After a couple of rounds of back and forth it came down to just two competing for my money.

When one sent me an offer both price wise and accessories i would pass that on to the other and do the same back.

I ended up getting $17000 off the RRP, 12 months registration, no charge for upgrading to a coloured car rather than white, and some free after market accessories worth approx $5000.

So while it’s not a guarantee that this will work, it worked for me and so wanted to share it.

While you're alive rest is never infinite. You need both enough of it and not too much, so it needs to be deliberately made to fit with all of your other things. This is important for the sake of those other things and for the sake of the rest itself.

Explicitly adding short breaks or blocks of free time into a time-plan might seem like a contradiction. The whole point of taking a break is not to be worrying about tasks and timelines and chores. But if done half-decently it reduces this worry, and improves your levels of relaxation and enjoyment. This is for multiple reasons:

If you feel you have allocated enough/comfortable time to relax, recover, or do whatever you enjoy spontaneously, without neglecting important tasks, then all the work leading up to a break is an easier burden to bare. You focus on your goals more willingly and easily knowing you are not just heading for exhaustion and more work, but have balanced your time for recovery and refreshment.

Secondly, if you are more confident, while resting, of how much time you have and that it seemed like a good amount of time when you stopped to think about your overall day, then it's easier to mostly forget about everything else for a while and just relax and enjoy yourself. If you know more clearly when the break is over you feel more clearly that it's not over yet.

It's just as risky in many cases to get too little rest, sleep, short stretching breaks, variation of activity to prevent fatigue, etc, as too much. Thinking about where and how much of these breaks to put in your plan when making it creates a good habit, and makes for plans that are more realistic and more appealing. It makes you less likely to routinely delay or pollute rest with thoughts of just doing one more thing when really you need to stop for a minute.

None of this precludes taking spontaneous breaks when you're ahead in your tasks or just really need it. Making a realistic/generous plan for your time, carefully prioritised, means you're both more likely to be ahead in the important things, and to recognise with confidence when you are ahead. This is yet another way that rest is improved with careful time-planning.

This is important because dividing your time into planned and unplanned slows down your education and training in the general art of planning your time. Once you recognise that even relaxation, leisure, breaks, sleep, etc, are improved by this art, you might embrace it more completely, and learn it more quickly.

About five years ago I bought a brand new Hamilton blender. It worked great at first, as they tend to, but gradually I noticed it would leak from between the base of the pitcher and where the blade connects. I put off replacing it and instead opted to wait and score a nice commercial blender during a seasonal sale. Then it dawned on me one day while cleaning the gasket on a water bottle: why not try replacing the rubber seal?

Fast forward a week and the replacement seal arrives in the mail. I pop open my container of superfood protein powder and got to work. Guess what? No leaks!

Initially, I was skeptical of a simple fix as the original seal appeared to be in fine condition. Lo and behold, it was the culprit after all. That and over tightening which likely warped/weakened the seal over time.

It goes to show that if you like something enough, consider fixing it before tossing. In my case, the fix was ultra easy and worth a shot. It paid off for me. Now the $$ I saved can be allocated to the next thing that genuinely needs replacement or professional repair.

LPT: My best LPT is to sit at the bar at any restaurant you visit. It is so interesting to engage in conversation with other patrons as well as the bartrnfing staff. I literally just left the hotel bar where I had the most intriguing conversation with other patrons.

I have a LinkedIn connection to someone I met one time and continue to engage with them.

The bartender from a restaurant I patronize recently opened his own restaurant and he was so surprised and grateful when we showed up to support his new venture. That never could have happened if we had not mutually engaged at the bar.

Put down your reservations and strike up a conversation! You will be glad that you did!

I got a fraud alert on a credit card that I keep locked away at home. I thought I was going to have to wait until I got home to call the bank. Luckily, they sent an email that I was able to read on my smartphone that listed the phone number that they wanted me to call.

If you're like me and forget things constantly due to the doorway effect, I highly recommend using a phone / alexa to document your shower thoughts. It's been a complete gamechanger for me.

If you’re a pepperoni person like me and you’re ever unsatisfied with how many pepperonis come on a frozen pizza or if you just want more: use turkey pepperonis. Tastes exactly like regular pepperonis but hardly any calories, fat, and extra protein. You can add as much as you want without any added guilt that may already come with eating a frozen pizza lol.

Anxiety feeds off of importance. So if you *secretly tell yourself that what you’re saying is the buildup to a joke then it’s easier to get it out with more confidence. Because you’re relieving your psyche of your words significance.

And one of the key components of confidence if not seeking to get any particular reaction from anyone.

Example:

I need five beers for table 6, I’m celebrating 5 years sober by myself!

You can’t use my bike, work won’t let me be late due to “being a conflict avoidant pussy”….again.

I like your outfit! Who was buried in it?

Just say the build up without the punchline and it flips a switch in your brain. You become an impartial representative of your thoughts instead of the owner.

Basically just commit to the joke without the punchline.

I’m not kidding I’ve seriously struggled with Coming off as genuine and confident (I am genuine but my tone comes off forced and awkward) and this has helped me tremendously.

If you get sick and tired of promotional notifications from certain apps (I'm looking at you Uber/Uber Eats...) but need these notifications to work when you place an order, then kill the app.

Hold the app icon, click the (i) icon, and then choose "Force stop".

This will completely stop the app from running and you wont get their annoying notifications, but the next time you open the app, the notifications will restart so you know how the pick-up or delivery is going.

Edit: As usual, the real LPT is in the comments, with thanks to u/RenderedCreed/ who first mentioned it in the comment. Under the app's notification settings there is a setting called "Notification Categories", which allows you to turn them on or off by category.

A real finished example shows the format, detail, naming, and what done actually looks like.

Instructions tell you how it should work. Last month's file shows what actually gets sent.

Because make it like last time is apparently a complete training program.

found this completely on accident and now do it every time.

so your watching a show, and you get a ad. just back out to the home screen and then open up the show again and you will be taken to before the ad starts. So before the ad starts, fast foward 10sec using the button and it will completely skip the ad.

So instead of waiting 2 minutes for 1 ad it only takes like 5 seconds.

This only really works like conveniently on mobile and computer.

I once accidentally called the wrong contact. Normally this is not an issue but in this case it was. For those I frequently contact, who unsurprisingly have similar last names, dialing hands free can sometimes be problematic. Adding middle names has improved the accuracy.

If the deposit winds up not showing up in your account, you can deposit the original check in-branch or bank-branded ATM at a later date.

I've personally had mobile check deposit just completely disappear, even customer service couldn't see it in the system. Thankfully, I saved the original check and was able to deposit it in-branch a few days later.

If you don't save it, you can't re-deposit it!

I bumped into this term recently: exercise snacks. That’s it! I was instantly enlightened! It perfectly describes how I consider movement.

The concept is super simple: an exercise snack is a brief bout of movement, anywhere, short and energetic, throughout your day. It is like snacking, but for your body.

Taking the stairs instead of the elevator
Squats while waiting for the kettle to boil
A quick walk around the block during a phone call
Walking around while waiting for anything

If you post something online, it's likely that sites like Google will find it and will archive it.

But if you delete it, the sites that have already made copies of it don't want to lose it, so they usually just keep the copy they already have.

On the other hand, if you edit the content to just say something very different, a lot of the time, sites that had archived what you posted will see the new content as an updated version of what you posted, and in many cases will replace the content you're trying to get rid of with the new content that you're replacing it with.

for example if you are cooking pasta and the water starts foaming up place a wooden spoon across the top of the pot the spoon can break some of the bubbles and give you a little more time before the water spills over

I'm not bad-mouthing estheticians—they have to make a living too—I'm just saying... I've had hundreds of nail sessions and I speak from experience. Do your own cuticles before you get your nails professionally done.

Now, don't go nuts! Don't push back or trim too far! Seriously, you can damage your nail beds!!! But, by soaking your hands/feet in warm water and pushing back and trimming your own cuticles, you will be able to go several more weeks until you need your nails redone because they'll have a lot more time to grow out before they start looking janky.

At a salon your nail technician will probably give you the barest minimum of soak time for a pedicure and almost nothing by way of a fingernail soak to soften and trim your cuticles before applying gel/shellack/acrylic nails. They know this and it is deliberate. If they don't trim your cuticles back very far, it shortens the time until you need a refill or a takeoff and redo, therefore more $$$ for them.

Save yourself some money and soak, push back, and trim your cuticles yourself a day or two before getting them professionally done. Your pedicure/manicure will last way longer before needing to be redone.