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Comment by ashishk | Hacker News Reader

I try to take care of myself in fundamental ways. Like eating well, exercising, and sleeping on time.

I've found having control of basic things provides a deep sense of security.

I second this. I can't relate the the part about a sense of security, but I've found that it's very important to "take care of myself", in whatever form. For me that often means cleaning my apartment, taking care of business I've been procrastinating on, etc. Those are concrete, actionable tasks that are guaranteed to make me feel better, even if only a little bit. At work, I similarly try to focus on specific small tasks if possible, to keep my mind off of things.

100% agreement on cleaning my apartment. I find this is the single most useful thing I can do in terms of my day-to-day emotional health.

Definitely! I feel more productive when there is less clutter in my real life as such clutter seems to translate to mental clutter for me. That's why when PG wrote his essay a while back called Stuff (i think?), and I was in the middle of moving, I chunked/sold/gave away a lot of the stuff I hadn't touched in a while. Unfortunately I moved to a larger place so I had to buy more stuff to fill it up, sigh.

I'll second the cleaning - particularly around my desk and work area. Nothing gets me more productive than a clean desk. Nothing gets me more frustrated and distracted than a bunch of papers lying around.

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