<ul><li>Friday is a good time to think about what Future You should be doing.</li><li>Make a short, three-category priority list.</li><li>Career, relationships, self.</li><li>Think about what you would most like to accomplish in these three categories by the end of the upcoming week.</li></ul>

1. Plan your upcoming week

<ul><li>Don't schedule many meetings or events on Fridays.</li><li>Leave your calendar as blank as possible.</li><li>Create a resilient schedule.</li><li>Have some open space so if something unexpected comes up Monday through Thursday, then you've always got a spot to put it on Friday.</li></ul>

2. Absorb the overflow

<ul><li>Small tasks like filling out forms, responding to non-urgent invitations, paying bills, etc. don't take much time.</li><li>Save these tasks for Friday and do them in one fell swoop. You'll feel like a machine as you power through your list.</li></ul>

Work through your punch list

Take an unconventional approach to having a great weekend and keep Monday blues at bay.

productivity

Productivity

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

timemanagement

Time Management

Tempted to take it easy on Fridays? Use them to set yourself up for success instead

<ul><li>Ask yourself, "Is this book any good?"</li><li>100 pages minus your age - so if you're 30 years old and a book hasn't captivated you by page 70, stop reading it. That way, as you age, you have to endure crappy books less and less.</li></ul>

Stop reading books you aren't enjoying

<ul><li>A collection of quotes, ideas, stories, and facts that you want to keep for later.</li><li>This will make you a better writer, a wiser person, and a more appreciative owner of words and ideas.</li><li>Many famous writers, including Walt Whitman, Walt Carroll, and Thomas Jefferson, kept a version of this for years.</li></ul>

Keep a commonplace book

<ul><li>We cannot be content to simply pick up a book once and judge it by that experience; it's why we have to read and reread.</li><li>Because the world is constantly changing and we are constantly changing, therefore what we get out of books can also change.</li></ul>

Reread the masters

<ul><li>If a book changed someone's life, it's worth the investment and will likely help you in the long run, give it a try.</li><li>Ask famous people for recommendations and find out what they read.</li><li>This will deepen your relationship with the book.</li></ul>

Ask people you admire for book recommendations

<ul><li>Read and learn from the experiences of others. Drink deeply from history, from philosophy, and more.</li><li>Study the cautionary tales and the screw-ups, the failures and successes of other entrepreneurs. If you don't, it's a dereliction of duty.</li></ul>

Don’t just learn from your own experience

<ul><li>Re-read something that has really spoken to you in the past.</li><li>Instead of expecting a random book to reach you, go back to something that's already spoken volumes to you.</li><li>You'll discover how much more there is to learn.</li></ul>

Get out of a dry spell

Ryan Holiday shares six tips to become a better reader to lead a better life.

writing

Reading & Writing

books

Books

6 strategies that will make you a better reader — and person

Scientists have long known that the human body, including the brain, needs food to function optimally. A diet high in proteins, vitamins, and minerals may have helped Einstein's brain function optimally.

What Einstein ate for breakfast

ompared to breakfast, lunch was much less of a regular occurrence in Einstein’s daily life. In 1915, he wrote a letter to his second son, Hans Albert Einstein, in which he says, “I am often so engrossed in my work that I forget to eat lunch.”

What Einstein ate for lunch

<ul><li>Even when someone else was doing the cooking, Einstein had a relatively simple, if not terribly healthy diet.</li><li>Some of Einstein’s scientist friends would regularly get together to discuss physics and other academic pursuits. In his biography of Einstein, Walter Isaacson writes that Einstein's dinners “were frugal repasts of sausage, Gruyère cheese, fruit, and tea.”</li></ul>

What Einstein ate for dinner

So while it's impossible to tell if Einstein’s diet contributed to his tremendous brainpower, the famed physicist was, unfortunately, plagued by chronic gastrointestinal issues throughout his life. These included both stomach ulcers and jaundice.The physician diagnosed him with a “chronic stomach malady” and mandated a four-week diet of rice, macaroni, and zwieback bread, which is a dry, crunchy German bread similar to Melba toast.

Everything didn't go well, though

In April of 1955, Einstein died from an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Although his diet likely isn’t to blame, his lifestyle habits may have been. According to the Mayo Clinic, tobacco use is the biggest risk factor for developing an abdominal aortic aneurysm. So is a diet of beans, eggs, and mushrooms the secret to cracking science’s toughest questions? Of course not. But eating those kinds of nutrient-dense foods may give you the energy to try.

The bottom line

The answer isn't as simple as you think. 👨‍🔬

From mushrooms to canned beans, Einstein had quite the interesting diet. It remains unclear what, if any, influence his diet had on his ability to understand the deepest levels of physics.

food

Food

history

History

health

Health

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

What did Einstein eat? Inside the diet of the famed physicist 

• You can't reason someone out of a notion that they didn’t reason themselves into.• Your best job will be the one that you were unqualified for because it stretches you. In fact, only apply to jobs you are unqualified for.• Buy used books. They have the same words as the new ones. Also libraries.• You can be whatever you want, so be the person who ends meetings early.• A wise man said, “Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates. At the first gate, ask yourself, “Is it true?” At the second gate ask, “Is it necessary?” At the third gate ask, “Is it kind?”

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• Take the stairs. • What you actually pay for something is at least twice the listed price because of the energy, time, money needed to set it up, learn, maintain, repair, and dispose of at the end. Not all prices appear on labels. Actual costs are 2x listed prices. • When you arrive at your room in a hotel, locate the emergency exits. It only takes a minute. • The only productive way to answer “what should I do now?” is to first tackle the question of “who should I become?” • Average returns sustained over an above-average period of time yield extraordinary results. Buy and hold.

59 - 63 Bits

• It’s thrilling to be extremely polite to rude strangers. • It’s possible that a not-so smart person, who can communicate well, can do much better than a super smart person who can’t communicate well. That is good news because it is much easier to improve your communication skills than your intelligence. • Getting cheated occasionally is the small price for trusting the best of everyone, because when you trust the best in others, they generally treat you best. • Art is whatever you can get away with. • With your children, spend half the money you think you should, but double the time with them.

64 - 68 Bits

• Purchase the most recent tourist guidebook to your home town or region. You’ll learn a lot by playing the tourist once a year. • Dont wait in line to eat something famous. It is rarely worth the wait. • To rapidly reveal the true character of a person you just met, move them onto an abysmally slow internet connection. Observe. • Prescription for popular success: do something strange. Make a habit of your weird. • Be a pro. Back up your back up. Have at least one physical backup and one backup in the cloud. Have more than one of each. Backups are cheap compared to regrets.

69 - 73 Bits

• Don't believe everything you think you believe. • To signal an emergency, use the rule of three; 3 shouts, 3 horn blasts, or 3 whistles. • At a restaurant do you order what you know is great, or do you try something new? Do you make what you know will sell or try something new? Do you keep dating new folks or try to commit to someone you already met? The optimal balance for exploring new things vs exploiting them once found is: 1/3. Spend 1/3 of your time on exploring and 2/3 time on deepening. It is harder to devote time to exploring as you age because it seems unproductive, but aim for 1/3.

74 - 76 Bits

• Actual great opportunities do not have “Great Opportunities” in the subject line. • When introduced to someone make eye contact and count to 4. You’ll both remember each other. • Take note if you find yourself wondering “Where is my good knife? Or, where is my good pen?” That means you have bad ones. Get rid of those. • When you are stuck, explain your problem to others. Often simply laying out a problem will present a solution. Make “explaining the problem” part of your troubleshooting process.

77 - 80 Bits

• When buying a garden hose, an extension cord, or a ladder, get one substantially longer than you think you need. It’ll be the right size. • Dont bother fighting the old; just build the new. • Your group can achieve great things way beyond your means simply by showing people that they are appreciated. • When someone tells you about the peak year of human history, the period of time when things were good before things went downhill, it will always be the years of when they were 10 years old — which is the peak of any human’s existence.

81 - 84 Bits

• You are as big as the things that make you angry. • When speaking to an audience, it’s better to fix your gaze on a few people than to “spray” your gaze across the room. Your eyes telegraph to others whether you really believe what you are saying. • Habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Make habits. Don't focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout. • When negotiating, don't aim for a bigger piece of the pie; aim to create a bigger pie. • If you repeated what you did today 365 more times, will you be where you want to be next year?

85 - 89 Bits

• You see only 2% of another person, and they see only 2% of you. Attune yourselves to the hidden 98%. • Your time and space are limited. Remove, give away, throw out things in your life that don't spark joy any longer in order to make room for those that do. • Our descendants will achieve things that will amaze us, yet a portion of what they will create could have been made with today’s materials and tools if we had had the imagination. Think bigger. • For a great payoff, be especially curious about the things you are not interested in.

90 - 93 Bits

• Focus on directions rather than destinations. Who knows their destiny? But maintain the right direction and you’ll arrive at where you want to go. • Every breakthrough is at first laughable and ridiculous. In fact if it did not start out laughable and ridiculous, it is not a breakthrough. • If you loan someone $20 and you never see them again because they are avoiding paying you back, that makes it worth $20. • Copying others is a good way to start. Copying yourself is a disappointing way to end.

94 - 97 Bits

• The best time to negotiate your salary for a new job is the moment AFTER they say they want you, and not before. Then it becomes a game of chicken for each side to name an amount first, but it is to your advantage to get them to give a number before you do. • Rather than steering your life to avoid surprises, aim directly for them. • Dont purchase extra insurance if you are renting a car with a credit card.

98 - 100 Bits

• If your opinions on one subject can be predicted from your opinions on another, you may be in the grip of an ideology. When you truly think for yourself, your conclusions will not be predictable. • Aim to die broke. Give to your beneficiaries before you die; it’s more fun and useful. Spend it all. Your last check should go to the funeral home and it should bounce. • The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished.

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Golden bits of advice from a 70-year-young person! ⭐ (Volume 2) | For Volume 1, visit my profile.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known – Volume 2

• About 99% of the time, the right time is right now. • No one is as impressed with your possessions as you are. • Dont ever work for someone you don't want to become. • Cultivate 12 people who love you, because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you. • Dont keep making the same mistakes; try to make new mistakes. • If you stop to listen to a musician or street performer for more than a minute, you owe them a dollar. • Anything you say before the word “but” does not count.

1 - 7 Bits

• When you forgive others, they may not notice, but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves. • Courtesy costs nothing. Lower the toilet seat after use. Let the people in the elevator exit before you enter. Return shopping carts to their designated areas. When you borrow something, return it better shape (filled up, cleaned) than when you got it. • Whenever there is an argument between two sides, find the third side.

8 - 10 Bits

• Efficiency is highly overrated; Goofing off is highly underrated. Regularly scheduled sabbaths, sabbaticals, vacations, breaks, aimless walks and time off are essential for top performance of any kind. The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic. • When you lead, your real job is to create more leaders, not more followers. • Criticize in private, praise in public.

 11 - 13 Bits

• Life lessons will be presented to you in the order they are needed. Everything you need to master the lesson is within you. Once you have truly learned a lesson, you will be presented with the next one. If you are alive, that means you still have lessons to learn. • It is the duty of a student to get everything out of a teacher, and the duty of a teacher to get everything out of a student. • If winning becomes too important in a game, change the rules to make it more fun. Changing rules can become the new game.

14 - 16 Bits

• Ask funders for money, and they’ll give you advice; but ask for advice and they’ll give you money. • Productivity is often a distraction. Don’t aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible, rather aim for better tasks that you never want to stop doing. • Immediately pay what you owe to vendors, workers, contractors. They will go out of their way to work with you first next time. • The biggest lie we tell ourselves is “I dont need to write this down because I will remember it.”

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• Your growth as a conscious being is measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have. • Speak confidently as if you are right, but listen carefully as if you are wrong. • Handy measure: the distance between your fingertips of your outstretched arms at shoulder level is your height. • The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what you do occasionally.

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• Making art is not selfish; it’s for the rest of us. If you don’t do your thing, you are cheating us.• Never ask a woman if she is pregnant. Let her tell you if she is.• Three things you need: The ability to not give up something till it works, the ability to give up something that does not work, and the trust in other people to help you distinguish between the two.• When public speaking, pause frequently. Pause before you say something in a new way, pause after you have said something you believe is important, and pause as a relief to let listeners absorb details.

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• There is no such thing as being “on time.” You are either late or you are early. Your choice. • Ask anyone you admire: Their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal. So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone. • The best way to get a correct answer on the internet is to post an obviously wrong answer and wait for someone to correct you. • You’ll get 10x better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior, especially in children and animals.

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• Spend as much time crafting the subject line of an email as the message itself because the subject line is often the only thing people read. • Don’t wait for the storm to pass; dance in the rain. • When checking references for a job applicant, employers may be reluctant or prohibited from saying anything negative, so leave or send a message that says, “Get back to me if you highly recommend this applicant as super great.” If they don’t reply take that as a negative. • Use a password manager: Safer, easier, better. • Half the skill of being educated is learning what you can ignore.

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• The advantage of a ridiculously ambitious goal is that it sets the bar very high so even in failure it may be a success measured by the ordinary. • A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others. • Keep all your things visible in a hotel room, not in drawers, and all gathered into one spot. That way you’ll never leave anything behind. If you need to have something like a charger off to the side, place a couple of other large items next to it, because you are less likely to leave 3 items behind than just one.

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• Denying or deflecting a compliment is rude. Accept it with thanks, even if you believe it is not deserved. • Always read the plaque next to the monument. • When you have some success, the feeling of being an imposter can be real. Who am I fooling? But when you create things that only you — with your unique talents and experience — can do, then you are absolutely not an imposter. You are the ordained. It is your duty to work on things that only you can do. • What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.

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• Make stuff that is good for people to have. • When you open paint, even a tiny bit, it will always find its way to your clothes no matter how careful you are. Dress accordingly. • To keep young kids behaving on a car road trip, have a bag of their favorite candy and throw a piece out the window each time they misbehave. • You cannot get smart people to work extremely hard just for money. • When you don’t know how much to pay someone for a particular task, ask them “what would be fair” and their answer usually is.

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• 90% of everything is crap. If you think you don’t like opera, romance novels, TikTok, country music, vegan food, NFTs, keep trying to see if you can find the 10% that is not crap. • You will be judged on how well you treat those who can do nothing for you. • We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can achieve in a decade. Miraculous things can be accomplished if you give it ten years. A long game will compound small gains to overcome even big mistakes. • Thank a teacher who changed your life.

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Golden bits of advice from a 70-year-young person! ⭐ (Volume 1)

103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known – Volume 1

Not many of us get enough fibre in our diets, but an added incentive to increase our intake comes from a study in Journals of Gerontology showing that it helps to slow ageing.

1⃣ Get 30g of fibre a day 🥑🍏

In 2020, researchers from the University of Navarra, warned that eating ultra-processed foods is linked to the accelerated shortening of telomeres, structures located at the ends of our chromosomes that are markers of our biological age.

2⃣ Cut out ultra-processed foods 🍰🍨

They are rich sources of lutein, an antioxidant carotenoid that Dr Kara Fitzgerald, a researcher in nutritional biochemistry at the Institute for Functional Medicine in Washington, found to have a profound effect on slowing biological ageing.

3⃣ Eat tomatoes and peppers 🍅🫑

Middle-aged adults who take this sweet spot of walking steps every day are 70% less likely to die at a younger than expected age than those who manage a lower daily total.

4⃣ Take 7,000 steps a day 🥾🚶

A single night of insufficient sleep can make an older adult’s cells age quicker, according to a study at UCLA. Not only that, but poor sleepers feel older and have a worse outlook on ageing, which ultimately affects their health.

5⃣ Get seven to nine hours’ sleep a night 😴

Lift weights to preserve muscles and prevent falls, but keep up your cardio for anti-ageing effects.

6⃣ Go running or do interval training 🏋️‍♂️

Staying active throughout life keeps your body young, according to researchers. Exercise helps to prevent loss of muscle mass and keep your immune system young.

7⃣ Don’t stop exercising as you get older 🤸🏊‍♂️

Dark berries are a rich source of anthocyanins, the antioxidants that give them their red and purple colour and which have been shown in studies to help to prevent age-related metabolic damage

8⃣ Consume a dish of berries every day 🫐🍓

Researchers reporting in the journal Food Chemistry hailed white button mushrooms as potent anti-ageing foods because of their high content of two antioxidants — ergothioneine and glutathione — shown to preserve cellular health.

9⃣ Eat mushrooms several times a week 🍄

Research in 2017 by the University of California, San Diego, found that women who spent 10+ hours a day sitting displayed DNA evidence indicating that they were physically 8 years older than women who exercised.

🔟 Aim for at least 30mins of physical activity a day ⏲️

A diet rich in leafy greens, along with regular exercise and sleep, has been shown to help reverse ageing by two years in just eight weeks, by triggering changes to DNA methylation, a process that affects cell turnover.

1⃣1⃣ Eat more leafy greens, cauliflower and beetroot 🥬

Simple things you can do to stay and look healthy for a long, long time.

Forget sugar, keep exercising as you get older and overload on ‘colourful’ vegetables and fibre

How to stay looking young: 11 things to do

“You’re unlikely to discover something new without a lot of practice on old stuff, but further, you should get a heck of a lot of fun out of working out funny relations and interesting things.”

<ul><li>You're unlikely to discover something new without a lot of practice on old stuff.</li><li>If you want to create something new, you have to work yourself on all the pre-existing and pre-established stuff.</li></ul>

What Does That Mean? 🤔

“It is important to doubt and that the doubt is not a fearful thing, but a thing of great value.”

<ul><li>Doubt is a crucial element for creativity.</li><li>Today, very few students are taught how to think, and question, and doubt what they have been taught.</li></ul>

“No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.”

<ul><li>If you clearly understand something, you should be able to explain it to anyone in a way that they understand it.</li><li>Feynman’s final blackboard at Caltech read “Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.”</li></ul>

“If you can’t explain something to a first year student, then you haven’t really understood.”

<ul><li>If you clearly understand something, you should be able to explain it to anyone in a way that they understand it.</li><li>Feynman believed that teaching is a very powerful tool for learning things.</li></ul>

“The only way to deep happiness is to do something you love to the best of your ability.”

<ul><li>Ultimate happiness lies in doing something that you love.</li><li>Feynman believed that one shouldn’t always rely on textbooks, the world itself is a big learning centre.</li><li>If you do not do what you love doing, you are doomed to failure and perhaps depression</li></ul>

Seemingly easy tips from one of the greatest educators on Earth.

I have been writing about Richard Feynman for quite some time now and if you are reading this you probably already know this thing. One of the reasons why many of my articles are surrounded around…

education

Learning & Education

problemsolving

Problem Solving

5 Powerful Study Tips From Richard Feynman

Hook: Grab attention.Line: Deliver on the promise.Sinker: Make the content resonate.

The Hook, Line, And Sinker Framework

1. The first few bits of consumable content in a piece are there not to deliver information but to make a promise of what's to come.2. Can sometimes be mistaken for "clickbait," and if the subsequent content doesn't deliver on the promise made, or delivers in a subpar fashion, that's a reasonable charge to level.

The Hook: Grab Attention, Make a Promise

1. The Line's purpose is to satisfy the curiosity created by your headline/preview.2. You're producing the meat-a story, an explanation, a dataset, a visual series-that quenches the visitor's thirst for knowledge, entertainment, distraction, or resolution. The key is to do this in a way that triggers an emotional response.

The Line: Deliver on the Promise, Trigger Emotions

1. The Sinker is that singular, powerful, lasting memory that makes a piece stick with you.2. Your job as creator isn't to deliver only one of these potential hits, but to strike those chords again and again throughout your content, then remind the reader/viewer/listener at the end.

The Sinker: Make the Message Last, Inspire Sharing

A simple framework to drive your long-term content marketing efforts.

Despite studying content that overachieves for years, it's only in the past few months that I've stumbled into a mental model I've called: Hook, Line, and

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

Hook, Line, and Sinker: A Model for Crafting Successful, Viral Content - SparkToro

Keep two to-do lists:<ol><li>For everything on your plate.</li><li> For the 10 or fewer things that you’re currently working on.</li></ol> Fill up the 10 slots on the second list with items from the first, then set to work. The rule is not to move any further items from the first list onto the second until you’ve freed up a slot by finishing one of the 10 items.You can also set a pre-established time boundary for certain types of daily work — for example, to resolve to write from 8AM to 11AM — and to make sure you stop when time’s up.

1. Adopt a “fixed volume” approach to productivity

Focus only on one big project at a time. It might seem alluring to get everything off your plate quickly. But multitasking rarely works well — and you’ll soon find that serializing helps you to complete more projects anyway, thereby helping relieve your anxiety.

2. Serialize

You’ll inevitably underachieve at something, simply because your time and energy are finite. But strategic underachievement — nominating in advance the areas of your life in which you won’t expect excellence — helps you focus your time and energy more effectively.For example, you might decide in advance that it is fine to keep the keep the living toom untidy until you finish the novel, or to do the bare minimum on a particular work project so you can spend more time with your children.

3. Decide in advance what to fail at

It’s easy to grow hopeless and feel ashamed when you can’t get through your whole to-do list. One counter-strategy is to keep a “done list,” which starts empty first thing in the morning, but which you can gradually fill in throughout the day as you get things done. It reminds you that you could have spent the day doing nothing, yet, you didn't.

4. Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just what’s left to do

Social media is a giant machine for getting you to spend your time caring about the wrong things — and too many of them at once.Consciously choose to care about charity, activism, and politics — and devote your spare time only to those specific causes. Focus your capacity for care, so you don’t burn out.

5. Consolidate your caring

Combat distractions by making your devices as boring as possible, removing social media apps and, if you dare, email. It’s also helpful to choose devices with only one purpose, such as the Kindle reader or a DSLR camera. Otherwise, temptations will be only a swipe away, and you would always feel the urge to do irrelevant things.

6. Embrace boring and single-purpose technology

Time seems to speed up as we age, likely because our brains encode the passage of years based on how much information we process in any given interval.The standard advice is to combat this by cramming more novel experiences into your life. It's not always practical.Try going on unplanned walks to see where they lead you, taking up drawing or wash your car with music on — whatever draws your attention into the moment more fully.

7. Seek out novelty in the mundane

When faced with a challenging or boring moment in a relationship, try being curious about the person you’re with, rather than controlling. Curiosity is a stance well-suited to the inherent unpredictability of life with others, because it can be satisfied by their behaving in ways you like or dislike. However, if you demand people to behave in a certain way, you would be disappointed.

8. Be a researcher in relationships

Whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind, give in to it right away rather than putting it off. Don’t pause to think if the recipient deserves your generosity or if you really have the time to be generous right now (with all of the work you have left to do!). Just do it. The rewards are immediate, too, because generous action reliably makes you feel much <a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/5_ways_giving_is_good_for_you">happier</a>.

9. Cultivate instantaneous generosity

Doing nothing means fighting the urge to change your experience, people, or things in the world around you, and to let things be as they are. Try the "do-nothing" meditation by setting a timer for 5-10 minutes, and then try doing nothing. If you catch yourself doing something — thinking, say, or even just focusing on your breath — gently let go of doing it.

10. Practice doing nothing

A mix of intuitive and counter-intuitive ways to help you live life in a meaningful way.

The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly finite. If you’re lucky and you live to 80, you will have lived about 4,000 weeks. Here's some advice to help you learn how to use that time well, from writer Oliver Burkeman.

habits

Habits

10 ways to get the most out of your time on this planet

1. Exercise on a Monday night (nothing fun happens on a Monday night).2. On the fence about a purchase? Wait 72 hours before you buy it.3. Tip: the quickest supermarket queue is always behind the fullest trolley (greeting, paying and packing take longer than you think).4. Bring fruit to work. Bring fruit to bed!5. Consider going down to four days a week. It’s likely a disproportionate amount of your fifth day’s work is taxed anyway, so you’ll lose way less than a fifth of your take-home pay.6. Everyone has an emotional blind spot when they fight. Work out what yours is, and remember it.

Ideas 1 - 6

7. Plant spring bulbs, even if they’re just in a pot. 8. Send a voice note instead of a text; they sound like personal mini podcasts. 9. Keep a bird feeder by a window, ideally the kitchen. It’ll pass the time when you’re washing up. 10. Always bring ice to house parties (there’s never enough). 11. Get the lighting right: turn off the overhead one, turn on lots of lamps (but turn off when you leave the room). 12. Sharpen your knives. 13. Feeling sluggish at work? Try the Pomodoro technique: 25 minutes on, five-minute break, and repeat.

Ideas 7 - 13

14. Buy a cheap blender and use it to finely chop onions (it saves on time and tears). 15. Keep your children’s drawings and paintings. Put the best ones in frames. 16. Set aside 10 minutes a day to do something you really enjoy – be it reading a book or playing Halo. 17. Don’t be weird about how to stack the dishwasher. 18. Reuse all plastic bags – even bread bags. Much of the packaging you can’t reuse can be taken to larger branches of supermarkets for recycling. 19. Take a photo of the tag you are given when leaving your coat in a cloakroom.

Ideas 14 - 19

20. Can’t sleep? Try a relaxing soak with lavender bath oil before bed. 21. Add the milk at least one minute after the tea has brewed. 22. Laugh shamelessly at your own jokes. 23. It might sound obvious, but a pint of water before bed after a big night avoids a clanger of a hanger. 24. Start a Saturday morning with some classical music – it sets the tone for a calm weekend. 25. Look closely. 26. Set time limits for your apps. Just go to the settings on your smartphone and add a limit – for example, if you have an iPhone, turn on Screen Time.

Ideas 20 - 26

27. If possible, take the stairs. 28. Always be willing to miss the next train. 29. Eat meat once a week, max. Ideally less. 30. Be polite to rude strangers – it’s oddly thrilling. 31. Ask questions, and listen to the answers. 32. Connect with nature: stand outside barefoot for a few minutes – even when it’s cold. 33. Join your local library – and use it. Find yours here. 34. Go for a walk without your phone. 35. Eat salted butter (life’s too short for unsalted). 36. Stretch in the morning. And maybe in the evening.

Ideas 27 - 36

Ideas you may think wouldn't improve your life every day. You would be surprised!

Whether it’s taking fruit to work (and to the bedroom!), being polite to rude strangers or taking up skinny-dipping, here’s a century of ways to make life better, with little effort involved …

Tempted to take it easy on Fridays? Use them to set yourself up for success instead

6 strategies that will make you a better reader — and person

What did Einstein eat? Inside the diet of the famed physicist

103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known – Volume 2

103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known – Volume 1

Pranav P.