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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?

#241

Post by vekker »

sumgame wrote: post #182

Funninly I just went for the Wim Hoff fundamentals course yesterday and it fits the description very accurately. You can learn it online by watching the video or downloading the app and shouldn't take more than an hour. But preferable do the cold exposure part of it with somone around. The breathing technique by itself is still great though

I had an accident last week and find the Wim Hof breathing tremendously helpful with managing the pain and inflammation.

I highly recommend learning this technique. It's free, you can find plenty of YouTube videos. A "proper session" should take 20 minutes (= until your breath retentions are at least 2 minutes long and you feel the effects).

The cold exposure is also great to experiment with. I find that regular cold exposure, learning to control the gasp reflex and calming yourself down in spite of the feeling of the ice is something very useful to learn and a "skill" that carries over to general pain and stress management.

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

#242

Post by anonu »

tempestn wrote: post #144

How, and why, to invest in a simple portfolio of index funds. Split between equity and fixed income based on your risk tolerance, and diversify equities globally. This will give you a low-cost, set-and-forget investment portfolio that you can add to over time without ever having to worry about what you should buy or what the market might do. Just add to it regularly over time, and end up with solid retirement savings…

I think the market needs better, easier portfolio tools for the lay person. Tools that can help coach the user as well

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

#243

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

Symbiote wrote: post #191
keiferski wrote: post #61

The Cyrillic script is fairly easy to learn and will let you phonetically read a bunch of languages (Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Mongolian, and Serbian to name a few.) Each language has a few unique letters and pronunciation can vary slightly, but for the most part they are the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script

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/.

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

#245

Post by jeltz »

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.

Here in Sweden most people are comfortable speaking English so if you address them politely in English they will probably be more comfortable and less caught off guard than if they have to decipher phrases in broken Swedish, no matter how well meaning.

Still probably a good idea to learn some words so you can read signs.

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

#247

Post by emerongi »

xouse wrote: post #121

People think touch typing takes a long time to learn, and getting good does take a while, but it only takes about an hour to memorize the alphanumerics and which finger types what well enough to break the hunt and peck looking at the keyboard cycle forever. Once the cycle is broken just typing casually is enough to eventually achieve mastery. It's only that one or two hours that really suck, and then that week or so…

It definitely took me longer than an hour. I had been using the keyboard wrong for over a decade, so it was hard to undo. I did an hour every day for 2 weeks, I think, after which it stuck. I then wrote at 30-60WPM for a while, which was a bit of a pain.

Now I can get up to 100WPM, definitely appreciate that I took on the challenge.

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

#248

Post by self_awareness »

Ensorceled wrote: post #239
derpherpsson wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHY

So you’re not saying “no, not bee, DEE” the rest of your life.

If I want to spell out something over the phone, I'm saying:

Hellen, Eve, Lawrence, Lawrence, Ophelia, Wallace, Ophelia, Robert, Lawrence, Donald.

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

#250

Post by self_awareness »

IvyMike wrote: post #14

One minute: what a dechoker is and how to use it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkqgexP_NNE One hour (because as easy as it looks you're gonna have to do it at least 4 times): deboning a chicken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfY0lrdXar8

This is horrible. I'm not even a vegetarian but I can't watch it.
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