Hara Hachi Bu is a saying from Okinawa in Southern Japan that advises people to stop eating when they're 80% full. Okinawa is famous for the longevity of the people who live there.

I learned it from Michael Pollan's excellent book Food Rules many years ago. He shares traditions, including the Ayurvedic in India, the Chinese, and the prophet Muhammad, that all counsel stopping eating earlier than your stomach might be telling you. That, and the German expression, "You need to tie off the sack before it gets completely full."

Hara hachi bu also appears in Dan Buettner's Netflix documentary Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. Blue Zones are areas in the world with the longest lifespans. Dan Buettner identifies eating to no more than 80% full as one potential factor in Okinawans' long lives.

The more literal translation of hara hachi bu is stomach eight parts (out of ten).

Some other methods to eat less without sacrificing enjoyment include:

Eat slowly so that changes in hunger signals from your stomach have a chance to reach your brain

Avoid distractions such as the TV while eating (when eating dinner, just eat dinner?)

Have a good selection of convenient (stacking) Tupperware for storing leftovers

When drinking tea, just drink tea (I like this sketch—I have it on my wall—so I drew hara hachi bu in the same Ligne Claire style)

Non-stacking Tupperware should be destroyed

It's sometimes misspelled hari hachi bu or said as hara hachi bun me.

Hara Hachi Bu

Box breathing can help us focus on the present, reduce stress and anxiety by lowering cortisol levels, and generally relax and be calm.

Box breathing involves four steps repeated in sequence, each for an equal count:

It's called box breathing or square breathing, as the four equal steps are like the sides of a virtual box. Counting to four is typical, though it can be more or less.

Because of box breathing's simplicity and effectiveness, it's also used by the Navy SEALs—for example, ex-Navy SEAL Mark Divine can lead you through box breathing on video.

I find meditation surprisingly difficult and the steps and simple counting of box breathing help me stay focused and free of distraction as well as any other technique. Even a few cycles of box breathing before a difficult conversation, a public talk, or after a challenging spell with our children helps me stay cool and be better.

Box breathing

Here's a helpful technique when you want to freshen-up some clothing at a hotel and need it to dry quickly. It's useful when you've packed one day short or need an extra day's wear out of something.

Wash the item in the sink/shower. Rinse out as much as you can directly with a squeeze.

Lay a towel flat and place the item on top.

Roll the towel up tight, making multiple layers of clothing, towel, clothing, towel.

Wring the towel well, working your way up and down. A lot of the water will transfer from the clothes to the towel. Repeat as necessary, perhaps placing the item in a different, drier patch of the towel.

Leave the item to dry that last bit overnight while you sleep.

With any luck, your underwear will be wearable again in the morning. And if it's not quite there, there's often a hair dryer to help finish off.

Of course, the technique works anywhere, but it's convenient in hotels where you don't have to worry about drying the towel afterwards.

This tip was discovered by my wife—like many of my most handy lifehacks—in this case while backpacking together in Central America.

Also see: Hotel HQ; Enjoy your hotel room more

Hotel Drying Technique

Stay organised in your hotel room with this one weird tip. When arriving at a hotel room clear the desk and fold a bathroom towel or flannel to make a little square space and use it as a store for all your useful stuff.

OK, so it actually does seem a little unusual, but having tested it on all hotel stays over the last few years I can say that it genuinely helps me not lose key things, like room keys, around my hotel room. It also reduces the chances that I'll leave without something important like a passport. Maybe give it a try.

This tip I learned from Dan Pink's Pinkcast episode where he calls it his hotel inbox — the place to leave everything when he walks into the room.

Hotel HQ

We all know that racing drivers overtake on the inside — it's the shorter, faster route. It was only relatively recently that I found how useful it can be on a long drive, too, not for racing but for using the bend on a multilane road for easier, safer overtaking.

Perhaps this scenario will resonate: after cruising at a steady speed for miles of a long journey you slowly catch up with a car traveling just a few miles an hour slower. You're not driving fast enough to zip by them, but the difference is enough to slow your steady progress on a long journey, and if you're driving near the speed limit anyway you probably don't want to accelerate much to overtake.

On a multi-lane road like a motorway or freeway — not a single lane road where you'd be overtaking with reduced visibility on the corner in the opposing lane — timing your overtaking so you're on the inside of a bend and the slower car is on the outside allows you to get round the slower driver in a shorter time and without needing to travel nearly as fast.

And the converse is also true: if you've timed your overtaking when approaching a bend where you'll be on the outside you'll find that you'll have to go a lot faster to get round or perhaps that your intended overtaking is actually not getting you past at all.

Passing on an inside bend

A forcing function is an external stimulus that makes you get to where you want to be. 

One of the simplest and most effective behaviours that you can try to help you level up is to keep creating forcing functions for yourself. Signing up for an event so that you are forced to get yourself in shape, offering to give a talk so that you learn your material, inviting people to a dinner party so you get your house in order, paying for a personal trainer to make you turn up every week — all useful forcing functions to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

Forcing functions play, very effectively, on our fear of letting ourselves down to make ourselves do what we want us to do.

Another useful sense of forcing function is a way to help people make fewer mistakes, like putting your passport on the door handle so you can't forget it before your flight.

Forcing function

Forcing functions are a super way to help make things foolproof, or better, errorproof — as all of us make mistakes with designed things without being fools. You may have used your own forcing function when, in an attempt to make sure you remember your passport or tickets before a flight, you put them directly in front of the door so you couldn’t open it without noticing them. That little dialogue that asks you if you want to save your changes before closing your work, that’s a forcing function too.

My first memory of understanding a forcing function was when working with a giant machine capable of cutting through 100 pieces of paper at a time. The two buttons to operate it were on opposite sides of the machine. I couldn’t start the machine without spreading my arms out wide. There was then no way to also accidentally have your fingers in with the paper and near the blades when it started. Smart.

I learned this sense of forcing function from Don Norman’s classic The Design of Everyday Things. Also from Don, see Mapping.

The other sense of forcing functions for productivity is also really useful: helping kick ourselves into action.

Forcing function — design

Sometimes we’re smart enough to know that we’ll have trouble doing something we want to get done. That might be going to the gym, finishing that essay instead of goofing around, quitting smoking, doing your taxes, or, if you happen to be Odysseus, listening to the sirens’ song without going crazy and diving in the water or driving your boat to be crashed on to the rocks.

In these cases, you can try a commitment device: a voluntary restriction to help maintain our future self-control. In Odysseus’s case he instructed his men to fill their ears with wax and to bind him the mast and told them if he asked them to let him go then they were to bind him tighter. In this way, he managed to listen to the sirens’ song without ending up at the bottom of the sea.

Other commitment device’s may be more mundane, such as publicly announcing to your friends that you’re going to do something, paying a bunch of money to sign up for something upfront, or handing a $20 bill to a friend with instructions not to give it back until you’ve done what you’re supposed to.

Here are some nice examples of commitment devices.

Commitment device

If you like pomegranate but are put off by the prospect of the effort of pulling out each individual seed and spraying pomegranate juice across the kitchen, then this is a fun and handy tip.

deseeding pomegranates in a bowl of water helps stop spraying when pulling them apart and naturally separates the light fluffy pith from the seeds, and 

whacking them on the back with a spoon is a surprisingly effective and fun way of making the seeds shoot out.

Deseed a pomegranate

The finger-dip test helps solve probably the biggest killer of houseplants: overwatering. So, I love this simple tip known as the finger-dip test, or the knuckle test, to determine if your plant needs watering. Sadly, it came too late for many of my plants, but perhaps not for yours.

Just dip your index finger into the soil near the stem of your plant up to about your first knuckle. If the soil feels dry and your finger comes out clean, then it’s probably time for some water. If the soil around your fingertip is still moist, then it’s time to sit back next to your plant with a good book and enjoy it.

I learned this from the good people at Patch Plants and their resident plant expert Alice Vincent (@noughticulture).

The finger-dip test to not overwater houseplants

You’re at the supermarket. There are 8 self-checkouts and 15 people in line, there are 3 servers scanning baskets only with 5 people in line and 4 checkouts for trolleys each with 2 trolleys at each. Or you’re at immigration after getting off a plane, and you can see 3 lines each of different lengths, but it looks like they’ve just opened up another agent who’s only accessible from the right-hand line, but it already looks longer. Or there’s a jam on the highway but it looks like one lane splits into two up ahead. Or they’re checking passports at the gate and it looks like there are two people checking at one line and only one at the other.

OK, chances are we probably won’t get it right, and most of all it’s worth just making peace with that and not stressing about it. But, there are times when a little counting, checking ahead and some mental arithmetic can save you a little time and give you a little glow of satisfaction. Good luck.

Choose the fast line

The Doorstep Mile is a brilliant Norwegian concept that shows how the most challenging part of a journey can be just getting out of the door.

So, sometimes, as Seth Godin would say, the most important thing is just to start — start small, start now, step by step, day by day, and you can give yourself the chance to make something amazing.

Got something you’ve been meaning to start? Maybe today’s the day?

When I created this sketch, it was my 104th in consecutive weeks — 2 years of weekly sketches without missing (the power of streaks) — and sketchplanation number 583 in total. And I can tell you that it didn’t start glamorously, and they weren’t high quality or even interesting, but I did start. Sketch by sketch. Week by week.

Alistair Humphreys (see Microadventure) wrote a book about The Doorstep Mile, which you can also listen to or read for free.

More sketches about starting and getting started.

The doorstep mile

Since I learned this remarkable trick I actually find I quite like getting a wobbly table for the chance to retest this simple, and still kind of remarkable, fix. A number of smart people have spent probably more time than justified demonstrating that, for a four-legged table with even length legs on uneven ground, as long as the ground is not excessively bumpy you’ll be able to fix your wobble by rotating the table up to ¼ turn.

Now, it’s definitely true, that if you have a square table, not a round one, or, say, two square tables next to each other, it’s not always possible to start rearranging the café, but…when you can it’s really neat to see it work. Give it a try.

Fix wobbly tables by rotating

So, you finish a packet of crisps, or chips, and scrumple the packet up, but in just keeps uncrumpling and tries to blow away. No longer. This handy little bit of origami creates a neat and tidy little triangle that keeps your crisp packet behaving. Give it a try next time.

HT: Dave Barker taught me this about 20 years ago. I still find it useful.

Tame unruly crisp packets

So maybe this was always obvious to you, but someone showed me this when I was in my 30s and it was hard for me to believe that it took 30 years for me to learn it. So, now you know. A simple tip to stop your bag coming undone — particularly if you’re walking or running and you’ve stuffed it too full like I do.

Zip backpacks to the side

For a super simple way to avoid making a mess when drilling into walls.

Louise, sent me this to try as another method:

So my Dad has half a tennis ball with a hole through it. Drill bit goes through hole. Tennis ball hemisphere presses against wall on flat side. All dust goes into ball. When he pulls it out he holds upwards then tips into bin.

Catch drilling dust with a Post it

A simple way to remember if you locked your car, turned the gas off, watered the plants or whatever, is to do something unusual around the time that you do it. When you find yourself thinking back to whether you did it or not, you will know for sure when you remember the strange thing that you did that is connected to it. The only limit is your imagination.

Ironically, I can’t remember where I learned this — I must not have followed this tip.

How to remember if you did something

The Fresh Start Effect explains why we’re more likely to tackle meaningful goals or form new habits at the start of a day, week, month, or year. 

These fresh beginnings—like a birthday, moving to a new house, or even a Monday morning—are powerful mental triggers that motivate us to take action and start anew.

It’s fascinating how the simple act of marking a “start” can make us more open to change and new challenges. Whether it’s the first day of the year or the start of a new chapter in life, these moments provide a sense of renewal and opportunity.

We explored this idea on the podcast: Listen to The Fresh Start Effect on the Sketchplanations podcast

You can also hear about it from Katy Milkman herself, Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, on the Freakonomics podcast: When Willpower Isn’t Enough.

The fresh start effect

The fluff floats to the top and the seeds will sink to the bottom. And no squirting. HT Alex Maiereanu

De-seed pomegranates in a bowl of water

Via The Wall Street Journal: The Perfect Nap and @jessmnhey.

How long to nap

Trim beans in one cut through the packet

Learned this remarkably reliable technique from our guide Rodolfo in the Corcovado in Costa Rica - appropriately, on a Pacific beach lined with palm trees, the sounds of howler monkeys and scarlet macaws flying by. It works just as well in our London apartment.

Update: if you’re not on a beach and have some minimal tools you can rescue more of the water by drilling or poking through one of the three holes in the top and draining it first. Tip from Jose.

Open a coconut

There’s no point in being in a room full of interesting people and not being able to find each other. Asking a question early on can give you a good conference day by letting others know who you are, what you look like and what you're interested in. It's like sharing your bio, and sometimes agenda, with the room. This helps you stand out later for others to seek you out.

Ask a question early at conferences

My wife finds it amusing, but I genuinely find it the most effective way to fit a sheet. Plus, it’s more fun.

(similar fun to be had by fitting a duvet into the corners by climbing inside the cover)

Topple-fit a sheet

It still takes me a moment to process, but Ryan, for example, is much closer to S, than it is the beginning of R. Consider starting at the next letter for some searches.

Consider starting at the next letter (when scanning address books)

Do not hesitate to ditch that which doesn’t stack and replace with ones that do. Life is too short.

Non-stacking Tupperware should be destroyed

Wrap cheese in paper towel to reduce mould

How to peel a Post-it™ so it doesn’t fall down: pull flat and straight.

This is helpful if a) you use Post-Its™ a lot, and b) you need them to stay up and don’t want them raining to the ground.

Typically, people pull Post-Its™ by starting from a corner and pulling it off diagonally. This leaves one corner itching to peel away from the wall. Once it starts peeling, it will dry out, and the rest will follow.

Believe it or not, on a rainy day, I even recorded a video about how to pull a post-it so it doesn’t fall down. And we did do some tests.

I learned this technique while at Jump Associates, where we used a lot of Post-Its™, and who, I believe, learned it from some people at 3M, manufacturers of the Post-it™.

This sketch, lovingly polished, is one of many featured in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures

Peel a Post-it so it doesn’t fall down

Among many other sensible suggestions, Michael Pollan recommends avoiding the centre supermarket aisles. It’ll generally keep you on the fresh stuff. Sketchplanation hat tip to Ben Merrick.

Shop healthy

Handy. Also works for walking instructions from books so you don’t have to carry the book.

Take photos of maps, to travel light and have backup before a hike

Smarter, compact and less creased. I learned from Rob Bell.

Fold shirts for better travel

Don’t let the frozen peas escape until you want them to.

Marshal frozen peas and such

By moving the rubbing from sock-to-foot, to sock-to-sock.

Two socks helps prevent blisters

It helps the environment and saves a great deal of hassle. Buy more easy-care, non-iron, quick-drying fabrics.

Iron less

Arrange kitchen storage to minimise excess travel

Great practice for research. Good practice for life too.

Prefer open-ended questions

The same principle as the swimming tumble turn — works nicely on stairs too.

Try stair kickturns to preserve momentum

Use both sides of a towel, one side to dry yourself and the other side to wrap yourself in after.

Use both sides of a towel

Enjoy your hotel room more by making the most of it:

Enjoy your hotel room more

My dad often says my mum won’t survive when he’s gone as she won’t be able to open any jars for food. Maybe this’ll help. Warming up jar lids has saved me on multiple occasions.

Fourth Try: Put folded dish cloth on counter and whack the edge of the lid against it. Boom. (courtesy @MrRobBell)

Remove troublesome lids

This simple division has made our lives a teeny bit easier.

Organise veg in the fridge

We’ve been looking for the right size plates for some time.

Smaller plates help you eat less

Turn carrots while cutting

Requires little equipment and is generally more fun and involving than the real thing.

Play your own Scattergories

Apparently, this is a well-known thing in the military, but no one told me until we learned about it in the film Beneath Hill 60.

It's also a potential reason why pirates are known to wear eye patches—from popping up and down between decks—though it's rather hard to be sure. But I think the primary use case is going for a pee in the night.

Shut one eye to keep your night vision

If you feel the need to sneeze, some people find that looking at a bright light can help release the urge.

Apparently, it’s called the photic sneeze. I asked BBC Science Focus magazine in the UK what was happening here. They shared that it's called the photic sneeze but also that Science doesn’t really know why. We need to find out.

It happens without fail for our eldest son. Anytime we pause to take a family selfie facing towards the sun, there's a guaranteed sneeze. It used to be a common occurrence that leaving the bedroom in the morning and entering the light would also trigger a sneeze. My niece is also a reliable photic sneezer.

Bright light will free your sneeze

This was an amazing tip IMHO from my wife. Folding t-shirts and storing them vertically, rather than stacking them on top of each other, keeps them visible and gives easy access to the t-shirt you want. Makes your drawers a million times better.

Apparently, this is a tip also from Marie Kondo of asking "Does this spark joy?" fame.

Lifehack sketches