What did you recently learn you've been doing wrong your whole life?

Changing duvet covers! I learned the Burrito Method [1] and never looked back. When I send this to people, the reactions vary from "OMG WHAT YOU CHANGED MY LIFE" to "you srsly didn't know that?"

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRPfudNNd8Y

My meta-answer is growing up in a tightly age-delineated cohort so that I wasn't being corrected all along by people 5-10 years older than me when I was doing things wrong my whole life.

Thinking intrinsic value of achievements matters more than extrinsic

I'll give an example: in getting a degree, seeking out the hardest classes and struggling to get a 3.8, or seeking out the easiest classes and getting a 4.0

The average recruiter is stupid and will only see the 4.0. It's much harder to communicate the value of taking the harder classes

I personally find this kind of depressing. It discourages people from actual learning and nudges them towards only caring about mere appearances

I learned I've been tying my shoelaces the wrong way my whole life! After discovering the "Ian Knot," my shoelace-tying game has improved tremendously.

It's a small change, but it made my daily routine a bit easier. It just goes to show that there's always something new to learn and improve upon, hehe!

I can't say that I have 'a thing', but one that I should have learned by now is that "being open to anything" doesn't get nearly as much done as "committing to doing something".

I like to do things in the moment but find I waste a lot of time on random/arbitrary things. This was good when I was learning so much. Now I consume so much information with so little adding to a base of relevant knowledge: like being on HN.

I recently learned that you're supposed to leave the toilet seat down to be gender inclusive, as woman feel unwelcome when it was left up.

I use to leave it up to show that I lifted it and left the toilets clean, unlike most men who are naturally stupid and gross because they're naturally uneducated.

So yeah, be gender inclusive and leave the toilet seat down.

Accumulating stuff, I was doing it all wrong... too much stuff, nowhere near enough curation and purging.

I feel like I'm in a constant state of realizing how stupid I was 5-10 years ago doing X or Y or Z either the wrong way or in a suboptimal way.

Caring too much about external recognition.

Trusting humans including experts.

fuckin everything. i want out!

Gender.