FIVE BEST SLEEP TRACKING GADGETS OR APPS

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 We could all use a better night's sleep, and the key to getting there is a mix of good sleep habits and understanding the things that keep you from getting the best sleep you possibly can. That's where sleep tracking gadgets that you wear, and smartphone apps that monitor your sleep cycles all come into play. This week, we're looking at five of the best sleep tracking tools, based on your nominations.

Earlier in the week, we asked you to tell us which sleep tracking gadgets or apps you thought were the best. We tallied your nominations, and here's a look at the top five. We know it's a bit unfair to include gadgets alongside smartphone apps, but depending on what you're looking for when it comes to sleep tracking, it's good to have options, both robust and complete (but may cost money) and affordable for the gear you already own (and free).

Sleep tracking is just one of the features of the FitBit One. Clip it on your pocket or somewhere else on your person and it'll keep track of the steps you take over the course of the day and how active you are overall. It'll also generate great-looking reports and feedback on your activity levels. When it comes to sleep though, just slip your FitBit One into the included wristband and set it to sleep mode. It'll track your movements overnight, including the times you get up and move around, or when you're awake tossing and turning in bed. Turn it off in the morning, and after you sync it with the FitBit web site or app, you'll get a complete report of how well you slept, along with how many times you woke up and what times during the night you were active. It won't diagnose sleep issues, but if you're worried you're tossing and turning a lot, or if your partner is the root of your sleep ailments, this gadget will tell you. iOS and Android apps complete the picture and give you access to all the data the FitBit collects from your smartphone. The FitBit One is $100, and the apps are free.

Sleep As Android is (as the name implies) Android only, but it does a great job of watching your sleep cycles. Originally it was intended to just wake you gently at the best possible time of the morning when your sleep cycle was at the best time for you to rise, but the app has come a long way since then. The app still helps you track your sleep and shows you graphs of your sleep habits overnight, but the app will also warn you if you're running on a sleep deficit and you should get back into a regular sleeping pattern. The app even pays attention to the sound in the room while you're sleeping to catch you snoring, record you talking in your sleep if that's a problem you have, or help you diagnose sleep illnesses you might not otherwise know about, like sleep apnea. Sleep As Android will wake you up gently at the best time in the morning for you to wake without being late with nature sounds, soothing music, captcha or puzzle alarms, or whatever you choose from the music on your phone or a special playlist to get you started. You can snag a 2 week trial free, after which you'll have to drop $3 for an unlock code, and a few bucks more for other useful in-app purchases.

After a bit of a rocky start with the original Jawbone, the Jawbone Up has come a long way and addressed a number of the concerns that made the original a tenuous buy. Like most activity and fitness trackers, sleep is only one thing the Up pays attention to. It'll also track your steps and your activity level, and even makes it easy to log food and drink to keep track of your diet. It'll even remind you if you've been idle too long and tell you to get up and move around. When it comes to sleep, the Up can track how many hours you've slept, and pays attention to your activity overnight, including when you toss and turn and when you're sleeping deeply versus sleeping lightly. The Up will show you everything it's recorded in a report the next day on the web site, or through the Jawbone Up iOS or Android mobile apps, so you can start trying to figure out what the root cause of your sleep issues may be, and work your way to a better night's rest. A Jawbone Up will set you back $130, and the mobile apps are free.

Sleep Cycle is an iOS app that also watches your sleep habits from your nightstand in order to help wake you up at the best possible time of the morning. We've mentioned it before, a long time ago, but the app has grown a good bit since then, and still has a loyal following. It's $1, and for the money you get motion monitoring (and even advises you on where you should place your iPhone while you sleep so it can make use of its accelerometer—right next to your pillow) so the app will know when you toss and turn and when you wake in the middle of the night. The app collects its data and then presents it to you in easy-to-understand graphs, and lets you even mark conditions for the night, including behaviors you may have changed, so you can see their effect on your night's rest. The app also functions as an alarm clock, and will wake you to your own music or any one of over a dozen soothing alarm melodies for a gentle start to the day. Plus, the app runs in the background so you can set your regular alarm and go about your business.

SleepBot for Android is another great Android utility for tracking your sleep patterns and measuring how well you sleep over the course of several nights. We covered it a while ago, but the app has grown and added a wealth of new features since then. The app tracks you sleep, but it also tracks movement overnight, auto-recording so you can hear whether you snore or if you're having breathing problems overnight (or if you're talking in your sleep), and is even packed with tips to help improve your sleep hygiene and fall asleep faster (and stay deeply asleep). The app also has an easy-to-use widget that lets you "clock in" and "clock out" when you go to bed and when you wake up to start and stop the app from tracking your activity, and it supports a number of other Android alarm clocks, so you don't have to give up the app you love to use Sleepbot to track your sleep. Best of all, the app is completely free, and pairs with the Sleepbot webapp for even more detailed analysis.

Now that you've seen the top five, it's time to put them to an all out vote.

Honorable mentions this week go to Sleep Time for Android and iOS, which does a lot of what many of the others app here in the round up also do: it keeps track of your movements and your sleep cycles, and wakes you up gradually at the right time during your sleep cycle so you're not late, but you're also not groggy and feel terrible when it's time to get up. For more information on Sleep Time, check out our article about it. It's free for Android users, and $2 for iOS users.

Also, before you buy a sleep tracking gadget or try out an app to help improve your night's sleep, our own Adam Dachis did a lot of the work for you. Check out how he got a better night's sleep with the help of technology to learn what worked (and what didn't) for him.

Have something to say about one of the contenders? Want to make the case for your personal favorite, even if it wasn't included in the list? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Don't just complain about the top five, let us know what your preferred alternative is—and make your case for it—in the discussions below.

The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it's not because we hate it—it's because it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!

Title photo by groenmen.

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Top 10 Hacks for Automating Your Life

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What if you were a wizard that could bend the entire world to your will? Chores would do themselves, bills would pay on time, and your appliances would obey your every thought. Well, you can't do that exactly, but with a bit of ingenuity, you can automate a lot of your life so you don't have to trudge through the boring stuff. Here are ten things you can automate right now.

No one likes to sit around and clean up their computer, but it's something that has to get done. We've talked about what kind of maintenance you need to do on your Windows PC and Mac, and much of that you can automate—like running CCleaner on a schedule. You should also set up an automated backup program, so you never lose your data. Set it up once, and forget it.

Paying bills and managing your budget sucks. Luckily, we live in an age where computers can do a lot of the work for us. Have your bills automatically pay themselves online, and set up an automatic budget that's easy to stick to with Mint. Check out our guide to automating your finances for more ideas, and be sure to check out when you shouldn't automate your finances, too.

Whether you're trying to lose weight or just take the stress out of planning and cooking, you can automate what you eat with a number of tools. Gather all your recipes up in one place and plan your weekly meals ahead of time for stress-free shopping and cooking. If you need to pay closer attention to your diet (like if you're trying to lose weight), try a service like Eat This Much or Swole.me, which will plan your diet for you based on your goals. That way, you can keep an eye on what you eat and stay on track with minimal effort.

We've all got stacks of papers lying around, not to mention a hard drive full of unorganized files. Luckily, you can automate just about anything with those files using a few tools. First, if you're having trouble organizing that paper, go paperless so you can organize it digitally—it won't take you much time. Ditch hard drive clutter by organizing your home folder automatically. For everything else, you can use Actions on Windows or Automator on the Mac—they'll let you automatically rename a bunch of files, crop a large number of images, or even extract text from a bunch of PDF files. Anything you can imagine, you can probably do—heck, I even put together a service that syncs iTunes with nearly any device.

Whether you're grocery shopping or trekking yourself to Home Depot, you can make shopping a lot easier by...well, not doing it. For example, Amazon Subscribe & Save will automatically send you everything you need on a schedule, and at a nice discount—heck, you can even use it to automate office lunches. Don't like grocery shopping? Get what you can delivered, and plan your way through the store for the few things you can't. While you're at it, be sure to automate all your coupons so you don't have to search for discounts—you'll just get them automatically.

Smartphones can be useful, but sometimes it feels like it takes forever to perform the simplest of tasks. With a few tools, you can essentially make your phone read your mind, performing tasks in response to related actions. For example, you could tell your phone to automatically dim your screen at night, or go into silent mode when you put it face down. Android users should check out Tasker, while iPhone users will need to jailbreak and try out some of these tools to make it happen.

You probably have a few apps and tools that you absolutely couldn't live without—like Dropbox, Gmail, a to-do list, or something else. That's great, but you can make those services even better by automating tasks—and even making them talk to each other—with If This Then That, also known as IFTTT. Make job searches easier, save articles for later, fix Instagram pictures on Twitter, add to-dos with Siri, make app deals last forever, archive your life, get digital doubles of your photos, and much much more. There's barely a limit to what it can do.

The days of combing the net for good downloads is over. With a small collection of programs, you can have your computer automatically search for, download, and organize nearly any type of file in existence. You can even tell it the quality of videos you want to download, the file format of the music you want, or what program you want to use to download it. It takes a little work to set up, but you'll never have to search for a file on the web again.

Doing chores is boring, so why waste time doing them when you can put them on autopilot? You can't make your broom come alive and clean the room for you (unless you're Merlin), but you can create a schedule that breaks everything up into almost unnoticeable chunks. Do your cleaning in regular short bursts, speed up your laundry, and even maintain your home without batting an eyelash. It isn't true automation, but it'll sure feel like it when you have all that extra time in your day.Photo by Maarten Takens.

Ever wish you could change the thermostat without getting up, or unlock your door without fumbling with your keys? Home automation can make it happen. We've shared tons of tricks over the years, from transforming your digs into a home of the future, controlling everything with Siri, turning stuff off with your phone, or even watering the plants and feeding the cat. Check out all our posts on home automation for even more ideas—the sky's the limit!

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Use Photoshop's Color Lookup Adjustment Layer to Quickly Applies Color Effects to Photos

This story will display in ...Feb 8, 2013 3:30 PM  

Thanks to apps like Instagram, color effects that emulate film stocks and vintage camera styles have become increasingly popular. While we've seen Photoshop actions that provide these effects, and you can even make your own, if you've got Photoshop CS6 you have a built-in tool that's far more flexible: Color Lookup.

Color Lookup is an adjustment layer you can add on top of any photo by going to the Layer menu, choosing the New Adjustment Layer submenu, and then selecting Color Lookup. This will provide a panel of various effects (as pictured above) that you can select and instantly apply to your photo. The upside of using an adjustment layer, however, is that the effects are non-destructive and you can fade them in and out as much as you want (just like a normal layer). If you're a Photoshop user and you want to be able to add Instagram-like color effects with ease while retaining a high amount of control, Color Lookup is pretty much your best option.

Quick Tip: Using the Color Lookup Adjustment Layer In CS6 | DIY Photography

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What Are Your Thanksgiving Traditions?

This story will display in ...Nov 21, 2012 7:30 AM  

Whether you realize it or not, you probably have a few Thanksgiving traditions. Perhaps it's hazing the kids by letting them pop open their first package of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, or gathering around the TV for the Thanksgiving Classic. So, we're wondering, what are your Thanksgiving traditions?

Share your thoughts in the discussion below.

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Zanetti: Ini Malamnya Schelotto

Penyerang AC Milan, Stephan El Shaarawy (kanan), berebut bola dengan gelandang Inter Milan, Ezequiel Matias Schelotto, pada lanjutan Serie-A, di Giuseppe Meazza, Minggu (24/2/2013).

MILAN, KOMPAS.com - Sejak didatangkan Inter Milan dari Atalanta, Januari lalu, gelandang Ezequiel Schelotto, sudah bermain empat kali di Serie-A. Total, ia sudah bermain 20 kali di Serie-A musim ini dan membukukan satu gol.

Menurut kapten Inter, Javier Zantti, meski hanya satu, gol itu sangat bernilai, karena tercipta pada Derby della Madonnina, Minggu (24/2/2013) dan merupakan satu dari dua gol yang tercipta malam itu. Gol lainnya dicetak penyerang Milan, Stephan El Shaarawy pada menit ke-21, atau 50 menit sebelum gol Schelotto.

"Ini adalah malam yang yang istimewa untuk Schelotto dan kami gembira karenanya. Ia mendapatkan kesempatan dan memanfaatkannya dengan baik," ujar Zanetti.

Sepanjang laga, menurut catatan Lega Serie-A, Inter menguasai bola sebanyak 46 persen dan menciptakan enam peluang emas dari sepuluh percobaan, sementara Milan melepaskan enam tembakan titis dari 18 usaha.

"Pertandingan derbi kali ini sangat ketat. Milan lebih baik dari kami pada paruh pertama, tetapi Inter melakukan segalanya untuk mencetak gol penyama kedudukan," ulas Zanetti.

"Aku terutama gembira dengan bagaimana kami bermain di babak kedua dan bagaimana kami melakukan pendekatan terhadap pertandingan itu," tambahnya.

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What's the Right Way to Season a Cast Iron Skillet?

Your clean new skillet doesn't cook quite right. Eggs stick and rust builds up. The solution? Your skillet needs some "seasoning." The cooks at Q&A network Stack Exchange can help.

I just purchased a new cast iron skillet.

What's the best way to season it? And if I need to re-season an existing pan, is the process any different?

Heat your oven to around 350F. Coat the pan with some sort of fat (vegetable oil works well), bake for at least an hour, and wipe. You're done!

Re-seasoning is similar to seasoning, as you say. To reduce the need for re-seasoning, make sure you're only cleaning with hot water (and possibly salt).

See this excellent article about the chemistry of seasoning. You want flaxseed oil (which incidentally has a low smoke point) but a high iodine value, allowing it to polymerize readily.

I have read so many blogs about oil "impregnating the cast iron," but this doesn't make any sense chemically. What happens is that the oil polymerizes, and you want an oil that does that really well.

First, there is no difference between seasoning and reseasoning, unless you need to do some extra work to remove rust (see instructions below). In fact, for new cast iron, scouring is also usually a good idea since you need to get off whatever wax or protective oil the manufacturer or seller may have put onto the cookware. (They don't use cooking oil for that sort of thing, believe me.)

1. If you need to remove rust: use a mixture of salt and oil and scrub that hard into the rust, then rinse thoroughly in hot water. Use steel wool if necessary.

2. Next, scour the pan completely under hot water. Do this for several minutes or until the water runs clean. I've heard varying things about whether soap or an SOS pad is OK at this step. My personal opinion is that it's OK, but you must wash the soap completely off before continuing with the seasoning so that your seasoning doesn't taste like soap!

3. Coat the cookware with grease or oil. (I do this with the whole pan, not just the cooking surface, to reduce the possibility of external rust.) Crisco, vegetable oil, and lard all work well. Don't pick something with a low smoking point, or too strong a flavor. Make sure it's a light coating... you shouldn't have pools of oil anywhere on your cookware.

4. Bake your skillet in a 250-350°F oven for an hour. If you used liquid oil, you may want to put the cookware in upside down so excess oil drips off. But it's good to put a cookie sheet or something underneath the cookware to catch the drips if you do!

5. Let the cookware cool, and wipe off any excess oil.

6. For best results, do this two or three times, though a skillet can be satisfactory after a single treatment.

To keep the seasoning happy:

Don't let the cast iron sit too long without using it (you may notice a rancid smell or flavor if the seasoning turns bad; I'm not sure at what point this happens, but it's happened to me before).Don't cook anything acidic (e.g. tomatoes) during the first or second use of your pan.Don't use dishwashing liquid or soap on the pan (hot water and scrubbing only).When cleaning the pan after each use, wipe it lightly with another bit of oil, using simple vegetable oil.

Another trick sometimes used to season Chinese woks: rub Chinese chives over the surface of the cookware when the oil is being heated (this works best on a stovetop, not in the oven). The juice of the chive has sulfur compounds that help remove remaining flavor from the previous coating of the cookware. Be aware that this technique really kicks up a lot of steam and smoke. I've never tried it on cast iron skillets, but I'd be curious if anyone out there has.

The more important part may be how not to unseason the pan. You can never, ever, clean it with soap. Or scrape it with brillo. Just warm/hot water and cloth.

(See here for how to clean a cast iron skillet.)

Seasoning is literally "greasing" the pan. And soap is the enemy of grease. Good when washing your hands. Bad when cleaning cast-iron. This creates a bit of a catch-22 since a poorly seasoned pan will require heavy cleaning. But once you do it right, it will last for months as long as you don't undo the seasoning with soap or scraping.

Illustration by Sean Gallagher.

Find more answers at the original post here. See more questions like this at Seasoned Advice, the cooking site at Stack Exchange. And of course, feel free to ask a question yourself.

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What Are Some Alternative Uses for a Closet?

This story will display in ...Nov 21, 2012 10:30 AM  

Traditionally we store clothing in closets, but they're good for other things as well. Some people use them as an office. That got us wondering: what other alternative uses are there for a closet?

Share your thoughts in the discussions below.

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What's the Best Way to Keep My Notes in Sync Across All My Computers and Mobile Devices?

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Dear Lifehacker,
There are tons and tons of apps for syncing notes and I'm not sure what to choose. Some are simple, some are feature rich. Some sync well across all platforms, some don't. How do I figure out what's best for my needs, and what works best overall?

Sincerely,
Writer's (App) Block

Dear WAB,
Every platform has various options for syncing notes (we've picked our favorites for each before), but our needs may not mirror yours. Basically, there is no best way for everybody. We like syncing plain text with simple apps that do their one task well. Others, however, favor powerful features, organization options, and versatility. Let's talk about our favorite option first, how the software works, and then take a look at some alternatives if you'd like to go another route.

It's no surprise that we love Dropbox, but until recently it wasn't our first choice for syncing notes. Because of problems with our former favorite Simplenote (described in the next section), some great apps, and open access to individual files, our minds have changed.

Dropbox comes with 2GB of space for free, and you can get plenty more. That's plenty for note syncing. You can sync any kind of document, too, as Dropbox is just a source for saving files. Plain text works best, but you can also use rich text files if you need more styling options. Additionally, because all the files just sit in a folder you can edit them with pretty much any text editor on your computer. That means you can use a full-fledged word processor when you want, and a basic notes app the rest of the time. Both of our favorite syncing notes apps for Windows and OS X work just fine with Dropbox, even though they were designed primarily for Simplenote. Both iOS and Android have great options that work specifically with Dropbox. See the list below for some great options for every platform.

Simplenote offers apps on every platform, supports simple styles, and syncs. On paper, it's nearly a perfect compromise between simplicity and features. But...

We loved Simplenote when it first began. It offers a great feature set, allowing simple text styles (e.g. bold and italic) plus the ability to roll back notes. It syncs everything, and it isn't hard to find an app that works with it. Unfortunately, Simplenote's syncing was never perfect and went downhill from there. On top of many sync troubles, not all Simplenote apps were created equal. Some do not respect the text styles and only sync plain text. It's still a great option, but it doesn't work quite as well as we'd like. If you want to give it a shot, check out the apps below.

Evernote is the king of feature-rich digital notebooks, offering great software for every platform. You can create some pretty complex documents and organize them easily. If Evernote is too feature-rich for your needs and you want something simpler, several third-party developers created alternatives that focus just on taking notes and not much else. The downside of Evernote, like pretty much everything else (other than Dropbox), is that your notes are stored on Evernote's servers and you don't get a collection of text files in a folder. You may not care about this, and there really isn't a more versatile note syncing option available. Evernote is so widely supported that you can just get the apps the suit your needs best.

Few people see Google Drive as a note-taking app, but it actually works as a really great alternative. If you want to work with more complex documents, such as Microsoft Word files or rich text, Google Drive can handle them without a problem. Not only that, but it syncs files to your computer much like Dropbox. You can use it for simply plain text or go beyond. While we prefer the app options that work with Dropbox because they're so efficient, if you need additional features and want the best word processor the web has to offer, Google Drive is a great choice.

We like using Dropbox because it's open, simple, free, and reliable. We would like Simplenote if it worked a little better and offered a consistent experience on each platform. If either of these solutions are too simple for you, try Evernote for great consistency and a rich feature set or Google Docs for high compatibility and the openness you get with Dropbox. Every option gets your notes on pretty much every platform, so don't worry too much about your decision. In the end, you're just trying to get text everywhere. The minute details of how it happens are only so important.

Love,
Lifehacker

Photo by mika48 (Shutterstock).

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"De-Flame" Onions with Boiling Water

This story will display in ...Feb 8, 2013 12:30 PM  

Before you add onions to salsa or guacamole, it's a good idea to tone down the intense flavor, lest your dip be overwhelmed. A simple and quick way to do that, according to chef Rick Bayless, is to pour boiling water over the chopped onions.

That's pretty much all you need to know. This step makes the onions much mellower and is an easy alternative to sauteing onions in a pan for 10 minutes to take the "flame" out of them.

This is one out of seven cooking tips from chefs posted in the Bon Appetit article below.

How Adam Rapoport Learned How to Cook Everything | Bon Appetit

Photo by James Bowe

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Add a Detachable Microphone to Your Over-the-Ear Headphones

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At What Point Does Frugal Just Become Stupid?

This story will display in ...Feb 8, 2013 2:30 PM  

Frugality can make your life better but, like any behavior in excess, it has the capacity to also make it miserable. In the process of living on the cheap, we can often diverge into a path of stupidity. The problem is, it's tough to know when you've gone too far. Where do you draw the line between frugal and stupid?

Kentin Waits, writing for personal finance blog Wise Bread, discusses a number of frugality myths that he thinks just aren't true. For example, he disagrees that frugality is all about sacrifice and denial:

There have been very few times in my own life when I've felt denied anything truly important because of my frugality. Maybe my wants have been suppressed, but more likely, they've been recalibrated. For me (and I have a hunch, for most frugal folks) the real denial would be the peace-of-mind lost from living beyond my means. I truly get a charge out of saving money and I enjoy the rich experience of (usually) being worry-free.

As he notes, frugality does actually involve sacrifice and denial, but it's about how far you take it. How far is too far when you're being frugal?

7 Frugality Myths Debunked | Wise Bread

Photo by wavebreakmedia (Shutterstock).

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Brew Control Turns Your iPhone into a Mobile Barista

This story will display in ...Mar 31, 2013 11:00 AM  

iPhone: If you take your morning cup of coffee seriously, Brew Control is a useful iPhone app that helps keep your brewing consistent.

The app lets you choose from a variety of brewing methods, including Aeropress, espresso, and pourover, then set your preferred coffee to water ratio for each. Once you've set up your recipe, you can adjust the grams of coffee you'll be using, and Brew Control will tell you exactly how much water to add. The app even includes some customizable timers to keep your brewing times consistent.

If you're new to coffee, the developer included his own tips and instructional videos for each brewing method, and if you want to learn more, you can also check out our recent morning school series on the subject.

Brew Control ($1.99) | App Store via Shawn Blanc

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Baby Steps: The Best Way to Overcome Your Greatest Fears

Last summer, my wife Amy and I took two months to travel in Europe with our five-month old son, Kai. Amy made an ambitious itinerary: the ideal balance of historical sites, lazy beaches, and vineyard romping—ideal for a couple anyway. By day three, we'd realized that toting a crib in our little rental car to a new hotel every few days was not going to be a vacation. If we were going to enjoy this trip, it was obvious all the work we'd done teaching Kai to fall asleep alone at very specific times (no small feat) was going out the window.

But screw it—we were in Europe. And fortunately, we loved snuggling with Kai in our bed after a night walk around Lisbon's cobblestone streets or sampling tapas in Madrid's open-air markets. Problem was, when we came home to San Francisco, ready to go back to the old routine, Kai went on strike. Forget sleeping in the crib. He would go into convulsions just looking at it. If we put him inside, like a wrongly-convicted prisoner, he would stand-up (the new 7-month-old party trick) and rattle the bars, shrieking in terror.

Not fans of the "cry-it-out" method, we devised an exposure therapy plan cobbled together from various parenting books. Though my friends will forever tease me about this, I actually slept with Kai in the crib a couple times—murder on my back, but it was a game changer for Kai. He immediately started napping happily in the crib alone. But he still wouldn't fall asleep on his own at night, or soothe himself back to sleep when he woke up. So onto stage two: letting him experience just a few minutes of crying at a time in the crib – to show him that his fear of being alone in there was not really that bad—allowing an extra minute each time before going in to comfort him. It required some sleepless nights, some tears, but within a week, Kai was sleeping through the night on his own.

Most parents experience something similar with their children's fears, but why do we so rarely apply exposure therapy to ourselves? As adults, our fears and aversions become things we're too busy to deal with, little monsters we repress, or abstract objects we over-intellectualize about, as if telling more stories about why we're afraid will magically give us courage. Our long-held fears transform into beliefs and personality quirks – "I'm just not a good leader," "I'll always be overweight"—that hold us back from our potential.

There are lots of ways to manage our fear, stress, and anxiety: exercise, meditation, talk therapy, medication. All helpful. But "exposure is hands down the most successful way to deal with phobias, anxiety disorders, and everyday fears of any sort," Philippe Goldin, a Stanford neuroscientist who specializes in anxiety disorders told me over tea recently."But the odd thing is that only 30-percent of PhDs in psychology are trained in exposure. When you get down to the MFT level, the percentage is even lower."

Freud was right that sometimes our fears have bizarre sources that need gradual drawing out by a professional. Other fears—say, getting kidnapped by terrorists—are probably not right for the exposure method. Serious anxiety disorders like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder need special treatment too. But a lot of the time our fears are obvious—low hanging fruit—and study after study has revealed that, whether it's sky-diving or public speaking, simply repeatedly exposing ourselves to the thing we're afraid of—ideally in a positive way—gradually brings down the physiologic fear response until it's gone, or at least manageable.

Goldin and other fear-specialized neuroscientists like Joseph LeDoux and Daniela Schiller explained to me why exposure works. Our brains developed like an onion, with the most primal functions—breathing, pulse, hunger, sex, fear—near the core of the onion, and the complex abstract thinking and logic happening mostly in the outer layer, the pre-frontal cortex. The core of the onion was part of our ancestors' brains long before the pre-frontal cortex ballooned to its massive human size. Similarly, the core of the onion develops in babies long before the cortex, causing them to experience raw emotional urges without reason or inhibition. Because of that, babies are perfect models for how the primal brain learns. When baby experiences something pleasant—mom's breast—an attraction develops. When baby experiences pain or discomfort—abandonment in the crib—a fear or aversion develops.

As the pre-frontal cortex comes increasingly into play through elementary school and high school, we develop avenues to reason with our emotions. But for the same reason you can't tell your heart to beat faster or slower, it's difficult to get meaningful results telling yourself to calm down when you see a mountain lion or when you're tearing out your hair from a stressful deadline. The primal brain is faster than reason. So if you're afraid of public speaking and someone asks you to give a spontaneous toast, by the time you can tell yourself, "this is no big deal," your pulse has already skyrocketed and you're starting to sweat. Reason can help you give the toast despite the jitters. But the only way to make that annoying heart flutter and gut twisting go away is through doing lots more public speaking—volunteer to give your own spontaneous toasts, for example (you can secretly plan them so you feel confident).

Take a recent study by neuroscientists Daniela Schiller and Elizabeth Phelps that was published in Nature. At NYU, they taught a group of people to fear a blue square on a computer screen by occasionally pairing images of the blue square with a light shock. (By contrast, a yellow square came with no accompanying shock.) Each participant knew intellectually that the blue square was completely benign. It was that damn buzzer that was doing the shocking. But that didn't stop their primal brains from developing a distinct fear response—increased sweat on the skin—to the blue squares, even sans shock.

To emphasize how little control the conscious mind has over unconscious fear learning, Schiller ran this test on me after I'd already read her study. Though I wasn't consciously afraid of the blue squares after the first shock, the monitor measuring sweat on my skin showed otherwise. And when Schiller and Phelps' test subjects came back into the lab a full year later, they still broke into a scared sweat when they saw the blue squares. And if that's how deep and long our fears linger in the primal brain with blue squares and shocks, you can imagine what the brain does with real trauma. The way to heal the irrational fear successfully and permanently, Schiller and Phelps found, was by triggering the original fear memory with a reminder square, then following up very soon after (within six hours to be exact) with positive exposure therapy—repeated blue squares without shocks, essentially remaking the old fear memory. "Avoidance is the natural response to fear," Schiller told me, "but it's not the one that works."

It may sound like bad news that it's so hard to talk yourself out of old fears, but just like we use our more developed brains to guide our children toward positive exposure to, say, the dark or a new school, once we understand how fear works, we can create healthy exposure experiences for ourselves. That might sound a little, well, babyish. But if we don't, the primal brain will simply draw its own conclusions based on life's random events—often prioritizing the negative, our failures, for survival—and integrate those experiences into a personality.

I know this all too well. I'm a military brat and had to change schools often. Being shy, the transitions were tough. But I was the type of shy kid who, once I had friends, I opened up and became gregarious and brave. So the routine was this: wander the playground alone, telling myself that I wanted to be alone—that I was a thinker, an artist. Eventually, one of the more gregarious kids in the school would take pity on me, invite me to a game, and I'd light up. That first nice guy almost always became my best friend. He introduced me to his friends, and like this, I always had a great crew. When it was time to switch schools again, I'd unconsciously use the same low-risk strategy. It worked, so aloofness—based on fear—became part of my personality, a skill that I developed to draw people in.

Growing up in a generation where not caring was cool, this aloof attitude even made me popular. But once I was in the real world, the passivity—a cover-up for social anxiety—didn't work as well. Taking the jobs and relationships that sought me out, I often felt dissatisfied. By the time my 30s rolled around, I found myself writing about topics that weren't my passions and in a wishy-washy relationship. It wasn't until that relationship ended painfully that I forced myself to take action. I started researching the science of fear and stumbled on studies about exposure therapy. Based on my favorite quote from Mark Twain—"Courage is not the absence of fear. It is acting in spite of it"—I created a homework assignment to do one thing each day that scared me: talking to a stranger in an elevator, contacting an old friend I'd had a falling out with, sending a pitch to a publisher that seemed out of range.

These baby steps became so fun—bearing surprising results like a book deal and funding for a film project I'd given up on—I started jumping into bigger, physical fears: diving with great white sharks, big-wave surfing, blind dating.

That last one might not sound like a big deal, but friends had tried to get me to go on a blind date for years, and I always made excuses, thinking the dates would be awkward. But after months of doing my exposure homework – approaching women I actually wanted to date—this time when the blind date offer came around, it seemed like a fun opportunity. There was a flutter in my chest when I showed up to the wine bar and saw a gorgeous woman named Amy waiting. (I'd wrongly assumed hot women don't get set up.) But it only took seconds of talking to her for that flutter to turn from nervousness to infatuated excitement.

Two years later, we were on a trip to Europe, debating sleep-training techniques for our son.

Jaimal Yogis is an award-winning journalist who has written for ESPN The Magazine, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and many others. His critically acclaimed first book, Saltwater Buddha, is currently being adapted into a film. The Fear Project is his second book and launches today. Tweet this story on January 8 with the hashtag #fearproject and Jaimal will automatically enter you to win one of 50 free hardcover copies he's giving away. More at www.fearproject.net.

Image remixed from doglikehorse (Shutterstock).

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Annotary Marks Up Web Pages and Saves Them for Later Research

This story will display in ...Mar 31, 2013 3:00 PM  

Chrome/Firefox/Safari: Whether you're researching a new car purchase or a term paper, you're probably going to be dealing with a lot of different web pages. Annotary lets you highlight and mark up sites, save them for later, and even share your research with collaborators.

Annotary exists as a browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Just invoke the app on a page you're using for research, and it will present you with a toolbox to save the page to your Annotary bookmarks and mark it up. You can highlight relevant blocks of text, and then type your own annotations into an on-screen sticky note. Once you're done, the page and all of your notes will be saved to your Annotary account, and you can even share the marked up page on social media or through email.

In theory, this is pretty similar to the Evernote Web Clipper. However, I enjoy being able to make notes directly on the page itself, rather than just copying relevant passages to a separate app. Annotary is free, so give it a shot for your next research project.

Annotary | via CNET

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Build a Cheap but Simple Microphone Stand or Boom Pole out of PVC Pipe

This story will display in ...Feb 8, 2013 1:30 PM  

Mic stands aren't incredibly expensive by any means, but if you want to save yourself $25 Instructables user Gabezilla found that you can build a really sturdy DIY alternative out of PVC pipe. This project can also create a boom pole, and those are far more expensive to buy ($80 on the very low end).

The project is very easy to accomplish. All you really need is a variety of PVC parts that you can obtain from your local hardware store. You just need to cut them to the right length, assemble, and you've got your mic stand or boom pole. Hit up Instructables for the full how-to.

DIY Microphone Stand | Instructables

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Build Your Own T-Shirt Folding Board With Cardboard and Duct Tape

This story will display in ...Feb 24, 2013 4:00 PM  

Employees at clothing stores use special boards to quickly and perfectly fold their merchandise, and you can create the same tool at home with some scrap cardboard and tape.

The video above will walk you through the simple process. It's similar to the clothes folding "machine" we mentioned long ago, but the design is far simpler. Once you're done, you'll be making crisp folds in mere seconds. Using this contraption probably isn't as fast as the Japanese two-second folding technique, but it's nice to have around for anyone else in your house who hasn't learned that trick.

Shirt Folding Board from Cardboard and Duct Tape | Instructables

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Combine a Wireless Router and Wall Charging Station for the Ultimate All-In-One Travel Gadget

This story will display in ...Nov 21, 2012 2:30 PM  

Why waste outlets on your router and cellphone charger when you could combine them into one, unified box? DIYer James shows us how.

After discovering a cheap Westinghouse charging station, James discovered he could fit the guts of his small TP-Link router inside of it. He even added a USB hub and a micro SD card, turning the entire thing into a small, hidden computer you'd never know was there. The router-and-charger combo is enticing enough, though—after all, those are two things we always recommend traveling with. Check out James' blog post for more information on the project.

TP-Link WR703N Custom Pwn Plug | Information Systems Auditing via Hack a Day

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Clean Your Washing Machine To Keep Clothes Fresh

This story will display in ...Feb 24, 2013 3:00 PM  

Washing machines take the dirt and germs out of our clothes, but a lot of that grime just ends up trapped in the machine itself. It's pretty easy to clean your top-loader though with a few basic supplies.

Regina Yunghans at Apartment Therapy wrote a great walkthrough to help you clean and disinfect your machine. Adding vinegar and baking soda to an empty wash cycle will do a fine job of disinfecting the wash tub, but cleaning the fabric softener well or those gross crevices under the lid will require some old fashioned elbow grease and a toothbrush. You don't need to do this after every load, but giving your machine some care every few months will help keep dirt from accumulating inside and transferring to your (supposedly) clean clothes. Be sure to check the source link for the step-by-step guide.

How To Clean a Washing Machine | Apartment Therapy

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Clean Copper Cookware with Salt and Ketchup

This story will display in ...Mar 30, 2013 3:00 PM  

Copper cookware is an attractive kitchen accessory, but only if you take good care of it. Surprisingly, you can keep it as shiny as the day you bought it with a mixture of salt and ketchup.

Mac Kohler, founder of Brooklyn Copper Cookware, shared this zany tip.

My go-to recipe for polishing copper is equal parts kosher salt and ketchup. Squeeze out a big glob of ketchup and add salt in equal measure. Spread the solution on the copperware and work it with a soft cotton or hemp cloth-not polyester or synthetics, as that will scratch the surface.

Kohler explains the science behind this trick, and shares a few other tips for maintaining copper in the interview through the source link. If salt and ketchup don't do the job for you, flour and vinegar might, so give them both a try.

Care For Copper | Kaufman Mercantile via The Kitchn

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