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Ask HN: What are your best life hacks/best tools in life/time savers?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks/best tools in life/time savers?

#81

Post by drKarl »

DrSprout wrote: post #74
nhooey wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get to work some quicker way and run instead. Running is much more valuable than walking.

Well, you have to factor in changing out of your running clothes and showering if you're in a "professional" environment. Also I have bad knees that make even the mile I walked to the job I just quit a little difficult. I doubt they will ever heal enough that running is a good idea.

You can try bicycling, it's faster and you won't sweat unless you have to go uphill. Also, if your office has showers (a rare but nice feature) you can go running/bicycling and have a shower.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks/best tools in life/time savers?

#82

Post by hugh3 »

wheaties wrote: post #15

Buy a starter pistol, you know the kind that they use at tracks. This is still considered a valid weapon for airport screeners so this "tip" applies only to non-carry on luggage. Put the pistol into your luggage and declare it before depositing it with the airline. It won't be lost, tampered with or diverted, ever. The reason is simple. They have to treat luggage with firearms different from normal luggage. It goes i…

How does that work out in terms of the amount of time you have to spend vs the probability of having your luggage lost?

Also, don't you think it's a bit unethical? Applying the "what if everyone did this?" rule it seems to come across pretty badly.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks/best tools in life/time savers?

#83

Post by lhorie »

nhooey wrote: post #69
lhorie wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 5) don't commute more than 20mins each way I walk to work. Free 1.5 hr of exercise every day and I don't have to spend money on transportation.

You can get to work some quicker way and run instead. Running is much more valuable than walking.

I could jog on my way home, but since I sweat a lot, running to work is probably not a good idea. I've thought about biking, but it'd be a hassle because of the narrow staircases in my building. The subway is just slightly faster than walking (when it's on time anyways)

In any case, I do ~6 hrs of martial arts per week, and I find that walking is a nice low-impact type of activity to complement it.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks/best tools in life/time savers?

#87

Post by drKarl »

jgrahamc wrote: post #84

Ditch your TV. I did this by accident ( http://blog.jgc.org/2010/02/year-without-tv.html ) and it's been an enormous change in my life.

Yep, I do prefer to watch films/series/documentaries not being broadcasted live, because I choose what I want to watch instead of watching whatever rubbish is on tv, and with the additional benefit of skipping ads.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks/best tools in life/time savers?

#88

Post by jleard »

drKarl wrote: post #62
seltzered wrote: post #54

humanized enso. I usually drop this in every "best tools" thread. for windows users: I recently learned to like installing the console app and set the startup path in it to cygwin. I'm sure most of you HNers do this already, but I've spent a loong time looking for a decent console setup on windows x64, where andlinux/colinux isn't supported yet.

Sure, while using windows I always setup Console2 + Cygwin killer combo. This way I don't need putty/Secure CRT/whatever and I can create tunnels so that I can connect to remote databases using TOAD.

I use a variant of this when running Windows: Ubuntu in VirtualBox is always running.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks/best tools in life/time savers?

#89

Post by andrewl »

Wall timers for my air conditioners. I have window units in my bedroom and living room. I'm on the top floor of my building, right under a black tar roof. In the summer my place would sometimes get so hot that I'd have to leave both air conditioners on all day just so the place was livable when I got home. Not cool, just livable. My asthma reacts badly to heat, and I'm addicted to breathing.

Then I bought a couple of timers. They're like the ones people use to turn lamps off and on, only these are heavy duty, and can handle the load of an air conditioner. Now the AC turns on in the middle of the afternoon, and things are fine by the time I get home. The living room unit turns off at midnight, so I won't accidentally run it all night if I drift off in my bedroom. The bedroom unit shuts off at 8:30 AM, so I don't accidentally leave it running all day. Not high-tech, but useful.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks/best tools in life/time savers?

#90

Post by joshkaufman »

jgrahamc wrote: post #84

Ditch your TV. I did this by accident ( http://blog.jgc.org/2010/02/year-without-tv.html ) and it's been an enormous change in my life.

I ditched my TV in 2005 (http://personalmba.com/need-more-time-to-read-get-rid-of-you...). There's no way I could've read so many books If I didn't.
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