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

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

#771

Post by darkkindness »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #760
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...

The problem with this is practical use. I so rarely need to knot something securely or in a special way that it doesn't seem worth the time to learn. I can look things up if I find a use. What practical uses do you use knots for?

Someone close to me taught me how to square knot, so my hoodie-tied-around-my-waist would stop slipping, as I was using a double overhand knot before.

I'd also like to add that learning knots is honestly more of a 5-minute commitment to learn than a 1-hour commitment, but it's definitely still a commitment.

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

#772

Post by slowhand09 »

wyxuan wrote: post #767
slowhand09 wrote: post #763

Learn how to get out of debt!!! https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/how-the-debt-snowball-method... Step 1: List your debts from smallest to largest regardless of interest rate. Step 2: Make minimum payments on all your debts except the smallest. Step 3: Pay as much as possible on your smallest debt. Step 4: Repeat until each debt is paid in full.

Dave Ramsey had been called out for questionable advice, and it's not something you could change and learn in an hour

Questionable? Meaning different from somebody else' advice? Show me somebody else giving advice for free that has gotten thousands of people out of debt. My guess is his advice is questioned by those who don't show the willpower to follow the steps. When they fail, they criticize the program. What he says here is solid.

edit: I just googled his name. On results page 5, yes five, I found one "advisor" disparaging his advice. And I think that guy's advice was questionable.

You can do all the paperwork you need easily in an hour. If you have any spreadsheet skills you can show in detail when you'll have each loan repaid.

I would challenge you to follow the steps, put it on paper, calculate how much and when. Then show me any fault with that process.

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

#773

Post by mrzool »

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…

Happy to see this rose to the top. I mean, knowing about compound interest and how to coil cables is cool and all, but the art of preparing food for oneself and others is by far the most important skill listed in here. As someone once said, “if you don’t know how to cook you’re loosing at life”.

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

#774

Post by alanbernstein »

krosaen wrote: post #561

Setup and learn how to use Anki to practice spaced repetition. Going forward you can now decide what you would like to remember (so long as you are willing to spend 5-15 mins a day reviewing)! People's names, that command you always look up, your credit card number, interesting statistics (e.g number of passenger miles per death for bicycles vs cars vs planes) foundational facts in your field that will allow you to p…

Maybe be careful putting your credit number into a card in the web service though...

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

#775

Post by bargl »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #188

If 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.

People are very dynamic, we either grow together or apart. My current success at marriage is due to a concerted effort not only to find out what interests my wife but to take an active role in it even if I don't wholesale agree. Then we can have a deeper discussion about it and that shows I care even when I don't agree.

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

#776

Post by xchaotic »

pps43 wrote: post #607
gwd wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm sure I've used a sheet bend at least three times in the last year in random situations. I haven't used the zeppelin bend, but I would say having an easy-to-learn-and-tie-but-effective knot "in your kit" is quite useful; you never quite know when it…

European death knot is much easier to learn than zeppelin bend.

All great Metal band names!

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

#778

Post by alanbernstein »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #243
Symbiote wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of Cyrillic is learned by the average HN reader if you tell them to think Greek rather than Latin. "P" is an "r" sound (rho), "П" is a "p" (pi), etc.

I always wondered why in English the constant and the letter π pronounced as /paɪ/ when the Greek letter is obviously /pi/. It really grinds my gears, there's no pie in π! Does Enlgish routinely localize foreign alphabet names? If so, it's bad practice. I believe no one in the world learns English alphabet pronouncing it arbitrary, and not as /ˈeɪ/ /ˈbiː/ /ˈsiː/.

Doing the Greek course on Duolingo, I discovered that several of the pronunciations for Greek letters I learned in college are incorrect. In gross terms (I don't really know how to use IPA to be more specific here): beta -> veta, delta -> thelta, for example.

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

#779

Post by Havoc »

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…

>It creates kinks when unwound and make it extremely likely for knots to form

99% sure that's a side benefit not the reason.

The way the audio techs explained it to me was as a method of reducing stress on multi-strand copper inside. i.e. the reason why it unwinds cleaner is because said tension isn't there.

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

#780

Post by 52-6F-62 »

reubenswartz wrote: post #730
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…

This is so important. I don't know if you can "learn to cook" in an hour, but you can probably drive to the store, buy some vegetables, come home, and make a great salad with an awesome homemade vinaigrette dressing in less than an hour. I try to eat fairly healthy, but having a salad that's easy to make that I actually crave (oh no, I've turned into an old person) most days at lunch is amazing. It's fast, and I have…

I regularly make my own dressing as well! I have a few basic recipes—most are pretty much the same as yours. One I like in the summer especially is a really simple one:

+ 2 parts olive oil

+ 1 part honey (try and make it good wildflower or clover honey)

+ 1 part squeezed lemon juice (add some zest as well if you're feeling energetic—I hate cleaning graters)

+ Salt & pepper to taste

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