Kinda sorta in response to a question that technolope asked recently: I’ve developed some reasonably effective habits for keeping myself happy.
* I keep my kitchen knives really sharp. Seriously. It makes cooking instantly easier, safer, and more pleasant to have knives that just work. Yes, I have both a “shaper” and a “honer.” Yes, there is a difference, and yes I can tell.
* When traveling, I standardize as much as possible. This means that I nearly always rent from the same company (Hertz), stay at the same brand of hotel (Marriott), and park in the same location in parking garages (top level, as close to the stairs as I can get, facing outward). There’s nothing particularly better about any of these choices … it just means that I have a default guess about where to go when I stagger off a plane. Plus, over time, this is how to win the reward miles / points games.
* I do my finances once a month. All my bills come in between the 1st and the 5th. I spend one session, usually less than an hour, to pay the bills, check status on finances, etc. Then I know that things are pretty much paid up and stable for the month. After that, I can look at the state of the world (since I’ve paid the big bills already) and say “hey, we’re doing okay this month” or “huh, better not eat out so much for the next few weeks.” I find that this keeps me from worrying about money the rest of the month. Of course … it doesn’t always work … but it’s helped a lot over the “random check ins every few days” method.
* I use Excel to track everything. If I have even the slightest hint that I might care about some particular data, I just track it in Excel. There may be some sorts of data in the world that are not amenable to tracking in Excel … but they tend to not apply to my day to day life. This saves me all sorts of abortive software / web development projects. “How much have I worked out? How many snacks do I eat on an average day?” These are questions for excel, not for some random website that I make up. The one big exception is Quicken. I know that I could do my finances in Excel (and I do use Excel for budget, rather than Quicken’s crazy-ass budget functions) but the “download my transactions” feature actually saves me a lot of time.
* I only keep one notebook at a time. I would sort of like to keep a “work” series and a “personal” series of journals … but I’ve never been able to segregate when I may need to write a work note vs. a personal one … and carrying two journals is just beyond me., So, one series of notebooks that carries everything.
* I read everything possible via RSS feeds. I hate having to open up windows and click “reload.”
* I standardize little junk as much as possible. For example: I’ve got a preferred brand of socks. They come in white and black. Most of the socks in my drawer are identical. So I have no problem throwing away one sock when it gets a hole in it. This also speeds up the laundry sorting process a great deal. As with the hotel chain preference, it doesn’t really matter *which* brand I picked … just that I picked one a few years ago and have stuck with it. I do the same with pens … but that’s straight up OCD.
* I don’t retain magazines beyond the current issue. That guilty pile of ‘you should have read me’ is a waste of time. Recycle.
That’s probably enough for now.
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