Anyone else do somewhat strange things to make life easier?

[BudAshes]

It's nothing really more than a set of checklists & reminders after you setup the system. The core idea is that the productivity system manages the complexity for you, so rather than getting lost in the weeds, you design the outcome & set it up to do your bidding in a very efficient way with the bare minimum amount of effort & thinking required. A basic operational tool I use to attack problems is called the 3P Approach:

1. Premise
2. Parts
3. Procedures

So let's use my standard example of managing your wardrobe. The premise is to have a variety of clean clothes available at all times, with minimal fuss for managing it. The parts include:

1. Wardrobe inventory
2. Storage management
3. Supplies management
4. Cleaning cycles

And then to break it up into specific procedures, all based off the main idea of having a managed laundry system: (remember, don't get lost in the weeds here based on the "wall of text"...our focus is the outcome of automated laundry management, it's the productivity system's job to manage all the crap below lol)

Part 1: Wardrobe inventory

Requirements are:

1. I want to have a week's worth of clothing rotation, so that I have enough variety & only have to do laundry once a week, plus a few extra day's worth of clothes if my schedule gets off-course. So say 10 day's worth of clothes.
2. I need to check my inventory every few months to see if anything needs to be repaired or replaced
3. This covers under garments, work clothes, workout clothes, shoes, glasses, wallet, belts, etc.

Setup: Do an initial inventory to see what I have in-stock at home right now
Recurring calendar entry: every 3 months, do an inventory true-up to make sure I have a 10 pairs of clothes, and see if anything needs to be repaired or replaced.

Part 2: Storage management

Requirements are:

1. Place to put folded clothes
2. Place to hang clothes
3. Place to put dirty clothes

Setup: Chest of drawers, hangers, laundry hampers.

Part 3: Supplies management

Requirements are:

1. Want to have enough of a supply inventory at home to not have to go shopping for supplies all the time

Setup: Buy a year's supply of detergent gel packs, liquid fabric softener, anti-static dryer sheets, and bleach. So like half a dozen boxes/bottles of each for my usage.
Recurring calendar entry: Check inventory every 3 months & either buy more at the store or on Amazon if needed.

Part 4: Cleaning cycles

Requirements are:

1. Always have clean clothes available
2. Divvy up the work so I don't have to spend all day doing laundry

Setup: Print out a reminder on washer/dryer lid/door to set my phone alarm to (1) swap washing machine items into dryer, and (2) fold laundry after drying
Recurring calendar entry: White clothes on Monday after work
Recurring calendar entry: Dark clothes on Tuesday after work
Recurring calendar entry: Towels & hand towels on Wednesday after work
Recurring calendar entry: Bedding (sheets & pillowcases) on Thursday after work

Results:

1. I have enough clothing to rotate them throughout the week
2. I have clean clothes all the time
3. I never have to have a big "laundry day"
4. My clothing inventory is easily maintained
5. I never run out of supplies or have to go shopping for them all the time
6. Laundry takes approximately 5 minutes a day
7. I never have to think about managing my laundry, as it's all automated through reminders & checklists

Other than typing this out as an explanation online, I basically never have to think about clothing again for the rest of my life. No piles. No big jobs. No running out of stuff. No running low on stuff that fits or having ratty clothing. All of the elements are addressed through simple recurring calendar reminders to execute specific checklist items. So my part basically included defining what I wanted the outcome to be & then using checklists to setup reminders to do stuff to support that vision. Now multiply that over every assignment & project you have, every recurring thing you have to deal with in your life, like car maintenance, household chores, meal prep, laundry, paying bills, etc. It's a fairly non-standard way of doing things, but having a strong personal productivity system in place is basically the most effective lifehack I've ever come across!

It's also the most effective means I've encountered for bypassing procrastination, because it gives you specific next-actions to do, via reminders, so that you don't have to figure out what to do or get things setup, you just kind of get an alarm of some sort & then do the action in your little pre-setup environment.

Still easier than having a wife.

 

[dullard]

Requirements are:
1.... only have to do laundry once a week
...
Recurring calendar entry: White clothes on Monday after work
Recurring calendar entry: Dark clothes on Tuesday after work
Recurring calendar entry: Towels & hand towels on Wednesday after work
Recurring calendar entry: Bedding (sheets & pillowcases) on Thursday after work

Seems like great proof that the 3P Approach is failing you.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I got married so I wouldn't have to cook or do laundry.

My problem with that is that I like grilled foods the best and women just shouldn't be around open flames and sharp knives.

I got married so I wouldn't have to do laundry or go f*** myself.

 

[ElFenix]

I wrote a thermostat program so I can have more fine control of my house temperature to go around my shift work schedule. Basically an advanced programmable thermostat, except it's web based so I can get to it form my computer or phone.

Recently made some improvements to it actually, I can set temp in 0.1 increments now and set a custom "dead zone" where after it stops it will wait a certain amount of temp shift before it starts again while before it was set by a range. I found full degrees was too big of a temp swing, especially with A/C.

All that so I don't need to get up to adjust the thermostat.

this is like the internet being invented so that lab dorks could monitor the coffee pot.

 

[ElFenix]

It's nothing really more than a set of checklists & reminders after you setup the system. The core idea is that the productivity system manages the complexity for you, so rather than getting lost in the weeds, you design the outcome & set it up to do your bidding in a very efficient way with the bare minimum amount of effort & thinking required. A basic operational tool I use to attack problems is called the 3P Approach:

1. Premise
2. Parts
3. Procedures

So let's use my standard example of managing your wardrobe. The premise is to have a variety of clean clothes available at all times, with minimal fuss for managing it. The parts include:

1. Wardrobe inventory
2. Storage management
3. Supplies management
4. Cleaning cycles

And then to break it up into specific procedures, all based off the main idea of having a managed laundry system: (remember, don't get lost in the weeds here based on the "wall of text"...our focus is the outcome of automated laundry management, it's the productivity system's job to manage all the crap below lol)

Part 1: Wardrobe inventory

Requirements are:

1. I want to have a week's worth of clothing rotation, so that I have enough variety & only have to do laundry once a week, plus a few extra day's worth of clothes if my schedule gets off-course. So say 10 day's worth of clothes.
2. I need to check my inventory every few months to see if anything needs to be repaired or replaced
3. This covers under garments, work clothes, workout clothes, shoes, glasses, wallet, belts, etc.

Setup: Do an initial inventory to see what I have in-stock at home right now
Recurring calendar entry: every 3 months, do an inventory true-up to make sure I have a 10 pairs of clothes, and see if anything needs to be repaired or replaced.

Part 2: Storage management

Requirements are:

1. Place to put folded clothes
2. Place to hang clothes
3. Place to put dirty clothes

Setup: Chest of drawers, hangers, laundry hampers.

Part 3: Supplies management

Requirements are:

1. Want to have enough of a supply inventory at home to not have to go shopping for supplies all the time

Setup: Buy a year's supply of detergent gel packs, liquid fabric softener, anti-static dryer sheets, and bleach. So like half a dozen boxes/bottles of each for my usage.
Recurring calendar entry: Check inventory every 3 months & either buy more at the store or on Amazon if needed.

Part 4: Cleaning cycles

Requirements are:

1. Always have clean clothes available
2. Divvy up the work so I don't have to spend all day doing laundry

Setup: Print out a reminder on washer/dryer lid/door to set my phone alarm to (1) swap washing machine items into dryer, and (2) fold laundry after drying
Recurring calendar entry: White clothes on Monday after work
Recurring calendar entry: Dark clothes on Tuesday after work
Recurring calendar entry: Towels & hand towels on Wednesday after work
Recurring calendar entry: Bedding (sheets & pillowcases) on Thursday after work

Results:

1. I have enough clothing to rotate them throughout the week
2. I have clean clothes all the time
3. I never have to have a big "laundry day"
4. My clothing inventory is easily maintained
5. I never run out of supplies or have to go shopping for them all the time
6. Laundry takes approximately 5 minutes a day
7. I never have to think about managing my laundry, as it's all automated through reminders & checklists

Other than typing this out as an explanation online, I basically never have to think about clothing again for the rest of my life. No piles. No big jobs. No running out of stuff. No running low on stuff that fits or having ratty clothing. All of the elements are addressed through simple recurring calendar reminders to execute specific checklist items. So my part basically included defining what I wanted the outcome to be & then using checklists to setup reminders to do stuff to support that vision. Now multiply that over every assignment & project you have, every recurring thing you have to deal with in your life, like car maintenance, household chores, meal prep, laundry, paying bills, etc. It's a fairly non-standard way of doing things, but having a strong personal productivity system in place is basically the most effective lifehack I've ever come across!

It's also the most effective means I've encountered for bypassing procrastination, because it gives you specific next-actions to do, via reminders, so that you don't have to figure out what to do or get things setup, you just kind of get an alarm of some sort & then do the action in your little pre-setup environment.

floordrobe is much easier and only requires typing 10 characters for people to understand what you're talking about.

 

[Kaido]

Seems like great proof that the 3P Approach is failing you.

1 - edit for clarification, each type of laundry. Split it out over time (one load a day), rotating each type through the cleaning cycle once a week. Rather than spending an entire Saturday as a laundry day, you spend a few minutes each day doing it. Think of it as a framework for how you want to do things, not a specific implementation. That's just the way I set things up for convenience.

2 - the 3P approach is for breaking things down in a simple manner behind a central idea. You still have to do the work, there's no getting around that! It's the management of the work that is often the biggest barrier, so being able to capture the main idea, break it down, and automate it can help out quite a bit.

 

[Kaido]

floordrobe is much easier and only requires typing 10 characters for people to understand what you're talking about.

Yes but floordrobe has a low WAF

 

[Kaido]

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That's where the reframing requirement comes in...you have to operate off the idea (ex. automated wardrobe maintenance) & not what's visible (i.e. the wall of text for how to implement that idea) because otherwise it looks NUTS, lol.

The whole idea is to offload that complexity into the system. Spend 20 minutes thinking about it & setting it up one time & then just do the bare-minimum required for the rest of your life. Awesome results, bare-minimum effort.

It's a hard concept to wrap our minds around because our brains looks at stuff like that & says "seems hard, I quit" & checks out on us. That's why the 3P system works so well...premise, parts, procedure. It's like playing Go-fish...the premise is that it's a card game, the parts are that you have some cards & two or more players, and the procedures are the rules of the game, shuffling, strategies, etc. Voila!

This approach makes it really easy to clarify stuff, then you stick those reminders into your system so that it can remember everything for you. Spend a couple weeks zipping through everything you have to deal with in life & put yourself on cruise control. For me, any other approach is just too much effort. I don't ever want to have to think about car maintenance or laundry again, I just want to be reminded to do the simple tasks required to support the idea (functional car, clean laundry, bills paid on time, etc.) so that I can do them & move on with my neffing!

 

[Red Squirrel]

this is like the internet being invented so that lab dorks could monitor the coffee pot.

Lol basically, which brings me to another system I have, a mouse trap monitoring system so I don't need to go in the attic to check the traps. I still need to figure out how they even get in there, but every couple years I catch one so the traps are in there continuously monitored.

I want to revamp that whole thing and make it more modular though. Like make it into an open source SCADA system basically.

 

[highland145]

I put stuff back where it belongs.


Head asplodes.


That doesn't keep the fam for effing up my perfect plan. Found my spare truck key when the next winter started. Where was it, you ask? In the wife's winter coat pocket.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Making sure things have a place to go to in first place can make life easier too. I'm bad for that myself. I'll buy a new tool or something, but it does not really get a designated area and I find I have tools kind of all over. I can't wait to do my shop so I can have a proper area to store and organize those. It's not the small tools that are the issue those go in toolbox or shelf, it's the bigger ones like the table saw and mitre saw etc. That will hopefully be my winter project, to do the shop. Still need to epoxy the floor before it gets cold.

One thing I'll want to do once I build my shop is to also build cases for tools that don't have one, or have a crap one or have no way to easily store accessories together with said tool. For example it makes sense to have a drill with a drill bit set that is always kept together, rather than them being separate, so I want to build a case that can accomodate a drill, spare battery, charger, and a hole bit set as well as driver bit set. If a job requires more than those bits I'll go ahead and get them from the other tool box, but at least for 90% of work, I can just carry that one case to where I'm going, as far as drilling holes or driving screws goes.

I actually have lot of projects in mind to make my life easier once my shop is built and climate controlled. I waited too long to build it, it kind of relied on me having a shed to move all the stuff to so I had to build that first, and had to get floor refinished which got done last year, so now I just need to epoxy, and then actually start building/insulating and getting it to a usable state. Money is kind of tight though but I really want to get the ball rolling with that shop it's been too long. I want to find a way to make money from it too, like maybe learn how to fix small engines or something, now I'll actually have a place for it.

 

[Kaido]

I put stuff back where it belongs.


Head asplodes.


That doesn't keep the fam for effing up my perfect plan. Found my spare truck key when the next winter started. Where was it, you ask? In the wife's winter coat pocket.

I have a sizeable investment in Tile hardware lol. It's saved my bacon enough times to pay for itself. Work bag, keys, wallet, you name it.

I'm all about designing "battlestations" in my life. That way, when you reset the room, you're resetting it back to a blueprint. Everything has a place, and everything is on the chore chart for maintenance. Like at my computer desk, I have a swiffer for dust, screen wipes for the monitor, etc. & just execute little tasks as my calendar alarms remind me. Zero thought required & everything stays clean all the time, and most important I can find my crap when I need it lol. I hate how easily projects get derailed because you can't find one little thing & it's a total showstopper!

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

I keep a system for my closet so I don't wear the same clothes too often.

1. Clothes are organized and grouped by type -- dress shirts, polo's, etc.
2. I always grab from the right side of each group.
3. After wearing, they go back in the queue on the left side. Over time the shirt will slowly work it's way to the right. So generally everything gets worn once.
4. If the shirt was worn for just a couple hours, it goes back in the left side, but on the hanger reversed (facing the other direction) so I know it was worn but not washed. When I get around to wearing it again, I know it was worn before so I'm sure to wash it regardless of wear time.

 

[Muse]

I have a lot of tape measures. Since I would previously struggle to locate one when I needed one I now have one for each floor plus one for the garage and another matching pair for whatever project I'm working on (because projects take me months if not years). I even used to have a floating spare but I got a little over zealous with a knife and cut through the tape

I don't have an exact count but figure I have over 10 tape measures.

I have done amazing things.

I ordered a hoody from Amazon that came without grommets where the draw string enters the hood. I'm WTF! That will wear out there. So I order a grommet kit that finally arrived a couple days ago. The punch gizmo that you use to cut a hole for your grommet was duller than a butter knife. Way duller, it was ridiculous. I put it in my cordless drill, and rotating it placed it against the side of my home made grinder wheel (spinning, of course). So, both the cordless and the grinder were spinning. Repeatedly cooled the gizmo in water so I wasn't drawing its temper. It's nice and sharp now. I didn't need it to add grommets to the hoody, though, because holes were already there. I had to cut slits in the hoody to get the grommets in and I sewed them up by hand. So, my new hoody has grommets now. It's 50-50 poly and cotton, the way I like.

 

[Muse]

I have about 8 tubes of chapstick located around the house and in my office so I never have to worry about losing them.

I never use chapstick. Simple.

I have at least 10 pairs of reading glasses that I keep throughout the house because I hate those chains around your neck that attach to the glasses.

I have 3 types of glasses (computer glasses, distance glasses and mid-range, that I designed myself by a process of interpolation). I have at least 2 pairs of each, except I have 4 pairs of the mid-range, which are so cool I could use them for anything... computer or driving, but they aren't perfect for either. On top of that I have two types of sunglasses, so 10 in all that I use.

 

[Muse]

Hah I finally did that this year too. Got a box of 'em & stuck em everywhere. Worst thing in the world to have something like a hangnail all day without clippers!

Yeah, I have nail clippers attached to my keys so I don't have to suffer a hang nail away from the house. Besides that I have 3 in the house. Another in my travel kit.

 

[Muse]

Yeah, I have nail clippers attached to my keys so I don't have to suffer a hang nail away from the house. Besides that I have 3 in the house. Another in my travel kit.

I have a lot of scissors. Many tools. Lots of hardware.

These are the coolest (got some at local Truevalue Hardware but they stopped carrying them, couldn't find them anywhere then spotted this great deal at Amazon). I use these all the time, have them on my keys, keep one in a pocket all the time. They can be resharpened. I don't know where they're coming from with the "snap-off" thing. You don't want to take this on a plane or they're apt to confiscate it... I don't, but I'm not flying these days:

Ram-Pro Mini Retractable Utility Snap-Off Pocket Knives - Box Cutter, Package Opener, Letter Opener, Touch Knife, with A Keychain Hole (Pack of 24) - - Amazon.com

Ram-Pro Mini Retractable Utility Snap-Off Pocket Knives - Box Cutter, Package Opener, Letter Opener, Touch Knife, with A Keychain Hole (Pack of 24) - - Amazon.com

www.amazon.com

 

[Charmonium]

I glue N45 neodymium magnets everywhere and then suspend utensils I might need from them.

I also glue smaller versions of N45's to my reading glasses and hang them from the nearest metal surface. I have glasses in every room of the house, including bathroom, and in the basement

 

[Muse]

I glue N45 neodymium magnets everywhere and then suspend utensils I might need from them.

I also glue smaller versions of N45's to my reading glasses and hang them from the nearest metal surface. I have glasses in every room of the house, including bathroom, and in the basement

What kind of glue do you use? I use epoxy or contact cement.

I used to rip those neodymium magnets out of hard drives and worn out electric tooth brush tips and glue them to little rectangles of wood and use them as refrigerator magnets. They work great. I still do this but bought a large pack of neodymium magnets instead. I probably have something like 75 of these homemade goodies to hang things from steel surfaces. I paint them a beautiful shade of yellow and paint all the corners with a sharpie. I put a dot in the middle of the outside surface, the bigger the dot, the more powerful the magnet (sos I knows).

The thing with those neodymium magnets is that without something to grab onto (my little wooden rectangles) they are so strong that it's a bit of a struggle to get them to release from a steel surface. I have one I have some tiny screws hanging from that I didn't glue to a piece of wood. Now, for hanging ferrous objects I have those big donut ring magnets you find in microwave ovens. I have ripped around 8 or so of them out of old MW ovens that either died on me or I found on the sidewalks around here. People are always discarding them on the sidewalks. Those big ring magnets are fantastic. You can hang a dozen or more things from a single one.

My fridge magnets:

 

[pete6032]

I set out my breakfast utensils, cookware, and supplements the night before.

This morning I chopped all the veg I need for dinner tonight.

 

[Muse]

I set out my breakfast utensils, cookware, and supplements the night before.

This morning I chopped all the veg I need for dinner tonight.

I cook big batches of stuff and eat leftovers for days. I cooked up an instant pot of 1.5lb pinto beans yesterday and refrigerated it all in two quart containers (old yogurt containers that I keep for these purposes). I do the same with rice.

"Give me convenience or give me death!" - Jello Biafra (who was, in case you don't know, being facetious)

 

[pete6032]

I cook big batches of stuff and eat leftovers for days. I cooked up an instant pot of 1.5lb pinto beans yesterday and refrigerated it all in two quart containers (old yogurt containers that I keep for these purposes). I do the same with rice.

"Give me convenience or give me death!" - Jello Biafra (who was, in case you don't know, being facetious)

What do you do with the beans, do you eat them by themselves? Do you season them? You started with dry beans?

 

[Kaido]

I cook big batches of stuff and eat leftovers for days. I cooked up an instant pot of 1.5lb pinto beans yesterday and refrigerated it all in two quart containers (old yogurt containers that I keep for these purposes). I do the same with rice.

My current meal-prep approach has been working pretty well...it's cooking every day, but (1) just one dish a day, and (2) for meal-prep purposes, not specifically for eating that day. I basically plan out the week ahead using a checklist (picking out meals & deciding when to cook them), then go shopping, then just do the "meal of the day" when I get home after work. The approach utilizes the power of compounding interest to build up a massive inventory so I have lots of options to choose from. So a typical week of cooking after work may look like this:

Monday: Homemade granola bars
Tuesday: Enchiladas (in meal-prep containers)
Wednesday: Sous-vide egg bites
Thursday: Pulled pork (ex. 8 pounds in the Instant Pot, unseasoned & then vac-sealed into one-pound packets)
Friday: Chocolate-chip cookie dough balls
Saturday: Sous-vide breaded wings (cook in bath, shock, freeze, then fry when ready to eat)
Sunday: Pizza dough (to cold-ferment & then freeze)

I like this approach for a few reasons:

1. I never have to do an overwhelming job of cooking. It's just one dish, right after work as a single chore, where I've already decided on what to make & have everything I need. Essentially as easy as shooting fish in a barrel!

2. The power of compounding interest is absolutely incredible. I'm paying into my food-storage "fund" using this method. On average, one dish makes half a dozen servings. If you do this approach straight for 30 days, 30 x 6 = 180 individual servings. Just massive!

3. It creates effortless variety. For example, I usually make 4 types of homemade granola bars: classic chocolate-chip, peanut-butter, strawberry white chocolate, and blueberry yogurt. Each batch makes a dozen bars. If I make one batch a day every day after work for 4 days, for a paltry few minute's worth of time, I end up with 48 bars in my inventory with 4 flavor options, which gives me snacks for a month!

4. It creates effortless foundational supplies to build meals from. For example, when I make pulled chicken/pork/beef, I typically make it unseasoned & then vac-seal them in packs. Then I can add a rub and/or sauce to it down the road. So if I want BBQ pulled pork pizza, I can pull out some pizza dough, pull out a packet of pulled pork, toss it in some BBQ sauce, and bake it on my Baking Steel for some really great pizza. Sometimes I do the pulled pork on my smoker, or in the sous-vide bath using liquid smoke, or in the Instant Pot. And in turn, I can make tacos, enchiladas, top baked potatoes with it, make pulled-pork sandwiches, etc. Having the resource of base ingredients readily available is extremely powerful!

For me, the key is to use a system, and to let the system manage the complexity. My job is simply showing up & doing the little bit of work required when my alarm reminder goes off. So for typically what amounts to 10 or 20 minutes per day, I have an endless variety of delicious food on a budget with low effort & zero mental stress. It also helps me to have food available for every meal & to hit my macros to manage my bodyweight. So IIFYM + yummy food + budget-friendly + low daily effort + zero stress = winning!

 

[Kaido]

What do you do with the beans, do you eat them by themselves? Do you season them? You started with dry beans?

One of the Instant Pot's magical powers is that it can cook dry beans, no pre-soaking required!

Insant Pot Beans: How to Cook Dried Beans with NO Saoaking

Insant Pot Beans: How to Cook Dried Beans with NO Soaking

amindfullmom.com

I've gotten into beans a lot more in the past couple of years because of how convenient it is to store them dry & then make them in the Instant Pot. I use them for a variety of stuff, such as:

1. Chili (with or without meat)
2. Refried beans with lard (oh man, so good!)
3. Habichuelas guisadas (Puerto Rican-style stewed beans, ridiculously good)
4. Various dips (bean & cheese, chicken enchilada dip with cream cheese, etc.)
5. Mexican bean salad (beans with peppers/corn/onion & sauce)
6. Hummus (chickpeas with tahini)
7. Cookies (using chickpeas, and these are SUPER good!)
8. Chickpea salad sandwiches (same idea as tuna salad, it's actually REALLY good, especially with curry seasoning!)

 

[BurnItDwn]

I got married so I wouldn't have to cook or do laundry.

For me it was so I didnt have to do laundry or clean, but, as compromise, I generally do most of the cooking.