Life Hacks

I'm going to write my life hacks here as I can think of them. I'll start with these:

• Kidmail. Set up a gmail account for your new infant child, and give out the address to only your closest friends and family members, then asking them to email your child stories about their time together, what they did, what your child did and said, and often with photos. Then when your child gets old enough to read, she can read about her life.

• Spam. You can have as many email addresses you want, but for most people, they should route into one of three actual email inboxes:
  • Personal email address. Give this ONLY to friends and family. Do not give this to work contacts or to any companies (amazon, netflix, etc).
  • Spam email address. Give this to any company that requires your email address, amazon etc, and check it once every week or two.
  • Work email address. Give this to business contacts. Generally check this Mon-Fri 9am-5pm. :-)

  See also one touch email handling.

• Teaching a kid to ride a bike. Remove the pedals (usually this is easy to do) and have them learn how to move around on the bike by pushing with their feet, and then coasting. Let them do this for a couple days. Then put the pedals back on. They will figure out what to do, no need for training wheels!

• Credit cards. Anticipate that your credit card info will get stolen. Put all your recurring payments with trusted vendors on one card, and use your other card for restaurants etc. When the latter card info gets stolen (it will), you won't have to change the credit card you use with all vendors.

See also lifehack.org.