What small piece of advice you would like to give that isn't heard enough ?

Proof-read your writing; even when writing titles.

One that sticks with me from chemistry classes: "Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass."

Read the entire error message very carefully before asking for help, or even searching for a solution.

For folks in tech this means reading and understanding the stack trace, too.

You don't have to have an opinion about everything.

When driving don't be nice, be predictable.

Eg.: If you are on the priority road, drive - don't be nice and slow down to let someone in from a side road. That's how you get rear-ended.

It’s okay to be bored sometimes.

If you find yourself compelled to do something that’s not destructive to society or yourself, pay attention. Not wearing headphones I brought to disc golf led me to meeting my wife. I just had a feeling not to wear them. Then I met some cool friends. Yada yada yada, life is better.

Get out of your own way. Let things play out and act when you’re able. Try being more passive about small things and see if you’re not less stressed.

Every interaction I have I try to think “how can this go more smoothly”. Life is easy mode if you make people want to be around you.

You can say no and not give a reason and people will respect it more. Give an excuse and watch them act like it’s a puzzle to be solved.

You can’t fix everything at once. You have finite willpower. Do not stack ambitious goals or habit changes.

Understand the only way to ever be good is to fail a lot. This applies to everything. Thinking, conversation, athletics, math, baking, everything.

Garbage in, garbage out. Applies to coding, your entertainment consumption, and food.

In direct contradiction to the above rule I personally believe you MUST have some garbage guilty pleasures. How could you know what’s great otherwise?

Things are not gonna stop happening ever, prioritize.

Try to be kind. People are usually just doing their best.

Relating to relationships: You can say 'no' to anything, but you can't say 'no' to everything.

"don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" is good advice for friends and family.

It's bad advice for salesmen, politicians, corporations, etc. They are more sophisticated than you and will take advantage of your willingness to extend trust after bad behavior.

Learn how to change your own brakes and filters, and save hundreds of dollars.

Buying second hand is underrated. I’ll often try buy something second hand first and just give it a good clean, I’ve saved loads like that.

"Measure twice, cut once."

Don’t be your family computer savy guy, you just found yourself a bunch payless jobs…

Disagree, while my family didn't pay me in cash, they made me food and such. They took care of me.

Unless you make a scene, nobody pays any attention to you ever, or will remember you later. You are invisible and anonymous in public.

It is absolutely okay to say, “I don’t know.”

I’d argue this is true even in instances where you should know as it will save time, damages, and/or misinformation.

Assume the best of people and the worst of circumstances. It just makes my life a little bit happier giving my friends and family, and even strangers, the benefit of the doubt.

Hit Cancel instead of Reply after typing a response to that moron. 9/10 it's not worth the effort and your life will be better for having moved on.

Refurbished is not second hand. It’s an item that has been returned to the retailer for one reason or another and gone through thorough diagnosis for any existing issues and repaired. You can save money over “new” to buy something that you now know has been scrutinized. Sometimes there may be blemishes, but depending on the product that matters very little.

Be mindful that a soldering iron cable can pull a soldering iron from your hand, so don't have too loose of a grip. Learned that one the hard way :(

Rice is a cereal and therefore a valid breakfast food. Fry last night's rice with some chopped veg and garlic salt for a nutritious and easy breakfast.

Assume positive intent. Amazing how much lower stress your stress levels will be if you don't feel attacked (on the road, on social media, in conversations, etc).

Oh yeah, and buy a bidet. Your bum will thank you.

invisible ink uses heat (friction) to turn invisible. so dont leave an invisible ink pen in the sun, if you want to use it again.

Frozen veggies have all the nutrients of fresh, and will still have them when you finally get around to cooking them.

You can just change careers whenever. No one cares. When I was younger it seemed so set in stone like you learn a trade you're a plumber for life. Go to college your major is what you're doing for life. It's not true I knew a philosophy major that was working as an elevator engineer. Do HVAC for 20 years then do something else. It's fine

If you find blood on someone who is incapable of verbalizing if they're injured or in pain, consider if they had a dark red jello with lunch before you carefully inspect their entire body looking for the injury.

You may not be the smartest person in the room, but if you are well prepared you can certainly look like you are.

Don't Panic

If something breaks and there is no warranty and cost of repairs are to much. Repair it yourself. You don't know how? What you gonna do break it again?

Most "rules of thumb" become awful advice when used indiscriminately.

People assign slightly different meanings to the same words. You need to acknowledge this to understand what they say.

Words also change meaning depending on the context.

When you still don't get what someone else said, it's often more useful to think that you're lacking a key piece of info than to assume that the other person does.

Hell is paved with good intentions. This piece of advice is popular, but still not heard enough.

Related to the above: if someone in your life is consistently rushing towards conclusions, based on little to no information, minimise the impact of that person in your life.

Have at least one recipe using leftovers of other recipes. It'll reduce waste.

Alcohol vinegar is bland, boring, and awful for cooking. But it's a great cleaning agent.

Identify what you need to keep vs. throw away. Don't "default" this indiscriminately, analyse it on a per case basis.

The world does not revolve around your belly button and nature won't "magically" change because of your feelings.

You can cultivate herbs in a backyard. No backyard? Flower pots. No flower pots? Old margarine pot. (Check which herbs grow well where you live.)

When you feel out of control in life, identify where you have agency and focus your efforts there.

I think my favorite allegory is the "We'll See Farmer".

Once upon a time, there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically, “you must be so sad.” “We’ll see,” the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it two other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “Not only did your horse return, but you received two more. What great fortune you have!” “We’ll see,” answered the farmer. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “Now your son cannot help you with your farming,” they said. “What terrible luck you have!” “We’ll see,” replied the old farmer. The following week, military officials came to the village to conscript young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Such great news. You must be so happy!” The man smiled to himself and said once again. “We’ll see.”

Only time can yield the ramifications of an event. There is no luck, good or bad. Things happen. On balance, they are neither good nor bad, just events to be dealt with. Be patient and continue doing the best you are able to with any given circumstances. I have always tried to keep a goal in mind and move through life's circumstances in the vague direction of those goals. Things have happened that have ended up having positive impacts, and things have had negative. None of them were clear at the time and only in hindsight can I see which were which.

Read books to your toddlers

“proofread before submitting”

It's all class struggle.

You can't change people

It's never too early or too late to do that thing you've been meaning to

Being polite costs you nothing but may buy you much.

When someone has had a health issue, ask the people around them how those people are doing. When I was first diagnosed with epilepsy, a person asked my mom specifically how she was doing. She hadn't really stopped to reflect on her own emotional state because she had been so focused on me. It was a great comfort to have someone guide her through thinking about herself.

You’re good enough. Start where you are.

Memento mori.

I am a big fan of the advice CGP Grey gives regarding solutions.

Don’t pick the first solution that comes to mind for a problem, it is most likely the least effective.

Buy a fire extinguisher (type ABC is best for home use), and check its pressure regularly. Many of them come with a simple wall mount that is very convenient.

Also, NEVER add water to a grease fire. It will explode.

Don't put WiFi dongle and wireless mouse dongle in neighbouring USBs, they are probably working at the same frequency and will interfere with each other.

Live a little. We'll all die at some point.

Water dripping? Don’t call a plumber yet. Get on your hands and knees and try to figure out exactly where the water is coming from. You might need a $5 part and 10 minutes watching a YouTube video instead of a $400 callout. The same concept applies for most things in a home or vehicle. But don’t screw around with electricity if you don’t know what you’re doing.

If you’re shopping around based on price, make sure you’re factoring in the cost of gas and your time. Driving an hour to save $5 actually costs you money.

Need to quickly determine if a caller is a scammer or legitimate? Just ask who they’re calling. If they don’t know your name, you can hang up immediately.

Maintain your things. All your things. If you use something until it’s no longer working, it has moved from inexpensive maintenance to expensive repair.

Always remember that on any given day several people are having a shitty day.

Being really good at the intersection of two different things is often a much more valuable skill set than being excellent at just one thing.

Exist outside the box.

Don't believe the hype.

"A man's mind changed against his will is of the same opinion still."

The only argument you win is the one you avoid.

What do you mean by 'buck buying'? I've never heard this term before.

Life exists within the grey area that is constantly bombarded by polarized extremism. Don’t buy into the “all” mentality. Because in reality it’s always just “some.”

Merlin Mann has collected his version of such a list here: https://github.com/merlinmann/wisdom/blob/master/wisdom.md

I very much enjoy reading it from time to time, even if I disagree with some of the points.

Put the seat of your toiled down before you flush if you don't want to end up with shit microparticles on your toothbrush.

There is expensive because of brand and expensive because of material quality, do your research.

If "do your research" means take a couple minutes to make sure there aren't glaring red flags about a purchase, then yeah that checks, but I see this phrase used as a more serious concept which just doesn't seem realistic given my experiences.

I feel like if you don't already know what to look for in your specific product of interest it's impossible to do research and have confidence. Like when I don't know where to start and try to research products through a search, I go through so much SEO bullshit in such a short timeframe that I have no confidence in anything I'm looking at, including the stuff that looks like it has a good chance of being legit. Maybe I can find a forum of some sort, but I'll need a way to tell that the users aren't just talking out of their asses (or bots, or paid sponsors). Major review sites are a mess.

The phrase "do your research" is way overstated, because someone who knows what they need to look at is already going to do research and is not the target audience. The time it takes to filter through all the nonsense and form a coherent opinion researching something from scratch is so enormous that it's hard for me to imagine someone actually doing that diligently for anything less expensive than a car. What actually happens is you just give up partway and make your best guess like you would have done in the first place. At that point your research has led you to seeing a bunch of ads and a few conflicting opinions. Yeah, that will influence your decision and possibly be helpful, but the benefits are marginal compared to the time investment, it's rarely worth more than a few minutes if it's not a major purchase.

Or maybe everyone else is a lot better at this than me and I'm making a fool out of myself by posting this.

"Don't do today what you can put off until tomorrow."

I know it sounds like procrastination, but it helps in particular with high stress jobs where things just keep piling on and priorities keep changing. Don't burn yourself out trying to get everything done today.

"Everyone has to start somewhere." and "You're one step ahead of the people who decide to stay on the couch."

This helps with just getting started, like if you are a beginner at the gym and intimidated by those fit people who look like they know what they're doing, or just going solo to a dance class for the first time. Or going on a hike and needing to take a lot of breaks. You're one step better than where you were before you went. At least now you have a starting point and you can only improve.

Also helps when it's cold and/or miserable outside because you know there will be a lot of people who decided to not go out, and you end up with a gym to yourself!

Do stuff for other people and explain until they are like 20% there. Then let them do it themselves and gradually reduce your help.

Thats how my dad did it with a lot of stuff, and I learned so much. Saves you from "mansplaining", from doing free work, from being unempowering.

This makes people feel motivated and you can share your learning experience too, and maybe learn from theirs

A friend will tell you "ok you're about to date a serial murderer, I strongly suggest you reconsider but if you don't that's fine, it's your choice." A manipulator will tell you "NO YOU CANT SPEND TIME WITH THEM THEY LOOKED AT YOU FUNNY I FORBID YOU FROM BEING WITH THEM!!"

Your situation is going to be between those extremes: it's going to be more of one than the other, and you'll know which.

When you feel like it's an easy one for once, it might be so but you'll still flunk it if you think so.

In no particular order:

Advice is usually worth (at most) what you pay for it.

The harshest lessons are about trusting the wrong person.

No one will have more words for you, than a lazy person who wants you to do something for them.

Judge weak people by their natures, and strong ones by their goals.

If possible, don't be poor. If you are though, be wary of following advice on this topic from people who have never been poor for an extended period.

I really disagree with your secondhand comment. Buy more secondhand, less new! Cheaper, better for the environment, and you can find some cool things you wouldn't otherwise. I get nearly all my small kitchen appliances from thrift stores. Most people get them as like a wedding gift or something and then never use them, so they are practically new. All my clothes except underwear and socks are thrifted, most of my furniture, my dishes, most electronics... I love thrift stores.

Inventory is waste.