We don’t often have a chance to showcase our staff’s personal side. In the spirit of our People-centric value, we’d like to share 12 of the real tricks, hints and tips that they use. These life hacks help make their days a little easier or more productive.
Program your sleep cycle to perform for you
Think of a current problem you have, just before you fall asleep, but don’t try to solve it. Instead, bring to mind the very next step you’ll take towards solving it the following day. You’ll find yourself waking up with a solution or a path to a solution already in mind.
Life hacks: snacks
Boil half a dozen eggs. Once they’re cool, keep them in the refrigerator. They make a handy and healthy anytime snack. They can also easily be added to many meal types.
Rise and reflect
Set your alarm to wake you 15 minutes earlier than usual, then use this as quiet time. Concentrate your mind on the upcoming day, without any distractions. Pay special attention to the daily goals you want to achieve. You’ll find that you are far better focused through the day.
Slightly overdressed confidence hack
Whenever you’re in a social situation, over-dress slightly. Not by much – don’t wear a tuxedo to a braai. Instead, dress up by one level. If the dress code is shorts and open shoes, show up in jeans and a T-shirt. However, if others are wearing jeans and T-shirts, wear a collared short. Finally, if they’re in suits, wear a suit and a tie. The slight edge in appearance and formality will subtly boost your confidence.
Plastic bags go further
Use an empty tissue box to store and re-use your plastic grocery bags. Pull the lower end of each bag through the handle loops of the previous bag in the box. As a result, they pull out like tissues would.
YouTube user WestMichiganSTAR demonstrates how to achieve this easily:
Time to go
It’s a little mean, but for family and friends who are typically late to go somewhere: tell them the occasion starts an earlier than it really does.
Children’s clothes sorting
If you have more than one child, a dotting system helps to organise clothes.
Label the oldest child’s clothes with a clothes marker with one dot “●”. Then label the second child’s clothes with two dots “●●”. Now when moving clothes between cupboards, you can just add a “●” when your oldest outgrows an item. And with the dotting system, everyone always knows whose items are whose, even if they jump cupboards.
“Fresh” garbage bin hack
Among the little-known life hacks: put one or two mothballs (naphthalene) into your waste bin when placing a new bin bag in it. This keeps a lot of odours away, and discourages flies and other pests from investigating your bin.
Lists
Make lists all the time. To-do lists, problem lists, idea lists, want lists. Once you have a list of things, you can start ticking them off. Every now and then, go through a list you made long ago and see how each of the things were ticked off. If you can figure out what you truly want in the long run, then you can start to get it.
Cool it down
To cool your drinks a little faster, wrap a wet cloth or tissue paper around them before placing them into the fridge.
Life hacks for all ages
For new parents: when your baby is suitably focused on something, THAT’S the time to do tasks not involving the baby itself. Don’t disturb them by taking photos or cooing at their cuteness.
Start small, go big
When you have a list of things to do and the deadline for all the tasks is the same or irrelevant, start with the small and/or easy tasks first. Leave yourself more time at the end to focus on the big task.
In addition, you might just find a resolutions to your problem by doing something else to take your mind off of it and thus not continuously focusing all you energy just on the problem itself.
Thanks to the staff at Adept for sharing their life hacks!