I've considered changing my name since the first day I understood that names could be relatively normal. You see my kind parents thought it would be endearing to name me Dusty. Suffice to say, I've had a hard time projecting a certain sort of image for myself with a name like that. The only merit I've ever noted in my birthname is recognition. For better or worse, no one forgets a Dusty. I try to diffuse some of the negative image by shoehorning in humor, "hello I'm Dusty, like the adjective," but eventually I'm going to have to get it changed...
Thus spake Eliezer:
It seems that many here might have outlandish ideas for ways of improving our lives. For instance, a recent post advocated installing really bright lights as a way to boost alertness and productivity. We should not adopt such hacks into our dogma until we're pretty sure they work; however, one way of knowing whether a crazy idea works is to try implementing it, and you may have more ideas than you're planning to implement.
So: please post all such lifehack ideas! Even if you haven't tried them, even if they seem unlikely to work. Post them separately, unless some other way would be more appropriate. If you've tried some idea and it hasn't worked, it would be useful to post that too.