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

441–450 of 1001 posts

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

#441

Post by sgdpk »

tarsinge wrote: post #261
taneq wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use a computer in any way in the course of your job or daily life, touch typing is the single biggest improvement in productivity and quality of life that you can make. It is SO much faster and easier than hunt and peck.

Second this. Also more specific but if you are french the keyboard layout is not great for programming (because []{}';. are not straightforward). I’m more happy since I switched to QWERTY layout for programming. Since I touch type I can easily switch depending on the task.

Just to add that this is not about QWERTY. The portuguese and spanish layouts are QWERTY, but still a pain [1]. Typically the best is to look for the US QWERTY layout or the international layout [2], the ones that have easily accessible brackets.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KeyboardLayout-Portuguese...

[2] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/106058/difference-...

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

#443

Post by Eliezer »

schoen wrote: post #66
Eliezer wrote: post #20

If you have even a small amount of math talent, you should be able to grasp the key ideas in Bayes's Rule that quickly iff you read https://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule_guide .

The biconditional is a pretty strong claim here (especially considering that you yourself have written well-regarded introductions to this topic).

It's spoken tongue-in-cheek, but in fact I don't know of any other intros including all of my own other efforts that I would make that claim about. Writing Bayes intros that actually work and introduce the most critical concepts is hard. Read the Arbital intro and compare others before you assume I'm joking or that the joke is false.

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

#444

Post by joshspankit »

muzani wrote: post #428
koliber wrote: post #338

Understanding compound interest thoroughly. Compound interest is probably the most powerful "force" governing out lives. It is crucial when borrowing money, especially for longer terms. It is crucial when saving and investing. It is crucial in self-development, where a tiny 5% improvement in some area of your life per year can mean that you are twice as good at something in 15 years. It is important when evaluating a…

Compound anything is powerful. Interest is... really slow these days though. Seems to be around 3% return after inflation. And with all the countries taking really high national debt, who's to say it will get better? The whole compound concept applies very well to startups though. 3% a week adds up.

3% is the high-end of the “consumer” (aka “chump”) interest rates. In fact, since inflation is about 3%, over time your money doesn’t grow. (Though, if you’re earning less than inflation your money is actually decreasing in value, so maintaining is better than that)

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

#445

Post by Kaiyou »

lisper wrote: post #85
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 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.

Reminds me of the old joke..

A: I'm sorry, I don't speak English.

B: But you just spoke English, how is that?

A: I'd answer this, but like I said, I do not speak English.

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

#446

Post by gulabjamuns »

jbverschoor wrote: post #434
RobertRoberts wrote: post #176

How to cook for yourself, really, really good food. I no longer crave restaurant food, and all of the really important things I learned about cooking take just the time to read it, hear about it and then try it. All without any special hardware. A few examples: 1. Cooking jasmine rice: rinse it first, 1 c. water to 1 c. rice ratio. Bring to boil, turn down heat to lowest setting. Leave lid /the entire time/. Fluff th…

3. Don't store eggs in the fridge, and don't frikking wash them!

Why not wash them?

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

#447

Post by danvoell »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #176

How to cook for yourself, really, really good food. I no longer crave restaurant food, and all of the really important things I learned about cooking take just the time to read it, hear about it and then try it. All without any special hardware. A few examples: 1. Cooking jasmine rice: rinse it first, 1 c. water to 1 c. rice ratio. Bring to boil, turn down heat to lowest setting. Leave lid /the entire time/. Fluff th…

1 & 3 - I had no idea.

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

#448

Post by unkulunkulu »

tarsinge wrote: post #254
RobertRoberts wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add a few things I learned to improve your memory: 1. Care about the subject 2. Focus on memorizing it: This may seem dumb, but how many times have you forgot where you placed your keys? If all you do is momentarily state to yourself "I set my keys here" when you put them down, it's almost hard to forget. 3. Don't eat white sugar or white flour processed, or other foods that may cause you to loose concentrati…

Also another trick (without going full formaliser spaced repetition): reread the same thing the next day, and then a week after. Boring but very effective for long term retention.

I would argue you better practice recall than rereading, i.e. put some notes after reading, make an abstract, expand on it with new thoughts next day, in a week etc. Just rereading might be a) boring b) constantly giving you a sense of familiarity, which is not knowledge. When I have to reread something that is not too deep I sense that I have made a mistake first time by not really thinking about the text.

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

#449

Post by greyhair »

collyw wrote: post #406
ryanschneider wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a seriously overlooked application of this principle is in nutrition and dieting. Over- or under- eating by a small percentage of your required intake might not have a discernible effect immediately but really adds up over time, both for weight loss and gain.

I am pretty sure that only applies to certain people. I stay fairly skinny no matter what, though I do move about a lot.

How old are you? My father was thin until he turned 27. He was never huge, but at 27 he was 170lbs (6'2") and at his peak, around age 65, he was a little over 200. He warned me about that. At 27, I was also 170 lbs (6'2") (I am nearly a clone of my dad), and then slowly gained weight. I briefly ballooned to 215 around age 31, but hammered that back down to 185, but since then it has slowly climbed to 200 (at age 60). I am back down to 196. In my early twenties I could eat a large 'special' pizza by myself in about 45 minutes. Metabolism changes with age. I dearly miss being able to eat anything I wanted at any time with no consequences.

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

#450

Post by ahmaman »

Learn how to make good coffee - Here is for example how to make a great cup of coffee using an Aeropress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmjPjZZRhNQ&t=252s

Learn the basics of economics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0

Learn how to journal.

Learn the basics of meditation.

Learn how to learn stuff using flash cards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzCEJVtED0U - I used this method to learn Finnish (https://mansour.blog/how-to-learn-any-human-language-the-sto...)

Learn how to make good food - making good (amazing) food is surprisingly easy

Post reply on HN