- Watch anime at 3X. It takes me 30 minutes to watch one episode of anime, on average. This equates to nearly seven hours per season of 12 to 14 episodes. You can imagine how much of my precious life I wasted back when I watched anime at the default framerate. If you press the plus key three times in VLC, your video will be played back at a speed of 3X. Coupled with skipping the intro and outro songs, and the preview, an episode that would have taken me 30 minutes to be watched can be watched in a mere five minutes! You can’t imagine how instrumental this technique is in my life. Even at 2X or 1.5X, much time is saved — 10 or 15 minutes per episode. The dialogue is still completely comprehensible (although a bit squeaky), and it will have no effect on your enjoyment of the anime (although it will mess up the director’s pacing), as you mentally modify your own sense of time to go along with the video’s speed. With this technique, you can watch twelve episodes in one hour, when it would have previously taken you six hours! This is amazing. Call in now to reserve your order and you’ll even receive FREE shipping and handling! Call fast, as our inventory is limited!
- Write scripts and macros to automate mundane computer tasks. This includes making Word templates for your MLA documents, and setting up AutoIt or AutoHotkey scripts to perform multiple keystrokes, mouse movements/clicks, or system calls with single keystrokes. It’s amazing how awesome scripts can get, but I always end up forgetting what key runs what macro that does what.
- Don’t update programs, unless you need some new feature. You wouldn’t be able to imagine how many times I’ve updated a program (or let a program autoupdate itself), only to end up with a nonfunctional program, corrupted data, or missing functionality. Then comes the string of 20 Google searches on how to revert to the old version, or how to fix the bug introduced in the new version. Then I end up spending 6 hours reverse-engineering the assembly and fixing the bug myself. Hey, loser. I fixed your code.
- Use a calendar. I try, but I’ve never followed mine.
- Don’t multitask while finishing high-priority tasks. If something extremely important must be finished in two hours, don’t do it while watching anime/TV. Turn off the computer, take out the earphones, go into another room, sit up straight, and do it.
This list is in order of descending importance. Yes, you read that right.
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