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Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#551

Post by samfar90 »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #390
samfar90 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to sound ridiculous, but I've gotten the same benefits that you seem to describe (I have never tried mindfulness) since I started to smoke weed.

Mindfulness is easier than getting weed. You can be mindful of your breathing for 5 seconds, right now. That's all it is, you just sit there letting thoughts come and go, trying to bring focus back to your breathing for 20 minutes. IMO it's better than coffee for acquiring focus and lasts the whole day.

I will try mindfullness some day

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#553

Post by joncrane »

MarkSweep wrote: post #223
RobertRoberts wrote: post #176

How to cook for yourself, really, really good food. I no longer crave restaurant food, and all of the really important things I learned about cooking take just the time to read it, hear about it and then try it. All without any special hardware. A few examples: 1. Cooking jasmine rice: rinse it first, 1 c. water to 1 c. rice ratio. Bring to boil, turn down heat to lowest setting. Leave lid /the entire time/. Fluff th…

I agree, and it's pretty easy to get started. My pallet is pretty easily amused, so take this with a grain of salt, but there all kinds of fun optimization problems and achievements to unlock with cooking. For example, given the random contents of a refrigerator, make some sort of meal out of what is available. For example, I recently had a cabbage and an onion and some chicken left over. With a little ginger paste a…

Second the tortilla chips. I used to fry them in a pan but I figured out how to get decent results in a microwave.

My go-to is to spread butter on them then nuke them.

Two weeks ago I went to Costa Rica and did a horseback/boat/hiking tour and there was a shack high in the mountains where we stopped and the guide made lunch. I was delighted to find that one of the three foods provided was fried tortillas. I insisted on helping. Frying tortilla chips in soybean oil in a wok on a wood fire in the cloud forest with no electricity or running water is a little different than nuking in the kitchen, but once you have the knack for it, it's pretty easy to pull off.

You never know when your weird cooking skills are going to come in handy!

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#554

Post by yodsanklai »

Spending a little time to learn the tools you're going to use often.

A few examples come to mind. Learn how to type on a keyboard. I feel sorry for my family doctor, slowly typing prescriptions using its two indexes. He could spend an hour to learn the right typing method, and within a few days, he would save time (and money).

An example is using Excel. I'm guilty of this. I always struggle whenever I have to use it (not often, but often enough). I should really spend some time once for all.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#557

Post by jansan »

lisper wrote: post #85
geowwy wrote: post #26

If you're going overseas, learn a little bit of the local language. 1. Hello 2. Goodbye 3. Please 4. Thank you 5. Me 6. You 7. Him/her 8. This 9. That 10. Here 11. There 12. Do you have this? 13. Where is this? 14. How much money is that? 15. Where is the toilet? 16. Digits (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9) You'll be surprised how much of the language you pick up naturally just by memorising some basic words and using them.

I always try to learn how to say, "I'm sorry, I don't speak X" in language X. When I was in Japan I got an unbelievable amount of leverage out of being able to say, "Sumi masen, Nihon-go hanasei masen" which, of course, means "I don't speak Japanese" in Japanese. The local's faces would light up and often they would respond in Japanese despite the fact that I had just told them that I don't speak Japanese.

In Japan I was at a German language insitute and asked the Japanese guy at the reception if he spoke German. His reply was "Leider nicht"/"Unfortunately not", which I thought was a fantastic reply for this kind of question. Very simple, yet much more sophisticated than a simple "Nein"/"No".

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#558

Post by smrr723 »

teekert wrote: post #255

I learned docker-compose in roughly one hour. It changed my mind on Docker as adding extra complexity to: docker-ize all the things and update with docker-compose up -d! I guess this does depend on some prior experience with docker and perhaps on me avoiding docker-compse because I thought it was docker for pros. Instead, it's docker for dummies.

What resource did you use to learn it?

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#559

Post by dqpb »

The killer app for education would be a system that can predict this for each person, over and over again.

Given your current knowledge and life experience, what lesson are you best primed to receive, that will result in the highest information transfer, in one hour.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

#560

Post by Crashbat »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #504
tzebby49 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are currently in a world where it is very difficult to find interest rates >2%. I found a tezos staking pool at approximately 5% recently.

The S&P500 with dividends reinvested has averaged a real (post-inflation) return of 7% annually over the last 100 years or so. It's currently up 24% YTD.

That's fine if you are prepared to take on significant risk - it took six years for the index to recover after the 2007 financial crash. If anyone was looking to retire on their investment then they'd be screwed. At least with a bank your savings are guaranteed.
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