Ask HN: What is the most significant small thing that changed your life?

* My brother bought me an external battery pack to charge my phone during travel, that has certainly given me some peace of mind and it's lasted about a decade.

* I try to tell my family I love them more now. I was pretty obsessed with work in my twenties, now I'm 33 and my folks are 65. One day I realized I didn't have many more years left where they'd be able to ski and bike with me I try to take moments to truly appreciate our time together.

* Waking Up App. Work stress and frustration has been my excuse in the past when I was a shit partner to my (now ex) girlfriends. I've been trying to work on not getting as angry when I get DM'd on Slack, or a bs email comes at off hours. I need to be a better version of myself.

Two things that come to mind:

* I met a girl at a party a year before I started uni. We had a 15 minute conversation in which she told me that studying 2 degrees is possible, I never met her again, I don't even remember her face. Because of that I entertained the possibility. The madness that unfolded [1] is all thanks to that conversation since it opened my eyes to look at the world differently. Differently how? Simple, people tell you as if certain things are true, but they are merely social guidelines at best. What you need to do is to test if this social guideline is applicable to you (sometimes intensively, sometimes on a surface level).

* I once overheard one sentence accidentally of a fellow student that I passed by in the hallway while he was talking to another student. He said "I study mathematics not because it's fun per se but because it teaches a certain way of thinking." That sentence didn't do much back then, but at the moment that insignifcant memory/sentence has produced a multi-week inquiry to see how this may or may not be true. And I think I have my answer, and I daresay that he was right. The way of thinking that it teaches is that it forces you to think very precise, only to learn that your precise thinking still has 10 holes according to your teacher and you correct those holes until that doesn't happen often anymore (i.e. writing proofs).

[1] Studying a degree in 2 years instead of 3, negotiating cum laude instead of properly qualifying for it, teaching other people how to study faster, studying 6 months worth of courses in 2 months. Note: with the cum laude, while I did not have the formal requirements, I was the only person in my program ever to publish a paper that came out of a homework assignment. That's the reason why I decided to negotiate since there were a few high ranking faculty members that made it known that they felt a published paper on its own (+ decent grades but not cum laude grades) deserved a cum laude.

Getting a blood pressure monitor. This just happened a few weeks ago. I've been trying to get into the habit of meditating for years, but always very half-heartedly and never being able to stick with it. I bought a blood pressure monitor just because I felt like keeping an eye on my BP, but then read about how it's recommended to sit still for about five minutes before taking the measurement, and to do the measurement as one of the first things you do in the morning.

Well, if I want an accurate BP reading and will be sitting still in the morning anyway, why not put on a guided meditation app? I've been doing ten-minute meditation sessions almost every morning before measuring my blood pressure since then. It's now gotten to the point where sometimes I'm a little too lazy to check my blood pressure some mornings, but still sit down to do the meditation anyway.

keeping your stomach a bit empty leads you to be much more active than being very full, common sense but so many people in America eat big meals 3x a day.

Pedometer. Almost a trivial device nowadays but it does show how little I move. My weight skyrocketed over the last few years and now it's coming back on me with all the bad things.