Ask HN: What are your best life hacks? • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by reeses » Sun, Mar 13, 2011, 1:33 PM UTC

danilocampos wrote: post #11

When 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…

If you do get a ticket, hire an attorney who just deals with tickets. $400 and it's almost guaranteed to go away, with no impact on your points, insurance, etc. The $400 easily outweighs the NPV of the recurring costs over the next few years.

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

#112

Post by MarkSimpson » Sun, Mar 13, 2011, 1:33 PM UTC

Ask your superiors for advice, even if you don't have any intention of following it. They'll love you for it.

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

#113

Post by joezydeco » Sun, Mar 13, 2011, 1:36 PM UTC

geuis wrote: 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…

I can generalize this tip a bit further: always understand your surroundings. Look for optimization.

The other morning I drove up to the bank's drive-thru. There are two lanes of teller+ATMs, but for some reason this morning the second lane had a red X over the lane, meaning there was not a teller manning the manual transaction tube.

But the ATM was still working, the green light was on. But guess what? The other 5 cars saw the X and decided to queue for the other ATM. I swooped right up to the free machine, got my cash, and left. I would have waited 20 minutes in the other line.

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

#114

Post by reeses » Sun, Mar 13, 2011, 1:37 PM UTC

anonymousDan wrote: post #103

kouiskas wrote: post #47

Use a vertical monitor for your code editing. Having twice as many lines of code in front of you at once makes a big difference. Most skeptics haven't really tried it. Stop wasting time obsessing about the best coding setup and the best editor. I've seen very poor developers with incredibly advanced typing shortcuts that they spend hours perfecting. They still write shit code (maybe they do so faster...). I use the s…

The problem I have with a vertical monitor screen is that I end up craning my neck to see the text at the very bottom of the monitor.

That's why I use horizontal screens as well.

If you're looking at a screen or paper all day, you want narrow text to avoid a lot of unnecessary eye movement, and relatively short windows so you avoid unnecessary head movement.

Readability is still a good reason for keeping functions narrower than 80 columns and shorter than 24 lines.

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

#115

Post by aw3c2 » Sun, Mar 13, 2011, 1:37 PM UTC

cloudkj wrote: post #35

Beanblabber wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And then you starting calculating how much time you spent in the bathroom and hopefully you realise that time is not the essence of life.

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

#116

Post by Evgeny » Sun, Mar 13, 2011, 1:41 PM UTC

reeses wrote: post #106

* Pick an editor and stick with it. If it's EMACS, learn enough keybindings to be useful and learn elisp. Go through the phase where you run gnus for email and erc and all those silly add-ons. Get your .emacs up to 50-100k. Use that for a few years then throw it all away. Look for force multipliers/secret weapons: * Use an IDE. Yes, this contradicts the first point, but an IDE with intelligent context-based autocompl…

Keep food stashed in your car, desk, etc. A Luna/Clif/Power Bar will get you through that low blood sugar phase, or more importantly, get your partner through it when they're cranky and they have no idea how close they are to being left in a ditch by the side of the road.

Wait ... is it specifically for diabetics? Then I think you should specify it. I personally am trying to maximise time between meals and not to have any snacks in between. For those not having any disease, the human body is extremely efficient in maintaining blood sugar and homeostasis in general even during prolonged fasting. And intermittent fasting has significant health benefits.

Either have someone wash and iron your shirts (a couple bucks a shirt)

Well, I made a habit of ironing five shirts for the next week during the weekend. When you're used to it, it takes a minute or two per shirt. Maybe it's cheaper to hire someone for couple bucks per shirt, but my time is not that precious yet unfortunately.

I wholeheartedly agree to most of the other points.

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

#117

Post by zackattack » Sun, Mar 13, 2011, 1:42 PM UTC

Estragon wrote: post #95

saulrh wrote: post #67

Two here. 1) Make the placebo effect work for you. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that says that the placebo effect works. Deep down, I know that the placebo effect works, and that simply thinking that I'm getting better makes me better. So, whenever I feel like I'm about to get sick, I tell myself that I can make myself feel better - and I get better. I got this working a few years ago and I haven't had…

> Whenever you get a new program, hit every button Or you could just read the manual...

hitting the buttons programs your physical procedural memory which is different from declarative memory

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

#118

Post by listic » Sun, Mar 13, 2011, 1:43 PM UTC

kristofferR wrote: post #102

listic wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember: not everyone needs to lose weight and/or cut their calories.

Almost everyone should cut their sugar/artificial sugar intake at least. I'm quite skinny and am working on gaining muscle, I don't want to lose weight, but for the last two weeks I've abstained from soda, candy and white carbohydrates (wheat, pasta, spagetti). It has made a huge difference on my energy level, feeling of well being (every day is just "better") and skin quality. Saturday is my cheat day where I'm allo…

> Almost everyone should cut their sugar/artificial sugar intake at least.

Then we should be talking about that, not cutting calories and losing weight. I think I could use more energy, feeling of well being and skin quality. But I suspect that if I just throw away carbohydrates from my ration, I won't be able to get up in the morning ('cause there will be not much left and I'm not eating much as it is, anyway).

I'm not even pro-soda. I could understand if one says that soda can be bad for one's stomach or teeth (diet coke won't help here). I have a problem with the line of reasoning that soda contains calories and everyone needs less of them.

It just undermines the credibility of the dietary advice when the author assumes as a given that everybody should eat less.

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

#119

Post by J3L2404 » Sun, Mar 13, 2011, 1:44 PM UTC

nhebb wrote: post #63

- Persuasion: Mention an idea in passing then wait a week or two. Mention it again in terms of "you know that idea you had ...". This is a surprisingly effective hack on stubborn managers. If they think they'll get the credit for an idea, then they are much more likely to go along with it. - Drink a glass of water when you first wake up. It will curb the temptation for high carb breakfast foods and reduce coffee inta…

Great life hacks, but how do barter with a big retailer?

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

#120

Post by alinajaf » Sun, Mar 13, 2011, 1:46 PM UTC

If you're working on projects outside of your full-time job, do it BEFORE work. Go to sleep relatively early, wake up at 5 and put an hour towards your projects every day.

You can work in the evenings as well, but you've done your work, so there's nothing wrong with chillaxing with your other half/friends/beer/PS3/any combination of the above.