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health
to prevent tendonitis or carpal tunnel, you have to take frequent, short breaks when using the computer (both typing and mousing). You also have to make sure that your keyboard and mouse are at the right height relative to your body, and that your posture is good
when you first start taking birth control pills, it might mess you up psychologically and make you feel sick and angry
each day when ritalin is wearing off, you might feel irritable
oatmeal is good for cholesterol, and for both diarrea and constipation (even though those last two are opposites)
getting enough sleep has a noticable effect on all sorts of health things
some things that don't need much preparation and that are not too bad for you are: oatmeal, bananas, yogurt, peanut butter, nuts, fruit. if you want meat, sandwiches with cold cuts are also easy to prepare, although too much meat is bad for you.
restaurant food and especially fast food tends to be really bad for you, so don't eat it too often
you should brush and floss your teeth each day, and when possible, after each meal or each snack that is sweet or that gets stuck in your teeth
posture matters, unfortunately
money
if you have money for long term non-cash investments, you should usually pay off your debt, especially credit card debt, rather than leaving it in a savings account, a CD, in stocks, or in bonds. This is because the interest rate you pay on your debt is usually higher than what you get back from your investments. Credit card debt rates are especially high so you should make a big effort to almost never carry a balance.
if you have cash sitting in a savings account for a long period of time, it's probably better to put it in a CD (certificate of deposit)
your long term non-cash investments should have something close to 60/40 stocks/government bonds (maybe put 10% into 'alternatives' like gold), except if you may need to take money out soon, in which case that money should be almost all bonds and cash
your long term stock investments should mainly be in index funds, not in individual stocks
government bonds tend to be anticorrelated with the stock market. Investment-grade bonds are less correlated but still positively correlated in financial crises. Junk bonds are strongly positively correlated with stocks, e.g. they behave somewhat similarly to stocks.
in order to find investments with higher expected return (the mean of the probability distribution of returns), you must accept higher risk (for example, as measured by the standard deviation of the probability distribution of returns), however, you should not put too much of your total net worth into very high risk investments, especially if they are correlated, because if you lose the bet, you will have so much less to invest in the next bet that the high expected return will not have been worth it (if you want to see th math, look up the 'Kelly criterion').
most people, even especially saavy ones who know a bit about finance and keep up with the news and who are aware of this paragraph, tend to display herd-like behavior when investing and to underperform index funds. so unless you are really special, or you have a lot more time than most, or you have a special insight into some particular investment, don't try to beat the market.
to become wealthy, you must spend less than you earn and save a lot. don't fall into the trap of making a lot of money but then also spending a lot, so that earn lots of money but never become wealthy
you probably spend most of your money on certain categories of things, so don't waste a lot of time trying to be cheap on the other categories. E.g. if your rent is $2000 a month, don't buy a low-quality bike that always breaks just to save $150.
the most expensive things in a given category tend to actually be better than the others, but not enough to justify their expense. The cheapest things in a category are often but not always inferior to the things in the middle in a way that makes their cheapness not worth it.
book learning
if you have X hours available to study something, you'll both understand it easier (if it's hard to understand) and remember it better (if it's hard to memorize) if those X hours are split into many study sessions with lots of time between them than if you have few long study sessions, or if you have many study sessions close together in time. So, if you have to learn something by a certain date, start very early.
getting enough sleep makes you learn things more
to increase your studying or concentration stamina, each time, study until you feel like stopping, then go just a little bit longer
people
there do exist evil people, but many people who are said to be evil actually aren't
people respond to confidence. If you are a guy you need to know this for dating, but if you end up doing business-y stuff you'll notice it there too.
networking is more important, and easier, than you might think. To network, go to conferences or networking events, and meet all sorts of people (don't make a list of the types of person you need to meet and then focus on only meeting those people; just hang around and meet all sorts of people and eventually you'll be introduced to the people you were hoping to meet). Meeting people at networking events is less scary than making friends in elementary school because most of the other people at those events are there because they want to meet you, too.
there are social scripts and roles and people respond to them. E.g. (a) if you are in a position of authority, even if people know that you got there somewhat randomly, they'll be more likely to follow the script and defer to you, (b) if you are in a dating situation such that, if you were in a romantic comedy, this would be where the people would be likely to hook up, you'll be more likely to hook up, even if you both know that you got here somewhat randomly.
it's easy for two people to think they said something clearly to each other and understood what each other said, but to actually not understand. i have been burned by this when i was responsible for assigning a job to someone and i offered it to one person, at which time i thought they clearly told me they didn't want it, and so i gave it to someone else; then the first person said they had wanted it and they were angry at me for telling them they had it and then giving it away. So, if it's something important and business-y, then follow up a verbal conversation with a written note
if people are working together, minimize meetings, and at the end of each meeting have a written list of who is supposed to do what after the meeting
give people the benefit of the doubt
people tend to conform to your expectations of them, so if you expect them to be bad, they are more likely to be behave badly
trust, but verify
posture matters, unfortunately
don't wear a white dress to someone else's wedding
if you are talking to someone of a minority ethnicity, don't ask questions about it or questions that imply that you are wondering if maybe they or their family came from elsewhere -- many folks like to identify with their ethnic group and are happy to talk about this, but some do not and feel alienated when you call attention to their ethnicity
don't talk about religion or politics unless you are prepared for people to maybe get mad at you for your views
don't make negative remarks about someone else's intelligence or appearance
writing
be concise
avoid cliches
speaking
practice
for some people, they have self-confidence problems when trying to go on a stage and speak something from memory, but they can speak fine if they have an outline and have practiced but don't have to get every word exactly right
having ideas
when you write down an idea, it encourages your brain to give you more ideas along those lines
time management, which is crucial to being successful, is anathema to having novel ideas. If you want to have ideas, you have to be willing and able to 'strike while the iron is hot', that is, to spend time thinking about, developing, and writing down ideas about something when the ideas come, which is unpredicable. If you put the idea aside and come back to it later when you have time, you'll understand the idea you initially had but you will be less likely to have the inspiration needed to come up with a bunch of related ideas. It's not like you only get one chance at each set of ideas (sometimes you do, but more often you get a few), but rather, it's that you can't always plan 'thinking time' and then just sit down and say 'i'm going to have ideas about this now' when you're not in the mood (although sometimes you can).
strategy
in many domains, a lot of situations are somewhat unique, e.g. there is a high dimensional space of relevant variables that affect which strategies would be good. In such a domain, beware of accepting strategic advice from someone not intimately familiar with your situation, and beware of one-size-fits-all strategy trends.
things take longer and cost more than you think they will
misc
most successful people use a system of explicit, written goals, and explicit, written to-do lists, and explicit, written time scheduling, and regular assessments on how they did on their goals
you can save a lot of time and money by not watching much TV
For most skills and for most goals, you can raise your level from 'pathetic' to 'decent' by spending lots of time practicing/working on it, even if you have little innate talent. For many of them, you can go from 'decent' to 'great' the same way. The difference between success and failure is more often just how much time you put into something than how talented you are.
if you are a hard worker but you do too many things at once then you don't get better results than if you were lazy
in many domains, you get better practice/experience/learning by doing a lot of projects in that domain, and finishing them all, than by having a few ambitious projects that take a very long time to finish
hope for the best, but plan for the worst. These two do not have to be in conflict.
plans are worthless but planning is invaluable
there are known unknown and then there are unknown unknowns
sometimes if you see everyone doing something that seems pointless, and they don't have a good explanation for why they do it, there's some rare situation that can happen if you don't do it that way that is very bad if it happens even though it is uncommon. So be careful trying to improve on others' conventional habits.
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