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

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

#251
post #99

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I'm always skeptical of this claim (and yes I do know vim fairly well). Programming isn't that much typing. For every burst of typing there's probably an equally long or longer lull where you are leaning back and looking at the screen or sketching something out on paper. If your productivity is limited by how fast you can type then you are either a far, far better programmer than most people or your skills are being…

Vim commands are more than just typing. It’s searching, deleting, replacing, selecting, moving entire lines of code. I can get to any location in a massive codebase within seconds . I can drop the cursor to any character I see damn near instantly. I can construct entire macros on the fly and repeat them endlessly until I’m satisfied and destroy repetitive tasks. I can move entire sections of code to anywhere else I p…

I'm trying to learn vim, thanks to this thread. How do I "drop the cursor to any character I see damn near instantly."

I'm digging moving things around quickly and all that. But I don't know how to get my cursor where I want it quickly.

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

#252

Taking this also as a bit of an Ask HN: Easily the Tiny Habits habit formation regime created by Stanford researcher BJ Fogg. A lot of the addictive design patterns you see in apps like Snapchat, Instagram, etc. are built off his research. Quite nefarious use of psychology for advertising/“engagement”, but the plus side is you can use the same strategies to build habits you want to build. Step 1: Consider the habit y…

> I spent a month of the year just flossing 1 tooth each night (ridiculous, I know!), then 5 months just flossing 1 row (better!) Not directly related to the habit formation part, but this reminded me of something my dad used to tell us as kids about flossing and brushing teeth when we'd complain about it: Dad: You know, you don't have to floss and brush them all. Us (amazedly): Really? Dad: Nope, just the ones you w…

Just let the kids smell some rotting piece of food inside their mouth after flossing. Guaranteed they floss every time from then on.

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

#253
post #66

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Or cutting extraneous expenses. It's cliche, but really, making your own coffee and packing lunch can save $20-25 a day. That adds up fast.

True, though I’m in the camp of “make enough money where I don’t have to feel guilty spending money on food”. If you’re more income strained then yes though.

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

#254
post #224

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> I spent a month of the year just flossing 1 tooth each night (ridiculous, I know!), then 5 months just flossing 1 row (better!) Was this because you hated it so much that you couldn't bring yourself to do more than one at a time, or is it important to effective habit building that you intentionall hold yourself back? (I can't imagine getting as far as remembering to do it, getting out the floss, tearing off a piece…

It isn't a "practical" thing, it is a mental thing. "flossing my whole mouth feels overwhelming, so I'm not going to do any of it", vs "I just need to floss a single tooth, that is easy". Sure "just grow up and do it" sounds nice, but learning to build habits that generally feel unrewarding when starting out (e.g. working out, learning instrument), is extremely difficult for some people (e.g. me).

It's a bit strange that something that takes less than two minutes can seem so overwhelming, yet we've all been there.

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

#255

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Not USA, but if you have a KBC in your country (a Belgian bank, but you'll find them in other EU countries) they offer a quite easy way to start investing in index funds. Essentially, each time you use your debit card, they round up the amount you owe the shop, and put that in a special account. For each 10 euro in that account - they invest it. So for example, let's say I go to the shops and pay 9.30 for groceries.…

In the U.S. there is a company called Stash that does this. https://www.stashinvest.com/

Also another one called https://www.acorns.com/

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

#256

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…

> And the little I do speak is designed to appeal, as much as possible, to my audience. "How to Win Friends and Influence People" really helped me understand where I was running into problems when interacting with people. It was written mainly for those who are in sales and need to learn how to persuade, but I've found it overall helpful in my career (not sales). It's one of the three books I would recommend for thos…

> It was written mainly for those who are in sales and need to learn how to persuade

One of my big revelations was ‘we are /all/ in sales’.

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

#258

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> And the little I do speak is designed to appeal, as much as possible, to my audience. "How to Win Friends and Influence People" really helped me understand where I was running into problems when interacting with people. It was written mainly for those who are in sales and need to learn how to persuade, but I've found it overall helpful in my career (not sales). It's one of the three books I would recommend for thos…

> I like it when I disagree with people. I like to dig down into it with them to uncover the truth. I like to share the truth that I know with others, and I really like it when someone helps me discover a truth I didn't know before, changing the way I see things. I like this too. But I've found that it's basically a disaster in real life. Very few people are educated, and even those who are have enough sacred goats t…

I think it's important in communication to understand the people you're meeting in your life. The people around us makes up the society we live in, and understanding how we disagree with them helps us see what we want to change and also where we're wrong. Whereas just trying to absorb one author's idea of how the world works ignores those pieces of society and knowledge that the author lacks.

To me it's more rewarding to know that I may not agree with everything everyone says all the time, but at least we can find our common ground and share our disagreements with each other to reach an understanding.

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

#259

Taking this also as a bit of an Ask HN: Easily the Tiny Habits habit formation regime created by Stanford researcher BJ Fogg. A lot of the addictive design patterns you see in apps like Snapchat, Instagram, etc. are built off his research. Quite nefarious use of psychology for advertising/“engagement”, but the plus side is you can use the same strategies to build habits you want to build. Step 1: Consider the habit y…

Just picked it up on Kindle.

Thanks so much for the book recommendation and the pointer towards BJ Fogg.

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

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 diminishing their statement by saying I knew that, I should say something like "wow that's cool" as it makes the person feel better. Taking this a step further, if you know the topic well you can instead say something like "I know, it's very cool isn't it? Did you also know that…

Spot on! I was terrible at making it seem like I wasn't just trying to one-up them or seem smarter when I was little. Delivery is so important.
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