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Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?

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Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?

#233
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d recommend asking Tim Ferris.

Mr. Ferris certainly has a lot to say about the process of learning, but I haven't run across him saying anything about this particular course.

This was a joke.

Tim Ferris still promotes a “life hack” of paying other people to read books for you and provide a summary. Of course, this entirely detracts from the entire reason to read a book or any complex piece of information that might affect people differently depending on biases and past experience (so anyone who’s interested enough to read said information / content).

Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how does one find business ideas that you can charge 300/customer? is it 300 per month or per year?

I'd err closer to $300/month. How do you find ideas in this category? Simple: Just look at what people are already paying lots of money for. Off the top of my head, consumers spend lots of money on education (courses, seminars, books, classes, workshops), events and experiences, travel and vehicles, rent and housing, clothing and accessories, food, hobbies, etc. Businesses spend lots of money on recruiting and hiring…

Off the top of your head what are some of the more successful ‘learn to code’ indiehacks?

Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?

#236
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I'd learnt about investing before I was in my late 30s - and same about value of a good pension. Still - it is never too late.

What exactly do you mean by “investing”. The notion of “investing” in a few index funds or shoveling money to a financial advisor?

Just the concept of sticking £100/£1000 here and there into a an index tracker and leaving it well alone - ideally until a rainy day/emergency.

There have been plenty of times in my life I was 'cash rich' but I left my money in the bank, as I didn't know what to do with it. I used to then over pay my mortgage, which was crazy as I had a 1% interest rate and the stock market would have been a better place to put my cash.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a 'rich' man - but I've always put money aside (out of a fear/memory of being broke) I just could have worked that cash harder - and that was money that I could have taken some risk with.

Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve used Anki to learn foreign languages and it has been amazing so I tried to use it in grad school but it backfired because all my courses expected understanding a few big deep ideas and not memorization of hundreds of small facts. I think it really depends on the domain, like medschool its commonly used but I’m not sure about other areas.

Do you have any examples? I'm genuinely curious. I'm using it for languages but also math etc. I've found that medium/big picture ideas come with some kind of "insight" that has to fit into short term memory, or consciousness, so it must be possible to construct some cue that reminds me of this insight. I've also learned over time that even though it feels like I could never forget an insight I just had, over time th…

Examples of where I dont find srs productive- law and programming. Both are focused on deep ideas that do not convert easily to a short sentence and by the time you’ve gotten the idea the verbal reminder is not necessary. I know what you mean about an insight but for me when I really get something, for example an algorithm its more like a mental picture of moving parts in my head.

Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?

#240

I wish I'd discovered writing ebooks earlier. I enjoy doing it and have completed one, but haven't carved out the time to do another. Earlier in life it would have been far easier to write a number of them, which would likely have led to more career opportunities, if not more "passive" income.

Do you have any advice on where to start? any course?

Whenever I think about writing an ebook, I write out twenty blog post titles. If I can't get to twenty titles, I don't have enough knowledge or passion to write a whole book.

Then, the one time I wrote an ebook, I blogged each of those twenty titles. I set up a mailing list. I participated in forums on the topic, with my signature linking to the blog posts/email signup form.

Then, after I'd written the blog posts, I used leanpub to pull in the RSS for them. Then I edited them and expanded where needed.

That worked for me once, that's the path I'd take in the future.

Things to realize:

* writing a book is hard. I remember spending an hour on one sentence of my book (just testing to make sure I was correct about a statement).

* technical books have short lives. Tech moves on. That said, people are willing to spend money to save time.

* marketing is at least as hard as writing the book. Prepare to spend time doing this.

* If you aren't using the tech in your work (or won't be in the future) you better love the tech or your book will need changes and you won't want to put in the time.

Here's more about my book launch: http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/1339

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