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Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

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71–80 of 187 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

#71
post #29

Sitting next to another person while writing increases my writing productivity by at least 400%. In retrospect it took me way too long to break down and try this. My shot at immortality costs me $120/year for membership in the Cryonics Institute and $170/year for $250K of 10-year term life insurance of which $50K goes to CI. I lost 20 pounds on Seth Roberts's fixed-point diet (aka the "Shangri-La diet") and gained 10…

Open relationships sounds good on paper but only works as long as you are not actually in love.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

#72
1) Job/Tech related: When starting a new project try to think of something new, something you wish to achieve. Like "I'll switch to VIM for this project in stead of TextMate" or "I'll use CoffeeScript here in stead of Javascript". This way you develop yourself further every project and it won't feel as much like you are doing the same thing all over again every time.

2) Start your own company / start as a freelancer. Come on, you can do it ;) It's not for everyone but ever since I've started doing this I haven't had any regret for doing it. You will have lots of extra time and freedom to try new stuff; And once you have the right clients you only need a couple of hours a week to get the same amount of money you now get working your ass off fulltime. Only do this if you know you are good at what you do. Make sure you've worked in the same field before so you know what to expect and be aware of.

3) Not going to work for yourself? Switch jobs once you get bored. I've seen people work at the same job for so long they go into auto pilot and they don't develop any further. In the last 5 years I've had 4 different full-time jobs, at every switch you will learn some new stuff, either tech or business related. No one ever questioned my loyalty and I've had I nice raise every time I started something new.

4) Some big buildings with lots of companies in it have a private parking lot with some guy in a booth checking out if you can park there (most of the time this is for suppliers or people with some kind of access card). Just approach the barrier, smile at the guy in the booth, and raise your hand. Most of the time they will just let you through. If they don't they will ask you why you are there. Just say you are delivering a package for Company X, they will let you through, no further questions asked.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

#73
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you can learn how to suppress or ignore or never have jealousy, multiple relationships seem strictly better (= more fun) to me than monogamy.

In addition to suppressing and ignoring jealousy, another option is to learn how to acknowledge and deal with it. Just as fear is quite a natural thing and hinders people in accomplishing their goals, so can jealousy be a hindrance to happy relationships. Both can be successfully managed however. Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. - Mark Twain I believe the same can be said of jealo…

Yes, I should have also said "accept jealousy" as a possibly superior option.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

#74
post #58
post #19

Use 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…

1 small risk: the other door might be locked, which turns the situation slightly embarrassing.

Minimizing the effect of embarrassment on your psyche reduces a lot of friction in life.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

#75
post #29

Sitting next to another person while writing increases my writing productivity by at least 400%. In retrospect it took me way too long to break down and try this. My shot at immortality costs me $120/year for membership in the Cryonics Institute and $170/year for $250K of 10-year term life insurance of which $50K goes to CI. I lost 20 pounds on Seth Roberts's fixed-point diet (aka the "Shangri-La diet") and gained 10…

Open relationships sounds good on paper but only works as long as you are not actually in love.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

#76
post #24

I used to be bad at names, but eventually I figured out if I repeat a name a few times within seconds of learning it, I generally remember it. "Hi Kevin, nice to meet you, I'm Pat. I was going over there to refresh my drink, you need anything Kevin?" It can sound a little weird, but it's made a huge difference for me, and people love it when you remember and use their name. Quit drinking so much soda, and switch to d…

I've worked in Marketing for a few years, and I can 100% confirm: the best trick to remembering someone's name is to say it.

Just figure out 2-3 ways to repeat the person's name in conversation and the name will stick to the face.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

#77

Socks tend to become lonely, loosing their other half, which makes you end up with lots of single socks in the drawer. I ditched them all and purchased 20 pairs of the same socks. I never pair them up, but simply dump them in the drawer after washing. This way I don't have to pair them up and I never have to quest for "the lost sock(tm)".

Conversely, you can take my approach: give up wearing matching socks. :)

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

#78
post #8

Last 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.

Yeah those lines operate via the honor code. No one is actually going to stop you. That said I consider line jumping to be cheating, not a "life hack".

I've seen tickets checked in Melbourne (Australia) in the Qantas terminal.

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

#79

Get your self tested for ADD, I know this sounds weird but up 10% of people have it. And with treatment,I got tested and my coding started to become more in depth. My concentration is more then i can ever imagine. Before I would work 30mins 30 mins(a life hack I got from HN previously) off like a previous. Now I can work 2 hours straight with even better results from what I would do in 4 30 min work sessions.

So what was the treatment that enable you to increase your concentration? Not medication I hope. I'm bad at focusing on one thing for more that 30 mins at a time, and just accept it as one of those things in life.

Yes it is medication,

I dont see any thing the matter with medication. Just like a diabetic person can not make insulin from their pancreas. An ADD person does not make enough dopamine in their brains to carry signals.

Medication of course needs to be prescribed my a medical Doctor and you should never take other peoples drugs.

There are a lot of variables, dosage, type of ADD, diet, lifestyle, history.

Medication is not the only treatment for ADD.

Here is an interesting clip http://wellnesshour.com/index.php?option=com_seyret&Item...

Re: Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

#80
post #5

I 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.

Can you elaborate?

Are you in effect creating a playlist with the "best" parts of songs.

Exactly what hardware are you using for this? "Classic" iPod with a custom firmware like Rockbox? Or iPhone/iPodTouch?

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