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…
Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
391–400 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
#392Regular expressions fall into this category. While they might take longer to master, you should know the basics after an hour. I've been surprised at how often people convert long lists line-by-line. You can sometimes take what was a multiple-hour task and complete it with a handful of cryptic characters.
agree...regular expression is like magic to me
Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
#393Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
#394CPR/Choking/First Aid course is probably close to an hour. How to change your own oil - probably lots of other money-saving home and auto DIY things... Speed reading and memory tricks can be a multiplier on learning other skills. How to use automation tools like Zapier and IFTTT - again, a force multiplier. You might be interested in this book https://www.amazon.com/First-20-Hours-Learn-Anything/dp/1591... - the auth…
What can you teach in only an hour? I work with some people who teach basic first aid, and the shortest course any of them does is 4.5 hours.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
#395Basics of presentation skills like - Using voice, body and mimics properly - Not putting lots of text on slides and just reading them - Using bullets instead of paragraphs - Tell a story and use a less formal more friendly style (not always but applies to majority of technical presentations) A nice video about the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB2pl1QbY3I
Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
#396If you've been married for a while, learn who your spouse is now . (I mean in a good way, by taking an hour to rediscover what his/her hopes and dreams are, what interests they've gained / lost, etc.) He/she is probably a pretty different person than the one you married. It's easy to overlook that.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
#397Mindfulness meditation. Sitting with your thoughts and emotions, experiencing them, and understanding them, rather than avoiding them or distracting yourself from them can have a dramatic effect on your life. And 10 minutes a day for a week can get you far enough to see some real benefits, like reduced stress and increased awareness of unhelpful thought patterns.
>Mindfulness meditation Absolutely useless thing which for some reason is shoved into each thread.
You cannot throw a word "useless" without emphasising the "use".
Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
#398Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
#399If you've been married for a while, learn who your spouse is now . (I mean in a good way, by taking an hour to rediscover what his/her hopes and dreams are, what interests they've gained / lost, etc.) He/she is probably a pretty different person than the one you married. It's easy to overlook that.
The implication being that you just don't communicate between the time you first met and now?
It is also not just that the person you're with changes. You change as well, and you might not be aware of that. I mean, we all age. Society changes, too. For example, we're all running around with a PDA with a bunch of radios these days. We weren't 30 years ago.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting that other cultural practices are dismissed as mystic bullshit by default, until a white man introduces it. That makes it more trustworthy other white people.
Wow. Rest assured, I still consider these cultural practices mystic bullshit.
I never stated there was value in every non-western cultural practice, only that the value that actually does exists is easy to dismiss away as "superstitious beliefs" (or mystic bullshit) until one of the "in-group" convinces us otherwise. No doubt, it's a good thing science now backs up meditative benefits to an individual, but it shows a certain level of arrogance if everyones culture is bullshit or backwards until [insert popular science guy] has confirmed otherwise.