Hacking life in a sabbatical year

It’s Month #6 of my sabbatical year and my last article was written 3 months ago. Since then I’ve not only been waiting for Hari (??) but also practicing life hacking skills, so that I can write this article.

A note before we start: No, I haven’t forgotten about my original sabbatical objectives/priorities (German, crypto, DYI projects) neither the behavioral change associated with them (i.e. creating daily habits to keep myself true about my progress). Since we last spoke in March I’ve been:

1. annoyingly following my minimum 1-2 hours of German/day. Actually they increased to 3-4/day and even 6-8 hours/day during my 3-week Berlin face-to-face German class marathon
2. keeping my daily reading of crypto news (Coindesk, Cointelegraph, Wall Street Journal, YouTube educational videos, etc) … despite the pain all investors felt when the market crashed by 50-70% in May/June (they say it was not expected, but what’s expected in crypto?)
3. moving around the tail with my “housekeeping” initiatives. My little place on my dream island finally has a water-resistant bedroom wall and a nice external bathtube / sunbathing area, but everything else goes veeery slow (probably everywhere in this field, I guess)

Learning life hacking skills came on top of the above, since I promised I’d be writing about it in my Q2 sabbatical article. Well, one could say this is THE most important skill in life, it should have always been part of The Plan.

What is a life hack, by the way?

Oxford Languages defines “life hacking” as “a strategy or technique adopted in order to manage one's time and daily activities in a more efficient way”. Wikipedia extends it a bit and calls a life hack “any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life”.

For me, the term has a broader meaning. I “hack life” when I discover things (that most people already know, by the way) which make me pass through life in an easier and more comfortable way. I “hack life” when I live experiences that everyone in my respective age/social group live (or has lived already). In a way I associate “hacking life” with “living life like a normal human being”.

Hacking life is one of the things where I excel less. Would you not agree with me when you would read the profile of the following person:

• Doesn’t know the words in his/her mother tongue for basic stuff like the furniture in a house or names of spices
• Has less than 3 types of knives in the kitchen and never before considered/valued the idea of having more
• Learnt that allergies exist when (s)he was 30, as a persistent cough would not go away with paracetamol, cough syrups, onion tea and what not. So strange!
• Talks about Michelle Pfeiffer with a strong, confident French accent (spoiler: she’s American, apparently)
• Has not seen most of the popular TV series, like “Friends” or “Game of Thrones”
• Plans to stop for a Starbucks coffee en route to Maramures, which is a remote area north of Romania (guess what, it ain’t no good cellular signal there, let alone American coffee shops)
• Buys a bathtube that is larger than the entrance door, so the vendor needs to go via neighbour’s balcony to install it
• Should I keep going?

?

What happened with my “hacking life” skills?

There is an interesting psychology theory that says humans tend to revert to the developmental cycles they missed (or did not fully complete) in the past. Another way of thinking about it is “what goes round, comes round”.

During my teenager times there was no TV cable in the village where I grew up. I would also get limited opportunities to spend afterschool time in the nearby city, as public transport to/from my village was limited. This means that, from an early stage, I got disconnected from the main sources of “living life like a normal human being” – the local TV and social events. In addition, my parents were of the (amazing!) opinion that one can learn “all-things-adults” well … when they become adults. So I was not asked to do too many chores, neither to learn how to cook ??. Later in life, when I went to study in the big capital and had my first jobs, I equally tended to make myself busy with anything else except the following: cooking, watching movies/TV, listening to music, attending social events, fixing stuff around me (new is better, so I thought).

So now you see where this is going, right? Two paragraphs ago we were talking about what happens when people miss / partially fill some of their developmental cycles: they tend to revert to the mean, like numbers or crypto charts ??. So I’m pleased to announce that, for maybe 2 years now, I’m in the process of “mean reversion”. This sabbatical, and the life hacking skills I’m working on, are part of it.

Life hacks, life hacks … we want life hacks!

Well, if you lived your life when you were supposed to, then you would not need to read further … cause you would know all of these life hacks (and many more) already. But if you, like me, got a little bumpy on the road to a well-rounded self-development, let’s have some fun together.

The proud list of Carmen’s top 3 life hacks – 2021 edition:

1. Vacuums: Not the vacuum cleaners: the vacuum sealers! ?You know, those things that can be used to extract air from closed containers/packages, in order to reduce volume and/or eliminate allergens/bacteria/etc. When I moved houses, I was impressed by how much space I gained in my new wardrobe by vacuum sealing some of my clothes: up to 90%. Then I learnt how to vacuum the wine and never, ever looked back. Did you know that some (red) wines can oxidate in few hours, after which their taste becomes metallic and their colour brownish – bleah!. But with a special stopper and a manual sealer (both very cheap) the wine lasts intact for as long as you can resist the temptation ??. And last but not least, my recent favourite: grilled aubergines soaked in olive oil, garnished with slices of garlic and some generous amounts of mint or parsley. It takes 2 hours to make them, and so you don’t want to do this work very often (nor to eat them all at once cause … cholesterol). So, when I started vacuum sealing the bowl my aubergines last 2-5 times longer than before.
2. Manuka honey: I need to admit, I discovered Manuka about 5-6 years ago, and never stopped loving it. It was the reason why I visited New Zealand, one of the very few places on earth where Manuka trees grow. I even read a full book about all scientific studies conducted with Manuka honey, I believe in the 80s and 90s. The book is called “Manuka: the biography of an extraordinary honey” (Amazon link here). For this article I revisited my notes and found over 30 medical/health benefits of this honey (and that’s only what I jotted down while I was reading the book): acne, sunburn, fever, pain, candida, gastritis, acid, throat inflammation, anti-oxidant, anti-fungus, anti-bacterial, prebiotic, immuno-stimulator etc. Nowadays I keep a permanent supply of 2-3 Manuka honey jars (UMF 10+). I use a tablespoon of it in my tea or breakfast when I have the slightest feeling a cold is sneaking in.
3. Splitwise: Thanks God I’m still travelling and meeting people these days. In 2021 I managed to do 8 trips in 5 European countries: an amazing achievement considering COVID! For each of them Splitwise saved me the pain of remembering who paid what, when and who owes what amount to whom. I see some eyebrows raising, but money equitability is quite a big theme for me (friends know why ??). This app (which is free of charge by the way) not only saves me from frustration/shame (of not remembering what I owe to people) but also acts as a mini “travel log”, as I frequently look back to see what type of things we did in trip x/y/z.

That’s it for now, dears. I’m going to eat some of those delicious oily aubergines from that vacuum sealed bawl, while I let you do other more important things in life.

PS: Next article theme = TBD. Next article date = TBD. I got feedback that I’m overdoing it with my sabbatical rigour, so I’m taking a summer vacation from it ??.