- [Narrator] We all have our bad habits. Some of these are unique to us and some of these are collective. The individual ones
we're probably aware of, but the collective ones, the ones everyone does, might be harder to notice. Luckily, you have us to
point them out for you. Here are just a few things that most of us have been consistently
doing wrong forever. - Amazing! (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Number 10. Charging your phone. There are quite a few phone
charging myths doing the rounds. One of these is that you
should let your battery get to the point of dying
before you start to recharge it. The thing is, charging a lithium battery
for an extended period of time actually wears it out. According to Battery University, which is itself run by a
battery company called Cadex, smartphones are subject to stress in a similar way that
smartphone owners are. Additionally, once your
phone is 100% charged, keeping it plugged in only serves to increase its stress levels. As it gets trickle
charges to keep it at 100% while it is charging. This keeps the battery
in a high stress state and gradually wears it down. It's the human equivalent of running a never-ending marathon. Battery University recommends that you should charge your phone when it loses 10% of battery life and stop charging it just
before it reaches 100% so it is not effected by
those pesky trickle charges. Another thing you
probably haven't realized is that you should also
take off your phone's case on certain models when charging. This is because some cases
can cause the battery to overheat and wear
out your battery's life. So charging your phone
naked in short bursts is the way to go. Number nine. Cutting a cake. Most of us cut our cakes in slices, which seems perfectly reasonable. How else would you cut a cake? Well, wedges cut from the middle are fine. You will get a perfectly
good piece of cake cutting it that way. However, it does leave
the center of it exposed and that means that the cake will start to dry and
go stale a lot quicker. Instead, you should be cutting your slices through the center of the cake, I.e. one long slice through the middle. Once you've had your fill
of the confectionary, you can push both sides
of the cake together, meaning you now have a brand new, slightly smaller cake that will stay fresh for much longer. This method has actually
been around for 100 years and was first noted in 1906
by British mathematician, Sir Francis Galton. In a letter to the journal Nature. Number eight. Holding your steering wheel. For years, American driving instructors have been telling their students to keep their hands at the 10 and 2 o'clock positions on their steering wheels when driving. This was recommended in the past to compensate for cars
without power steering. This was a great tip back in
the crazy days of the 1990s, now though, as people have started to take car safety pretty seriously, every vehicle comes with
its very own airbag, meaning that holding your hands in this traditional position could see you wind up
with some injured limbs. In fact, the National Transportation Safety Board, a U.S. agency that monitors car safety, has reported some terrible injuries specifically due to how people are holding their steering wheel. Instead we should now be placing our hands in the 9 and 3 o'clock positions, with the thumbs placed
along the rim of the wheel, rather than looped around it. When airbags are triggered, they force open the plastic
cover on your steering wheel. The higher your hands are placed, the more likely they are to
be over the plastic cover, and thus the less likely
they are to be in harms way. For safety reasons, it's also best to avoid resting your hand on the center of the wheel and driving with an
underhand grip when turning. Sure you might feel a
little more comfortable now, but when your airbag winds up breaking your arm in a minor accident, you'll probably feel
a little less relaxed. Number seven. Going to the bathroom. This is one you probably
thought you couldn't get wrong. Right? We've all been doing this fairly naturally since we left our diapers behind. Turns out practice has
not made us perfect. Science has discovered the optimal way to do your number twos. Sitting on the toilet places
your knees at a 90 degree angle to your abdomen, which actually leads to a relaxed colon and a slightly choked rectum. This causes some additional
strain on the abdomen and can lead to gastrointestinal issues. Before the invention
of the flushing toilet at the end of the 16th Century, we all just used to squat in the woods, occasionally glancing over our shoulders for any eminent bear attacks, and that's apparently
the best way to do it. Squatting relaxes the
muscles in our pelvic floor and straightens our rectums, thus making the process a lot easier. And there is now actually a
product available to help. It's called the Squatty Potty. It elevates your feet and ensures your knees are above your hips so that you're sitting at
effectively the same angle you would be if you were squatting. Thereby making bathroom
breaks a whole lot simpler and helping to prevent issues such as hemorrhoids, constipation,
colitis, and colon cancer. Number six. Wearing earphones. There's not a whole lot to wearing any ear headphones, right? You just put them in your ears and wait for that Glee
soundtrack to kick in. Sure, they've never seemed
the most efficient of objects. In fact, a major problem with
earphones is that they're a one size fits all product
that doesn't fit all. They fall out when your jogging, they get tangling up and
lost remarkably easily, too. While we can't do much
about the latter two, there is a simple way around the first. We should all be wrapping our headphones over the top of our ears before we plug them into our ear hole. And there you go. No more earphones crashing
to the floor while we run. Number five. Peeling a banana. This is an obvious example of humanity arrogantly
ignoring mother nature. We all peel bananas by the stem. It's unanimous. It seems a few centuries ago, a bunch of humanity's
richest kings got together and decided that this was how bananas would be skinned forever, even if peeling them
that way causes bruising as well as causing them to get
annoyingly mushy at the top. Really, we should be peeling
bananas from the bottom. It's easily done too. Simply pinch the black
part at the top and peel. How do we know this is
definitely the way to go? It's how the monkeys do it. Number four. Using antiperspirant in the morning. This one might seem a little
counterintuitive at first, but stick with me. You shouldn't be putting
antiperspirant on in the morning. In fact, it's most effective when
you use it the night before. Applying it in the morning, particularly after showering, makes it difficult for its ingredients to get into your sweat
ducts and clog them up. What you should be doing is
using it before you go to bed. This gives the deodorant
time to work its magic and plug those pores. Even after showering the next morning, a good antiperspirant
will still remain active for at least 24 hours. How do we know this is the
best way to use the product? For most clinical
strength antiperspirants, it's actually written on the label. Number three. Washing your hair. Here's one that could free
up a little bit more time in your day. You probably shouldn't
be washing your hair on a daily basis. In fact, washing your hair everyday is not only bad for your hair, it actually helps to make it more greasy. This is because frequent washing removes a beneficial oil known
as sebum from your crown. Sebum helps stop bacterial infections by protecting your hair and skin from disease causing microbes. You need some sebum in hair. Shampoo and an emulsifier
that traps excess oil and dirt and washes these oils away when you rinse. Over-washing leaves a dangerous
lack of sebum in your scalp and causes your oil
glands to overcompensate by flooding your hair and
making it look less than 100%. Number two. Applying moisturizer. When it comes to applying moisturizer, most people go for the rubbing the cream into the face method until the moisturizer has entirely disappeared. This is wrong. Moisturizer is supposed
to be slowly absorbed by the body's outer layer. It should be gently tapped onto the skin using the tips of your fingers and then smoothed out. Patting your face gently
helps to stimulate circulation and flushes out toxins that have built up in your lymph nodes. A vigorous rub only serves
to stretch your skin. When it comes to applying eye cream, it's also best to apply it in the morning, rather than late at night, as it is more likely to
be absorbed at this stage because your blood flow is more active at this hour of the day. Number one. Pouring juice. You probably think you're something of a juice pouring expert. What could be easier than
opening the carton and pouring? So there might be some glugging and a few splashes here and there, but the majority of the liquid
still stays in the glass. But what if we told you there
was a better way to pour? A splash free method. What you should be doing is
turning the carton around and pouring the juice
with the hole at the top. If the carton has a fold, you can simply hold that
down and pour over it. Easy and no splashes
to clean up afterwards. There ya go. Just a few more ways humanity
has been getting things wrong for decades, and in some
cases, even centuries. Which example shocked you the most? Are there any you have
been doing all this time? Are there any we've missed? Let us know in the comments
below. Thanks for watching.
