Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 1001 posts

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#111

Post by shoo »

Tomte wrote: post #84
shoo wrote: post #69

For the lame definition of valuable: if you are not in the practise of negotiating, try to negotiate in more situations and see what happens! Attempting to negotiate will not harm your situation when dealing with another party making you a genuine offer. Even if you are a very mediocre negotiator, you might be able to easily eg obtain a somewhat higher salary when starting a job versus just accepting a given offer if…

I think "Never split the difference" by Chris Voss is the better book if you can tolerate a bit of bragging.

In your opinion, what does Voss' book do better?

There's also a Farnham Street podcast with Voss: https://fs.blog/2018/01/chris-voss/

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#112

Post by geowwy »

acjacobson wrote: post #91
geowwy wrote: post #26

If you're going overseas, learn a little bit of the local language. 1. Hello 2. Goodbye 3. Please 4. Thank you 5. Me 6. You 7. Him/her 8. This 9. That 10. Here 11. There 12. Do you have this? 13. Where is this? 14. How much money is that? 15. Where is the toilet? 16. Digits (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9) You'll be surprised how much of the language you pick up naturally just by memorising some basic words and using them.

I find also 'Excuse me / Pardon me' is extremely useful in the local language.

Agreed! Forgot that one

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#116

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

Taking value literally, spend an hour learning how salary negotiations for new jobs work and how to ask for & get more. patio11 has written an excellent intro to the topic, and if you're an entry-level Silicon Valley engineer, this is easily worth a cool million ($25k/yr * 40 years) in lifetime earnings.

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#117

Post by SPBS »

mantap wrote: post #95
lsiebert wrote: post #7

How to do various knots comes to mind. Square knot, A sheet bend, clove and trucker's hitch, prusik, the alpine butterfly knot, and bowlines can all be learned rather quickly, then practiced so they can be remembered easily. http://paracord550milspec.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/How...

My favorite knots to add to your list are adjustable grip hitch (AGH), siberian hitch, and zeppelin bend. The AGH is super easy to tie and very versatile. The Siberian is useful for tying a rope around a static object such as a pole or a tree. Bends are rarely useful for me since I rarely need to join two ropes together, but if you are going to learn a bend, you might as well learn the most beautiful one.

Yeah I think the zeppelin bend is the greatest knot ever, extremely secure and 100% jam proof (jam proof means the knot is easily untied even after extreme loads). I can’t think of any other bend that has those two properties, usually it’s one or the other

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#118

Post by mikekchar »

unlinked_dll wrote: post #28

How to properly wrap cables. A/V and cable techs are super anal about this and it takes just a few minutes to learn, it will change your life. Cables should never be coiled in the same direction. It creates kinks when unwound and make it extremely likely for knots to form (ever leave your headphones in your pocket?). If a cable isn't being installed permanently it should be "wrapped" using a technique called "over-un…

Wow. I was super skeptical about this thread and clicked on it "just in case I'm missing something". I was. As a nomadic developer, I'm always coiling my cables and I am always cursing my cables because they get tied up or ruined. Now I know it's me! Thank you!

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#120

Post by lisper »

kqr wrote: post #105
lisper wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always try to learn how to say, "I'm sorry, I don't speak X" in language X. When I was in Japan I got an unbelievable amount of leverage out of being able to say, "Sumi masen, Nihon-go hanasei masen" which, of course, means "I don't speak Japanese" in Japanese. The local's faces would light up and often they would respond in Japanese despite the fact that I had just told them that I don't speak Japanese.

Similarly, Excusez-moi; parlez-vous Anglais? is how you get a French person to speak English.

Je ne parle pas Francais. :-(
Post reply on HN