Six life-changing beauty hacks that will ruin your productivity

I guarantee you'll do nothing productive all week

I know I’ve been a bit quiet. You may be wondering where I’ve been. Perhaps, you’ve thought, I’m off doing something exciting and glamorous? Surely the author of an invariably interesting newsletter does invariably interesting things in her spare time?

…. could she be trekking across the Sahara? That would explain why she’s been out of touch, wouldn’t it? Yep, I’ll bet that’s where she is: the only place in the world without Internet access. A brilliant blue turban wrapped around her head, Claire must be sheltering from the sun under an acacia tree, squinting across the endless shifting sand dunes, taking notes about her invariably interesting life for her invariably interesting newsletter. Doesn’t that sound like the kind of glamorous and exciting thing Claire must do in her spare time? That would completely explain why we haven’t heard from her. Wow, I can’t wait to read her upcoming missive about the complex security situation in the G5 Sahel! That will be worth the wait!

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I’m afraid not. It’s not actually that interesting at all. The truth is it’s just been a while since I’ve had anything interesting to say.

For days running, I’ve woken up boring. This happens, from time to time. For most people, it isn’t a catastrophe. But if you’re the author of “Claire Berlinski’s Invariably Interesting Newsletter,” it is quite a serious problem.

To be frank, it’s making me a bit insane.

I was hoping all my new subscribers—welcome, new subscribers!—would leave interesting thoughts of their own in the comments section. Have you remembered to subscribe, by the way? You don’t have to—this newsletter is free—but if you do, you can leave comments, which I’d enjoy a lot.

If you did, then tomorrow morning, I’d have a place to start: I’d reply to you. I’d be so much less likely to procrastinate and waste time if I had your comments to read and your questions to answer.

I fear you’re a bit shy, though. Only one of you has left a comment so far. (Thanks, Eric!) So let me make the prospect even more enticing:

There! It’s free! I didn’t realize until just now that I could give away free trials, actually. I was just sort of poking around on Substack, clicking the buttons and asking, “I wonder what this button does?”

Fortuitously, I’d say, because now you’ve got no excuse. Please accept the free trial and leave interesting comments, okay? I need you to do that because I’ve got nothing interesting to say, but this newsletter has to be interesting.

Please would you pick up the slack?

In fact, why don’t you use the free trial to Ask Me Anything?

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So, Judith—remember her?—wrote to me a few days ago. She’s also suffering from an epic attack of procrastination. (If you don’t remember her, scroll to the bottom of this post.)

As usual when I’m at the beginning of a project, I feel like I can’t possibly do this. I know I’ve said this to you before, but I’m feeling absolutely paralyzed right now—I can’t seem to get a single word down. I don't want to produce nothing. That would be awful; it would be worse (I think) than producing something bad or unsellable, because I’d feel like a loser for not having been able to get a grip. But I can’t seem to produce anything at all.

She asked me for advice. She doesn’t really need it. She goes through this every time, and every time, in the end, she manages to write a great book. Besides, I was in no position to be giving advice. “I’ve procrastinated for ten days straight now,” I wrote back:

I hate myself for it more than anyone who doesn’t write for a living can possibly understand. I loathe myself for it. I think I’m a worthless human being who doesn’t deserve to consume oxygen, or live in an apartment with hot water and electricity. I compare myself unfavorably with every person I see. They all seem to be more useful and productive. Everyone else in the world gets up and goes to work and earns a living. Me? I’ve spent ten days watching “Ten Amazing Beauty Hacks” videos on YouTube.

Judith found this consoling, somehow:

I know it’s terrible, but it’s very comforting to me that you suffer this too. At least I’m in the best possible company. Meanwhile, because I am the queen of full-throttle, Olympic-caliber procrastination, I have developed an obsession with steel string acoustic guitar and now spend every waking moment when I should be writing trying to learn songs from YouTube videos and studying the fretboard with a guitar-training app (there really is an app for everything). It’s taking the place of archery in my life, I guess—the archery I gave up because I wanted to free up all that time I was spending at practice to write.

“Yes,” I wrote back. How well I understood:

I have developed a parallel obsession with press-on nails. The new generation is astonishing. They take five minutes to put on, cost about three Euros, and look better than the most expensive manicure I’ve ever had. This is going to put the whole nail salon industry out of business.

If they only take three minutes to put on, though, you may be wondering, how can they be so useful for procrastination? Well, I have to spend a great deal of time looking at various colors, sizes, and shapes on the Internet, evaluating their tastefulness. And who knows what other miracle beauty products are out there now? I’d best find out, right? Maybe I can press on cellulite-free thighs? After all, I have a very, very hot date tonight with my self-hatred. I need to look my best. Also, the glitter-colored nail can’t stay. I’m too old for that. And frankly, I thought the beige ones might be tasteful, but I don’t think they suit my skin tone.

I do like the wine-red, though. 

Judith at first had doubts. “Don’t press-on nails do bad things to your real nails underneath?”

“No! They don’t harm your nails underneath at all! I’m telling you, this is a revolution. Bigger news than Iran, really.”

“Wait a second,” she answered. She was beginning to grasp the potential of this. “How securely are they stuck on your nails? Can I use them on my right hand to play guitar?”

“Sure! They’re stuck pretty securely.”

“How do you get them off?”

In an access of enthusiasm, I accidentally wrote her a long essay about the sociology and economics of press-on nails. The article I was supposed to be writing— about the sociology and economics of the Great French Pension Strike—could have been written in less time, but work is what a body is obliged to do. “Soak ‘em in nail polish remover; they come right off,” I replied.

Honestly, Judith, these are miracle products. I would never have bought them because I remember those awful stick-on nails from the ‘80s—the ones that looked painfully fake. But I earned points on my loyalty card at the local discount shop which entitled me to buy something really cheap, and the only thing cheap enough were the nails. So I figured, “Whatever.” I took them home, gave them a whirl, and I was floored.

I hate salon manicures. They take forever; they cost a fortune, and I usually ruin them within a day. Also, I don’t find having another human being attend to my toenails “relaxing.” I find it disturbing. I hate doing my nails at home, though, too. I’m not good at it. I smear the polish. In the end, it never looks good. So I’d resigned myself to having, at best, nails that didn’t look ratty—though mostly they did, because even getting them “not ratty” requires time and attention. 

But I always felt, in the presence of a woman with a perfect manicure, sort of … ratty. Never again! These look good enough that if I ever win an Oscar, I’ll wear them on the red carpet. I can’t see that they’re aesthetically inferior in any way to a sixty-Euro salon manicure. The polish doesn’t chip or flake; they’re indestructible; and they’re so cheap and easy (and gratifying) to put on that there’s no reason for me ever to have ratty hands again.

I hope it takes a while for the rest of the world to catch on. I want to enjoy making other women feel ratty.

Seriously, I think this will put the majority of manicurists out of work. That’s bad news for a lot of immigrants in the West. Nail salons are a huge industry—and they’re staffed mostly by middle-aged Vietnamese women. I feel bad for them. There aren’t a whole lot of jobs like that for women who don’t speak English well. What will they do, I wonder? In France, they’d take to the streets and demand press-on nails be banned.

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Thus did Judith begin her own press-on manicure journey. It was to become an epic voyage. She discovered that the press-on manicure had been endorsed by none other than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And before you say, “Well, so has Bernie Sanders,” remember that AOC has been criticized for many things, but never for looking ratty.

“If she did pretty much anything other than what she does for a living,” Judith wrote, “I’m pretty sure I’d like her a lot.

A few hours later, she wrote again. “Now you’ve got me scrolling through press-on pedicures.”

And again. “You have to have one odd nail? Or do they give you a ring finger nail that matches the rest as well as an odd one so you can choose? You’re wearing the same sparkly nail as in the last photo you sent me or a different one?”

I gave her my best counsel:

They usually give you a matching one so you can choose. This is the height of fashion now—the single, sparkly nail—and indeed I am now wearing one golden sparkly nail, just like that, because like all modern consumers, I’m a slave to advertising. At first, I thought it looked totally dumb and cheap, but now that I see all the cool kids are wearing their nails this way, I’m pleased as punch to have a single, sparkly gold nail.

Judith was by this point profoundly intrigued, but still perplexed:

I’m so confused ... do you put nail glue on? Or do you have to put some kind of sticker on your nail and then press the nail on top of that? Or do the nails have their own sticky stuff and you just press them straight on?

I explained:

Some come with two options—sticker and glue. The stickers are for people who just want to put them on for an evening. I don’t like them. They’re fussy (they take three minutes to put on instead of two), and they only last an evening. They can’t survive a good workout or doing the dishes. But I suppose if you want to change your nails whenever you change your outfit, they’d be perfect.

They don’t all come with the same things, so make sure you’re ordering a pack that comes with glue, or order the glue separately. (Every brand of glue seems the same. But watch it, that glue really sticks! You don’t want to get it on anything that you don’t mean to stick together. On my first try, I wound up sticking myself to the floor. Took me a few hours to get free.)

I’m thrilled that you’re coming along on this wild ride with me.

A few hours later, she sent me a photo of her first purchase. “Look what you’ve started.”

I sighed with pride.

“I’m so glad,” I wrote, “that I’ve been able to help you with your procrastination problem.

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What do you do when you’re supposed to be doing something else but you just can’t make yourself do it? Have you got any advice for overcoming procrastination? Let me know in the comments.

And of course, if you wish to make a contribution to my collection of press-on nails, I would be grateful as ever for your support:

I will actually use the money to do something more interesting than my nails. But I’ll get to that later. For now, I promised you six amazing beauty hacks, and we’ve still got five to go.

I know some of you aren’t really the amazing beauty-hack type. Or so you think. But keep an open mind. Commander Salamander, have you ever wondered whether something soft and silky might lie beneath that rough scaly exterior? Maybe you just need the right exfoliant?

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The right exfoliant

Lately, everyone’s been asking me about my skincare routine. It must be said: I have very youthful-looking skin. None of you would ever guess that I’m 92, right?

I just took that photo. Unretouched, no makeup. (That’s my first tip for brighter, clearer skin, by the way. Put on some damned makeup and retouch your photos. It immediately cures acne and blemishes.)

The second tip: choose good grandparents. My grandfather could have passed for a forty-year-old when he was 90. Choose your grandparents well, because you’re going to look like them, no matter how much serum you slather on.

My third tip is to have really bad acne when you’re a teenager. You’ll be so glad you did. Are there any acne-and-angst ridden teenagers among my readers? Welcome! I know what it’s like. But trust me, you’ll have the laugh last. You know all your clear-skinned friends? They’re all going to look about a million years old when you—finally—have clear skin. (The photo above was actually the first time my skin has ever been clear, so it can be a bit of a wait.)

And you’ll have no wrinkles.

My final tip: Lactic acid peel. Order it on Amazon at 70 percent strength from Dermadik. Skin like a newborn, I’m telling you.

Now again, it’s not so much the product as the amount of time you can spend on the Internet shopping for it. If you want to evade useful work, you need to really go bargain hunting. I refuse to spend more than two Euros on a cosmetic product, even if it takes me two days to find the one I want on sale.

How many tips was that? Well, that’s all you’re getting, because I’m beginning to bore myself. But don’t despair. Things are about to become a lot more interesting around here.

(Meanwhile, see those dark circles under my eyes? Anyone have a good tip to get rid of them? I just airbrushed them out: I think this would be much better.)

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We’re Going to the Sahara

This boring phase will be over soon, because yes, that’s right—we’re going for real. My brother lives in Mauritania, and he surprised me with a ticket. So in mid-February, you’ll read an actual missive about the complex security situation in the G5 Sahel—live, from the G5 Sahel, if I have Internet access.

None too soon, because I haven’t seen the sun since mid-August. I’ve got severe cabin-fever, and I’m losing my interestingness. I can feel it flowing out of me. I need to do something interesting—soon—or all I’ll be able to talk about is my nail polish.

In the meantime, please fill the comments section with your interesting beauty hacks, tips for overcoming procrastination, and your questions.

Ask me anything.

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