The Stratagem’s Archive

Category: Life Skills

  • Take Control When Adults Don’t Listen: Lessons from the Rage Room

    When Adults Forget the Rules

    Working in a rage room is unpredictable.

    People come in to let off steam, but sometimes they forget that rules still apply.

    That night, a group of adults ignored my instructions entirely. I had told them their time was up. I made eye contact, warned them, and walked away.

    They slammed their weapons against the metal anyway.

    It was infuriating—but it taught me a critical lesson: how to handle adults who can act like overgrown children.

    And when this happens, you need a method to reclaim control.

    Using Controlled Force

    In a noisy environment like the rage room, yelling doesn’t always work. So I used controlled force: I firmly pounded my fist against the door to reinforce my presence, signaling they needed to pay attention, then entered the room.

    When I asked them again if they were done, and they said yes, I moved them out of the room.

    Simple, firm, non-negotiable.

    It wasn’t aggression, not in a visceral sense—it was clarity, presence, and boundaries in action.

    If you’re like me and are learning to set boundaries and be firm as an adult, then know it will feel uncomfortable at first, but it is a necessary muscle that needs exercising.

    Lessons You Can Apply

    • Be clear with your instructions: People often ignore rules because they think someone else will enforce them.
    • Use presence over physical force: You don’t need to tap anyone’s shoulder to be taken seriously. Body position, gestures, and a calm, firm voice go a long way.
    • Assert your boundaries: You don’t need to explain, apologize, or justify. Enforcement is the signal people respond to.
    • Learn from one-off experiences: That night was a one-off, but they are bound to repeat. Learning now equips you for similar situations.

    These are skills I practiced in real time—calm authority, controlled force, and follow-through—and they can apply anywhere you face disregard.

    Take Action Today

    Next time someone ignores your instructions or crosses boundaries, try controlled presence:

    • Stand in a visible position.
    • Use deliberate gestures to signal attention.
    • Speak clearly and firmly.
    • Follow through without apologizing or overexplaining.

    This works in high-stress jobs, meetings, or even day-to-day interactions where people try to push you around.

    Apply This Now

    Have you ever had to assert control when someone ignored the rules?

    Try using controlled force method, share your story in the comments below. If you found this post helpful, feel free to like it, share it, or hit the wave button to support the archives!

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    Want To Explore More Rage Room Takes?

    Below you can explore with me how rage rooms can be an essential tool to our mental health and how they become a place where people leave their mark in plain sight.

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  • Chores as a Creative Secret Weapon: How Cleaning Sparks Ideas

    Don’t Avoid Your Chores—Do THEM!!!

    Chores aren’t distractions from creativity — they’re invitations to it. They’re the quiet rhythm between our thoughts, the white noise that lets real ideas sneak through.

    Ever since I started my self-imposed writing schedule while juggling work and life, I thought my best ideas only came when I was busy. Turns out, that’s a lie.

    My best ideas also appear when I’m doing something boring — scrubbing the tub, folding laundry, wiping down the counter.

    Chores, it turns out, are part of my secret creative weapon.

    Work can be chaotic, repetitive, monotonous—sorry, boring as SHIT—at times. I don’t care what industry you’re in, there is no way that someone hasn’t had this thought pass through their head not ONCE in their lifetime. Whether you’re an entry worker, manager, self-employed, or a business owner, this thought makes us human, okay? 

    Chores are the same. Just with less lifting heavy freight or cleaning broken glass, and more laundry detergent and a bag of waste and trash. 

    Stop pretending to be androids in disguise alright? We don’t have that kind of public kind of access. Yet. 

    Anyways, back to the topic at hand.

    Work is mandatory and we’ll get reprimanded by higher ups if we don’t get our work done, right? You know what else will give us backlash if we don’t do them? 

    Our chores.

    Why do we have to villainize our chores that it has to be considered the “elephant in the room?” Or chores are “the frog we have to eat first?” We’re human, our schedules might not allow us to put 5 minutes to meditate, or let us take a walk if your brain is constantly on high alert-no time to wind down and relax.

    The only reason I brought up chores is because they, like majority of our jobs(don’t lie to me here, Janet!) are boring as FUCK!!!.

    I’m not saying there aren’t people who don’t enjoy cleaning, but I’m in the middle majority that does my chores to:

    • Get it out of the way and over with.
    • I have to feel productive for a few minutes on my days off.
    • And I usually get some idea to write down and explore later on.

    Because, from personal experience, I can tell you;

    You can’t invite new ideas into a cluttered head when your place looks like a homicide crime scene.

    What Kind of Ideas Were Born From Auto-Pilot Tasks?

    A lot. A lot of ideas were born from doing nothing but my mundane chores. Most of my best ideas didn’t come from deep focus. They came while I was scrubbing the tub or folding my clean clothes sitting in the basket for 1 week. Boredom is the brain’s open tab — it invites things in when you finally stop forcing them.

    All of the things you’re likely avoiding, or have hired someone to do it for you(sorry, Big Bucks over here can afford help. I’m kidding, that’s a different kind of help people need in their lives too, but I digress), such as having a clean space that you’ll be living in for as long as you possibly can has a HUGE amount of benefits.

    Plus, let’s be real, no one wants to have an unkempt living space if they can help it, right? 

    When A TV Show Is Actually Relatable and Memorable

    There’s a tv series, if someone knows what it’s called let me know, I’m too lazy to go looking for it myself, where a woman takes on a cleaning job with a pregnant woman with 2 young children. Her home is a hoarder’s paradise.

    The reason this was impactful to me, wasn’t the mess, but rather how both of the women was interacting with each other; the pregnant woman isn’t able to pay her help more than she wish she could and she’s afraid to let go of her children’s things. To her, these things were her children’s childhood, memories for all of them to hold onto. But the mom is the only one holding on to tightly.

    The helper, a single mom who’s taking on these cleaning jobs to care for her young daughter, told the other woman something along the lines that, “her and her children need space to grow too.”

    That line — ‘her and her children need space to grow too’ — hit me harder than any productivity hack I’ve tried. It wasn’t just about cleaning a house. It was about what happens when we don’t make room for our own, and the people in our lives, growth.

    This wasn’t in your face, loud, or obnoxious like some people who tell people to get their shit together. This was gentle, like an open and extended hand, and I kept that line in mind since I saw it on a YouTube short.

    We All Need Space To Grow

    Take a look at the people in your life whether or not this is true. Sure, maybe the people in your life aren’t best selling authors, Nobel prize winners, or anything like that.

    But certainly you’ve noticed that your mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, cousins, siblings(older, middle, and younger), children, guardian, friend(s), stranger in the street, your OCD coworker, or even yourself, has their own system of chaos, no?

    How they were able to figure out things that your ADHD ass struggled to figure out, right?

    You don’t have to defend yourself here, I’m not calling you out on anything. I’m inviting you to be more mindful of what people could be doing that might be pushing them ahead of the curve that meditation, nootropics, binaural beats, or walking can’t be complete without.

    You don’t need a meditation app or a Himalayan salt lamp to clear your mind. Sometimes you just need to wash the damn dishes — because when your hands are busy, your brain finally has room to breathe.

    Trust me, it’s why I published this post a lot later than my usual posting times. I’ve been feeling tired, weak, and under the weather, being up for nearly 24 hours in the last 5 days of working, and my chores were glaring at me when I just wanted to stay asleep until the world ends.

    Call to Action: Sit, Clean, Think

    Try it for a day or a week. Do your chores while keeping a small notebook nearby. Capture the ideas that appear while your hands are busy and your mind is quietly wandering.

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    Thank You for Reading to the End

    If you’d like to explore more of the archives, feel free to check out my other works down below.

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