Doesn’t have to be a thing you bought. Just some thing you didn’t have but then once you did it expanded your scope of actions.
The first obvious example that comes to mind is a car. Plenty of drawbacks to prevalence of cars, but being able to go where I want when I want, and far away, is very transformative.
I’m interested in other examples of things that aren’t just useful, but that open new possibilities.
A low-powered zoom microscope. I can again look at and work on tiny things, fix jewelry, electronics, remove splinters. Use it WAY more rhan I ever thought I would.
For anyone interested, just Google “stereoscopic dissecting microscope used”. The ‘used’ part is to makes it less expensive. They can cost a lot. I used to use my lab sonicator water bath to clean my jewelry, and our dissecting scope to check the jewelry to make sure all the skin crud is gone from every crevice.
Moving to a city with a tool library. For an annual £20 fee I can borrow any of a myriad of power tools. Currently using an orbital sander for some DIY, previously borrowed a hedge trimmer for the garden, it’s freaking great.
When I figured out how to run computational chemistry software on my home pc. It entirely changed how I saw chemistry because I could tinker and experiment with (virtual) molecules on a grand scale. Being able to run five maybe ten thousand simulations significantly increased my understanding.
I’m currently off my bipolar meds, against my will. Insurance change required a doctor change, and finding anyone who was available within a months time was not possible.
I need shit to get back to “normal” in my brain. I’m not doing well. I wasn’t before, but yeah…
Only a couple more days until my appointment. I had one last week, and they sent me to the wrong place, coupled with a whole slew of other issues, and I said fuck em. Thankfully found someone the second time around pretty quickly.
Dude I’m always surprised how shit health services are in some countries. I’m from Brazil and never got without meds in more 2 years of treatment. Now I’m moving to Portugal and I’m scared as fuck about it. But I always have the ER card. If I ever run out of medications I would run to an ER asking for more, I dont want want to die again, this is not an option where you are?
Relying on a basic understanding how things/situations work.
At a new school, I really messed up a math test. I was studying like crazy, learned all formulas that I would need and managed to apply them all in each question on the test, combining all off them each question. Lowest score possible (1 out of 10), as I really messed up. Next test I didn’t study, I jusy flipped trough the book, checked 1 situation I didn’t understood and made the test. On handing out the teacher asked what I did different then the previous test. I told him I didn’t study, I just checked if it was logically to me and decided I understood as much as I could. He told me to do just that on all tests and I’d have no problems with education and gave me the result, a perfect score. (10 out of 10)
That was 34y ago and still I want to understand things and see the logic behind it. Works perfectly on almost everything. (Humans behavious still mostly eludes me though, totally illogical 🤨)
(Humans behavious still mostly eludes me though, totally illogical 🤨)
We're not rational, but there are patterns. If you're willing to do some reading Thinking: Fast and Slow is beefy, but helps to show some of the patterns of irrationality in a structured way, from one of the leading experts on human behavior. If that's too much, Thinking in Bets is a nice taster that still is well backed by much of the same research, but is shorter and more accessible.
I am handicapped and in early retirement. I had a hard time going on walks, got tired fast, there was always the fear of stumbling/falling again and carrying a bag was painful using a backpack made me getting tired faster.
I bought an expensive walking helper /walker with 4 wheels (not something you sit on and drive, but walk behind), a seat and a big bag for shopping. I feel like superwoman now when I am on a walk, because I can walk longer, buy stuff and just put it on the thing and it is so easy to get even heavy stuff home and whenever I get tired and no matter where I am, I just sit down, relax, power comes back and I can keep going.
The best thing I have ever bought in my whole life.
I was told this is only for very old people and that it looks ridiculous at my age and that I would not need it by everyone, fuck them. It is pure quality of life and increases my power to over 9000! I have been more outside in the last 12 months, than in the 5 years before that because of it.
My divorce. I didn’t even realize that my ex-wife was abusive until getting into the divorce process. Once I got away and started to understand, I began to take some of my power back and develop even more. I went from terrified of her to strong and confident.
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