Using the mantra "Jeff Bezos doesn't want you to do it, cause he knows it's a step towards the prophecy" to get me to do stuff that's good for me but I don't want to do (like going to the gym)
The prophecy is I will kill him with my bare hands
I use Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg
Also excellent options
Intrinsic motivation?
Well it's obvious, billionaires ruin the lives of everyone
Some time ago I learned about psychological safety and Crucial Conversations. Since then, I've seen them improving my life.
To test whether they actually work, I did a little experiment in my life. For some time, I played a little game where sometimes I followed the opposite advice to see what happened. And yeah, I saw the conversation quality go down. It really is not inconsequential to have a common purpose and being open to wild takes.
So yeah, I realized how powerful Crucial Conversations and Amy Edmonson's research are and applied them to my life. And naturally my quality of life improved quite a bit.
Oh, and I can think of a few more:
What's the advice?
Crucial Conversations — Summary
A crucial conversation is any conversation where
The book teaches how to stay effective, curious, and collaborative even when it’s hard.
Before opening your mouth, check your intent.
Ask yourself three grounding questions:
This interrupts reactive fight-flight patterns and restores internal alignment.
Crucial conversations become unsafe when people sense judgment, coercion, or disrespect.
Detect early signs:
The moment safety drops, the conversation stops mattering—only self-protection matters.
You restore safety through two tools:
i. Mutual Purpose — “We’re in this together.”
Show that you care about their goals and outcomes.
If purposes differ, create a shared purpose by inventing options acceptable to both sides.
ii. Mutual Respect — “I value you as a person.”
When respect feels threatened, no conversation works.
Apologize sincerely if needed. Use contrast statements:
Your emotions come from the story you tell about what’s happening—not the event itself.
Event → Interpretation (“story”) → Emotion → Reaction
People naturally fill gaps with:
The fix:
The book’s core communication tool:
This expresses truth while reinforcing safety.
Use curiosity to draw out their meaning-making process.
Tools:
AMPP Skills
ABC of listening: agree where you can, build on shared areas, compare differences respectfully.
Goal: understand them well enough that they feel seen.
Crucial conversations should end with clear commitment.
Questions to answer:
Four decision models:
Pick based on urgency, stakes, and involvement.
Dialogue succeeds when people feel safe enough to express their full truth—and curious enough to hear others.
Crucial Conversations is fundamentally a blueprint for replacing defensiveness with inquiry, fear with safety, and positional fighting with collaborative problem-solving.
To understand your question, do you mean in general? Or to go into the details of how it looks to apply the ideas? In general, I'd say my advice is to read the book Crucial Conversations and the book The Fearless Organization and learn the ideas in there. How does it look? From afar, Crucial Conversations and psychological safety look like better conversations. I can't say they're perfect, but at least I avoid some pits I fell into before.
Walking 3 times a day
I mean, it's cause I recently got a dog, but it's actually been really good for my mental and physical wellbeing too
I dropped a friend because they didn't walk their dog.
Your friend is an actual monster
Just back from my first dog walk of the day right now myself.
Sewing! Clothes are too expensive and I've found a very cheap cloth store. It's dark and cramped and you have to dig around, but they have good stuff in there. Tank tops are the easiest garment to learn, and now I'm working on drafting a nice button up for the fancy blue cloth I found
And it’s so rewarding to make something long lasting!
I've always wanted to learn to sew my own clothes. I can do simple hand sewing and used to make tote bags and turned men's t-shirts into fitted T-shirts but that's as far as I ever went.
Practicing mindfulness through the lense of stoicism. Aurelius really had some good advice.
I've also been learning the dvorak layout which has been fun and better for my fingers.
Also learning a bit about how to work with docker containers as they seem super handy for self hosting and whatnot.
I know of two people that switched to Dvorak and both have regrets. Mostly because it's a pain to switch to any other machine and not look like you're just learning to type.
I haven't had much of a problem switching back and forth between QWERTY and Dvorak between work and personal usage. I feel like you would have to be using Dvorak exclusively for a long time to experience that kind of problem.
For me, it seems kind of like learning to ride a bike in that just because I have learned another thing has not meant I forgot how to walk.
Yea these people have been all Dvorak for years, so switching back is difficult.
I see, that makes sense. To try to avoid that, I have a hotkey configured that remaps my keyboards between the two layouts so that I can maintain a sense of both.
I thought about learning Dvorak, but at this stage my fingers just do what I'm thinking, I'm not sure I can unlearn Qwerty.
I touch typed with qwerty for over 20 years before learning it, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. It's just a matter of consistent practice.
Meditating. Becoming less judgemental.
Eating better. Reducing carbs and eating more fruit and vegetables. I've had to give up some eating habits that I had before but I'm loving the results on my body.
Programming
Play games more like I did as a kid again.
Fuck progression and the meta.
Instead of grinding through in the most efficient way with a wiki open on another screen, just fuck around, roleplay, try to do interesting things...
And then apply the same mindset to your life.
That's a cool mindset, if the fck around part is not too extreme
learning keyboard shortcuts
Which ones do you find most useful?
There's so many I'll pick a random one: A picker tool. I play a game called OpenTTD and pressing F to select a decoration object I've already placed instead of scrolling through the menu ~~and accelerating the rate at which I develop carpal tunnel~~ to find the object
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