Life, the universe and everything is filled with uphill challenges. From the smallest things like making sure we have food, to trying to find a good job or just keeping ourselves entertained, sometimes it gets so complicated it’s overwhelming. But as it turns out, we have the capability to make the smaller stuff less troublesome through little changes we ourselves make. A few tricks, or cheats so to speak, of the system to help us slip through the back door instead of through the brick wall we’ve been standing in front of this whole time. It makes all the difference, so here’s a few breadcrumbs of life advice to help you crank open those side windows and get where you need.
Only subscribe to one streaming service at a time; watch what you want on it, then unsub and go to the next platform. This rotation will save money.
This is so handy, we wish we’d seen this one sooner. Plenty of platforms have shows we want to watch, but subscribing to every single one for that one season can feel like an ever expanding hydra of an expense. So rather than give into the impulse, pick one at a time depending on what you want to watch. If it’s a show that’s being released weekly, wait for it to finish so you can binge watch it all at once, then when the month is over, cancel the subscription and wait for it to be fully up again and for you to be done with the last one. Your wallet will thank you.
When you’re doing well financially, put small bits of cash in pockets or bag compartments. When you need money later it’ll be a pleasant surprise to find.
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An odd sort of trick to play on yourself, but really, you’ll thank your future self for it if you fall on harder times. If you’re going through a financially affluent period, you can store some cash away in pockets, compartments of bags, and maybe a few drawers. It’ll be a pleasant surprise to come across when you hit bumpier times.
Open bananas from the bottom. It takes the strings right off.
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Bananas are wonderful snacks and nutritious as well, but sometimes can be a pain to peel with those extra strings sticking to it after you’ve peeled it. Turns out the chimps knew what they were doing all, as peeling the banana from the bottom is actually a smarter way to do it. It might be more intuitive to pull the top off the banana, but turns out you can save time on peeling off those extra bad tasting strings by just doing it the monkey way.
When you use moisturizer, make sure to put it on your neck as well; it’ll help reduce the wrinkling when you get older.
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Man or woman, a good skincare routine is important to have for both health and vanity’s sake. Proper skin care can help reduce your number of trips to the dermatologist. So when moisturizing after you wash your face, make sure to put it on your neck and near your ears; it’ll help reduce the skin wrinkle when you begin to age. Unfortunately, if you don’t start when you’re younger it won’t be as effective but it’s still good practice no matter your age.
If you cold call a company to confirm an interview you didn’t have, you might be able to secure a job.
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In this digital world we live in, computer algorithms have been set in place on so many company sites, making it hard for our resumés to be looked at even if it might be the perfect one for the job. If we don’t have the keywords, by random chance we can end up completely overlooked despite being qualified. Sometimes bypassing the system by finding a creative solution will help fix that. So maybe if you sent in a resumé and never heard back for a place you really liked, cold call the company to confirm an interview and they might schedule you into the system, giving you a chance to come in and impress recruiters.
You can improve your willpower and self control by using your non-dominant hand for mundane tasks like eating, opening doors, etc.
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Most people are right handed, some are left handed, and even fewer are ambidextrous. But it turns out, even if your non-dominant hand is weaker, using it for the occasional small tasks can actually improve your brain’s functionality. Your brain fires off neurons not usually used when working that weaker hand, and if you push it to work harder it can increase your willpower and self control.
You can trick your brain into becoming more confident by faking it for a while.
“Fake it til you make it”? Turns out the saying is true. It’s always a rough start, but if you put on the act of confidence, over time you will begin to actually believe it and embrace it. There’s plenty of theories we can come up with as to why it works; perhaps the confidence shows you that you’re more capable than you realized, or maybe it just becomes a regulated thought and you begin to believe it through habit alone. Either way, it’s a handy tool to improve yourself. Just remember to be patient; it doesn’t happen overnight and the change is small and happens overtime.
When planning to give a presentation, bring a bottle of water. If you blank out, you can take a sip of it to buy time and gather your thoughts.
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Well, this has to be a useful tip for overcoming stage fright, but also just a handy tool to avoid those awkward silences. We all reach that point sometimes, where we might not know what to say on the spot with a group of people. The best thing to do is pause to take a moment and gather our thoughts, and a bottle of water nearby is a very handy thing to have to help us do so.
Use the floor a lot to stay healthy; sit on it while eating, practice getting up and keep yourself flexible by picking things up off of it (properly).
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Alright, this is a strange one, but is actually good solid advice for keeping you healthy and flexible in the long run. Especially when you start to get older you begin to lose that flexibility to bend over, but did you know a lot of adults can’t bend down to pick things up off the floor? Probably a side effect of all of us in those office jobs. To keep yourself flexible, you can at the very least keep yourself reasonably fit by simply practicing getting up off the floor and finding ways to be comfortable on it.
Use bins and/or baskets for everything storage related in your home; They’ll do wonders for organization and clutter.
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Bins? Bins, you say? I do say. Turns out, the solution to our clutter problem was right in front of us all along. All we needed was some neatly set up bins and baskets, and it puts organization in easy mode. Everything has its place, and if you make sure to keep them there you’ll find you won’t have to dig around through piles of messes looking for a specific item. Life gets a lot simpler that way.
Wash your hands with toothpaste to remove bad smells from your skin.
Handled fish? No one likes that smell, and it’s darn difficult to get rid of too once it’s stuck to your skin. Well fear not, we have the perfect solution to your aromatic problem. Toothpaste; the secret is toothpaste. Rub some onto your hands when you’re washing them and the smell should go away, replaced by a refreshingly minty scent.
If you get a brain freeze, pressing your tongue to the roof of your mouth will give you quick relief.
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Ah yeah, those wonderful frozen treats are hard for even the most iron-willed of us to resist. Ice cream, smoothies, frozen food and ice cold beverages have become a mainstay in our culture, especially on a hot day. But an over enthusiastic consumer could end up with more than they bargained for and get what has been coined a brain freeze. Which sounds much funnier than it is; a pulsing pain in your head from the low temperature. If you press your tongue to the roof of your mouth, it’ll help you warm up the area which set off all those nerves in the first place.
Use paper cash when you can; it’ll help you save money by making you more conscientious of your spending.
Old fashioned, we know, and maybe sometimes a bit inconvenient, but if you think about it there’s logic behind it. Using your phone or credit card is so easy, you’re not really aware of the money depleting from your account so it’s so much easier to just spend and lose. But when you physically hand the cash over, there’s a much more tactile feeling as you are aware of the exchange of goods.
