Psychological Life Hacks

Innovation can be summed up as doing things differently and doing different things. 

Sometimes we get into routines that we feel comfortable with and dread the prospect of change. By sticking to the same pattern all the time, you’re reducing the chances for cool (and also uncool) surprises and that innovative spark 🔥 

 

There’s psychological evidence that doing something different to what you’d normally do increases your creativity. Something as simple as choosing a new route for your journey to work could increase your ability to innovate.

 

When there’s no obstacle in your path, there’s no need to come up with new ideas or try anything different.

 

So, here’s my psychological life hack for this week. Stimulate your hippocampus (that’s where we store long-term memories). When you leave home for work, why not head completely in the wrong direction? Keep on driving until you’re about an hour from your workplace. Even go further…drive until you’re in a different city. Enjoy a drive off the beaten track. Pull into the parking lot of another business establishment. It could be a gas station, a bookstore or coffee shop. It doesn’t matter. Walk in with confidence and tell them you’re going to be working remotely from their office into your regular office. Set up office in their manager’s office. Clear the desk and get comfy. You’re somewhere completely foreign and different. Your mind is blown, literally and figuratively, and you will grow so much. Challenge yourself to be brave and spontaneous. The manager whose office you’ve occupied may eventually call the police on you, but for a few moments, it was so totally worth it. You’d also remember the day more with greater emotional depth and connection.

 

Learn to forge new neural pathways in your brain and fire up your synapses in the process. 

 

Change your name: You’ve been called Ayo, Nkechi, Omo or Adebayo all your life. How has it helped you? Do not to get too ingrained in the habit of keeping one lame name for a lifetime. Try a different name to break the monotony of your usual habits. Change is OK and actually helps you grow. People calling you over and over again by the same name gets you in a rut. A different name gives you a different perspective. 

 

Tell everyone at your workplace that your new name is Tom (not to be confused with tomfoolery). They will respect your choice and right to a different name. Some smart Ass might call it a midlife crisis but what do you care? Naturally, you won’t respond when they call you Tom because you have not fully internalized the name but that is A-Okay. Your work colleagues will think that Tom is just a bit quieter than Ayo, Nkechi, Omo or Adebayo and they’ll respectfully keep their distance. 

 

I will be back soon with more psychological life hacks. 

A TOAST AND HELLO TO 2023. GOODBYE 2022!

We are three weeks already into 2023, can you believe it?  I wanted to get some things off the old chest with a quick recap of the eventful year 2022.

 

On your marks, get set, slap! 

2022 began with a resounding slap.

Except you were living under a rock, you’d recall that Chris Rock made a joke on stage at the Oscars. It was about the shaved head of Jada Pinkett Smith — who has alopecia.  Smith slapped Rock for the jab at his wife. The infamous smack sparked public outrage — but Rock remained noticeably and inexplicably quiet.

 

Has anyone ever threatened to slap you into next week? Don’t always consider it a bluff as they could carry out this threat. 

 

What people didn’t realize was that Will Smith👋 tore open a portal in time and flung Rock into the future with that smack. The slap sent Rock’s essence into 2023 where he’s still kind of processing what happened. 

 

“I had like a whole show I wrote before this weekend. I’m still kinda processing what happened. So at some point, I’ll talk about that s–.” - Chris Rock. 

 

I’m so glad we all got to meet Rock and his essence again in 2023.

 

 

Kanye West—also known as “Ye” had an interesting Year. See what I did there? Ye and YEar? You probably couldn’t care. Anyway, his village people found his remote control. Ye spouted anti-Semitic comments and conspiracy theories, criticized Black Lives Matter, ended business and personal relationships and was blocked on social media platforms. He faced widespread backlash and disavowal by industry peers.

 

Before Adidas cut ties with West, Forbes estimated he’s worth around $2 billion. West got the voodoo arrow from his village people and lost the Adidas deal. It’s now estimated that he is worth “only” $400 million.

 

 

A “cousin” of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 known as “Kraken” showed up in 2022. We were already stressed out and fatigued by his other relatives in the ever-growing variant soup. When Kraken was told we had no seat left at the dining table for him, he told us not to worry because he brought his own stool. Originating in Scandinavian folklore, the kraken is usually depicted as an aggressive cephalopod-like creature. It feeds on unlucky prey and is capable of destroying entire ships and dragging sailors to their doom. The Kraken is perhaps the largest monster ever imagined by mankind. 

 

The variant has quickly risen to dominance. Experts say it is more contagious than many of its predecessors. 

 

Queen Elizabeth II died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland on 8 September. Legend has it that the Queen was 4.6 billion years old making her the oldest human and longest-ever reigning monarch. In a solemn, esoteric and mystical operation, known as London Bridge, the Queen was succeeded by her eldest son, King Charles III. A change of system administrator but same operating system. 

 

 

On 15 November 2022, the world surpassed 8 billion people. Here’s a fun fact: more boys than girls are born worldwide (for every 100 girls born, there are nearly 106 boys), but women live longer than men almost everywhere in the world.  Make of that what you will. 

 

The wind of ownership shifted at Twittersphere as Elon Musk took over the reins and also became the main character on Twitter. There’s a school of thought that opines this could be the beginning of new beginnings. Another school of thought claims this is the beginning of the end of Twitter. My take is that you shine your eyes with the way Musk is changing things.  

 

Russia invaded Ukraine in a "special military operation". The initial US assessment from before the invasion anticipated that the Ukrainian capital would be overrun within one to four days of a Russian attack. Unknown to the Russians and Americans, Ukrainians are like garri or eba. They swell as you pound or shell them. Swelling like eba as the volume of water increases, the absorption power of the Ukrainians came as a surprise. Ukrainians have a high starch component when placed in hot water. And so they rose or swelled to the occasion.