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PaperclipPerfector  16hr ago (text post)   470 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 28, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I executed a DNS block on my laptop to block Youtube and Instagram. I've been having a problem doomscrolling low-energy entertainment for years. It got really bad this year to the point that I'd come home from work and just rerun Youtube shorts of movies I've already seen a thousand times at this point before heading to the gym. This is week 2 of my Youtube block and week 1 of my Instagram block, which I seem to have started doing more to compensate for the lack of Youtube. It's going well so far but my large problem seems to be that I want something "low-effort" to do. Hard to put it to words, but I feel like my brain is craving filler things to do between "high-effort" things. Something to take a break on mentally. Anyone on here ever run across this and have any suggestions for some non-addictive filler mental consumables?

Ask Claude to make something. Whatever software you've been dreaming of, even something that a couple years ago would require a team of engineers; it may not be as good as a team, but it will exist. And it's low effort at least compared to output.

Subscribe to a physical newspaper. The Journal is the best, the Times is fine if you prefer, I would not recommend the Post unless you live in DC. The physicality and tactility of a real newspaper is much more enjoyable than scrolling articles online.

I find it's very important how I start my day. If I'm reading within the first 30 minutes, I will continue to read throughout the rest of the day. If I scroll in the morning instead, it sometimes becomes hard to force myself to read even if I have the entire day for time.

I sometimes like entertainment where I can master a skill, then delegate it to System 1. That's been stuff like:

  • Magic: The Gathering decks with linear strategies
  • physical manipulation like pen spinning or card tricks
  • Fighting games (at least when matched against middling opponents)
  • MMO farming

Learn to juggle? Basic patterns will occupy you for a few weeks.

All existing juggling guides for me look like the infamous "how to drive an owl" guide. The first steps are like "yeah ok I can do that" and then there comes the step when they say "after you have learned that, you can easily do this" and no, I totally can't.

Yeah I said weeks for a reason. It's a process of creating new connections in your brain in order to bypass the control from the slow and clumsy conscious and deliberate control of movements to the fast and fluid autopilot. Like learning to touch type. The screwy part about juggling is you can't slow down to decrease the difficulty like you could if you were learning to play an instrument or something like that. You can throw the balls a little higher but that's of limited usefulness. There's definitely a learning cliff from practicing what feels like stupid baby time-wasting 2-out-of-3 ball juggling to adding in the third ball and not having enough hands free anymore.

I fucked it up and learnt how to do it wrong the first time so I had to unlearn that at the same time.

It's worth sticking with if you have the patience though. The first time I successfully made the full rotation of a really challenging pattern it literally felt like my brain was throwing the switch on a whole new path of neurons that had finally connected. Most pronounced natural high I've ever had.

There's a whole mathematical notation for the patterns if you really get into it but I bounced off that aspect.

I'm an ex-swimmer, I have negative coordination on land. My hand-eye is particularly bad lol

Kindle books (I love paper books but very easy to lose track of time when using them to fill dead time)

Might be a move, though I am a reading addict. I guess find a suitably boring book that isn't too cerebral

Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels killed many hours on the train for me. There were 23 books or so when I stopped reading. They only make you think in as much as if you know anything about firearms you wonder how Child got some of it past fact checkers (assuming there were any.) Otherwise they're a very easy read, and often very enjoyable.

2nd this. Fluff reading on a Kindle is my go-to filler/low-effort thing to do.

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