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Mood stabilizers, for sure. My episodes were getting out of hand and I'd probably be dead by now if it wasn't for that

Buying a menstrual cup. It feels so natural, I forget it's there, and it holds an entire day's worth of blood and then some.

Teaching myself how to cook from scratch ingredients.

It allowed me to completely reform my diet, I could eat anything I wanted (on the condition I self-imposed that it had to be made by) and I lost 130 lb as a result.

I'm not saying it wasn't a lot of work, it was, but it was an investment in myself.

Now I am able, with no pre-planning, to look in a fridge and whip something up delicious in 30 minutes.

An accidental discovery through this diet reformation, was that I discovered I am intolerant to wheat and gluten! Not celiac, not allergic, but it provokes my autoimmune disorder.

I am now psoriasis free after being a terrible sufferer for almost three decades. Also my joint pain went away.

It has saved me a phenomenal amount of money, given me great body awareness. It's also expanded my food horizons.

Working from home. I didn’t realize until the pandemic how energy draining the office really is. Once I started working from home I found out quickly that I had energy to spare for evening activities - while also being more productive at work.

Lifting weights did wonders for my health and wellbeing, I would highly recommend it

• Daily walks and eating healthy food (aka no industrially processed shit). I went from being barely able to walk at all a few years ago (not exagerating) to someone happily walking for miles every single day. Also I'm somewhat much slimmer too :p
• Cutting down screen time, like by a lot. Which helps in getting more time to do fun & exciting stuff (including walks)

Air Fryer. Hands fucking down. I put them off for years because I assumed it was overhyped shit.

It fucking wasn't.

Running, also marijuana

Leaving America.

I was just talking about this with someone this past weekend. For me, it has been removing most "smart" features from my phone.

• I've disabled Chrome, so I can no longer access the internet.
• I've disabled the "google" app, so I don't have a back-door to the internet, as that seems to have a browser built in. This also disables voice to text, which I never used anyway.
• No social media, games, etc. of any kind.

The only thing I use my phone now is calling/texting, navigation, music, a calendar, and a notes app. It's taken me a long time to get here, almost 3 years at this point, but being able to take my phone out, use it for the one intentional thing I need, then put it away... It's so liberating. I use Olauncher, which is a minimal text-based home screen, and it also tracks your daily screen-time and displays it on the home-screen. I'm down to around 30-45 minutes MAX of screen time per day. Most days its 15 or below.

Green tea. 🍵

Work pants with pockets for built in kneepads.

If you do any kind of maintenance or trades, you're probably kneeling a lot.

Knee pads make it so much more comfortable but they're usually annoying and tight, even painful.

Putting them in the trousers makes it a non issue.

Working out. Even if everything is my life is falling apart, that one hour is where I make progress. It keeps the hope and positivity alive. It is like meditation for me. I have overcome depression with working out.

Getting a job that paid more money than I actually need to survive.

Solid state memory. I was just thinking about my first SSD (the "drive" for your computer) and how I video recorded the startup time before and after I swapped it into my computer. Everything was so much faster. Everyone has solid state memory today, but ~18 years ago, that was sorta rare.

Water. I used to drink a lot of soda. Water is better.

being late from work every day 1 hour. i realised that nobody cares about me. as long as you keep the status quo, nobody snitches. i even changed from public transport to biking, and it feels great for my shoulders. (and actually get there faster)

going to the supermarket at later times. they usually close around 9pm. i arrive at 8.30, no ques, no idiots standing at the bread trying to pick the perfect one, no old folk moving in your way, nobody tries to kill you in the parking lot with a big ass suv.

elastic shoe laces, so i can just put my feet inside, and they never get untied cause theres a little clamp in the end.

i also would like to thank my candy trio, which is one part dishwasher, one part oven. its only one machine big, so no space wasted, yet does both job great.

the adblocker called blokada on my phone, plus ublock in the browser...honestly foss apps in general.

A sleep tracker. The worst thing about sleeplessness is the fear of sleeplessness. Once i saw that my sleep wasn't anywhere near as bad as it felt, it helped me a lot to cope with it.

A gym membership, reducing social media, and cutting prolly out of my life who don't deserve to be in it.

A nice small (and cute!) backpack that I always take with me when I go outside, plus a water bottle that I have near me at all times.

20h/week job that pays well

Eating (mostly) clean, retirement, weight lifting / a personal trainer, and limiting my screen time.

Developing and following basic principles of organisation:

1. If it's in use, set it apart.
2. If it's often used, it should be at hand.
3. If it's used with something else, group them together.
4. Beyond that, put it in a predictable place. Don't try to be smart.

For some people this might look obvious, but for me it wasn't - my mum is noticeably disorganised and my father was a hoarder, so I never had the chance to learn those things through my childhood. But once I got those things right, they improved my quality of life by a lot.

Short answer: https://rtalbert.org/gtd/

(I'm not that guy. That's just my favorite resource on the topic.)

Long answer: Organizational system for tasks at work and in daily life. People think it sounds boring and makes your life too rigid, but I find it's exactly the opposite. Once I know what I need to get done and have it out of my head, it frees me up to (1) be deliberate about how I spend my time and (2) focus relatively distraction-free on whatever I'm doing at a given time, even if that's something simple like watching a movie without wondering whether there's something I forgot to do for work.

Everybody who is obsessed with an organizational system has their own version that worked for them -- for me, it was the one I linked above. The author's goal really resonated with me: be okay not doing what you're not doing. It's not always about doing more. It's about deciding what you need to do, doing that, and then not having to stress all the time. The article is tailored to academics, which was where I worked at the time, but I still use it now that I've moved on, and I see no reason it is not generally applicable.

It seems like a lot at first, but you don't do it all at once. Even the author of the article recommends that you start small. I spent years doing just the first few steps without even attempting bigger-picture planning and review stuff, and it was still life-changing for me.

If any of this resonates with you, I'd recommend you give the first step a shot today. Keep it simple, start small, but actually start.

Not internally criticising myself as harshly as I was brought up to.