Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

quanticdev.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 340 posts

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#201

Post by mateo411 »

mathieutd wrote: post #188
slowhand09 wrote: post #174

Learn how to get out of debt!!! Step 1: List your debts from smallest to largest regardless of interest rate. Step 2: Make minimum payments on all your debts except the smallest. Step 3: Pay as much as possible on your smallest debt. Step 4: Repeat until each debt is paid in full

I disagree with this. You should pay your higher interest rate debt first.

Yes, paying the maximum that you can to the highest interest rate debt and paying the minimum to all of the lower interest rate debt is the optimal greedy algorithm.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#202

Post by inetsee »

ghaff wrote: post #148
inetsee wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider CPR to be an invaluable thing to learn. Unfortunately, at least where I live (North Carolina, USA), there do not seem to be any free classes. Available classes range in price from $84 to $126 in price, depending on what's included in the class (basic CPR, basic plus pediatric CPR, CPR with other first aid instruction, etc.).

If you haven't done so, you might check if your company offers or would be willing to offer a class.

I'm retired so that's not an option.

I'm at an age where my wife and many of my friends are 50+, so I will probably go ahead and pay for one of the courses.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#203

Post by tayo42 »

shantly wrote: post #86
Insanity wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it count if you lie awake in bed for an hour unable to sleep because of rumination? Because in that case, I'm sure plenty of people do it at some point. But what helps me is taking walks. You're alone with your thoughts, but the act of walking through nature is stimulating for more positive thinking, from my experience anyway.

> Does it count if you lie awake in bed for an hour unable to sleep because of rumination? Because in that case, I'm sure plenty of people do it at some point. Heh, shit, if that counts I "meditate" for an hour or more a couple times a week. It's absolutely horrible. [EDIT] in fact, running with that, most of my life has been a struggle to "meditate" less for the sake of my own health and sanity. I'm way down from th…

I don't think it is. I think meditation is about stopping the rumination by being present, doing something like focusing on your breath. If your mind starts to wander/ruminate then you catch your self and return your thought to being present. It is hard

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#204

Post by maerF0x0 »

tuesday20 wrote: post #15

Compound interest. Simply starting early in some boring find/investment and not obsessing over daily stock prices will do wonders for one’s health and finances

A requisite response to those who mention compound growth (interest) and the fallacy of it "never" ending:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4

(Exponential Growth Arithmetic, Population and Energy, Dr. Albert A. Bartlett)

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#205

Post by weaksauce »

KORraN wrote: post #158
mathieubordere wrote: post #106

using `Ctrl + r` in your shell, I just hope someone reading this doesn't know it yet :-)

Wow, thanks! I knew about ## arrow up "\e[A":history-search-backward ## arrow down "\e[B":history-search-forward but it works only for beginning of the line. CTRL + R shows results with keyword anywhere within the line and pressing it again shows next result. CTRL + Shift + R goes back one result.

Zpresto has a zsh plugin thing that you can enable to get partial substring search with up/down arrow and color highlighting for the match. Really useful and one of my favorite features

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#206

Post by justaguyhere »

riffraff wrote: post #44
tuesday20 wrote: post #15

Compound interest. Simply starting early in some boring find/investment and not obsessing over daily stock prices will do wonders for one’s health and finances

this is generally useful and true, but it was more so when boring and safe investments (e.g. government bonds) were paying significant interests. As of now, a 10y US treasury bill will pay less than 2%, and 2% compounded is still not much ("your $1000 saved today will become $1999 if you don't touch it for 35 years!"). Learning to save in general is probably the more fundamental information, imho. EDIT: obviously inv…

There are places where you get 5-10% interests on fixed deposits (mostly Asian countries). At approx 7%, you can double your money in 10 years. At 10%, you can double in 7 years approx and so on. It all depends on where one is living, I suppose. I can't find anything in the US market though - bank interest rates are a joke, treasury/bond % is too low. Stock market is on fire, but most stocks are so expensive that it is out of reach for most Americans.

I am not sure what other choices Americans have ...

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#208

Post by weaksauce »

fbnlsr wrote: post #64
timvisee wrote: post #34

Vim. I think it can be in the list as well. It takes a long time to properly learn. But one hours is defiantly enough to get to know the main Vim bindings, to be as productive as in other editors. In the end it makes you super productive.

Serious question: I keep seeing Vim thrown up and down like it's the holy grail. I've been using VS Code for two years maybe now, and I don't see how Vim could help me be a better/more productive coder. What am I missing?

Try the vim extension in vscode. It’s pretty good for about 75% of vim. Definitely good enough to be useful.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#209

Post by Zelphyr »

OGWhales wrote: post #165
nordsieck wrote: post #149

IMO, the single most important thing I've ever learned is: try to be effective when you're communicating. I used to feel an obligation to correct other people if they had false beliefs. This was not an endearing trait, and even worse, I was never particularly successful at convincing the other people. One day, I read a passage from "How to make friends and influence people". It said something along the lines of: "The…

My dad gave me very similar advice growing up, as I love for things to be factually correct. To me, it didn't bother me if someone corrected me. However, most people don't appreciate it and it isn't worth upsetting them 90% of the time. This is something I didn't understand. Another thing he told me was not to be a know it all. One example would be when people said something and I had learned before, instead of dimin…

> when people said something and I had learned before, instead of diminishing their statement by saying I knew that

I know someone like this. Their reply is always, "I'm not stupid". Clearly they were offended when I told them something they already knew, even though my intentions were to educate rather than offend. But their reply actually always created two offended people because to me, it's obvious I had no ill intentions and I'm left resenting their reply.

So now I just don't tell them anything unless they ask and I'm highly specific in my answer to their question. That ensures I'm only providing information they have indicated they don't know. If they want to know more, they'll ask more.

For my part, there was almost certainly an element of my being a know-it-all which is what got this person so riled up in the first place. Regardless; this simple change has helped me a lot and has improved my relationship with other people in addition to this one person.

Post reply on HN