General Advice
Hard-won wisdom from the IrregularChat community. Practical tips across life domains—from tools that actually work to mindset shifts that matter.
Contribute: Have advice that changed how you operate? Share it in the community or submit a PR.
Tools & Productivity
Use Markdown—Everywhere
"Markdown is the industry standard. It's human readable, easy to learn, allows any AI tool or service to integrate directly with your content, enables change logs, and breaks you out of any single platform. Push to adopt it in your unit or section!"
Why Markdown matters:
- Human readable — No special software needed to read or edit
- Version control friendly — Track every change with Git
- AI-compatible — LLMs work natively with plain text
- Platform agnostic — Move your content anywhere, anytime
- Future-proof — Plain text files from 1970 still work; proprietary formats from 2010 often don't
Getting started:
- Markdown Guide — Learn the basics in 10 minutes
- Obsidian — Popular markdown-based note-taking app
- HackMD — Collaborative markdown editing
- Typora — Clean WYSIWYG markdown editor
Related: Knowledge Management for Communities
Plain Text Presentations with LaTeX Beamer
"Every slide deck I create is plain text using one of these templates and compiled to PDF."
The hard truth about PowerPoint: Good presentations are never good because of the graphics. Content and structure carry the message. Fancy animations, gradient backgrounds, and clip art don't make weak ideas stronger—they distract from them. For detail-oriented audiences, inconsistent formatting, misaligned elements, and visual clutter actively undermine your credibility.
The alternative: Write your presentations in plain text using LaTeX Beamer templates. The template handles all formatting decisions so you can focus entirely on what you're saying, not how the bullet points are indented.
- Templates: Overleaf Beamer Templates
- Benefits:
- Content-first — No fiddling with fonts, spacing, or alignment
- Version control — Track every change with Git, collaborate without "final_v3_REAL.pptx"
- Consistent formatting — Template enforces visual consistency across all slides
- Math and code — Renders beautifully without screenshots or workarounds
- Universal output — Export to PDF that looks identical everywhere
- Diff-friendly — See exactly what changed between versions
Getting started:
- Create a free account on Overleaf
- Browse Beamer templates and pick one you like
- Replace the sample content with your material
- Download as PDF
When PowerPoint is required: If you must use PowerPoint, apply the same principles—pick one clean template, disable animations, and let the content do the work.
Career & Professional Development
Document Everything
Keep a running log of your accomplishments, projects, and impact metrics. When evaluation time comes, you'll have specifics instead of scrambling to remember.
- Weekly: Jot down what you shipped, problems you solved, kudos received
- Format: Date, what you did, measurable impact
- Tool: Plain text file, markdown, or a simple spreadsheet
Related: Army Evaluation Resources | Awards Guide
Build Your Network Before You Need It
The worst time to build relationships is when you desperately need something. Invest in connections now—offer help, share knowledge, make introductions—and the network will be there when you need it.
Related: Community Skills Exchange
Learn to Write Well
Clear writing is clear thinking. The ability to communicate complex ideas simply is a career multiplier in any field.
- Book: On Writing Well by William Zinsser
- Practice: Write something every day, even if it's just notes
- Feedback: Share drafts and accept critique gracefully
Related: Community Writing
Finances
Live Below Your Means
The gap between what you earn and what you spend is your freedom. Maximize that gap, especially early in your career when lifestyle inflation is tempting.
Understand Your Benefits
Military and government benefits are complex and often underutilized. Know what you're entitled to:
- TSP matching and contribution limits
- Education benefits (TA, GI Bill, credentialing assistance)
- Healthcare options
- Leave policies
Related: Credentialing Assistance | Leaving Service
Track Your Spending
You can't optimize what you don't measure. Use a simple system to know where your money goes.
- Book: Profit First — Applicable to personal finance too, not just business
Health & Fitness
Sleep Is Non-Negotiable
"The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life." — Matthew Walker
Sleep affects everything: cognition, emotional regulation, physical recovery, decision-making. Protect it.
- Book: Why We Sleep
- Target: 7-9 hours for most adults
- Tip: Consistent sleep/wake times matter more than total hours
Move Every Day
Exercise is the closest thing we have to a wonder drug. Even 20 minutes of walking improves cognitive function, mood, and longevity.
Learn to Cook
Cooking is a force multiplier for health, finances, and quality of life. Start simple:
- Master 5-10 basic meals you enjoy
- Batch cook on weekends
- Treat eating out as occasional, not default
Learning & Academics
Learn How to Learn
Meta-learning—understanding how you learn best—pays dividends across everything else.
- Book: A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley
- Course: Learning How to Learn (free on Coursera)
- Techniques: Spaced repetition, active recall, interleaving
Read Widely, Not Just Deeply
Specialists know more and more about less and less. Cross-domain knowledge creates unexpected connections and creative solutions.
- Book: Range
- Practice: Read outside your field regularly
Take Notes That You'll Actually Use
Notes are only valuable if you can find and use them later. Develop a system:
- Capture: Get ideas out of your head quickly
- Organize: Use consistent tags or folders
- Review: Periodically revisit and connect ideas
Related: Knowledge Management
Mindset
The Soldier's Mindset
"When you choose the life of the soldier it's not too different than the Olympic athlete. You're going to be tired and everything will hurt. What separates you is that you will rise back up and fight because soldiers don't know where the race ends."
Reflections from two decades of service at the highest levels:
Pass it forward now — The current generation of warfighters needs your knowledge today. Don't wait until you're the "old veteran" nobody listens to. We're already fighting to retrieve lessons learned from LSCO that previous generations took to their graves.
Conviction over credentials — It wasn't books or quotes that made the difference. It was the conviction to add as much value as possible to the unit and the broader force. When you know something works—because you've seen it save lives—you fight to spread it.
Minimum was never the standard — A PT test was never about the minimum. Never even knew what the minimum was. Always shot for the best.
Choose service, not benefits — Some join as adults who gave up careers to serve the country, not for benefits. That choice shapes everything that follows.
Personal experience over theory — It was less about books and more about personal experience. Losing or being last was never an option. As Theodore Roosevelt said in his "Man in the Arena" speech: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again... who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly." Jump in even when it's not perfect. Criticize those in the ring less.
Excellence isn't arrogance — Aspiring to be the best and relentlessly pursuing it isn't arrogance. It's the standard required when lives depend on your performance.
Question Everything You Were Taught
Technology is advancing faster than doctrine. The tactics you learned may have been optimized for human limitations that no longer apply.
The uncomfortable question: If an AI system trained to clear buildings—running thousands of simulations with civilian and enemy roles—would it converge on the same tactics we use? Almost certainly not.
Consider why current CQB tactics exist:
- Human eyes are at a predictable height range
- Rifles are held at chest level within a narrow band
- We move through doorways sequentially because we're human-sized
- We stack and slice because that's what human geometry allows
An AI-enabled autonomous system operates in a completely different space:
- Three-dimensional maneuverability — Drones can engage from near the ceiling, near the ground, or multiple angles simultaneously
- No fatal funnel constraints — Small systems don't need to flow through doorways the way humans do
- Distributed sensors — "Eyes" everywhere, not just forward-facing at 5-6 feet
- Expendable first contact — Send something cheap through first; don't lead with your most valuable asset (humans)
The broader principle: Every tactic, technique, and procedure was designed around constraints that may no longer exist. The force that recognizes this first—and adapts—wins. The force that keeps doing things "the way we've always done them" because it's doctrine will learn hard lessons.
This applies beyond combat:
- Intelligence collection methods designed for human analysts may be obsolete with AI processing
- Communication protocols designed for voice/radio may not fit autonomous systems
- Planning timelines designed for human decision cycles may be too slow
Don't just master the current playbook—question whether the playbook itself needs rewriting.
Related: Guide to Unmanned Systems | FPV sUAS | Counter-UxS
Embrace Discomfort
Growth happens at the edge of your comfort zone. Seek out challenges that stretch you—professionally, physically, intellectually.
Control What You Can Control
Stoic wisdom that never gets old. Focus energy on your actions and responses, not on outcomes or others' behavior.
- Book: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Ask for Help
"You have not because you ask not." — James 4:2
Most people want to help but don't know you need it. Be specific about what you need and who might be able to help.
Fail Forward
Failure is data. Extract the lesson, adjust, and move. The only wasted failure is one you don't learn from.
Office & Organizational
Manage Up
Your boss has constraints and pressures you may not see. Make their job easier:
- Bring solutions, not just problems
- Anticipate what they'll need
- Communicate proactively about blockers
Master Email
Email is a tool, not a task. Control it or it will control you:
- Check at set times, not constantly
- Process to zero when you do check
- Use filters to pre-sort low-priority messages
- Write clear subject lines that indicate action needed
Meetings Need Agendas
If there's no agenda, there's no meeting. Before accepting or scheduling:
- What's the purpose?
- What decisions need to be made?
- Who actually needs to be there?
- What's the expected outcome?
Business & Entrepreneurship
Start Before You're Ready
Perfectionism is fear in disguise. Ship something, get feedback, iterate. The market will teach you faster than planning ever will.
Related: Zero to One | Company of One
Solve Real Problems
The best business ideas come from problems you've personally experienced. Build something you would use.
Cashflow Is King
Revenue means nothing if you can't pay bills. Understand the difference between profit and cash, and manage cash religiously.
- Book: Profit First
Related Resources
- 2026 Community Recommendations — Books, podcasts, articles
- Community Reading List — Evergreen recommendations
- Community Skills Exchange — Learn from each other
- Learning Resources — Free courses and training