What are some of your best life hacks? Not just limited to tech, although it is pretty ripe for hacking. I'm interested in social interaction-based hacks, too.
Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
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Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#2Focusing on actual productivity instead of all the apps, software, and techniques to get things done. It's taken a while to learn that, but a very valuable lesson in my opinion.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#3StrongLifts 5x5 - real strength and fitness for geeks like me.
Getting Things Done using Org mode (very simplified).
The Unschedule from The Now Habit.
Many tips from The Four Hour Work Week.
Make lists. Not too many. Mostly do.
I'm sure I'll think of more...
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#4If I am in a conversation with another developer because they asked for my help I will stop talking if it looks like they are 1. either ignoring my advice 2. or have understood enough and are busy doing what they need to do or 3. are busy doing something completely different.
This way I don't waste my time, and I can quickly get back to what I was doing. I tend to spend a lot of time explaining concepts even to people that may know what I am talking about so that I don't have to be interrupted again.
I work better while in an almost empty room with no movement around me and no noises other than the music I am playing.
I tend to spend too much time multitasking so I have disabled all of the notification features on most of the apps I use (such as Mail.app, Adium, Twitter, and others) now they can't interrupt me with an badge stating how many messages I still have unread in my Inbox. It has given me a cleaner experience.
Socially I have started cutting out those people that only demand my time but don't provide me with anything. There is no reason why I should be spending my time writing a long reply when I know you are not going to read it or provide some sort of adequate answer to the questions I posed in an attempt to help you. This is in real life as well, phone calls and the like.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#5I wanted to listen to my music in a way that my iPod wouldn't allow. So that day, about a week ago, I wrote an app to play my music the way I wanted. It has a big button, when pressed once marks that position of the song, twice immediately loops from the first mark to the second.
I felt like I had just grabbed a wrench or something and fixed a part of my life, but the wrench was Xcode.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#6Okay, just life hacks, no tech:
Figuring out how to skip boring classes and phys ed in high school (mostly) without getting caught. Ah, good times.
Bypassing uncooperative assistants on the phone in order to schedule meetings with their superiors (OK, not my proudest moments actually).
Faking attractiveness and social intelligence in order to get girls with all kinds of tricks, including infamous wing man maneuvers.
Wow... I better stop right there. Those are all kind of terrible :-(
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#7Setting goals and then pursuing those goals along any avenue, not just the obvious ones. Empiricism along the way.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#8Last time one of these threads came up, someone mentioned using the privileged security lines even without a first class ticket or whatever frequent-flyer status you need. I just flew out of Chicago and skipped a pretty decent sized line without any fuss from anyone.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#9Okay, just life hacks, no tech: Figuring out how to skip boring classes and phys ed in high school (mostly) without getting caught. Ah, good times. Bypassing uncooperative assistants on the phone in order to schedule meetings with their superiors (OK, not my proudest moments actually). Faking attractiveness and social intelligence in order to get girls with all kinds of tricks, including infamous wing man maneuvers.…
I want to be this guy's friend.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#10Putting myself in positions where I have to pull through.
Like signing up to be a TA at the university -- now I know that I have to really master the course content.
Or telling people that I do/will do x and y.. so now I have to do x and y or else I'm a hypocrite and that sure would be bad. I tell my friends that I get out of bed by counting down out loud from 5..0, and that I ALWAYS get out of bed at 0. And I've convinced myself that I'm a hypocrite or fool of some sort if I don't follow through, just because i told people.
Also made a fun screen scraper last week for a course at the University that filled up with only Seniors and Juniors(has at least 100 students trying to get in). Crontabs to run my script which logs me into the course website and checks the spot availability of the class(and then alerts me if it's open). That's fun because only me and the other CS kids could possibly do this.