1) Doing something is better than failing to do everything. I was accumulating notes on useful low-pri habits to have / things I maybe want to do for like 7 yea

1) Doing something is better than failing to do everything. I was accumulating notes on useful low-pri habits to have / things I maybe want to do for like 7 years, hardly doing any of them. Sometimes I'd try to do all of them - start the day with a cold shower, meditate, do hard work before email, go for a walk, apply pomodoro, message a friend, exercise, 50 more things, and have a perfect day, but it's pretty much impossible to maintain. Making a list and doing one habit per week (or an approximation) I actually started to make progress and get better at some things. Ditto with exercise - consistent simple short workouts are much easier to maintain than perfect workout program with long awesome workouts. 2) For projects too, doing a little bit is better than failing to do a lot. Ditto, I've made a lot of progress on projects, especially icky ones like minor house repairs (but also e.g. personal coding projects that became hard to do quickly after my early 20ies due to other things) by committing for 10-30 minutes at a time and accepting that it might take me a year to finish. 3) Life-scale timing. That's something I really wish someone told me when I was 25, although it probably only applies to exercise. I got serious about training for climbing (my hobby) when I was 34... that is too late, and now I'm 38 and I get injured easily from intense training. I wish I did that earlier and did whatever I did then, now :) 4) Getting rid of hassles and not introducing new hassles that are not worth it. Something as simple as choosing devices/tools/appliances/building materials - how much maintenance worry does it require? How much manual labor does it add vs a more expensive/less pretty/... option? To where to live - how long do you want to spend driving around places/etc.? Feynman's bio where he describes putting on chains and his thoughts about that were very instructive for me. Then, larger choices, like I am the type of person who would enjoy skiing, but I find skiing to be logistically complicated and generally a giant hassle, so I can find similar hobbies, like climbing, with much less hassle and cost. But also larger life decisions, after looking at tons of people (from close friends/family to coworkers) with kids I choose not to have them, it's just not worth it, your whole life becomes one project with (for me) very low reward. Ditto about buying a house - an interesting tradeoff for me, cause I'd prefer semi-rural living with condo-level hassle level, but they don't build condos in rural areas ;)