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Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?

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

#81

Post by frosas »

quizbiz wrote: post #61
mantalk wrote: post #22

Life is an experiment. Whatever you do, try, learn, iterate. Remember, though, that time is your precious resource. You'll never, ever get it back. All life hacks must either extend your time, shorten tasks, or make your time more meaningful. Here are a few things that came to mind: Productivity: * Make a check list. Once you start, you won't be able to believe that you lived life without one. Can't overstate this on…

can u publish that script that takes a screen shot?

A simple one for OSX:

while true; do screencapture `date '+%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%I'`.png; sleep 30; done

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

#82

Post by morbidkk »

quizbiz wrote: post #61
mantalk wrote: post #22

Life is an experiment. Whatever you do, try, learn, iterate. Remember, though, that time is your precious resource. You'll never, ever get it back. All life hacks must either extend your time, shorten tasks, or make your time more meaningful. Here are a few things that came to mind: Productivity: * Make a check list. Once you start, you won't be able to believe that you lived life without one. Can't overstate this on…

can u publish that script that takes a screen shot?

http://www.rescuetime.com/ will give you analytics for free

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

#83

Post by bergie »

When writing code, use Literate Programming. Not JavaDocs-style API documentation, but actually explain what your code is doing and why inside the code itself. When explaining stuff you will be able to catch bugs before even running the code.

And as bonus, you'll have documentation that isn't a burden to maintain.

Docco or Noweb are good tools for this. Here is one of my Docco examples: http://bergie.github.com/VIE/

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

#84

Post by karolisd »

Do open mics, whether it's comedy, poetry, or music. Put yourself in front of a crowd. You might bomb and embarrass yourself. But afterwards, you'll still be alive. You'll walk back to your same life, but stronger.

I totally agree with the business suit. There's nothing like wearing a suit. (I wonder what it would be like for a woman to get fake tits? Is that the equivalent? I'm not being sexist just making a joke)

Keep track of what you eat. Before you eat something, remember everything you've eaten that day. Keep it up and you'll be surprised how much your eating habits will change.

Bike everywhere.

Go with your gut. I think a lot of us love analyzing things to death because we love flexing our brains. Use the gut.

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

#85

Post by Johngibb »

rms wrote: post #57
danilocampos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An awful lot of the rationalists I know have moved to open relationships. Why?

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.

Did anyone else accidentally parse (= more fun) as a strange prefix notation way of saying "more relationships = fun?"

If not, I apologize in advance for my insanity. ;)

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

#86

Post by Johngibb »

pmcginn wrote: 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…

Ive tried the repeat someones name trick, but it's always felt forced and made me feel like a car salesman. Have you ever gotten a negative reaction?

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

#88

Post by jackvalentine »

jaidev wrote: post #62
eof wrote: 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.

What do you tell them when they ask you why you are in this line?

Act like you're meant to be there.

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

#89

Post by pella »

hacker-gene wrote: post #64
yoshgoodman wrote: post #48

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.

"Anecdotal evidence suggests that the dual n-back task also enhances focus and attention and may help improve the symptoms of ADHD/ADD."

http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/

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

#90

Post by thenomad »

jarin wrote: post #12

I don't really keep a traditional to-do list anymore. I tried GTD several times over the last 5 years and it's just too cumbersome (and having a huge to-do list is pretty daunting). I keep high-level project to-dos organized in Basecamp, project ideas are organized in soywiki, and any critical reminders are in Google Calendar (with alerts). The real hack that I do though is every morning I take a post-it note and wri…

I use almost exactly the same system, and it works well.

The major problem I have with it is convincing myself it's OK to stop if I finish my three tasks early.

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