Lifehacker and Lifehack

There are a great many blogs and sites that I follow which provide advice for improving your quality of life in one way or another. I really should add a section for links to such sites but I wanted to take a moment to recommend a couple which I've found particularly interesting and enjoyable.

Lifehacker provides tips and links to sites with tips about many aspects of life including using your computer, changing your living space so it is more attractive and efficient, making your own versions of things more cheaply, saving money and time and reducing consumption. I don't find every tip useful and tend to skim the headers for each one and generally find one of use or interest several times a week. The comments on Lifehacker often add even more to the tips and provide a lot of information as well.

The nice thing is that the tips are useful to those of us living in Japan for the most part and not specifically geared toward people in any particular life situation. I strongly recommend bookmarking it and giving it a glance on a daily basis.

While Lifehacker is mainly concerned with improving your external life, Lifehack is concerned with both improving your outer and inner life (but not in a spiritually-oriented way so please don't think it's a religious site). There is an absolutely excellent post there on "10 virtually instant ways to improve your life" which every person ought to be forced to read again and again until they act in accord with those ideas and teach them to their children, friends, coworkers, and pets. Honestly, the world would be a happier place if everyone followed those steps (or at least tried to do so).

As with Lifehacker, I don't find everything useful but I give the headings a read everyday and find several really good items a week. The links to tips for using vinegar are particularly interesting this week.