What's one small thing you've done to make your life easier?
For example, I 3d printed a box over my outlet to protect my cables from my bed pushing against it. In addition, my cables never fall to the floor so they’re much easier to grab.
I do this with socks. Mostly because I hate taking the time to match socks when I’m doing laundry. And when I inevitably lose a sock I’m not left with one sock that doesn’t match any other sock.
Me too! The only bummer is when they all wear out at the same time and you have to buy 2 dozen socks at once. I’m at that stage right now, which is only a drag because I bought shitty socks last time and need to find a new brand.
One time I bought Calvin Klien and they were pretty good. This time I think I got Mark’s Work wear house brand and they were crap. I used to buy one pack to see if I liked them but this time I bought a bunch and got burnt.
I love them. They fit well and feel and look nice.
One thing you can do with quality stuff is to just buy one or two every month (or however much you can afford). Assuming it’s good quality and holds up, you’ll have a good amount after a year or so. I do this with underwear as well.
Honestly? I switched from Windows to Linux. I was working for several years at a Windows-centric computer magazine and realized a couple of years ago that many of the articles I was writing were about how to make Windows behave less like Windows. So I installed some Linux distro in a virtual machine on my work PC to play around with it for a bit. And soon after I installed Manjaro on my PC at home. Today, four years later, I’ve installed various Linux distros on all my PCs, and I’m much less annoyed by computer issues on a regular basis.
Yes Linux sort of feels like a car from the 1980s or earlier, where you can open the hood and understand it, and Windows feels like a car from the 2020s where you simply can’t understand everything the car is doing because of all the computers onboard.
Well, that’s as good of an explanation for that name as any I’ve come up with, so I using that in the future. Not sure how it makes sense, but that’s okay.
I don’t even keep my wallet in my back pocket. I used to stuff my wallets with receipts, bustickets and whatnot, so I guess the strain of all that would also wear on my cards…
When I did that in college, though it was over 20 years ago, I distinctly remember my mother saying over the phone “Oh sure, just take the easy way out”.
Yeah Mom, I’m taking the “easy way out” here by going to therapy and taking medication. That’s totally what those words refer to. 🙄
My parents were baby boomers. When I started antidepressants I continued my policy of saying nothing to them about my personal life. It saved me a lot of trouble over the years.
It might seem dumb but i started preparing what i need for the next day the evening before it, clothes ,my bag, the train ticket, what i need to eat on the go, etc. instead of doing a mad rush in the morning to get ready.
Also good is to always put something back where it should be. Like my work badge is always in the front pinch of my laptop bag and the first thing I do when I finish work is put it back into that pouch.
I always had an in between pile for the same reason. Clothes that weren’t freshly washed but weren’t dirty enough to wash. I like your idea of hooks. I might try it out.
Eliminated Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and all of the affiliate companies and services for the mentioned ones, from my life. Now all I have is Linux based and self-hosted. My life’s toxicity levels dropped to pretty much nothing since then.
I have is as a docker in my UnRaid server. However, from what I’ve heard, the easiest way to get NC up and running real fast is in a Ubuntu server and installing Nextcloud from Ubuntu’s snap store. I can’t confirm that, but it seems legit, since it came from a DistroTube video in YouTube.
You will probably have to get a domain, but some of the ugly TLDs can cost few bucks for a year, so it’s not that bad.
As for being able to access your Nextcloud from outside, if you don’t use it to share large amount of data often, I recommend looking into Cloudflare Tunell. It’s pretty easy to set up, and allows you to not only put a configurable firewall in front of your Nextcloud instance that you can for example geoblock traffic from other countries, but you also don’t have to deal with port forwarding, DDNS, or exposing your home network directly into the internet.
The setup is simple, you just download their cloudflared service, install it with a token generated in their web management (that ties it to a domain and tells it what port it should expose) on your Nextcloud machine, and it will automatically connect to Cloudflare server that will act as a port forward, but without you having to expose anything on your home network directly.
I don’t really access my Nextcloud from the internet that often, don’t use it to stream or share large files with large number of people, so I never had issues with it. But I’ve been told that it’s against Cloudflare ToS to use it for large data sharing, streaming or high-volume data transfers, so keep that in mind.
But it’s perfect for accessing my Home Assistant and Nextcloud when I need it.
Yes, but actually no, if you want to access it remotely. DONT OPEN THE WEB PORTS TO THE INTERNET, rather use a vpn like wireguard to connect in to the home network.
Not OC, but I’m using Kagi and super happy. Before I use Kagi, I didn’t realise how bad Google result is. Its results are poisoned by ads and SEO nowadays.
I still am using Google and I hate how useless it has become since SEO started to become a thing in the last 5 or 10 years. Maybe I should try Kagi. Does it have location specific search results
Yeah, since about 2016 it has started to get really bad though. I remember when I would be looking for a solution to a computer related issue, all the top results were super useful Tom’s Hardware and AnandTech forum posts. But of course nobody does SEO for forum posts because they’re just trying to help people not make money, so instead now all of the probably AI written crap is in the top results which half the time is only barely related to what I searched
I managed to clean the kitchen and do the dishes every evening for two weeks in a row now and it is a start to be nice to tomorrow me. If it becomes a habit, I will try to do more, but for now it is hard enough, but also so, so satisfying the next morning! Past me, today me and tomorrow me are a team!
Yeah the hardest part is making a habit. I’ve started to do a quick vacuum on the stairs once a day (cordless vacuum FTW) and it makes a big difference.
Buy two of things. If you have trouble washing something, like bed sheets, buy a second set. You can change them first, then you have some more time to wash and dry and fold the other set. Otherwise, if you only have one, then you have to wash and dry and remake your bed in a shorter time window.
I discovered this strat on accident! Blew out my favorite jeans irreperably, and my replacement pair was actually two replacement pairs. My limiting factor on how long between laundry loads is how much lunch is on my jeans and now I have a backup pair so I do laundry half as much on average.
I keep getting burned finding boots that I like and by the time they wear out they’re discontinued. For the first time I finally did the thing where I bought a pair, confirmed I like them, and immediately got a second pair. It was a hefty up front cost but now I’m genuinely looking forward to the same blue crushed velvet docs for the next 4-6 years
Labeling things. I write simple instructions to myself so I don’t have to remember things as much. It doesn’t have to be formal stickers. It can be some masking tape and a pen. I just leave little notes for My Future Self
During lockdown I spent so my time considering and planning; trying to find a sophisticated labelling system for my pantry.
Colour coding for the top of spice jars so I could quickly find what I need. High quality stickers with neat, clear labels of what the item is, with the brand in pencil that could be altered if I switched to a different brand.
That system was completely fucking useless. ADHD means my motivation to uphold a system is completely fucked on some days. And the awkward half measures irritated me on my good days.
Now it’s masking tape and a marker and pray it’s legible. Because when it comes to this (and tbh, many things in my life) consistently average is better than inconsistently perfect.
I started doing things immediately when I see that they need to be done to look out for Future Me. It sucked at first, but it’s a habit now. I haven’t been putting things off as much as I used to. Future Me always appreciates it.
Future Me has more experience and wisdom than Present Me. There’s no reason I should do anything when such a better-suited candidate will inevitably emerge.
If you don’t have a smartphone, I don’t know what the chances are that you self host services, but, if you do, check out paperless-ngx, which is what I’m using. It’s great.
There are scanning apps that automatically crop the photo, let you make multi page PDFs, and automatically upload to your cloud of choice or directly to your computer. This has made it super easy for me. I’ve tried a few and settled on the one-time paid version Genius Scan and it works well for me.
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