When I can’t sleep, I turn around and sleep “upside down” - moving my pillows to where my feet were beforehand, and my feet to where my head was beforehand - and I stick with that for a week or so. It gives me a week or so without insomnia and then wears off, so I have to turn myself back around for the next 7-12 day period.
Admittedly this could just be a me thing, but let’s put our faith in this method and let the power of placebo effect take hold. Boom, minor bouts of sleeplessness are cured.
What are your own examples of this?
If you’re walking with an open container of liquid that’s filled so full it’ll spill, purposefully avert your gaze from the liquid sloshing as you’re walking.
Getting nervous that you’ll spill, will cause you to spill.
If someone is about to sneeze, wait until they begin to inhale and say something unexpected to them and it will stop them from sneezing.
I told this to my wife and she scoffed and didn’t believe me. One day her allergies were kicking up and she started to sneeze. I waited for the right moment and said “GRAPEFRUIT” to her and… She didn’t sneeze.
The secret is timing it correctly.
Also, if you’re having trouble sneezing (starting but unable to fully sneeze), try looking at a light source when you start sneezing. Conversely, looking away from a light might help you not sneeze as well, but it isn’t much of a guarantee.
That’s true!
It’s the reason why you tend to sneeze after coming out from watching a movie and it’s still light outside. From what I have read, it’s a reflex to give your eyes time to adjust to the brighter lighting conditions.
This can work on yourself too if done right
This is cooking advice.
If you struggle with cooking or find that you mess up often, try preparing all of the individual ingredients before you start cooking. Eg. measure, wash, cut every ingredient. Apparently this practice is called mise en place.
If you ever watch a cooking video and it looks so effortless this is probably why. It was a game changer back when I was learning to cook. Suddenly it felt like I could make every recipe with ease.
This practice has drawbacks as it could dirty more dishes and increase cook times but it allows you to tackle most dishes at your own pace. I definitely recommend it whenever you make something new for the first time.
Mise en place is essential in my mind and one of the most important skills I learned early on in culinary school. At home if you don’t want to dirty a ton of dishes, you can organize ingredients (veggie ones anyway, still need bowls for spices/liquids) into small piles on your cutting board. Then just grab a bench scraper or the side of your knife and toss the ingredients in as needed.
Also, get a kitchen scale. You won’t need it all the time but it’s so much easier to just stick a pot on top of a scale and add 500 ml of chicken stock than it is to have to measure 2 cups in a separate container. This is especially good if you’re looking to blanche/simmer something in a flavorful liquid like stock or broth
Hiccups: repeat in your head “I don’t have hiccups, hiccups don’t exist”. Repeat these phrases a few times and the hiccups should be gone.
It has worked everytime since I learned this a couple of years ago.
On August 27 2031 make sure you turn left instead of right. You’ll know when I mean.
TYVM
Here’s how I quit smoking about 15 years ago.
Step one: for about a month, every time I smoked I told myself I’m ready to quit. Every cigarette, every time.
Step two: the next month, every cigarette, every time, I told myself they stink and taste like shit.
Took about 3 weeks into the second month and I never picked up another. Oh and I can be around other smokers and don’t crave them. They still fucking stink.
YMMV
Something like 20 years ago now, my pack-a-day wife decided to try a vaper. Not clouds-of-vape, just a pedestrian vaper.
She never went back to cigarettes. She decreased the nicotine and nowadays vapes maybe 2-3 times per day, I think her current level is 6… whatever units of nicotine, it’s not a lot.
I don’t care that she still vapes at that level. If there is anything bad, it’s not much at that rate, so screw it.
smoker in my early 20s and this advice might change my life.
Honestly, quit as soon as you can. After the two week mark, you’ll start smelling things again. At the one month mark, you’ll notice that you’re not constantly out of breath. Cravings still occasionally happen, but it shifts from “god damn it I need a donut right now” to “hmm a donut sounds good right now… But I don’t wanna bother with going to the donut shop.” The cravings never fully vanish, but they definitely change and become easier to dismiss as a passing whim.
I realized it was causing a lot of anxiety for me. Easy quit after that because the reward was less anxiety after a few days.
When microwaving a thick food, like pasta, there’sa risk of the “deepest” part being cold from lack of microwave penetration. Shift the contents of the plate into a donut shape, so most of it is on the sides and a gap in the center, before microwaving. That helps the heat penetrate evenly.
You mean it creates a thinner section for the induction currents to set up. There is no heat that penetrates in a microwave, it’s an induction oven. It’s the meal itself that generates the heat.
If you can’t sleep. Get up. Get out of your bed for a while.
Staying awake while laying in bed often changes the association of sleep with the bed. Removing sleep conditioning effects.
Also as someone who has had insomnia since I was a child. I can tell you if I lay in bed. Unable to sleep. And Stay there. Rolling around. I won’t ever fall asleep.
But if I force myself to get up. Maybe have something to drink. Walk around a bit. Stare out the window for a bit. Then go back , I’m more likely to fall asleep.
And if I’m having really bad insomnia. I go for a walk. At this point I’m my life I can tell if it’s going to require a walk or just getting up and moving around the apartment/house for a bit.
Even a 15-20 min walk can do wonders. But I typically do 30 to 1 hour walk. It depends on how I’m feeling.
You would think exercising in the middle of the night would wake you up more. But nope.
9/10 times I go for a short walk. I get back and fall to sleep almost immediately.
It’s hard to force yourself to get up when you are exhausted and just want to sleep. But it’s do the walk or not sleep at all.
Also. Going out at 2 or 3 am on a week day is kinda of an interesting experience. Depending where you live, you might be the only person around.
It’s eirie and surreal. Subliminal spaces.
I quite like it. That also helps motivate me to do the insomnia walk. (Sometimes I ride my bike instead which is really nice as there are minimum cars. -make sure you are in light clothes and have lights and reflectors on your bike).
Drink more water. Eat more fiber.
Yeah if you like poop and pee
Go on…
“if”
While most probably would be okay with hydrating more, do be careful:
- The “eight glasses per day” thing was made up whole cloth
- The advice I’ve heard is that for MOST people, drink when you are thirsty.
But if you’re trying to figure out what’s wrong because you feel a little bad, or have a headache, or are sleepy, or feel like you might be hungry but think you shouldn’t be, or any number of other situations - drinking a glass of water usually doesn’t hurt, and does sometimes turn out to have been the issue. So it’s rarely terrible advice.
(Unless you’re on dialysis like me and have fluid restrictions) :)
When you sprain your ankle, DON’T MOVE. I used to try and walk it off because that’s what everyone does and even coaches recommend it, but that’s when the actual damage is done.
Spraining is usually just your tendons/ligaments going into emergency mode (getting very short/tight). So if you try to walk while they are still tight, they will actually tear, doing damage that takes weeks to heal. If you instead just keep that ankle perfectly still for like 30 seconds to 2 min, the ankle will be completely fine.
Trick is, you have to overcome the social pressure to hurry it along (i.e. on a hike at work, or on a sport field).
I rolled my ankle, damaged the arch of my foot and rode my bike home because I couldn’t walk. I didn’t really have a good support system to say the least and had to rely on myself. I have a slight limp now. Definitely listen to this advice. Dr was facepalming so hard when I told him what I’d done.
I broke my ankle, didn’t realize it was broken, and tried to twist it back into place and stand on it. Twice.
My doctors all had things to say about that, too. As well, like you, I have a pronounced limp after walking more than a few steps.
My ankle hurts just reading this 😖
Mine, too!
Yeah, if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t do … Most of what I did to lead up to that point.
I sprained my ankle once trying to dodge out of the way of a classmate I was trying to avoid when i saw them at a park 😂 What you say is correct. Kind pf wish I’d gotten it checked at the time but it could’ve been worse and I rested soon after hobbling out of view
In a financial negotiation, avoid saying a number first, even if it seems like you’re being rude, just say stuff like “what’s your budget” instead. This trick sounds really stupid but somehow it is extremely effective.
That’s great until the other person is also doing it haha
This is why I have doubts about Macklemore’s business acumen:
I went to the moped store, said “Fuck it”
And salesman’s like “What up, what’s your budget?”
And I’m like “Honestly, I don’t know nothing about mopeds”
I suppose at least he doesn’t immediately answer about the budget, but it still seems like a less than stellar negotiating technique.
Absolutely. And in a more general sense, whenever negotiating with businessmen, tell yourself they’re nasty rotten pirates beforehand and throughout the process. Visualise them having peglegs, hooks, eyepatches and battered old sea hats. Do NOT give in, do NOT name that number before they do.
I prefer to think of it like a competitive game; you’re trying to win and you aren’t going to go easy on anyone, but you still treat your adversaries with as much empathy and respect as that allows.
Hiccups? Try taking a moment to close your eyes, focus your attention to the sides of your neck, and remind yourself that you don’t have gills anymore. I read this a few years ago and it mostly works for me - about 80% of the time (not that I get hiccups often). I’ve spread it to others with about ⅔ success, ⅓ failiure.
I’ve read the theory that it’s our brain in a panic because our gills (that we haven’t had for millions of years) aren’t working, so reminding yourself they’re not there helps. At least sometimes, at least some poeple.
To cure hiccups:
Hyperventilate for about 30 seconds; breathe out until your lungs feel like they’re going to implode; Without intaking breath, smoothly chug a 12oz glass of water.
It will “reset” your spasming diaphragm and stop the hiccups.
A lot of good sneeze tips in this post, thanks y’all
If you have a song stuck in your head, and it’s driving you a bit mad: listen to it. Something about your mind trying to fill things in (it’s been many years since I’ve read this bit of advice, and unsure entirely on why).
And if you always seem to have music stuck in your head, go research ADHD symptoms, as that is one of many. And if you DO have ADHD, things like ritalin can silence the music. (One of several things I still remember from my first ritalin)
Basically songs stick in our head when we can’t finish them, so songs with really subtle endings or heavily repeated phrases will stick the most.
Or try to rememberr how the song ends.
