I'm going to start buckling up in cabs now. Same as wearing earplugs at clubs, you might get weird looks, but it's better to be uncool than dead (or living with tinnitus).
Does it surprise you at all that I also carried around a set of earplugs on my keychain all through my college years? I highly recommend these as they don't change the audio spectrum very much compared to the foam kind:
I think I just really like low-impact high-reward behaviors. People tend to over-insure for common and minor issues and under-insure fore rare but costly ones.
Here's a tip for those who may read this and pick up a pair of these. It may sound obvious, but do take some time to adjust the depth of the plug based on what sounds good. I spent a year using them, but taking them out for a favorite song, or only for bands I didn't like much, because they rolled off the highs too much. Then, (at an underwhelming Wolves In The Throne Room show) I backed them out of my ear just a little. It was a touch louder, and I got the highs I wanted.
Thanks for the complement! Hmmm... not easy to think of them. It's not that they're weird, in practice they come off as sounding very normal, but very conservative. I would say the first thing to do is to get to know all of the known cognitive biases surrounding risk because just about all humans suck at it:
Also, read Warren Buffett's annual letters to shareholders and try to emulate his approach to risk. I think he's very good at it.
My biggest problem, after becoming more risk-aware is being comfortable taking calculated risks. I often can come off as a bit of a party-pooper. Nothing says "Life of the party" quite like piling into a cab while hopping from one bar to the next and spending the first 45 seconds of a 5 minute cab ride trying to fish a seatbelt out from under your drinking buddy's ass.
I would say other behaviors that could seem odd to some people are:
* Never play lotto, but always buy tickets for local fund raisers or charity giveaways that have desirable prizes. My wife and I won a week long Black Sea cruise at a charity event where tickets were $10 each but I estimate less than 600 tickets were sold.
* Always buy things like renter's insurance (not likely to be used but will wipe you out if you need it and don't have it) but skip things like those insurance policies they offer at the store for non-big-ticket items.
* I stopped worrying about flying but I've become very pro-bicycle even though I don't bike much at all (because I'm a pedestrian and cars are a bigger risk to me than bikes).
* Pick software frameworks and libraries more based on well-trod paths than the new hotness. Avoid the very old and for the very new, wait a bit.
* And finally, on the other hand: I quit my job, moved halfway around the world, and started a startup in a country that is notoriously hard to do business in (Japan). That would seem very risky but it was the sum of a lot of very calculated moves that seemed like good bets when I took them.
There are probably a lot more. I bet you have some too.
One thing of note with them, whilst they are better than nothing, they are only rated to 12db, I carry a set of them at all times, but also some foam ones (rated at 30db attenuation) to protect my hears when music is 110db plus. (It won't sound as good, but stops my tinnitus from getting worse)
Pretty much everyone I know that goes out to a club regularly wears earplugs. People are unlikely to even notice if you are wearing a pair of musicians earplugs.
Cutting out 12db makes a huge difference (as decibels are measured on a non-linear scale). It can make the difference between hearing this for the rest of your life or not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HIfqyHbKgY
In my case, in college, I would go to a club or show that was hearing-damaging probably at least once a week. Hundreds of shows a year, so I think that would qualify as very frequently as you say.
One of my friends was in a band and over the years that I knew him, I noticed he started to mix down his own music recordings hotter and hotter on the treble. I asked him why he was doing that and he said "I don't know, this is just how it sounds good to me." Later I realized that he probably has hearing damage and doesn't realize how much treble is in the mix for normal ears.
Keep in mind that 85db for sustained periods of time is the low end where noise induced hearing loss can begin. That's not really that loud. It's likely that your headphones can crank out over 100db and many people work in environments with loud, constant ambient noise.
