A popular community on reddit is called Life Pro Tips. Users share their wisdom for living their best life. These are tips that are meant to improve your life in one way or another. The following are drawn from the very best life tips.
- [Family/Education] If you want a smarter kid, teach your child to read as early as possible and instill in them a love for books. Because as soon as they can read, they can teach themselves. And that will be a life-long advantage over their peers who don’t have that same ability.
- [Online Advice] If you want to know which companies sell your name and email, when you sign up for anything online, put the website’s name as your middle name. That way when you receive spam/advert emails, you will know who sold your info.
- [Career & Work] Don’t be fooled by the “working for a dream company” ideology. You’ll be much better off with an amazing boss at an average company who champions your work, allows you to develop mastery in your field, and gives you autonomy. Doesn’t matter if you work for the best company in the world, if your boss sucks then your job sucks.
- [Social] When you don’t have all the facts, try to give people the most generous reason you can for their behavior. Annoyingly slow driver? Maybe it’s a mom with a birthday cake in the back. This mindset will gradually make you less reactive, more compassionate and more forgiving of your own bad days. You might call it the “Most Respectful Interpretation” rule. What’s the most kind reason we can come up with for why said person is being such a dumb-dumb? As an additional benefit, coming up with these explanations is usually a nice distraction from whatever was annoying.
- [Personal Growth] Just because you did something wrong in the past, doesn’t mean you can’t advocate against it now. It doesn’t make you a hypocrite. You grew. Don’t let people use your past to invalidate your current mindset. Growth is a concept. Embrace it. Worried that someone will call you a hypocrite because you changed? “I’d rather be a hypocrite than the same person forever”. People grow and evolve.
- [Relationships] Anytime you think about contacting an ex or old crush, rub one out first. Post-nut clarity is real, and it might save you from a truly bad decision.
- [Personal Growth] Do not try to be the man your father would want you to be. Be the man you would like your son to be be. It more clearly defines your own convictions, desires, goals, and motivates you to be your best.
- [Family] If a friend or a family member gets diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer, in the early stages try to find out what their favorite songs of all time are. In this way you would be able to create a playlist for them that could be of great benefit in the later stages of the disease.
- [Personal Growth] Don’t use your child’s embarrassing stories as dinner party talk. They are your child’s personal memories and humiliating them for a laugh isn’t healthy.
- [Career & Work] Your company didn’t know you existed before you applied and won’t notice you when you’re gone. Take care of yourself. When an minor issue pops up at 5:01pm, that’s an 8:01am problem.
- [Health] If you’re still young, make physical fitness a top priority. Once you hit your 50s, it’s especially hard to change old habits. But if you start a strong routine early, you’re more likely to stick with it.
- [Social] When a friend is upset, ask them one simple question before saying anything else: ‘Do you want to talk about it or do you want to be distracted from it?’ This can be one of the best things you can do for an upset friend. Sometimes a friend needs to vent, but other times, they need to be distracted so they can stop dwelling on what has upset them. One person’s go to phrase is: “Are we fixing, bitching, or distracting?”. You might word it differently depending on the friend. Some don’t like the thought that they are bitching about something so I’ll say “talking it through,” “detailing,” or “venting.”
- [Financial] Are you trying to cancel or suspend a gym membership or some other monthly subscription but the business is forcing you to go through crazy hoops? Call the bank and order a 1 year stop payment to them. Many banks are currently waiving the fee for this. Also, fuck Anytime Fitness if you’ve had to deal with them.
- [Social] If someone slights/insults you publicly during a meeting, pretend like you didn’t hear them the first time and politely ask them to repeat themself. They’ll either double-down & repeat the insult again, making them look rude & unprofessional. Or they’ll realize their mistake & apologize to you.
- [Relationships] After a bad break up, do 10 things that your ex would never do with you. You’ll feel better and realize how much of yourself was being held back.
- [Home] Pay Attention to the smell of your home when you come back from a trip – that’s what it smells like to guests all the time, you just get used to it.
- [Computer / WiFi] If you ever forget your WiFi password or you want to get your school WiFi password etc. Just type this command into the command line of a Windows computer already connected to that WiFi: netsh wlan show profile WiFi-name key=clear Be sure to replace “WiFi-name” with your actual wireless name. Somewhat related, when you’re at a hotel that charges for WiFi (or for faster WiFi), get the password from the business center computer which is probably connected to the employee WiFi.
If you’re enjoying these, see Best of Life Pro Tips Part 2