Mostly unrelated tips I've accumulated over the years

5-minute read

Over the new years break, I was talking with some friends about the “random” life tips they had that feel obvious once you know them, but other people don’t actually know. This is my attempt at dumping some of them ‘on paper’.

This has sat as an half-edited draft for a few months so I thought I’d just post it as-is. It might be updated in future.

Shopping

Don’t overpay for stuff

(web)shops do lots of dynamic pricing - changing prices daily or often even more frequently. This means the point at which you realise you need to buy something is probably not the optimal time for you to buy the thing.

  • Use CamelCamelCamel to track the price of basically anything on Amazon.
    • note! This is still helpful even if you don’t want to buy from Amazon, for whatever reason. Shops often change prices to try to match or undercut each other, so if Amazon has dropped the price for something, you can use that as a trigger to check the prices at other stores too
  • Use eReaderIQ to track ebook prices on Amazon.
  • Use Ethical Book Search to find places to buy physical books.
    • You can also buy ebooks through the stores it lists, but bear in mind you will have to do the work to then get them loaded onto your ebook reader; no automagical loading process
  • Use AirHint to get informed predictions on whether the flight price is likely to go up or note. Note that its a prediction, not a guarantee!
  • Use DekuDeals to check and track the prices of e-stores for Nintendo/Playstation/Xbox/Steam

Travelling

  • Don’t pack your clothes directly into your bag - use packing cubes! They make travelling way better because:
    • You can easily grab just a subsection of your packed stuff (eg just grab your underwear) without ruining the folding and packing of everything else
    • Each packing cube can be fully packed and then compressed to hold all the things inside it. Think about stuffing a suitcase and then sitting on it to shut it; you get more in than you would otherwise expect. Do this for every packing cube and you’ll manage to pack way more stuff overall
  • If you’re travelling by rail in the UK (ouch), install the RailBoard app.
    • I’ve found it gets you better live updates for arrivals/departures/delays than any other app
    • It’s hands down the best way to buy split tickets in the UK - I’ve found its fees are always lower than Trainline.
      • Plus, if you book a non-split ticket, it doesn’t take a fee. Unlike Trainline, which always takes a chunky booking fee.
      • Also: if you’re not looking to book a split ticket, you can buy the ticket straight from the train provider instead of any third party (RailBoard included)

Around the home

  • If your boiler lets you do it, adjust the radiator temperature! You just have to bear in mind 2 conflicting limits:

    1. The lower your radiator temperature, the more efficient your boiler will run.
    2. The lower your radiator temperature, the slower your home will heat up. If its cold enough outside and you’ve lowered your radiator temperature by enough, the house will take forever to properly heat up.
    • My general approach is to put the boiler temperature lower in milder weather, and higher in colder weather (triggered by noticing that the house is taking longer to heat up than I’d like)
    • Bear in mind that if you have a hot water tank you want to keep it at ~60C to avoid the risk of Legionnaires’ disease.

  • Do you have difficulty with mornings, especially in the winter? Try a sunrise alarm clock.

    • The gradual light makes waking up less abrupt, and the bright soft-yellow light helps my brain realise its daytime, even if it’s dark outside

  • If you ever eat Parmesan (or other “hard italian-style cheese”)

    1. Buy a wedge and not pre-grated (the texture of freshly-grated is far better)
    2. Don’t bin the rinds - keep them in the freezer!
      • If you’re ever cooking a sauce-y dish that you’d want to top with parmesan, throw the frozen rind in when cooking it. It’s a magical way of making it just taste better.

  • Sharpen your knives!

    • You don’t need anything fancy, just a cheap IKEA sharpener can transform chopping vegetables from a burdensome chore into just a chore
    • If you had a fancy knife that was worth getting a proper knife sharpener learning the proper techniques, then you wouldn’t need me to tell you about this. Just by a simple roll-through sharpener.

  • Set up your TV picture settings

    • Most TV’s default settings aren’t actually great for watching things at home
    • There’s a guide here that will walk you through the major settings to change. Just show the pictures they link to on your screen and adjust the settings

Work

  • Almost all companies have some kind of regular performance review process (3/6/12 monthly). The bigger the gap, the harder it is to remember all the things you have done (even at 3 months it can be hard). So don’t try to remember it all - write it down.
    • Keep a structured “brag document” - I first saw it in this blog post by Julia Evans, and it has lived rent-free in my head ever since. It’s very focused on software engineering but I think the principles can be taken to many different kinds of roles.

(UK) Finances

  • For pretty much any money question you might have, there’s probably an article on MoneySavingExpert about it. It’s such a great resource.