Brush while in the shower.
Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
31–40 of 187 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now, this is the part where you elaborate and tell us how you did such things. Honestly, your post is more suspenseful than a cliche horror movie.
I'm not trying to sound extra cool, if that's the reason why I'm being modded down. Those are just hacks I did when I was a lot more foolish than today. As with many things, the actual implementation is quite lame and dubious... Escaping classes: we had these forms where we were supposed to enter our missed classes and then present them to the various teachers for signature at the end of the month. The weakness of th…
nice
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#33[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#34I bake chicken wings and drumettes for a slow, but low-fuss dinner. Cover with salt and spices, rub in three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, bake on aluminum foil for 50 minutes at 190 C.
In those 50 minutes, I can clean my apartment, go for a walk, start the laundry, or whatever. The prep time for dinner takes me all of five minutes. They taste delicious and it's very easy to scale up (provided you have oven space) for visitors.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#35Use the other door. The next time you're in a crowded place, like a mall, and lots of people are trying to enter or exit, take notice. Almost 100% of the time, most of the people will all be filing through one door that is open because other people are going through it. This is despite the fact that there is probably one or more perfectly good doors to the left or right of it. Something similar for revolving doors. M…
On the topic of doors. I have a hack that speeded up transit and benefited many many people daily. There was a main entrance gate at my old high school. There was four sets of double door that opened out, that allowed students into the campus. These doors are damn heavy and one night I was cruising with my friend and I told him, I got an idea. I refused to answer any of his inquiries. We arrived at the high school, I…
Like. I do these type of time-saving calculations in my head whenever someone like the bus driver drives too slow and fails to make a light, thus costing everyone on the bus an extra minute of their lives.
You actually saved 24 minutes times, say, 3000 students, which is 24*3000/60/24 = 50 human days saved over the span of four years. Not to mention, this hack may well have lived on since you've graduated, so that's many more days of savings. Nice.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#36Never do anything to kill time.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#371) Own a business suit. It hacks other people, because whatever problem you are trying to get resolved does not happen to the sort of people who wear business suits. It also hacks yourself - you'd be amazed how hard it is to sound like an absent-minded twenty-something when you look like the CEO of a multinational. (Trust me.)
2) Writing letters - on paper, physical letters - is the most underrated professional skill there is. Every bureaucracy in the world is a machine to turn letters into things you want. When possible, hand-deliver the letter while wearing a business suit. (Not joking.)
3) You will end up like the people you associate with. Choose friends carefully. (Want to lose weight? Make thin friends. etc, etc)
4) Crock pots: cooking without all the sucky, time consuming parts.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#38Putting 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 con…
Can you expand on how one would get started writing such a script? I've been meaning to do something like this for a while (partially as a legit exercise, partially for fun).
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#39When pulled over by the police: Surrender completely, be kind, considerate and honest. Haven't gotten a ticket in nine years. More, if you're curious about the step-by-step: http://blog.danilocampos.com/2010/10/23/how-to-get-away-with... Having a notebook: A notebook large enough to comfortably dump your thoughts into but small enough to be always near your keyboard is awesome. The notebook helps with procrastination…
My favorite speeding ticket escape hatch goes something like this:
1. Get pulled over for speeding.
2. Have your windows rolled down when the officer walks up to your car, hands on the wheel, &c.
3. Preemptively, "Hi, officer. I know I was speeding. I'm sorry, but if I don't get home and go to the bathroom right now, I'm going to need a new pair of pants." Delivery matters, obviously, but it's not hard.
4. Get sent on my merry way.
100% success rate, for a far smaller sample size than I should have, given how I tend to drive.
That said, danilocampos' advice holds. In the one instance where I was caught speeding egregiously, playing the situation as described got my ticket reduced below the magic "10 MPH over" threshold, where the violation is typically also reported to your insurance carrier, leaving aside the reduction in ticket cost.
Moreover, that was after he had to chase me for almost half a mile. His car was an unmarked Mustang, with no siren and recessed flashers, so I simply didn't see him until he pulled in behind me and blocked me into my parking spot at the office.
He was obviously expecting a worst-case scenario after a chase like that (hand on his sidearm as he approached my car, &c). My courtesy and honesty helped defray would could've otherwise been a deep pile of suck.
(I also don't speed much on that road any more. Go figure.)
Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
#40Whenever possible, pass off laziness as efficiency.
Don't be afraid to take your own path. When I decided to switch research topics during grad school, no one was actually doing what I wanted to do, but I was able to convince a couple profs to work with me, successfully have them apply for an NSF grant on my topic, and form a brand new research group of questionable officialness.
I think this has been mentioned before. When purchasing stuff in (US) stores, you can generally swipe your card and enter your PIN before they are done ringing your items up. Makes things go a little faster and you feel like you're in the know.