These 10 No-Bullshit Life Hacks Will Make You a Better Person

Because we care, we’ve come up with a list of general life-hacks that will brighten your mood, improve your overall well-being, and even help keep you safe (though mostly from yourself). Extra bonus hack is to print this out, tuck it in your wallet, and read it three times a day.

1. Quick, go ask your landlord if they accept “exposure” as a form of payment.

Didn’t think so.

Every opportunity is not a good opportunity, nor is all business good business. Especially for you young freelancers out there, unless it is a favor for a friend, family member, or organization for whom you are specifically volunteering, don’t do free work. Just don’t do it. Not only will exposure pay nary a bill, if you do enough work for free, you’ll start to think the people wanting to pay you pennies are doing you a favor.

2. Treat people like pinatas

Well, treat people more like this kid treats pinatas:

3. This trick to separate eggs may legitimately save you some aggravation and cleanup time:

4. This trick to peel potatoes, on the other hand, is a pretty terrible idea:

5. Think through your Halloween costume. Please.

This gentlemen will have to pay for exactly zero of his own drinks Halloween night or really any other night he rocks this costume.

Meanwhile this dude might be escorted out of the bar through a closed window:

6. Force yourself to learn something new every day.

Seriously. Go to bed tonight knowing at least one more thing than you did when you woke up. Learn a new recipe, learn the NBA’s all-time leader in free-throw percentage, learn how to tell someone to piss off in Bulgarian, it doesn’t matter, just learn something. If you don’t know where to start? Wikipedia was literally built for this sort of thing. Here, enjoy a random page.

If you make it a habit to force yourself to learn one new thing a day, eventually you’ll stumble onto something you actually want to learn more about. Once that happens, cool changes follow: new hobbies, new career possibilities, new experiences.

And if you won’t do it for you, do it for the people around you. Listen, your buddies are tired of hearing about how you snuck into the VIP room at that Tool concert back in ‘01. Getting to do jello shots with Maynard is a cool story the first 38 times, but honestly man, shake your shit up a little.

7. Put that $10 a week into your savings account. FUCKING. DO. IT.

Twenty years ago, a good friend of the family pulled me aside and told me something I’d never forget: “You won’t do it, because you’re young and stupid, but now that you’re working, take $20 out of each paycheck and put it in a savings account.” He was right. At the time, I was young and stupid didn’t do it.

That $20 per check always seemed to have better uses, and it’s not like $40 a month is enough to retire on, amirite? As it turns out, dropping $10 a week into a savings account (or, these days, mutual fund) that offers 6.5 percent interest turns into about $20,000 after 20 years. No, that’s not enough to retire on, but it might be the difference between having a nice little financial cushion and going full-on crying Jordan meme the next time you check your bank statement.

Don’t let your future self become a crying Jordan meme.

8. Do this. But with Cherry Garcia and red velvet cookies, because you’re fancy AF.

9. Go feed the birds

My great-grandmother lived to be 105 years old. Now I can’t say that I’d necessarily want to live that long, but if that’s one of your ambitions, here is her secret to longevity: Schnapps, a good cigar, and feeding the birds at the park.

For the last 30 years of that woman’s life, she’d go to the park, feed those damn birds, go home, and enjoy a drink and a cigar before bed. Every day. Now it’s not really about the birds, the booze, or the tobacco, it’s that those were the things she liked to do. They brought her joy and genuinely gave her a day-to-day routine to which she looked forward.

The point is, regardless of age, find your own things — small, fun, relaxing things — that you can do everyday, and make sure you do them. You have enough bullshit in your life, make it point to treat yourself on a daily basis.

10. Speaking of, for the love of God, don’t ever try to pawn off maple-flavored sausage on Randy Taylor. He’s not from the North.