Here are this week’s Life Pro Tips.
01. How to make friends as an adult
As an adult it really is difficult to make new friends especially after moving to a new city with no friends. It only gets harder as you get older. So here are some good tips.
- First fill up your time. Sign up for things like volunteering, sports, meet ups, art class, hiking etc. Just be (around) other people.
- Say yes to anything anyone suggests to do.
- Start suggesting things to do with other people, keep asking until you figure out who is down to do stuff. Doing stuff usually leads to meeting more people.
- Then ditch the time-fill activities (unless you really love them) and just do stuff with the people you now hang out with.
02. When you get a GoPro…
Or any camera, make the first picture your business card/contact info so that if it’s lost it can find its way home easier.
03. If you are sent a Pages file…
If someone with a Mac sends you a .pages file, but you are on a PC, simply change the extension from .pages to .zip and inside you will find a PDF version.
Another neat trick is if you need the photos off of a PPTX or DOCX, change the extension to .zip and you will have a folder with the images inside.
04. Obscure items to take camping. (Camping Hacks)
- If it’s fairly, bring caribener clips and some amsteel cord. You can tie up your smaller items and clip them to something sturdy. This makes it easy to store food away from your tent as well. Amsteel is incredibly lightweight, can be spliced to make versatile loops and slings, supports 1 ton of weight, doesn’t swell when wet like paracord, and floats on water. Keep everything you don’t want the wind to take away either tethered down or stuffed in your (zipped up) tent. You’d be surprised how something you never thought would catch wind can and does.
- Baby wipes. It may not be as good as a shower, but they are far better than nothing for keeping yourself clean.
- Stormproof matches. These cannot be extinguished by water or wind. Don’t try to put these out with your fingers. This is good for lighting things on fire when it’s pouring rain and there are huge gusts of wind. If you cannot get stormproof matches you can bring along trick birthday candles.
- Metal match. This is great for igniting your kindling (whether it’s shreds of wood, cotton balls soaked in Vaseline).
- Lexan spork. Lexan is a tough, flexible, light and cheap plastic that is perfect for backpacking.
- SilNylon tarp. Shelter at a moment’s notice.
- Dr. Bronner’s Castile soap. You can use it as soap, shampoo, toothpaste and fifteen other things. It’s totally organic, biodegradable, paraben free and if you bring the original bottle it provides some fascinating reading material.
- Pencil sharpener. You can use it to make kindling out of any little sticks.
- Decent strength garbage bags can be really convenient as emergency rain coats, and to keep things tidy.
- For a super windy area, bring goggles. Keeping things out of your eyes is never appreciated until you have things flying in your eyes.
- Bandana in kitchen supplies. Good for wiping hands, use as a napkin, wiping a spork or cup cleaner/dryer than it was before. Not used for really goopy/sticky/greasy stuff. Paper towels for that.
- Ziploc with partial roll of toilet paper and very tiny bottle of hand sanitizer. Always dig a hole (use a stick or a rock) at least 6 inches deep and 200 feet away from any water source.
- Another ziploc with bare necessities first aid supplies (you decide what defines that).
- Take a big 20,000 mah usb battery pack. It will last a week or more with one smart phone.
05. Explanations aren’t apologies
When you apologize, do so explicitly. Some people just explain why they acted the way they did instead of apologizing for it. To the receiver, that doesn’t feel like an apology but as if they’re trying to justify their behavior. If you’re apologizing for something, remember to actually say sorry.
