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Six patterns behind 151 life hacks
The book is a list. Read it closely and the same few moves keep coming back, and those are what you can actually use. This page is a selection, not the whole list.
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01 Pattern one · the setup
Most of these hacks work before the moment, not during it
Read the money chapter and notice what it never asks you to do. It never asks you to resist anything. It asks you to arrange things earlier, while resisting is still cheap.
Write the list before you enter the shop, and skip the aisles that are not on it. Take cash and leave the card at home, in big notes that are awkward to break. Delete your saved card details so buying online needs one more step. Move money to a savings account that is hard to reach on the day you are paid, and pay the debt first. Put the phone in another room an hour before bed. Block the distracting sites before you sit down to work.
Every one of those is the same move. You are not trying to be stronger at the moment of temptation. You are trying to have already decided when it arrives.
You can say that it is a strategy that is used to save yourself from yourself.Hack 8, on keeping savings in a separate account
Open the shopping app you use most often and delete the saved card. Typing the numbers again is the whole hack, and it is enough.
02 Pattern two · the timing
Waiting is a tool, and it does the scrubbing for you
A lot of the house and kitchen hacks are not techniques at all. They are instructions to put something on and then leave it alone.
A capful of mouthwash sits in the toilet for ten to twenty minutes and the gunk lifts off with no scrubbing. Baking soda and vinegar sit in a blocked drain for a few hours before the hot water goes down. Ketchup and salt sit on tarnished copper for a few hours. Vaseline sits on a water stain on wood overnight and the stain is gone by morning.
The cold hacks run on the same principle. Chill an onion for fifteen to twenty minutes and it stops stinging your eyes. Put a damp pillowcase in the freezer for twenty minutes and you can sleep through a hot night without the air conditioning. Stand limp celery in ice water and it comes back crisp. None of this is quicker on the clock, but it is far cheaper in effort, and the waiting happens while you are doing something else entirely.
Find the one stuck-on mess in your kitchen you have been avoiding. Put the cleaner on it, set a timer for twenty minutes, and do not touch it until the timer goes.
03 Pattern three · the tool
The thing you need is usually already in the house
The book almost never tells you to buy a special product. It tells you to look again at something you already own and ask what it is actually made of.
Ketchup contains salt and a mild acid, which is exactly what dissolves the oxide layer off tarnished copper. A pillowcase slides over a ceiling fan blade and catches the dust instead of dropping it on your face. A fitted sheet has elastic corners, so outdoors it is a tablecloth the wind cannot lift. Old glass jars plus cheap tealights are party lighting. A muffin tin serves bite-sized food without spills.
The substitution runs through the property, never through the label. Work out what the job actually needs, then walk through the house looking for anything that already has it.
What you need are things that can be used for many different purposes so that you do not have to fill up your backpack.Chapter 9, survival hacks
Take the next small thing you were about to buy. Write down the single property that makes it work, then spend two minutes in the kitchen looking for that property.
04 Pattern four · the interruption
Guard your attention, because getting it back costs half an hour
The work chapter contains one number that explains all the others. After a notification pulls you away, most people take about half an hour to focus again.
Once you know that, the rest of the chapter reads as consequences. Mute the notifications on the phone and the laptop. Block the sites that tempt you before you start. Work in twenty five minute blocks with a five minute break, which is the Pomodoro technique, and take a longer break of fifteen to thirty minutes after four of them. Find your golden hour, the part of the day when your motivation is highest, and put the hardest task there.
There is a matching rule for small tasks. If it takes less than two minutes, do it now, so it never joins the pile that becomes overwhelming later.
It is better to finish a task well than do many tasks badly.Hack 101, on saying no when your hands are full
Turn off notifications on your phone and laptop, set a timer for twenty five minutes, and start the task you have been avoiding. Stop when it rings and take the five minutes.
05 Pattern five · the loop
With people, the hacks are about frequency, not size
There are fifteen relationship hacks and almost none of them cost anything. Say thank you. Notice the new haircut and say so. Hold hands. Send one message that asks a real question. Talk about an old memory before sleep. Split the chores in writing and stick the list on the fridge.
The one that carries all the others is listening, and the book is unusually specific about it. Do not interrupt. Do not compete with your partner's story or tell them you have it worse. Ask a follow up question. Say that you understand. Be patient.
Those rules matter because they decide whether there is a next conversation. Listen well and you are told more, which gives you more chances to listen well. Listen badly and you are told less, and the chances disappear. The book adds one counterweight: give your partner space, because the loop needs room to run, not constant contact.
Listening is not just hearing the words; you have to focus your attention and set aside other thoughts to properly listen.Hack 82, on listening to your significant other
The next time your partner tells you something, ask one follow up question before you say anything about yourself. One question first, then you can talk.
06 Pattern six · the carry
The survival hacks are all learned before they are needed
The survival chapter is the clearest case in the book, because it pulls apart two things that normally blur together: the moment you need a skill and the moment you can go and get one.
Learn the Heimlich maneuver now, in a few hours of an emergency response class. Learn the beginner rules for mushrooms now: avoid white gills, a ring on the stem and a volva, avoid red on the cap or stem, and never eat one you cannot name. Learn now that you do not run from a stray dog, because running turns you into something to chase.
The objects follow the same rule. Duct tape, dental floss, a metal spoon and a solid belt weigh almost nothing and each does five different jobs. What they have in common is that you cannot pack them after the thing has already happened.
Saving a life is worth a few hours of classes.Hack 125, on learning the Heimlich maneuver
Book one emergency first aid session, or at minimum watch a proper Heimlich demonstration today and place your own hands in the right position once so your body knows it.
07 Recap
Six patterns, and a book you can now skim
Not one of the 151 hacks is difficult. What makes the book usable is seeing that they are variations on a small number of moves, and three of those moves cover most of the household chapters.
Act before the moment
Arrange things while resisting is still cheap. Cash instead of a card, the list before the shop, the phone in another room, the site blocked before you sit down.
Let waiting work
Dwell time replaces scrubbing. Twenty minutes of mouthwash, a night of Vaseline, twenty minutes of cold that stops the onion stinging.
Match the property
Work out what the job needs, then find it in the house. Ketchup on copper, a pillowcase on the fan blade, floss as a fishing line.
The other three patterns are about people and time: protect your attention, because every interruption costs about half an hour; keep the signals to the people you love small and frequent rather than rare and grand; and learn the things you cannot learn in the moment, before the moment arrives.
Hold those six in your head and the book stops being a list of 151 things. It becomes six questions you can ask about any problem in front of you.
Adapted from 100+ Life Hacks That Can Change Your Life Today & Not Tomorrow
Sweet Palmer · © 2022 DVFZ Training Consultancy Services · 63 cited sources in the source edition
A selection of hacks grouped into six patterns, not the full list of 151