How I lifehacked my way into a corner

Great minds think alike?
Also, spoons for salted nuts, but you can easily accidentally plow down a 5-lb. bag that way without even noticing.

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I guess. I thought of this on my own, for the record.

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I first saw it being done by anime characters. I imagine anyone who has chopsticks constantly at hand will pick up the trick.

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All the “lifehacks” that are for domestic activities (cooking, cleaning, organizing) seem to have come from the “Hints from Heloise” booklets and columns.

But hipsters and Pinterest users like to think they invented all the shortcuts.

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“Do what you love and the money will follow.”

Hmm, if money is the motivator, I suppose.

I’m the sort that if I have enough to live on and have fun (and to keep up the dollar-cost-averaged contributions toward retirement, which isn’t too many years away), I’m happy. I’m not motivated by being richer than the neighbours, and I don’t find playing the market to be a fun game.

I’m privileged that doing what I like pays well enough to bring me to that level.

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How could it have existed before the internet? Isn’t that when civilization began? /s

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Everyone who doesn’t do greasy fingers is a hipster? That seems overly broad.

I’ve had to show them the booklets that I inherited from my mother because they* didn’t believe me.

*gaggle of “girls” aged 18-40 at a ThirtyOne purse party

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I was just about to suggest it! I first ran across a similar concept in a book written by a guy that spent many years working at a food research lab, you know, trying to come up with better varieties of almost-but-not-really-like-butter, etc. At that lab, they had silly Friday afternoons, or they called it somesuch. Friday afternoon, they tried all the weird experiments that they wanted to do just for the hell of it. Stuff that they had no clear idea why they wanted to do, tests that had no obvious road to any kind of application, that sort of thing. He said they stumbled across a lot of their very best stuff on those Friday afternoons.

There’s sort of a tradeoff between being focused on a single goal and letting serendipity guide you, isn’t there? I mean, both tend to reward those that spend a lot of time on whatever it is they are doing, I would imagine, but it seems some of the best stuff may be hidden in the rather random-seeming workings of our brains.

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Chopsticks. Original post, read it:

Now picture someone using chopsticks in a movie theater.

So it’s just chopsticks? That seems overly broad.

I suspect you may have identified one reason why ‘lifehacking’ holds limited appeal for you(in addition to the fact that it attracts both cultists of the same school as those who see all human interaction as ‘networking’ and clickbait fishermen who repackage trivial advice into ‘lifehacking’ infographics and listicle slurry).

Someone peddling schemes for improved output or heuristics to bring greater visibility to phenomena that are making you unhappy for reasons you don’t understand, has nothing to offer a person who already finds what they do without some scheme for systematic reflection perfectly satisfactory. Just a bunch of redundant bookkeeping.

However, being satisfied with the results of what you just do; and not necessarily having to examine or systematize it because it works fine as is is hardly a universal (quite possibly not even common) condition. If you are unhappy with what you do; or are aware of pervasive failures but unable to put your finger on exactly where they occur, the prospect becomes so much more attractive.

I can sympathize with both perspectives; unfortunately not in the helpful order. Once upon a time, I acted largely as my whim moved me; and all was well because it moved me in directions I found interesting and engaging and others found productive and satisfactory.

Then, in a turn of events I suspect I will never understand (if, indeed, it isn’t a category error to suggest that it possesses a summary that would feel like understanding); I ceased to do so. The whim no longer so moved me. Now I’m having an atypically good day if I get as far as having a desirable objective to fail at; and that is by no means assured.

Without any real understanding of what used to work, I’m rather poorly placed to either identify the problem or reconstruct the past systematically, hence an interest in people purporting to have systematized mechanisms for improvement: those are stilted compared to ‘do what comes naturally’; but when that becomes a brutally maladaptive strategy you are left looking for another.

Not that they’ve helped; but I can understand why someone might be enticed.

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I got it. I just made my own.

I haven’t watched TV regularly in more than a decade

I have found that giving up everything except TV has kept me from having to go through this difficult winnowing process repeatedly.

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Hmmm.
8-ball2
8-ball3

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Somebody else just posted Oblique Strategies in another thread. It’s a creative card-draw, so interpreting how you wish is part of the deal. You’re welcome.

http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html

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It has been remarked that your TV is a Brilliant TV that Vint Cerf sometimes rubbernecks in wondering if a lay device health service should be made and clear other worries too. Before yesterday it was the brilliant video newspaper Disney would never forsake, heralded foremost among free newscasters.

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…so the scene has someone with popcorn and chopsticks viewing a movie, but it’s so tense they bite the sticks into pieces, right? (Well, that can’t be the only CD cameo, right?)

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