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

• leto_ii 7y ago
  Two quick things from back when TED talks were actually interesting/useful: 1. How to tie your shoes the right way (so the knot doesn't come undone): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAFcV7zuUDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAFcV7zuUDA 2. How to dry your hands with a single paper towel (so that you prevent unnecessary waste): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FMBSblpcrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FMBSblpcrc
• mister_hn 7y ago
  Git. It has few commands and can be rapidly learned in one hour, mastering commands such as Git fetch Git pull Git commit Git push Git merge Git log
  • mk89 7y ago
    This. I would add -> understand how git works. The difference between merge and rebase, what Head is, what Tip is, etc.
    • mister_hn 7y ago
      that's out of 60 minutes time
      • phaemon 7y ago
        No, it isn't; you can learn git internals in less the 60 mins. They are really simple. It's people's imagined model of how git works that is complicated so they assume git itself must also be complicated.
  • skrebbel 7y ago
    I doubt people with no prior dvcs experience can learn git in an hour. The interface is abysmal, it uses multiple terms for the same concepts, it's a mess generally.
  • arvinsim 7y ago
    Although it is important to know how they can be used in the CLI, I find that I using a GUI speeds up my workflow. I would just settle for understanding how they work rather than dive deep into the CLI syntax intricacies
  • jaredsohn 7y ago
    If a developer using github, learn the keyboard shortcuts for github.com ? shows a list, 't' shows a directory tree and lets you search for a file.
  • tus88 7y ago
    I wonder what % of HN readers don't already know Git.
• vinhboy 7y ago
  Learn how to use deals site to save a ton of money: https://slickdeals.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=9 https://slickdeals.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=9 I can't overstate how much money you will save by simply setting up alerts on sites like SlickDeals and learning the basic lingo like YMMV, B&M, PM etc... At the very least learn about the TofuVic's purchase point for toilet paper so you don't waste money wiping your ass.
  • hombre_fatal 7y ago
    How doesn't that just become a way to buy crap you don't need, or to undo any potential savings you might gain by losing time hawking over a "deals" forum?
  • cientifico 7y ago
    It's weird that they forbid any user from Europe because of data privacy law.
    • sshine 7y ago
      This is a weird side-effect of Americans reacting to recent EU GDPR legislation.
  • qohen 7y ago
    For SlickDeals, you might want to use the following URL, as it'll give you 80 items per page (vs. the default of 30): https://slickdeals.net/forums/filtered/?f=9&perpage=80 https://slickdeals.net/forums/filtered/?f=9&perpage=80
• adamnemecek 7y ago
  Basic reverse engineering. Download hopper and hack away. Nothing more hacker than that.
  • self_awareness 7y ago
    Use Ghidra, because it's free.
• mappu 7y ago
  Keyboard shortcuts for Excel + what exactly a Pivot Table is
  • rmm 7y ago
    I laughed at how true the pivot table point is.
  • rudedogg 7y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c Qualifies at 54 minutes!
• sachop 7y ago
  Go to featured articles at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. Learn something interesting within few minutes everyday.
• lsiebert 7y ago
  How to do various knots comes to mind. Square knot, A sheet bend, clove and trucker's hitch, prusik, the alpine butterfly knot, and bowlines can all be learned rather quickly, then practiced so they can be remembered easily. http://paracord550milspec.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/How-to-Tie-20-of-the-Most-Useful-Knots.pdf http://paracord550milspec.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/How...
  • arvinsim 7y ago
    I remember learning these before but due to not finding any use case for them, I already forgot how to do them properly. Only thing I regularly tie nowadays are my shoelaces. EDIT: Grammar
    • dokem 7y ago
      I’ve also learned a number of knots. The only knot I ever really tie is the tautline hitch. The average person cannot string up a piece of rope and remove all slack because all they know is the granny or square knot. This knot is also incredibly simple and versatile. If you are reading this do yourself a favor and learn this over the next 5 minutes. The bolin should also be learned because the tautline hitch cannot be used for rescue purposes.
      • mkl 7y ago
        For the curious, it's bowline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowline
      • superhuzza 7y ago
        Just so you're aware, the bowline is considered somewhat dangerous because it has a high chance of being tied incorrectly. The only real advantage it has over a double figure 8 is that it's easier to untie after dynamic cinching. https://rockandice.com/climb-safe/climb-safe-rethinking-the-double-loop-bowline/?cn-reloaded=1 https://rockandice.com/climb-safe/climb-safe-rethinking-the-...
        • 7y ago
• peteforde 7y ago
  There's a growing realization that you can completely side-step the need for Single-Page App frameworks like React using websockets and the morphdom library. Projects like StimulusReflex (Rails) and LiveView (Phoenix) allow developers to build complex, reactive modern apps faster and easier by rejecting the need to even have client state. https://github.com/hopsoft/stimulus_reflex https://github.com/hopsoft/stimulus_reflex https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view I haven't been this excited for a web technology since Rails came out.
  • jes5199 7y ago
    neat! Of course, this makes me want to run React serverside...
    • peteforde 7y ago
      Whatever floats your boat, I guess. I don't understand why some folks are determined to see everything through a React lens. It makes sense for Facebook, which is why they made it. If you're doing CRUD, you are just torching your productivity. Here's an example of tabular data, sorted, paged and filtered in 115 LOC including templates: https://expo-pjf.herokuapp.com/demos/tabular https://expo-pjf.herokuapp.com/demos/tabular No transpiling, no API endpoints, no Redux.
      • jes5199 7y ago
        I just think that React components are more readable and more maintainable than erb templates
  • samcheng 7y ago
    Seems like cool stuff. Unfortunately, both of the StimulusReflex demos (Heroku apps) are giving errors right now. Maybe somebody hit a quota!
    • peteforde 7y ago
• Bootvis 7y ago
  Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/519/ https://xkcd.com/519/
• aeternum 7y ago
  Regular expressions fall into this category. While they might take longer to master, you should know the basics after an hour. I've been surprised at how often people convert long lists line-by-line. You can sometimes take what was a multiple-hour task and complete it with a handful of cryptic characters.
  • agungsukma 7y ago
    Yes, regular expression. Saves me from lines of substr, split, join, etc.
    • enraged_camel 7y ago
      Eh, I always use substr, split and so on if possible. They make the code way easier to read than with a regex.
      • Izkata 7y ago
        It really depends on what you're doing, and at least being aware of what regex can do will help with deciding which is better for a given situation. For example, I remember once replacing a buggy 3-4 lines of python based on split/etc with a single regex: match all \d+ (it was for extracting IDs from a user-input string)
  • aliceryhl 7y ago
    Simple transformations can easily become complex to do with regex, so I've started using vim macros instead.
    • swiley 7y ago
      Regex don’t do transformations? All they can do is match strings.
      • TJSomething 7y ago
        Transformation by substitution is part of most dialects of regex, in the form of capturing groups.
• smaddox 7y ago
  Mindfulness meditation. Sitting with your thoughts and emotions, experiencing them, and understanding them, rather than avoiding them or distracting yourself from them can have a dramatic effect on your life. And 10 minutes a day for a week can get you far enough to see some real benefits, like reduced stress and increased awareness of unhelpful thought patterns.
  • samfar90 7y ago
    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.
    • sgillen 7y ago
      Both things change how you think temporarily. I think they both do so in such a way that you can identify and emotionally deal with stuff that would otherwise remain unresolved.
      • sshine 7y ago
        I'm sorry, but there is a fine line between dealing with stuff and smoking weed, one of which involves dealing with stuff, and the other postponing dealing with stuff.
        • saiya-jin 7y ago
          That's simply not true. I've dealt with hard stuff in my life (ie very long term relationship went into tough sudden breakup) with weed. It gave me a good perspective on it that holds to this day, it made me close the whole topic completely very quickly (1-2 weeks at max) in a rather pleasant way. I've set my life priorities with help of weed. They still hold to this day. I've done some of the best decisions on direction of my life with weed. Looking back +-10 years ago, damn those were some fine decisions. Weed gives me, when alone, often semi-constant stream of very creative ideas just popping out of sub-consciousness. I've come up with ideas for startups at least 50x, often to find later somebody is already well into executing it (often in areas I normally don't touch, ie self-belaying machines for climbing, or self-shaping moving wall for climbing - I never ever saw/heard about any of those, but it seems they are quite popular in US). The rate, amount and depth of those ideas just isn't there when sober. The rate is so high that I sometimes don't manage to record them all. All this was done alone, just me and my emotions. YMMV, but for my introvertish personality type, it works wonders. There are drawbacks of course, like with everything else. But postponing dealing with issues is more of an alcohol style effect.
• ken 7y ago
  Learn to tie the basic knots. 3 to 5 knots will cover 95% of the situations you'll ever encounter. They're easy to learn. When someone tosses you a rope, you have no excuse for not knowing what to do with it.
  • zepolen 7y ago
    When someone tosses me a rope I'll toss it to you ;)
• IvyMike 7y ago
  One minute: what a dechoker is and how to use it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkqgexP_NNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkqgexP_NNE One hour (because as easy as it looks you're gonna have to do it at least 4 times): deboning a chicken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfY0lrdXar8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfY0lrdXar8
  • Wistar 7y ago
    I think to match Pepin, I'm gonna have to do it at least 4,000 times.
  • self_awareness 7y ago
    This is horrible. I'm not even a vegetarian but I can't watch it.
• harrisonjackson 7y ago
  CPR/Choking/First Aid course is probably close to an hour. How to change your own oil - probably lots of other money-saving home and auto DIY things... Speed reading and memory tricks can be a multiplier on learning other skills. How to use automation tools like Zapier and IFTTT - again, a force multiplier. You might be interested in this book https://www.amazon.com/First-20-Hours-Learn-Anything/dp/1591846943/ https://www.amazon.com/First-20-Hours-Learn-Anything/dp/1591... - the author has a youtube video that covers it pretty well in 15 minutes - similar to 4-Hour chef, too
  • RobertRoberts 7y ago
    I would add a few things I learned to improve your memory: 1. Care about the subject 2. Focus on memorizing it: This may seem dumb, but how many times have you forgot where you placed your keys? If all you do is momentarily state to yourself "I set my keys here" when you put them down, it's almost hard to forget. 3. Don't eat white sugar or white flour processed, or other foods that may cause you to loose concentration. (I tested this theory when trying to memorize stuff. Crazy the effect it has) 4. Associate a picture (with an action or something outlandish) with the item. You can take a list of 20 items where most people get only a max of around 4 items, I can memorize the entire thing by making a story with the items. No practice needed, it works the first time for most people. Works for memorizing directions as well. (too long to explain the entire process in a comment) These are just shortcuts though... (from a few memory courses I took in the past)
    • tarsinge 7y ago
      Also another trick (without going full formaliser spaced repetition): reread the same thing the next day, and then a week after. Boring but very effective for long term retention.
      • unkulunkulu 7y ago
        I would argue you better practice recall than rereading, i.e. put some notes after reading, make an abstract, expand on it with new thoughts next day, in a week etc. Just rereading might be a) boring b) constantly giving you a sense of familiarity, which is not knowledge. When I have to reread something that is not too deep I sense that I have made a mistake first time by not really thinking about the text.
• Eliezer 7y ago
  If you have even a small amount of math talent, you should be able to grasp the key ideas in Bayes's Rule that quickly iff you read https://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule_guide https://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule_guide.
  • schoen 7y ago
    The biconditional is a pretty strong claim here (especially considering that you yourself have written well-regarded introductions to this topic).
    • Eliezer 7y ago
      It's spoken tongue-in-cheek, but in fact I don't know of any other intros including all of my own other efforts that I would make that claim about. Writing Bayes intros that actually work and introduce the most critical concepts is hard. Read the Arbital intro and compare others before you assume I'm joking or that the joke is false.
  • OrderlyTiamat 7y ago
    > iff You're certain there is absolutely no other way? ;)
  • sshine 7y ago
    I know Bayes' rule, so I must have read this article.
    • username90 7y ago
      No, he just said iff you learned it in an hour then you must have read that article. If it took you longer then you didn't necessarily read it.
• tsumnia 7y ago
  Learning that learning takes more than an hour, no matter the domain. You said it yourself: "A lot of what hackers do takes years of building knowledge upon knowledge". Understanding a skill takes time, energy, and discipline to improve is all you can do. Everything else is simply spending an hour "doing something". If you keep the "something" to a smaller set of "things", then maybe you can learn something over several one hour sessions.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• sellingwebsite 7y ago
  Sales. If you only have 1 hour to learn anything, learn sales. That's a skill that can come handy in many areas of life, not only in business.
  • tasssko 7y ago
    Where would you start? I’m in the “learning sales stage” of my career and have stumbled on Sandler sales training. I’ve talked to a really excellent sandler trainer (link down below). The gist of what I discovered is that I must learn new habits when making sales calls (i.e more listening, better questioning, resist making assumptions). None of these things take an hour. However here is a YouTube video by the Sandler Trainer I talked to. It will take you less than an hour to watch and you could learn something. https://youtu.be/I4qrQz8h0AM https://youtu.be/I4qrQz8h0AM
• eugenekolo2 7y ago
  * Filing taxes if in the US. * CPR * Cooking a couple of meals
• geowwy 7y ago
  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.
  • nxpnsv 7y ago
    This really is good advice. I’ve found a little goes a long way in improving your experience.
  • lisper 7y ago
    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.
    • Kaiyou 7y ago
      Reminds me of the old joke.. A: I'm sorry, I don't speak English. B: But you just spoke English, how is that? A: I'd answer this, but like I said, I do not speak English.
      • AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        Brian Griffin : Hola! Um... me, me llamo es Brian. Ahh, uh, um... Let's see, uh, nosotros queremos ir con ustedes. Migrant Worker : Hey, that was pretty good, except when you said, "Me llamo es Brian," you don't need the "es", just "me llamo Brian". Brian Griffin : Oh! So you speak English! Migrant Worker : No, just that first sentence and this one explaining it. Brian Griffin : You... you're kidding, right? Migrant Worker : Que?
    • 7y ago
• weiser 7y ago
  How a blockchain works.
  • arcticbull 7y ago
    They said valuable haha, a solution on a decade long quest to find a problem isn’t really valuable.
    • nnq 7y ago
      Maybe bitcoin and crypto are not valuable... but the mathematical ideas of blockchain are, after the bubble dies they'll just become boring pieces of crucial infrastructure that sit in the background but they'll be there, it's the only way to ensure data auditing and integrity, and sooner or later people will be ok with paying 10x or 100x storage and compute costs for auditable integrity. It's just that the real deal insight behind blockchain is not sexy and not something that's easy to make money from...
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • arcticbull 7y ago
        > ...after the bubble dies they'll just become boring pieces of crucial infrastructure that sit in the background Well if the value is Merkle trees we can just say that ;) > ... it's the only way to ensure data auditing and integrity It isn't. > ... and sooner or later people will be ok with paying 10x or 100x storage and compute costs for auditable integrity. They won't.
    • ravenstine 7y ago
      We're all using blockchain every day when we use Git.
• unlinked_dll 7y ago
  How to properly wrap cables. A/V and cable techs are super anal about this and it takes just a few minutes to learn, it will change your life. Cables should never be coiled in the same direction. It creates kinks when unwound and make it extremely likely for knots to form (ever leave your headphones in your pocket?). If a cable isn't being installed permanently it should be "wrapped" using a technique called "over-under". Hard to describe in text, so here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpuutP6Df84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpuutP6Df84 Personally I disagree with his method, what I do is do the "over" loop by placing my palm over the cable, and on the under loop, put your palm under the loop. Then when you pull the loop to your fixed hand, you always keep your palm down when laying it. Very quick way, eventually becomes fast with practice. Also useful to unroll kinks from the cable when you wrap it, and always tie the bastard off because if one end falls through you'll get knots.
  • Wistar 7y ago
    Also known as "figure-eighting." Guys who do stadium setups for televised sports are champion cable figure-eighters.
    • unlinked_dll 7y ago
      wrapped cables save lives!
    • 52-6F-62 7y ago
      Ugh. Some guys take that technique too far and destroy cabling. I had some teams do this with power cables we rented out and they could take a 50ft coil of 4/0 copper cable and turn it into a kinked, broken mess with that technique and it always messed with our coil process that worked much like other users mentioned. A lot of teamsters, gaffers, and grips did not like having to carry a 50lb cable further than they had to so many loved they could lay the cable down, pick up one end, and walk with it to the junction in order to lay them. (Temporary power, I mean). As the one responsible for the department looking after that gear, those figure-eight cables were a nightmare because we'd have the prime experience of re-wrapping them all so that we could store them. That caused a time-pinch when we had to handle intake and loadouts at the same time. I don't do that work anymore, but it's personal hahaha
• lazyeye 7y ago
  Humility
  • Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    Extremely valuable. In an hour you can learn why it's important. Mastering it could take a lifetime.
• tasogare 7y ago
  I would say learn your partner’s erogenous zone.
  • sshine 7y ago
    If only finding a life partner took an hour, too.
• citilife 7y ago
  Learn how to read quarterly earnings (and other financial documents). It's amazing how simply it is to see if a company is making money / losing money and how that'll impact your view of the world. For instance, Uber as it is today, is going out of or dramatically changing its business. Might not see that from all the hype, might not see it from all the user, but the terms sheet doesn't quarterly earnings doesn't lie ($1B in losses quarter-over-quarter). Has helped me (and friends) reduce losses and improve earnings by identifying good / poor investments.
  • vast 7y ago
    And how to learn it?
    • adventured 7y ago
      I think when I self-taught how to read public corporation financials, I did it just by looking up various definitions over time. There are not very many that matter. I did that when I was quite young, so I'm confident most any adult with even very basic financial literacy can do it in an hour to get started. So for example, Uber, on Yahoo Finance (fairly simple data presentation): https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UBER/financials?p=UBER https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UBER/financials?p=UBER Columns displaying full fiscal years (you can change that to quarters optionally). And rows showing specific financial information, such as "total revenue" or "gross profit." There are ~22 rows in a column year in the Yahoo data sets, each displaying different financial data. Of those, maybe a dozen are particularly important for an amateur to know. So you'd look up the definitions for eg: revenue (sales), cost of revenue, gross profit, operating expenses, SG&A (selling, general and administrative expenses), operating income, income before tax, income tax expense, interest expense, net income. Another that can be useful as a new or amateur investor, is EPS, or earnings per share. Investopedia is a reasonable option for learning the definitions, although there are numerous sites that will work fine. Shouldn't take more than an hour to look those up and learn them at a basic level. After a bit of practice, you can scan a multi-year profit & loss (P&L) statement in a minute and have a great idea of how a company is fairing. A balance sheet can be more complex, although it can similarly be boiled down to a dozen or so things that by far matter the most. You can get the definitions for those things and learn them in under an hour, then practice reading balance sheets. Then last but not least for an amateur interested in such, would be to acquire practice at scanning through annual and quarterly reports filed by companies with the SEC. They're often obnoxiously long and overflowing with low-value bullshit, however only a small amount of the content tends to matter. I think the best way to keep that under an hour, would be to have someone mark off the segments worth always looking for / looking at in the filings, such that you can learn to jump to those sections to pick out important information. Beyond that, getting good at digesting company SEC filings will take a lot longer than an hour. I wouldn't attempt to take on all of these things in under an hour, it'd be unreasonable. An hour each to get started however is doable. Starting with the P&L statement.
• ta1234567890 7y ago
  Meditating. You can learn in 5 minutes. One of the easiest ways is using an app like Calm or HeadSpace. Alternatively, just sit down wherever you fee comfortable and won't get interrupted for a few minutes, close your eyes, then count your breaths from 1 to 10, then repeat, start from one of you get lost (very common). Regular meditation practice can help you in many ways, the most valuable to me is the improved ability of staying present, which seems to improve a lot of different aspects of my life.
• Mizza 7y ago
  Learning how to solve a Rubik's Cube using the "beginner's method." Maybe not as valuable as you were hoping, but getting the methods down feels good and gives you a new hobby of competing against your own best times.
  • onorton 7y ago
    I remember that I couldn't be bothered to learn the algorithms for the middle layer so I just learnt F2L (First 2 Layers) to solve that part. Never learnt the advanced stuff beyond that though.
  • ghurkan 7y ago
    I learned how to solve Rubic's cube when I was in high school as some kind of party trick, with the beginner's method. Years later, I still remember the movements and recall them in a short notice. Couple of months ago I attended a conference where companies where giving out swag and gift cards to those who give their contact details or watching a demo. After the demo, they told that if I can solve a Rubic's cube and be one of the first 20 to do it, they will give $25 gift debit card. I solved it in a couple of minutes and got my card and had delicious Buffalo Wings with it, so, definitely worth it :)
• Waterluvian 7y ago
  Learn NATO phonetic alphabet while in traffic. Keep a reference card in your car's visor and then read out loud every license plate you see.
  • derpherpsson 7y ago
    WHY
    • funklute 7y ago
      It's super useful if you're on the phone, having to spell out a list of letters, e.g. a postcode
      • yread 7y ago
        If the other side also knows NATO alphabet. There are too many uncommon words for the average helpdesk operator
        • Waterluvian 7y ago
          That's an interesting thought that I didn't consider. In a decade or so of using it I've never, anecdotally of course, had a problem.
        • astura 7y ago
          ^---- yes, this is exactly it. Especially since most CSRs you're going to be talking about don't have English as their first language and don't have the same cultural background as you. That's why the people I know who use it at work don't use it while on the phone with Comcast.
        • scottlocklin 7y ago
          The other side will either know the NATO alphabet or be able to understand it anyway. It was designed to be interpreted and used by non English speakers, since most of NATO doesn't/didn't speak English. I've used it dozens of times, zero errors. It's really good enough to be considered a sort of spoken language Golay code.
• LouisSayers 7y ago
  Boxing / self-defence. While you'll have to do a lot of practice to have the moves come fluidly and naturally, you can learn the basic principles of boxing or self defence very quickly if you do a 1-on-1 session with a pro. Even for myself - someone that does 4-6 hours of boxing a week, it was incredibly valuable getting a couple of 1-on-1 sessions and having my technique scrutinised.
• robotresearcher 7y ago
  You can grok elementary analysis of algorithms (‘Big-O’) in an hour, and have a thinking tool that is useful once in a while.
• mikorym 7y ago
  Binary Search. (And its antithesis, exponential growth.) In my opinion it is the single most important piece of computer science insight with the constraint that you only have less than an hour. I often use binary search as a sort of thought experiment into whether something is "obvious" or not. As a child, I would say exponential growth is the one thing that I developed no intuition for between the age of 1–11. Even now, I regard exponentiation as the one really fundamental thing you possibly won't discover or have intuition for on your own and first see it at school (in contrast to addition or multiplication maybe). And even then, you have to accept exponential growth before you start to "understand" it. Maybe if you are Gauss, it's different for you... Binary search is also a nice way of explaining counting, specifically the combinatorics thereof. You can write down the numbers [0,...,2^n-1] in binary, and then show how when you halve each time with binary search, you actually are just checking the leading bit (and then discarding it). When you have discarded all the bits in that way, then you have found the position you are looking for.
  • nurettin 7y ago
    This is the first thing I talk about when someone asks me what computer science teaches a person and how it relates to real world. It covers a practical example and lets you touch on topics like algorithmic complexity. And it takes 5 minutes to explain. So I fill the rest of the time by demonstrating a simple sorting algorithm on paper and I finish off by drawing a simple maze and solving it with breadth first search by marking squares with numbers.
    • notelonmusk 7y ago
      Since you mentioned sorting 'on paper', here's the sorting algorithm you'd use as a human sorting papers :) https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-manual-sorting-algorithm-E-g-if-you-had-a-stack-of-papers-that-you-wanted-to-sort-alphabetically-what-would-be-the-most-efficient-way-to-do-it-What-if-you-were-okay-with-them-being-off-by-one-or-two-from-their-sorted-position https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-manual-sorting-algori...
  • rikkus 7y ago
    I'm currently teaching my child binary search. She thinks we're just having fun playing "Guess Who?"
• kqr 7y ago
  Reading scientific articles/papers is something I think has to be learned, but probably possible within an hour. That's a skill I've found use for over and over.
• aaron695 7y ago
  Depends what you know. Learn to Torrent, steal from media companies. Learn to cook another meal, steal from food/delivery businesses. Learn about DOI's and Sci-Hub and steal from Academia. Learn how to log into your financial management plan and make a change, steal from the banking sector. Learn CPR, steal from death.
• kqr 7y ago
  I don't know if an adult can do it in an hour, but learning to ride a bike is very useful/freeing.
  • seaish 7y ago
    I have a friend who did learn to ride a bike in an hour. I was extremely surprised, but he is the fastest learner I know so I don't think it's typical.
    • saalweachter 7y ago
      Frankly it is easy as an adult, even if falling is probably worse. You would not believe how uncoordinated children are, and how much better you are at using your body a few years after it finishes growing and you've had some time to get used to it. (I mean, developing proper instincts about stopping and turning can take some time, but just mastering going slow and not falling down isn't too hard.)
• quickthrower2 7y ago
  Go through your expenses and identify waste. Even if you’d don’t keep a budget check your credit card statements etc. cancel unrequited subscriptions, haggle utility bills, refinance loans, etc.
  • dokem 7y ago
    But looking at my credit card statement gives me anxiety.
    • quickthrower2 7y ago
      Yes that’s a big problem. Not sure on the solution to that, but over time you get used to it. Just think of it like any other math exercise.
    • Danieru 7y ago
      That's the point! Thinking about money should not be a cause of stress in your life. If money is stressful then budget/expense tracking is what you _need_. Since we got married me and my wife have been tracking every expense down to the penny. The net result has been no fights about money, everything was known and obvious from the records. Every so often we come together, look at the numbers, and decide things. You might decide an expense is worth it, or you might decide an expense is not worth it. Without measurements you cannot make that decision, with measurements you are in control. Once you are in control money should become a tool, and a source of freedom to spend on what you value.
    • UnFleshedOne 7y ago
      That means you spend too much. It is good to know such things in advance. Not knowing never makes anything better in the long run.
• monkeycantype 7y ago
  Hirigana Or Hangul
  • rootsudo 7y ago
    Hiragana and Katakana.
    • pvinis 7y ago
      I don't think any of these are something you can learn and remember in one hour. It's a good start though.
      • monkeycantype 7y ago
        I think you can learn to recognise the base hirigana characters with 95% accuracy in an hour. I had expected it to be much more difficult. I used the app ‘pastel’ I think it will take vastly more time than that to have the fluid instant recognition I have with Latin characters
• devnonymous 7y ago
  A lot of devtools and configuration oddities can be learnt in an hour or less. One can become a fairly proficient/well informed user of any of these. The $VALUE for any/all of these are huge ! * keyboard shortcuts for your preferred UIs * vim (/ your preferred $EDITOR) * tmux * make * readline * strace * gdb * valrind * tcpdump * wireshark * basic bash * all sort of server configs: - nginx - apache - postfix - ldap -... * compiling the linux kernel * understanding the sysctl tunables * pick a binary file format and understand it * pick a protocol and understand it * man proc * iptables ... ... You get the general idea. Personally, I sometimes feel the only reason I am respected by my colleagues is simply because I know a little about a lot. If you have an hour to spend, don't look for the biggest bang of the buck / the most valuable. Explore something small that you use all the time / wish to understand better but didn't take the time.
  • blaerk 7y ago
    This will also ease communication and working with sysadmins. Everybody wins!
• keiferski 7y ago
  The Cyrillic script is fairly easy to learn and will let you phonetically read a bunch of languages (Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Mongolian, and Serbian to name a few.) Each language has a few unique letters and pronunciation can vary slightly, but for the most part they are the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script
  • mantap 7y ago
    IPA is also amazingly useful if you want to learn another language or even just learn to say someone's name correctly. Having a notation for sounds helps you to understand and speak foreign languages, because you can think of what someone is saying in IPA and not in some flawed English transcription.
    • mathieuh 7y ago
      It definitely took me longer than an hour to learn IPA, but aside from that, definitely. I have an amateur interest in linguistics so I picked it up through reading Wikipedia articles on obscure languages, I would say I use it at least once a week. Very helpful when learning languages that have sounds that aren't in a language you already speak, because your brain tends to map those sounds to similar sounds you already know. Like how English speakers can't distinguish between French [u] and [ou] (/y/ and /u/ in IPA). Even if you can't hear it you can read about how to articulate it.
    • SkyMarshal 7y ago
      What's IPA? Googling that is gonna show a of links for beer.
      • Jarwain 7y ago
        The International Phonetic Alphabet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alpha...
      • SllX 7y ago
• aamederen 7y ago
  Basics of presentation skills like - Using voice, body and mimics properly - Not putting lots of text on slides and just reading them - Using bullets instead of paragraphs - Tell a story and use a less formal more friendly style (not always but applies to majority of technical presentations) A nice video about the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB2pl1QbY3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB2pl1QbY3I
  • lozf 7y ago
    Good call, reminds me to mention Julian Treasure on How to speak so that people will want to listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIho2S0ZahI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIho2S0ZahI
• shoo 7y ago
  For the lame definition of valuable: if you are not in the practise of negotiating, try to negotiate in more situations and see what happens! Attempting to negotiate will not harm your situation when dealing with another party making you a genuine offer. Even if you are a very mediocre negotiator, you might be able to easily eg obtain a somewhat higher salary when starting a job versus just accepting a given offer if you're not aware that negotiation is possible/expected. (This doesn't work in all situations, some employment markets are highly regulated and don't have market rates, negotiation is more likely to produce better results if you are in a stronger negotiating position...) If you have an hour, read https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ If you have a few hours, read through the book "getting to yes"
  • Tomte 7y ago
    I think "Never split the difference" by Chris Voss is the better book if you can tolerate a bit of bragging.
    • shoo 7y ago
      In your opinion, what does Voss' book do better? There's also a Farnham Street podcast with Voss: https://fs.blog/2018/01/chris-voss/ https://fs.blog/2018/01/chris-voss/
      • Tomte 7y ago
        It doesn't focus exclusively on "let's make the pie bigger", and it's more hands-on. NStD gives you practical tips, GtY is more of a framework (and maybe an ideology).
    • dmichulke 7y ago
      Plus, it's also a book on active manipulation (in a wider sense) and an even better when read after "When I say no I feel guilty" which deals with defending against manipulations. None of them can be read in an hour, nor can they be made a habit in a month.
  • 7y ago
• nxpnsv 7y ago
  I would suggest learning juggling a basic 3 ball cascade. It’s great for training concentration and coordination, and also quite addictive.
  • suyash 7y ago
    +1
  • tempestn 7y ago
    I learned this back in the early 2000's because I moved to a new city, didn't have a cellphone, and was waiting for my landline and internet to be hooked up. So I literally knew no one and had no contact with the outside world. Then, seriously, I happened to find a set of juggling balls in the back of the closet of the room I was renting—the previous tenant must have forgotten them there. With literally nothing else to do, I taught myself to juggle. Took me longer than an hour, but not all that much longer. (Started with one ball tossing back and forth, then two, before moving to three.)
    • nxpnsv 7y ago
      That rings true, I spent a weekend in the 90s to teach myself. I taught a bunch of people to juggle since - usually with an instructor an hour to reach something like juggling is achievable.
  • jgwil2 7y ago
    For most people this will take more than an hour to master, but once you get to around five tosses and catches you've figured out the pattern and the rest is just practice.
• tus88 7y ago
  Double unders.
• eliseumds 7y ago
  Advanced Google Search syntax + the Ngram Viewer.
• colechristensen 7y ago
  How to cook eggs. Pick two or three styles of egg and spend an hour (and a few dozen eggs) preparing them over and over keeping notes on the conditions and outcomes of each generation.
  • bronco21016 7y ago
    I purchased “The Food Lab” by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and it completely changed things for me. He spends an extensive amount of time in the book describing techniques and tools in a very hackerish kind of way that finally taught me to cook at a level closer to my wife who spent her earlier years working in restaurant kitchens. Cooking eggs, in any variation, is discussed at length in the book and it’s well worth the read.
    • kqr 7y ago
      "Cooking for Geeks" is another newcomer-friendly resource in the same vein.
    • colechristensen 7y ago
      Other good books in this vein are Ratio by Michael Ruhlman and On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee
  • muzani 7y ago
    Eggs are interestingly one of the hardest to do in cooking. So it seems like something you can do in a few minutes, but not really.
• lisper 7y ago
  Basic social skills. How to make small talk, especially with non-technical people. It's easy to learn, but if you're a hacker then it probably doesn't come naturally and so it must be learned. But you will get enormous leverage out of learning it.
  • lawlorino 7y ago
    IMO if you're the kind of person who needs to improve on basic social skills, an hour of practice is probably not going to be enough. You also didn't describe how this could be practiced in an hour?
    • lisper 7y ago
      I would start here: https://www.improveyoursocialskills.com/basic-social-skills-guide https://www.improveyoursocialskills.com/basic-social-skills-... Like any other skill, you are not going to master it in an hour. But an hour of study and practice can produce dramatic results.
• dancek 7y ago
  Learn an aphorism by heart and think of situations it applies to. Pick something important that you believe in. Then, over time, you'll remember the aphorism in various situations and slowly adopt it as a life value. Examples: - Getting what you want will not make you happy. - It's hard to get what you want. But it's easy to want what you get.
• coltnz 7y ago
  Logical fallacies - how not to think. Kelly criterion - what can you afford to invest. Polya's problem solving method. Salary negotiation skills. Rich Hickey's Hammock driven development (for non programmers too). No Limit Holdem Poker flop and turn odds calculation.
  • Zanni 7y ago
    If you play blackjack for money, you can improve your EV significantly by devoting an hour to learning (most of) basic strategy. If you already know basic strategy, you can learn the basics of card counting in an hour. (Actual card counting requires significant practice after you "know" it in order to maintain a correct count under stressful conditions.)
    • mason_jake 7y ago
      Agreed on learning blackjack. I went to Las Vegas about a month ago and spent the four-hour plane ride trying to memorize some of the pattern in a blackjack strategy chart. I didn't memorize all of the actions for every possible hand combination, but I learned enough to be dangerous (read: enough not to make dumb/obvious mistakes). I ended up quadrupling my money (only a few hundred dollars) and have been playing really well on a blackjack app on my phone. Practice makes perfect is really the maxim here.
  • eterps 7y ago
    > Logical fallacies - how not to think. Does anyone know a good app or website that drills you in recognizing logical fallacies from realistic examples/scenarios?
    • CyberMacGyver 7y ago
      The best resource I have found is a fantastic old book - Straight and Crooked Thinking[1] [1] http://www.neglectedbooks.com/Straight_and_Crooked_Thinking.pdf http://www.neglectedbooks.com/Straight_and_Crooked_Thinking....
• hombre_fatal 7y ago
  How to shuffle cards, especially without needing a surface to do it. This video did it for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdCia_d1u5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdCia_d1u5c
  • suyash 7y ago
    I'm gonna try this weekend, thanks!
  • alanbernstein 7y ago
    Don't get me wrong, that's neat, but do people often find themselves needing to shuffle cards without having a surface?
• werber 7y ago
  How to revive someone with narcan
  • Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    I didn't realize anyone can buy naloxone over the counter!
• scarejunba 7y ago
  Use Upwork or a similar service to outsource some of your drudge work. Suddenly you'll find that you can accelerate yourself so much more.
  • kqr 7y ago
    Can you expand on this?
    • scarejunba 7y ago
      Sure. Let’s say you have some mundane task: you’ve got some number of people with varying dietary restrictions and they want to go to dinner together. You don’t know which places can accommodate you. Don’t do it yourself. Just ship the info over to someone you pay $25 to do the work. You can then use the time more productively. Eventually, you can see the MTurk / Upwork folks as just slow executing programs. For some jobs, some guy in Southeast Asia will do it for $4. Don’t even think about it. This works across the spectrum: want to clean up formatting in a doc? Ship it over. Want to transcribe a video for captions? Ship it over. Want a quick scraper for a few websites? Ship it over. The objective is to not be the bottleneck on any task. Get a quick idea of what the labour looks like. Southeast Asia at $5 is great. Americans at $15 are a waste of time. South Asians at $8 will break even. Eventually, every hour of your time is spent on the time that is special about you.
      • kqr 7y ago
        This sounds great. How can I trust the quality of the output?
        • scarejunba 7y ago
          Many of the things are easier to check than to do. And where it isn't, you can have multiple people do the same thing. And last of all: if you build a working relationship with the guys who do good work you can use them for more work.
• suyash 7y ago
  Meditation
• bArray 7y ago
  Do nothing. Seriously. Allow yourself to become bored and you'll find your brain has suddenly got time to work on all the problems you mentally shelved. There's a good reason why a good number of ideas happen in the shower.
  • muzani 7y ago
    We call that meditation these days.
    • monktastic1 7y ago
      Although there are forms of "do nothing" meditation (which are, ironically, very easy to get wrong), most forms of meditation are precise ways to train attention and awareness. Quite different from the kind of "do nothing" where your mind wanders mindlessly into boredom.
  • Double_a_92 7y ago
    I find it difficult to ever feel bored. I could look out of the window for hours and find infinitely many details to entertain me. Almost as if there is a positive offset to my "exitement" level... On the other hand regular activities (e.g. eating in a restaurant) start stressing me out too much, so those things become less enjoyable. Is this fixable?
    • username90 7y ago
      Nothing strange, you just spend more time processing information than average people. My mental model is that any point the brain is dividing its resources between execution of current events and processing old events. If it spends too much time processing old events then it has no resources over to properly execute in the now. When this happens some people just drop the unprocessed tasks from the queue to free up resources while others (like me and you) starts experiencing immense stress forcing us to drop what we are currently doing instead. One way is not the other, sometimes I wish that I could execute better in the now but sometimes others wish that their brains didn't automatically drop important experiences without properly processing them first. How to fix this? One way is ADD medication, increasing your dopamine forces your brain to focus on the now and drop old packets. It helps me execute better but I definitely become less creative and have a harder time remembering what I did when I took them. I might feel more creative when I'm on them, but most of those thoughts will be gone without a trace since they weren't properly processed.
• kendallpark 7y ago
  Memorize important phone numbers (eg, close friends and family). Memorize at least one of your credit card numbers. It's not uncommon to find yourself in a situation without a phone or wallet. Can't tell you how many times a would-be tricky situation was easily resolved by having a particular number in memory.
  • MandieD 7y ago
    Those pieces of information have saved me a lot of trouble on several occasions! I always dial my husband's mobile number by hand, and usually my close friends and family's numbers, too. Credit card: I try entering the number, expiration and check digits from memory, then check it against the card before submitting the order. When the card number changes (bank decision or mine), I learn the new one by learning the differences - the first four digits are almost always the same, as that's a bank identifier. With AmEx, the variance was only in the last five digits, and was slight.
  • AlexCoventry 7y ago
    Don't forget to memorize the security code!
    • kendallpark 7y ago
      And expiration date!
• westonplatter0 7y ago
  asking open ended questions.
• adharmad 7y ago
  vim
• Pinegulf 7y ago
  Basic (office) exercise and stretches. I've gotten old(er) and really wish I'd done those for my neck and shoulders.
  • mikelyons 7y ago
    It makes such a difference, this and posture. I've had so many injuries and joint problems from not doing this, luckily I've made it a routine in my 30s
• 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  Taking value literally, spend an hour learning how salary negotiations for new jobs work and how to ask for & get more. patio11 has written an excellent intro to the topic, and if you're an entry-level Silicon Valley engineer, this is easily worth a cool million ($25k/yr * 40 years) in lifetime earnings. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
• samvher 7y ago
  This is not really a tech skill, but it can help you save some time a couple of times a day which you can then spend on other things ;) Relearn how to tie your shoelaces: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WgSwvDkJVxE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WgSwvDkJVxE
  • Geee 7y ago
    I was going to post this same tip. I have been using this method for a few years now and it's great. It takes 15 minutes to learn and then you have to just stick to it to make it quicker.
• xouse 7y ago
  People think touch typing takes a long time to learn, and getting good does take a while, but it only takes about an hour to memorize the alphanumerics and which finger types what well enough to break the hunt and peck looking at the keyboard cycle forever. Once the cycle is broken just typing casually is enough to eventually achieve mastery. It's only that one or two hours that really suck, and then that week or so of being kind of mediocre that keeps people stuck in the suboptimal local maxima of not touch typing.
  • taneq 7y ago
    If you use a computer in any way in the course of your job or daily life, touch typing is the single biggest improvement in productivity and quality of life that you can make. It is SO much faster and easier than hunt and peck.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • kalyantm 7y ago
      Agreed. Touch typing + learning vim changed the way I work and boosted productivity to another level
    • caro_douglos 7y ago
      I had a conversation with a friend who is an attorney and they blew me away with their off the cuff typing speed. It ended up inspiring me to get better at something I did all day....for someone who’s not sure where to start I’d start with gtypist typespeed or speedpad. Don’t forget about mavis beacon!
    • tarsinge 7y ago
      Second this. Also more specific but if you are french the keyboard layout is not great for programming (because []{}';. are not straightforward). I’m more happy since I switched to QWERTY layout for programming. Since I touch type I can easily switch depending on the task.
• lrem 7y ago
  How to frame your photos, as in where to point the camera at. Most family members could skip a level or five of they had the patience to internalise a 15 minutes YouTube video.
• acacar 7y ago
  AWK. The hour I spent learning AWK way back when must have saved me a few days, cumulatively, on mundane data munging tasks over the years.
• antman 7y ago
  Nutrition. An essential life skill.
  • notelonmusk 7y ago
    I can understand the value, but what exactly about nutrition to cover in one hour?
• mojuba 7y ago
  You can learn the basics of DJ-ing on digital decks in an hour. However, it can take years of practicing to reach a level of a mediocre DJ who can lead a party with a lot of people you don't know. DJ-ing is a surprisingly difficult underappreciated skill, which can also be very rewarding when you learn it. The decks become your musical instrument on which you can modify the original music as much as you want and glue together pieces in a myriad of possible ways to build one long running non-stop musical track.
• paulcole 7y ago
  Take 10 minutes and think deeply about the fact that you’re probably wrong about most things. If your immediate instinct is to tell me that I’m wrong, take 20 minutes instead.
  • Geee 7y ago
    And then realize that everyone is wrong all the time so it doesn't matter. You just have to be louder.
  • rwnspace 7y ago
    The trick is to reduce the number of falsifiable beliefs you hold. It grants you an immense amount of conviction, and can be very effective in the short term, although the price is a crippled perception... A commendable way to spend the remaining 40 minutes is to reflect on becoming so brave in the face of failure - of being wrong - that you seem almost foolhardy to others. Ideally, you want to be really quite wrong about many different things in myriad interesting ways.
• slowenough 7y ago
  Probably meditation, pranayama, basic stretching, basic posture, basic self awareness.
• nick88msn 7y ago
  Regex
• rapnie 7y ago
  Learn blind typing with 10 fingers, if you were not doing that yet. Not only will it be a timesaver for the rest of your life, but it allows you to get into flow much easier, where your thoughts stream effortlessly to the screen.
  • kqr 7y ago
    And if you thinking about re-learning how to type anyway, try doing it on an optimised but common layout like Colemak or Dvorak. Basically no extra cost, but even greater savings!
    • jholman 7y ago
      Ugh. I continue to be skeptical that there's any substantial performance improvement. The published research is obviously ambivalent-at-best. And my anecdotal life experience also make the Dvorak typists look pretty mediocre (including the ones who've been doing it for a decade). On the other hand, a very real cost is that if you want to pair, or receive coaching from a mentor, or coach someone, or just let a significant other type a quick email on your laptop, that works poorly. Though you could view that as a perk, I suppose. Also keybindings optimized for physical layout on QWERTY will no longer apply to you, which can be inconvenient.
      • kqr 7y ago
        I'm sure that depends on how you define "performance" -- for me, the greatest benefit is in hand comfort, not speed. Switching between Qwerty and Colemak for any of the reasons you mention has never been a problem for me either. Obviously, going from Colemak to Qwerty is going to be inconvenient for the sole reason that Qwerty is inconvenient, but that's only because you become aware of how much you contort your fingers unnecessarily once you've been typing for a while not doing that. I agree keybindings can be an issue, though. For me, personally, it's minor compared to everything else, though.
• tempestn 7y ago
  How, and why, to invest in a simple portfolio of index funds. Split between equity and fixed income based on your risk tolerance, and diversify equities globally. This will give you a low-cost, set-and-forget investment portfolio that you can add to over time without ever having to worry about what you should buy or what the market might do. Just add to it regularly over time, and end up with solid retirement savings. The market and your portfolio will certainly fluctuate, but there is no need to react to these fluctuations—simply rebalance based on your investment plan (say, annually). Here's a good primer from the Bogleheads forum: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads%C2%AE_investing_start-up_kit https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads%C2%AE_investing_s...
  • Plough_Jogger 7y ago
    Jack Bogle did not advocate for adding international equities to a portfolio as a means of diversification. [1] [1] https://www.morningstar.com/articles/885739/why-jack-bogle-doesnt-own-non-us-stocks https://www.morningstar.com/articles/885739/why-jack-bogle-d...
    • tempestn 7y ago
      The fact that the Bogleheads forum is a useful source of information doesn't imply that Jack Bogle was right about everything.
      • scotty79 7y ago
        ... or that the Bogleheads forum is right about everything.
        • tempestn 7y ago
          Naturally. Like any forum there are a range of opinions there. I think if most reasonable people take an hour to familiarize themselves with an investment plan based on diversification and cost minimization though, they'll see its merits.
    • 7y ago
• tempestn 7y ago
  I have to say, I was skeptical of this whole thread based on the title—what could you really learn in an hour of any true value? Well, it turns out a lot of things. I even added one to the list. Now I know how to properly wrap cables and tie my shoes. Thank you for posting this.
• carapace 7y ago
  Self-hypnosis. You can learn the basics in less than an hour and it can be an amplifier for most other things.
  • renox 7y ago
    Any good pointer on this?
    • carapace 7y ago
      In re: hypnosis in general the books I recommend are: "TRANCE-formations" by Bandler and Grinder, and "Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such Thing as Hypnosis?" by Heller. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/956297.Trance_Formations https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/956297.Trance_Formations https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/447454.Monsters_and_Magical_Sticks https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/447454.Monsters_and_Magi... As for self-hypnosis, you can learn it from a book or a website, but you might also want to check out the people locally who are into hypnosis and self-improvement. Personally, I get really good results from a very simple induction. It has a lot of names, "Betty Erickson’s Induction", "See, Hear, Feel Induction", "5-4-3-2-1 Induction", and so on. It's easy to remember and reliable. This is a good write-up of the process: https://www.practicalhappiness.co.uk/media/download_gallery/5%204%203%202%201%20Relaxation%20technique.pdf https://www.practicalhappiness.co.uk/media/download_gallery/... That should be enough to get you started. FWIW, although I'm not a hypnotist I know a lot about it, AMA.
• notelonmusk 7y ago
  Off-topic: Since you left 'valuable' intentionally vague, I asked myself what the value of a piece of knowledge would be. So I quickly came up with a simple model. Just take the integral of the value you get from this piece of knowledge over time, I thought. This helps you measure if a one-time payoff of knowledge A is better than the repeated payoff of knowledge B. Then I realized gauging value is more nuanced. How to model the value of things that are less tangible like insurance? The Heimlich maneuver may have a really high value in the case that my friend chokes, but very low value otherwise. But this kind of knowledge is harder to focus on when we measure our knowledge by some simple value model. Surely you didn't expect an answer to "the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour" to be about what the best kind of insurance you should get?
• tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  Double entry bookkeeping.
• mekoka 7y ago
  Some years ago, I learned how to tie my shoes from this video https://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_how_to_tie_your_shoes https://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_how_to_tie_your_shoes. I believe those 3 minutes were among the best time investments I've ever made.
  • clarry 7y ago
    One alternative is to eliminate the problem entirely and get shoes without laces.
• kitd 7y ago
  If you have to work with the linux or mac command line at all as part of your job, 'sed' and 'awk' are 2 commands that will boost your productivity hugely.
  • UweSchmidt 7y ago
    Very useful, but one hour might not be enough to get good enough to reach for these commands when you need them, and these skills require some maintenance.
  • Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    I use sed routinely for string replacement. Don't know how to use it for anything else. I also use grep, find, and wc routinely. For anything more complicated I reach for a full-featured programming language. I never feel like I'm missing anything.
• wafikismaja 7y ago
  Good
• jakobov 7y ago
  The basics of evolutionary psychology. It is a less bullshit version of psychology. It will help you understand yourself and society.
  • gwd 7y ago
    OTOH... https://xkcd.com/775/ https://xkcd.com/775/
• jacobush 7y ago
  Meditation.
• disordr 7y ago
  How to negotiate.
• newguy1234 7y ago
  Learn how people manipulate one another in various contexts (online, in-person, social settings, sales settings etc.). Just being able to pick up on the red flags will help you go along way in terms of making sure you don't get frauded or scammed.
• RobertRoberts 7y ago
  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 the rice (look this up) when done. (about 12-15 min of cooking) 2. Baking a cake: (any square pan yellow cake) Read how baking powder actually works, then you realize you need to mix and bake quickly. Letting it sit before baking will make a flatter cake. Also, stick a butter knife in the middle to test when it's done, if it comes out with batter stuck on it, it needs a few more minutes. 3. Eggs: When frying, scrambling, put the eggs in warm water before cracking to make them room temperature first. They cook better this way. 4. Chocolate syrup: 1 c. water, 1 c. cocoa power, 1 c. sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp salt. Blend it in a blender. (sealed container works best, as it's messy) Better than store bought, super cheap, use organic if you like... etc... Why is this valuable? Because I am no longer tempted to waste money at restaurants any more, or buy unique expensive organic products (because I can make them now). I feel incredibly free and liberated that I get food at home that tastes better than what is at a restaurant now. (for about 90% of the stuff I like) Also, I can teach my kids, and they start life with these skills. Great question, way too many things to write down...
  • danvoell 7y ago
    1 & 3 - I had no idea.
  • dwoozle 7y ago
    Cooking is great but you cannot learn it in an hour.
    • sillysaurusx 7y ago
      Sure you can. If you said 10 minutes I'd agree. But if you can learn a bit about programming in an hour, you can learn enough cooking in an hour to make a yummy meal. The simplest example is a pork steak. Throw it on the skillet and wait awhile. Turn it over and wait awhile. You now have a pork steak. It's delicious.
• sumgame 7y ago
  Funninly I just went for the Wim Hoff fundamentals course yesterday and it fits the description very accurately. You can learn it online by watching the video or downloading the app and shouldn't take more than an hour. But preferable do the cold exposure part of it with somone around. The breathing technique by itself is still great though
  • vekker 7y ago
    I had an accident last week and find the Wim Hof breathing tremendously helpful with managing the pain and inflammation. I highly recommend learning this technique. It's free, you can find plenty of YouTube videos. A "proper session" should take 20 minutes (= until your breath retentions are at least 2 minutes long and you feel the effects). The cold exposure is also great to experiment with. I find that regular cold exposure, learning to control the gasp reflex and calming yourself down in spite of the feeling of the ice is something very useful to learn and a "skill" that carries over to general pain and stress management.
  • hunterx 7y ago
    I am surprised to find this here. I've been practising on and off for the last three years. It's well worth the investment :)
• biased_coin 7y ago
  Pomodoro technique - Takes a few minutes to learn and setup an app. It has helped me be super productive with tasks requiring concentration.
  • pheelicks 7y ago
    And if you can't abide by a timer, use this to completely lock your screen to force the downtime: https://github.com/felixpalmer/Cherrola https://github.com/felixpalmer/Cherrola
• DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  If you've been married for a while, learn who your spouse is now. (I mean in a good way, by taking an hour to rediscover what his/her hopes and dreams are, what interests they've gained / lost, etc.) He/she is probably a pretty different person than the one you married. It's easy to overlook that.
  • ralusek 7y ago
    The implication being that you just don't communicate between the time you first met and now?
    • DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
      > The implication being that you just don't communicate between the time you first met and now? That's not how I meant it. My point is that day-to-day life can be so consistently busy or hectic, that couples can spend way less time together than at first. And when you have kids, grad school, careers, etc., you can end up with a surprisingly long stretch of being more like business partners than soulmates. There may not be much you can do about diverging interests, or the diminished levels of crazy love-hormones that you had at first. But taking time to really pay attention to each other, and have real emotional vulnerability and care for each other, can be pretty awesome.
      • toomuchtodo 7y ago
        My partner and I had several years of couples therapy together, and I can confirm your thesis in thread is spot on, great comments. You have to be able to grow together, live through the parts where that new relationship energy and passion are burning lower than they used to (and not act out destructively because of it, lots of ways to accomplish this, limited only by negotiated boundaries of the relationship), but still be able to check in with each other to ensure each other's needs are being met. IMHO marriage is about finding a teammate, not a soul mate. It is more of a business partnership than about fairy tales and romance, and I think too many folks don't understand that upfront. TLDR: You are looking for a life cofounder; choose wisely.
    • 7y ago
• irreality 7y ago
  Basic docker commands docker ps docker inspect docker exec docker run docker build docker rm ...
• scandox 7y ago
  Credibility of sources. I learned this in 40 minutes of a medieval history class. It is simply the constant habit of asking: Who is speaking? Why are they speaking? What have they to gain or lose from speaking? What have I to gain or lose from believing/disbelieving what is said? I actually by instinct tend to believe people are mostly speaking in good faith so this is a great corrective for me. Also I have a habit of seeking reassurance instead of allowing bad news to register. So again a good corrective.
  • ehecatl 7y ago
    And "To whom are they speaking"? What you are giving a succinct overview of is Aristotle's _Ars Rhetorica_ Cracking read, BTW.
    • janniks 7y ago
      Is there a good translation available somewhere?
    • scandox 7y ago
      Yes indeed I had neglected the "To whom"...which reminds me how often I think a message is aimed at me (egomania) when in fact it has an audience I am not even aware exists...
  • pgt 7y ago
    Follow the money. If you can't see a person's motivations (esp. a politician), watch the result of their actions and assume that the outcome was their motivation and tell them that. Practically it doesn't matter whether they intended for that outcome to occur or not, because you still have to bear the consequences. If they predict the undesirable outcome, they should alter their behaviour. If the same behaviour repeatedly maps to the same outcome regardless of who is doing it, judge the person on the outcome. Drunk driving laws work like this.
  • saalweachter 7y ago
    My introduction to this were the excellent books 1421, 1434, and of course, the author's third book, The Lost Empire of Atlantis, which I found every bit as convincing as the first two and really drove home how credulous I'd been when reading them.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• sshine 7y ago
  I spent the last hour reading this thread, and I learned to tie my shoelaces differently, that Sam Harris has a somewhat pleasant voice in spite of his unpleasant world view, and that beyond juggling, CPR and personal finance, there's really nothing I'd like to learn in just an hour.
• trumbitta2 7y ago
  Writing a functional component in React, and some uses of it.
  • trumbitta2 7y ago
    Hey downvoter, I learnt that little bit in one hour, and it was pretty useful from the get go in my area of interest.
• PeterStuer 7y ago
  Skills are gained through practice. To get good at non-trivial skills requires more than an hour. Knowledge is gained through insights. While a full understanding and implications of an insight can take a lifetime, an insight can be triggered in under an hour. Now which insights are most valuable? That is always going to be personal and relative. But one of the insights that touches all people and is almost universally lacking or deeply misunderstood is the insight into money. What is it exactly, where does it come from, who controls it? ... So that would be my choice. Spend an hour learning about money. Here is a decent and easy starter in under an hour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8i-4HpKlM&list=PLyl80QTKi0gPBcb32paMvXxcq7UUeJskV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8i-4HpKlM&list=PLyl80QTKi0...
  • taffer 7y ago
    > Here is a decent and easy starter in under an hour. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8i-4HpKlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8i-4HpKlM It should be mentioned that the video presents a fringe theory (MMT) that is highly controversial among economists. I would recommend the Khan Academy series on banking and money as an alternative, even though it is longer than an hour: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/money-and-banking https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-fi...
    • PeterStuer 7y ago
      While the short video series is indeed also criticizing the traditional econo 101 money account (I'll leave it to the discretion of the viewer whether that critique is deserved or not), it does also address and explain the traditional views in a concise and accesible way in under an hour.
      • bluesign 7y ago
        I agree they explain basic concepts in an easy and accessible way, but there are a lot of missing pieces intentionally omitted. I don't know how many times refers 'creation of money by banks', but it was the essential point for sure, and totally wrong one. Rest of the video all depends on this.
• tobireif 7y ago
  CSS Grid is very useful, and it's fun: https://tobireif.com/posts/layout_fun_with_css_grid/ https://tobireif.com/posts/layout_fun_with_css_grid/ The spec is great for learning Grid: https://www.w3.org/TR/css-grid-1/ https://www.w3.org/TR/css-grid-1/
• tudorw 7y ago
  Tactical Breathing :)
• FailMore 7y ago
  How to interpret your dreams accurately from this paper: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz. Interpreting dreams accurately = clear directions for personal development / ability to do the work of a therapist for yourself = personal growth.
• earnubs 7y ago
  How to stretch.
• Grue3 7y ago
  Folding a shirt in 2 seconds. Knowing this method will save you hours of time later.
• kisanme 7y ago
  Basics of a knowledge area!
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• teekert 7y ago
  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.
  • smrr723 7y ago
    What resource did you use to learn it?
    • teekert 7y ago
      I wanted to start running Home Assistant using Docker (on my main server instead of a dedicated Raspberry Pi with Hass.io) and came across this page [0], search for "Docker Compose", I copied the yaml, ran docker-compose up -d and boom. Shortly afterwards I added mosquitto and sabnzbd to the yaml and all three now update very easily and everything became very portable. Before I was keeping docker commands somewhere in an md file. Edit, I hope to learn Traefik reverse proxying in one hour next ;) [0] https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/installation/docker/ https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/installation/docker/
• lispm 7y ago
  Lisp: https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/common-lisp/ https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/common-lisp/
• janpot 7y ago
  Learn to relax, take an hour off.
• kahlonel 7y ago
  Learn how to do rear naked chokehold. You’ll probably use it once in your lifetime, but learning it is worth it.
• tarsinge 7y ago
  SQL is a good fit for one hour I think. Not « valuable » for work but interesting for stimulating other parts of your brain, which can have interesting side effects: - juggling (3 balls). Great for arms and hand coordination and trusting your left hand. - drumming (common patterns). Good gateway to music production.
  • Lendal 7y ago
    SELECT INSERT UPDATE DELETE If you're going to write software for a living, learning those three simple commands well can save you so much future pain. Just do it.
• z3t4 7y ago
  Many people think that if they just become successful they will be more happy, but it's actually the other way around. First comes happiness, then comes success. A happy life will be a successful life.
  • forgotmypass9 7y ago
    In my experience, this is not true at all. When I had a solid job, I was the happiest person alive. When I was struggling to find a new job, I was the most depressed person alive. It's not just me, there was a study saying that money correlates to income perfectly - up to $70 000, after which there is no correlation at all. Unless your definition of "not successful" includes people who make enough money to paying living expenses.
    • z3t4 7y ago
      Indeed economy security is one of the corner pillars of success. Think of it as part of the hierarchy of needs. But you can be upper class and still feel miserably, then you think if only my startup takes off I will be happy. But that will only lead to more work, not happiness. It's better to do something you love, be around people you love, etc, which is more likely to lead to success.
• jt2190 7y ago
  How to ask better questions. Before asking any question, I now ask myself: * Is this the right person to ask? How likely are they to know the answer? Should I trust their answer? * Would knowing the answer change my next step? * Have I spent a reasonable amount of time trying to answer the question myself? Am I depriving myself of an opportunity to learn?
• sjapkee 7y ago
  >A person can also learn a few guitar chords and possibly play a carefully-chosen song in that time. He can't. He'll know how to play it, but it will require many hours of repetitions to reach enough speed.
  • mikelyons 7y ago
    maybe spend an hour ... every day!
• psychoslave 7y ago
  Meditation. Seriously. Take time to focus on your focus. For me, it's a really hard exercise, and before I really started to practice it daily, I always had this a priori that spending time on "doing nothing" was just a waste of time. I couldn't have been more wrong, of course. I still feel like I have much progress to do, but now I understand how practicing the art of focusing on focus (aka "concentrate on here and now", "mindfulness" and so on) helps to focus on a selected task in general. Also if you have indeed a [30-60] minutes vacancy window, having a nap is a good option. Especially if you have to solve some mind blowing issue. Trust the power of you unconscious force. I can't put my hand on it right now, but there is an excellent essay by Pointcarré on this topic.
  • mertnesvat 7y ago
    Ohh Boy, I feel relate to your explanation a lot. After heavy gaming and diagnosed with ADHD. I started to think a lot about how we focus how our attention span various to the content. And it became obvious that we're losing long focus ability which is really hard to improve. For that there's really nice book called Stillness is the Key from Ryan Holiday and Chop wood and Carry Water they're perfect examples to teach how precious focus and stillness is.
  • pzumk 7y ago
    Meditation isn’t something to learn within an hour, unfortunately. It took me really much time to actually learn how to meditate but now as I know how to do it it’s awesome.
    • psychoslave 7y ago
      Well, there is two side of it: - of course, meditation is an art that you don't master in the minute (and that most likely can always be further strengthen); - anyone which has a bit of free time can practice it, all it asks is the will to improve its meditation skill to quickly feel practical benefits.
• mertnesvat 7y ago
  How do sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves effects cardiovascular system. Spent less than hour or so to understand them 3 years ago now I think because of that my life is so much different than what could have been. Consequently, I learned that our breath is so much important than what I really thought. Because of this knowledge, breathing exercises, meditation, Wim Hof breathing method and Cold Therapy made a lot of sense and started using them since then. Just one question and less than hour research lead to many changes. It's definitely something to learn, we're learning so things why not little bit more about this sophisticated machinery called body. PS: Again it's super subjective question so there's also generally what fascinates me most is this variation how different the answer it is to this question. If we ask this question to the bacterias or viruses the answer wouldn't be so much different I guess or let's make it even fish, dog. Another reason to be a humanist.
• methusala8 7y ago
  Download Vimium and install it in the chrome browser and then learn the shortcuts. It should take less than 30 mins to learn and practice. https://github.com/philc/vimium/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/philc/vimium/blob/master/README.md
• borumpilot 7y ago
  How to fight and take a punch. People are capable of taking much more punishment then they think. With an hour of practice, you can overcome the initial fear and act much more rational when push comes to shove. I understand that this is not just "intense concentration" while sitting behind your desk, but that is exactly the point of learning, get out of your bubble.
  • lawlorino 7y ago
    So, what's your advice for practicing this? Ask a friend to punch me in the face for an hour?
  • mac1175 7y ago
    I suggest Brazilian Jujitsu. The rolling aspect of training trains you mentally to not to panic and problem solve the situation, deal with pressure, build cardio and relearn how to breathe, and adapt to different body types. Unlike striking martial arts, less worry of CTE.
    • mac1175 7y ago
      In regards to what can be learned in an hour, a roll with someone gives you an idea of what it is like to be on the ground with someone in a fight without striking, biting, eye gouging, etc.It is a decent simulation if what would happen when on the ground and the idea that if someone doesn't honor your tap, you can be in big trouble.
• boomlinde 7y ago
  Pick up any GNU/BSD tool you use but don't fully understand and read the man page. There is often something valuable that you'll learn in an hour.
• vfinn 7y ago
  First aid skills, e.g. Heimlich maneuver. You might end up saving someone's life by being able to act calmly and correctly.
  • vfinn 7y ago
    The one who down voted, please explain.
  • Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    I saved my grandmother's life with this. She was embarrassed and didn't want me to. Super weird. She looked all round soft but her diaphragm was surprisingly tough, and it took a couple tries. A year later I learned that I had broken one (maybe two?) of her ribs.
    • vfinn 7y ago
      Thank you for the story! I helped my brother who was choking on a cough drop. Didn't use Heimlich, but nevertheless it was a scary experience. I hesitated to which one is the correct move. Edit: As far as I understand, one uses Heimlich if hitting on the back while bent doesn't work.
• t-h-e-chief 7y ago
  Sand blasting, esp. soda blasting. You can start with cheap equipment and work up from there. If I had to start from scratch, this would be it.
• koliber 7y ago
  Understanding compound interest thoroughly. Compound interest is probably the most powerful "force" governing out lives. It is crucial when borrowing money, especially for longer terms. It is crucial when saving and investing. It is crucial in self-development, where a tiny 5% improvement in some area of your life per year can mean that you are twice as good at something in 15 years. It is important when evaluating any kinds of improvements in personal life or in business. The trick is that the percentage never sounds like much. The number of years always sounds like a lot. Nonetheless, the years WILL pass whether you want them to or not, and what tiny life choices you make throughout have a huge impact on where you will be in the future. Being aware of that does not take much. An hour of intense concentration should be enough to get this insight. Of course, this depends on your age and math background. However, I feel confident saying the above as this to the Hacker News audience, as the above requires nothing more than an imagination and the ability to add and multiply by decimals.
  • majortennis 7y ago
    compound interest is where the bank say's its 3.5% interest but if you do the math you're paying 180% for a house. I don't have any idea how that became acceptable/the norm.
    • epanchin 7y ago
      You need to adjust for inflation.
      • majortennis 7y ago
        inflations a big scam too, stop printing bloody money
        • bildung 7y ago
          The printing of US dollars in the last decade had zero effect on inflation. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi
• fbn79 7y ago
  I think one great and simple skill would be use Google more efficiently. This will give you better access to global knowledge so better generic problem solving abilities. See a complete list of google operator https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/ https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
• seiko988 7y ago
  You can learn the principles of good city design / urbanism in about an hour, which could inform your next housing selection.
  • setman2 7y ago
    Can you elaborate? Any good examples?
    • seiko988 7y ago
      Considering time in the day and human walking speed, it turns out that if people cannot walk to their destination within 10 minutes, they will opt to drive. So if you are looking for a place to live in the city, be aware of your walking radius (walkscore.com will map it for you)
• known 7y ago
  I'd suggest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Medicines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Me...
• dcolkitt 7y ago
  History is a pretty much endless well in this regard. Pick some era or focus, and read the major wikipedia articles on it. For example the Franco-Prussian War or the reign of Augustus or the early history of vaccinations. In 60 minutes, you can pretty much become more educated on about a specific historical event than 95% of people you'll meet.
• Curzel 7y ago
  I'd say basic CPR, you never know
• demarq 7y ago
  implementing min max in every language you know. it surprisingly encourages you to both use a ton of language features as well as allowing you to see patterns across all programming languages. this is probably more fun if you build tic tac toe on top of each implementation
• calferreira 7y ago
  The value in doing nothing, just observing with a clear and patient mind. I believe that has been lost and it's also very important.
• s_dev 7y ago
  I'm convinced the gist of any given unix command can be nailed in an hour.
• daodedickinson 7y ago
  Well... um... if someone wants to love me you could definitely maybe get me to fall in love with you in an hour of conversation.
  • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    There's actually a technique for this! Two people stand about 4' apart, and take turns asking personal questions. Start simple and ramp up, like from "What is your favorite color?" to "Who did you like better, your Mother or your Father?". Move to "Have you had a friend pass away, and how did that affect you?", "Are you happy with your life?" and so on. Try to answer truthfully, and pay close attention to your partner's body language, facial changes, voice quality. Empathize silently using the same. After 10 minutes, normal folks feel a closer bond. Unreasonably closer.
• hannofcart 7y ago
  How to play poker. It's the advice I'd give my younger self if I could go back in time. An hour is more than enough to learn the rules and basic strategy.
  • totololo 7y ago
    But why?
  • yangikan 7y ago
    Can you please point to some resources?
• johnlbevan2 7y ago
  Learn how to ask a question. Think of all the times you've seen poorly worded questions on Stack Overflow, in support tickets, etc. Think of the power that being able to get answers to your questions has. Most of us are good at asking questions where we're working within our comfort zones, but struggle when we're on unfamiliar territory (e.g. I'll ask a better question if I have some issue with my code than I would if I were talking to a mechanic about a problem with my car, since I don't know the terminology / worry more about appearing ignorant in the latter scenario). However, by taking time to consider what's useful to the mechanic & what I can report as fact vs my opinion, I can ask a cleaner question. Related, it's also good to learn how to think about things as a collection of dependencies, and how to debug/analyse issues by testing different parts of that dependency graph to isolate variables and narrow down where in that graph an issue must exist. This both helps to ask cleaner questions, provide more background information, and often to resolve issues for yourself.
  • notmyaccount 7y ago
    Start answering questions. You'll automatically learn how to ask questions.
  • csours 7y ago
    A valuable resource I've used for myself and for people who ask me questions: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
    • johnlbevan2 7y ago
      Great resource - thanks for sharing
• omarhaneef 7y ago
  I think the most valuable thing you can learn depends on what you already know. If person A knows differential equations but not regressions or Python, and person B knows Python but not the other two and Person C knows regressions but not the other two then the most valuable thing they can learn in an hour will be different. It might also depend on their goals (does person B want to learn data science of websites)
• movedx 7y ago
  > What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour? All the answers to this thread, once they've built up. Given enough time there would be about an hour of reading and contemplation to be had, and in that time a good deal of advice would be received that can later be acted upon.
• joemccall86 7y ago
  If you are on a unix system with vim installed, fire up "vimtutor" and learn basic vim usage. At worst you become at least more productive on the de-facto editor installed on most unix systems. Personally I find myself incredibly more productive using vim over most other text editors.
• morgan65 7y ago
  I was referred online by eric albert to hire Benati Jordan after checking him out it was obvious he's totally legit and a professional. i made over $600,000 with Bitcoin He helped me generate funds by hacking and multiplying my Bitcoins. All Thanks to him and his team. He's the best bitcoin miner out there based on a personal experience with him. His email is "jordancorporation01@gmail.com".
• jonmal 7y ago
  Learn how to give and receive feedback, both privately and at work Too many times do we give feedback to people we both care of (and don't) in a way that hurts the individual rather than help them. If the aim is to create better relationships with those you care for, then study feedback techniques, so you can deliver it in a constructive, radical candor way. Useful in personal situations as well as at work.
• learnstats2 7y ago
  On the contrary, it has taken me years to unlearn compound interest. When you start with relatively little, compound interest is relatively very unhelpful - it compounds wealth and benefits people who have started with something more than you. Twice as good at nothing is still nothing.
  • joshspankit 7y ago
    As much as I dislike seemingly knee-jerk contrary statements against “known-good” knowledge, I feel that there is an important point here: aggressively attempting to compound interest is a poor use of time when you only have, say, hundreds of dollars. Better to focus on compound interest “in the background” while optimizing for growing capital or income-generating skills.
    • truculent 7y ago
      So, essentially: compound interest is something wealthy people are good at because it's useful when you are wealthy. Not because learning about compund interest will make you rich?
      • cyborgx7 7y ago
        I find that most legitimization attempts for wealth end up being circular if followed to their logical conclusions.
      • Amygaz 7y ago
        Yes, it’s vastly easier even Buffet says so. He only started really using compounding has his core strategy when he already had his first billion (he was 60). Then his fortune doubled a few times in the space of 20 years. People can search YouTube for the interview.
      • solipsism 7y ago
        For the vast majority of people, the best thing they can spend time on to improve their financial situation is increasing their hourly wage or salary.
• Fnoord 7y ago
  I'm not exactly sure how to word it, but my suggestion is privacy related: the implications of publicly sharing information. Why? Because these days, once the cat is out of the bag, oh boy, is it out. I believe this is important for young and old. Young, because statistically they still have a big life ahead, and realizing this will save them harm, and potentially make them more private about sensitive subjects. I'll hold my breath when my daughter gets in her teenage years. I doubt they'll teach her this at school (it absolutely should be taught though). Elder, because society has changed so much, and once you're older it is more difficult to keep up (and part of you doesn't want to anymore). Getting on the bandwagon is difficult, and once they do, this part should be an integral part of say "how to use the Internet" (or "how to use your first smartphone"). It could also lead to higher participation of those who are afraid of new technology, thereby leading to more inclusion. The lesson could have some good examples, could be a workshop, or an open dialogue. Perhaps even a game. A more advanced lesson two could have a more advanced level of how sharing information privately can become public (by government, blackhats, "freindz", broken cryptography, etc).
• tyingq 7y ago
  For people building websites, learning what the experience is like for your users with old hardware or limited bandwidth. Buy an old used Chromebook (< $100 shipped), and use the bandwidth throttling feature in Chrome's dev tools to ratchet down to low end DSL speeds. See if your site is still usable.
• GistNoesis 7y ago
  Two hind-sights for an hour : - Learn how to fall. In skateboarding : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hundbrub8iQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hundbrub8iQ In a more general way, it can be enlightening because it is a fundamental learning principle. When confronted to something new, you will make mistakes, what you need to learn is not how to avoid mistakes but how to avoid catastrophic failures (i.e. how to reduce the cost of mistakes). It's learning how to fail safely so that you can do more cycles and let exponential growth due to iterated processes settle. - Learn to spot cycles. A cycle is a sequence of actions that can be repeated. Ideally cycles would repeat indefinitely but usually they have side effects. Characterize the cycles : timescale, resources created and consumed, compare the value relatively to the values at the same instant of the previous cycles. Is it good or bad ? How frequently can it be repeated ? Can I do every part of the cycle on my own ? How can it be optimized ? And for almost cycles : How to close the loop.
• mettamage 7y ago
  > A person can also learn a few guitar chords and possibly play a carefully-chosen song in that time. Not true, there are many 4 chord songs. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Smt1VsoqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Smt1VsoqQ
  • Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    So many. But just learning proper guitar form -- holding the strings so you won't hurt your hand with time (your fingertips should be perpendicular to the neck, not flat against it), and so your fingers don't block neighboring strings -- is at least an hour-long job.
• haddr 7y ago
  Read Schopenhauer „The Art of Being Right: 38 Ways to Win an Argument”. It’s a short read, but mind opening if you’re new to the subject. If it seems too long then just read some shortened version. If you still have some time after that then go to “list of cognitive biases” Wikipedia entry and continue there. I believe it is crucial to understand what tricks others are using in arguments. And also what’s our cognitive limits and logical fallacies when trying to understand the world.
  • justinclift 7y ago
    Looking at Amazon reviews of it, one of the commenters says it's a rehashing of the 1896 book "Art of Controversy", available online free (public domain). A quick search online shows an example of it here: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/controversy/ https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/controv... Does it seem the same to you?
    • haddr 7y ago
      All are in public domain now. Read the one i mentioned as it is shorter read. If you like it then go of the other one.
• dougweltman 7y ago
  Learn how to use Google Search effectively. It's a "language" we use every day. Mastering its few features can make any search so much more effective and precise: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433
  • Daub 7y ago
    Completely agree. I teach web search to my first year students as a valuable life skill.
  • lelima 7y ago
    wow that's handy!
    • xhruso00 7y ago
      By using these techniques Google thinks that I am a bot and after 3 queries I have to fill CAPTCHA.
  • Loughla 7y ago
    This is an addition to my First Year course that I teach for college students. It's week 1, along with media literacy and evaluating sources. Because they 100% need that week 1 more than what our Title IX policy is.
  • eswat 7y ago
    For those wanting more examples, some probably more nefarious, look into Google dorking. Here’s an execellent presentation from Blackhat many years ago but is still relevant: https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-05/bh-us-05-long.pdf https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-05/bh-us-05-lo...
  • fractalf 7y ago
    Or even better, use duckduckgo!
  • buboard 7y ago
    interestingly "jaguar speed -car" returns the speed of a ship called Jaguar, not the animal's
• Jemm 7y ago
  How to calm yourself. Whatever it takes be that meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, yoga... Learn how to quickly calm yourself when you feel you are becoming upset.
• ahmaman 7y ago
  Learn how to make good coffee - Here is for example how to make a great cup of coffee using an Aeropress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmjPjZZRhNQ&t=252s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmjPjZZRhNQ&t=252s Learn the basics of economics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0 Learn how to journal. Learn the basics of meditation. Learn how to learn stuff using flash cards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzCEJVtED0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzCEJVtED0U - I used this method to learn Finnish (https://mansour.blog/how-to-learn-any-human-language-the-story-of-how-i-learnt-finnish https://mansour.blog/how-to-learn-any-human-language-the-sto...) Learn how to make good food - making good (amazing) food is surprisingly easy
  • Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    I wish I had learned -- in fact I wish everybody learned -- labor economics before going to college. That we expect kids to make such a financially momentous decision without having any idea what they're doing is absolutely nuts. (Maybe read a microeconomics textbook first; labor economics is a specialization of that.)
    • ahmaman 7y ago
      Couldn't agree more! It's amazing how people can research the best gadget for days but when it comes to taking a mortgage its out of a sudden "I don't have time to research this"
• crispyambulance 7y ago
  What's the deal with "an hour"? You have more than "an hour" you have many hours. Why the extreme time restriction? Not everything is hackathon.
• CommieDetector 7y ago
  That Communism is pure EVIL!
• VLM 7y ago
  Learn very basic weightlifting, like how to design sets (12 or so light reps to warm up, aim to run out of energy around 8 reps for "production" sets, do about 3 production sets a couple minutes of rest in between). With only an hour, limit to relatively safe machines (LOL at learning olympic squats correctly and safely in only an hour of coaching). If you need motivation for why human bodies need to lift, "The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After Forty"
  • ulucs 7y ago
    Alternatively you could just read Starting Strength. The only exercise that's difficult in technique is the Power Clean, and you can replace it with Chin-ups. Even Rip does it in his Practical Programming book. Seriously though, your stabilizers are important and machines do nothing for them.
    • VLM 7y ago
      Its all in what you want to do. The barbell prescription book goes into great detail on medical research on the effects on blood chemistry and general health of the ratio of muscle to fat and so on. For that, it doesn't matter if all the muscle in my body is in my left calf or stabilizers or whatever. On the other hand SS and similar IS vital if you're going to work a blue collar job and lift and install plumbing all day long at a construction site. Another topic is the machines make it virtually impossible to hurt yourself no matter how dumb you are WRT liability insurance reasons, so they're quite safe, whereas everyone doing free weights eventually ends up in the ER self inflicted. Overall the machines are BOTH a good gateway and a good terminal activity. Wanna move up to free weights, can do! Wanna just have better blood sugar and osteoporosis outcomes for the rest of your live and never move up to free weights, can do! Free weights do nothing for stabilizers anyway. Run the trig and static engineering numbers. Sine of 10 degrees is about 0.2 so for people starting out, benching 50 pounds with ridiculously bad form only loads the stabilizers (triceps, maybe?) with 10 pounds at 10 degrees off ideal, and even noobs start triceps extensions way more than 10 pounds. And "experts" have perfect form so there's "zero" load. Due to trigonometry you can't work your delts merely by using ridiculously poor form when bicep curling. The whole stabilizer issue is a bro-science thing that requires not running the math or engineering statics vector diagrams.
• thsealienbstrds 7y ago
  Read a few chapters in 'a mind for numbers' to understand how learning works in the brain. It will give you an idea about how much effort it takes for your brain to actually learn something, and so will help you plan anything you'll want to learn in the future. In my opinion, they should teach this knowledge in schools everywhere.
• exDM69 7y ago
  Learn how to sharpen a knife or chisel or axe or other tool. Suddenly every piece of hard steel turns into a tool when you know how to get it sharp. All you need is some abrasive (e.g. sandpaper at 600 and 2000 grit) and a piece of leather to strop it (optionally some chromium oxide or something for honing compound). Then you can level it up from there and learn how to heat treat steel (you'll need a blowtorch) and you can make sharp and pointy things in all shapes and sizes. For example I once needed a very small chisel, so I made one out of a two inch nail. It wasn't great (not hard steel, didn't retain an edge for long), but it got the job done.
  • xhruso00 7y ago
    Reminds me that my friends are laughing at me that I am having SAFETY knives
• opsunit 7y ago
  That as you age an hour is extremely valuable. You only have so many. Don't waste them on bullshit.
• mchanson 7y ago
  Salary Negotiation Basics.
• swader999 7y ago
  Learn Wim Hof's breathing technique. https://blog.spire.io/2018/05/20/wim-hof-breathing/ https://blog.spire.io/2018/05/20/wim-hof-breathing/
  • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Or maybe not: http://www.capradio.org/articles/2017/07/28/breath-holding-meditation-leads-to-two-drowning-deaths/ http://www.capradio.org/articles/2017/07/28/breath-holding-m...
    • swader999 7y ago
      Don't do it while driving or near water. Same goes for trying to sleep - avoid this around water too.
• geekus_maximus 7y ago
  Learn how to regulate your sympathetic nervous system with diaphragmatic breathing. I know that meditation has been mentioned various times, but breathing as a subset of meditation is useful whilst sat in a meeting or conference, as it's approaching your turn to speak. It has worked wonders for my state of mind before public speaking.
  • bootloop 7y ago
    Any good resources you know?
    • geekus_maximus 7y ago
      https://www.healthline.com/health/diaphragmatic-breathing https://www.healthline.com/health/diaphragmatic-breathing One can vary the pattern to determine what works best for them. For me it's "in for 5, hold for 5, out for 5". As in breathe in slowly over five seconds, hold for five seconds and than exhale over five seconds.
• softwaredoug 7y ago
  If you’re a freelancer: invoicing
• ChrisRR 7y ago
  As a programmer, learn to use a version control system if you don't already know how.
• skelet 7y ago
  How to cut vegetables. There's a lot of people with a fear of cooking, but it really is not a magic skill. There are just a few techniques that need to be learned to get started and those don't need hours and hours to be understood.
• Kye 7y ago
  Read through Farnam Street's list of mental models: https://fs.blog/mental-models/ https://fs.blog/mental-models/ They won't change your life overnight, but as you read one or more will likely click with some tricky problem you're in the middle of. For me, that was inversion. Flipping things works for digital artists, and it works for thinking about problems.
• agumonkey 7y ago
  inductive combinatorics
• enriquto 7y ago
  If it is the last hour of your life, learning music is the certainly wise choice given by Socrates. I don't see how it can be different for any other spare hour.
  • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    If it was the last hour of my life, I'd spend it making sure that certain people knew that I loved them.
• artur_makly 7y ago
  meditation
• known 7y ago
  https://www.quora.com/Can-you-sum-up-all-of-your-investing-mistakes https://www.quora.com/Can-you-sum-up-all-of-your-investing-m... https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-dumbest-psychology-tricks-that-actually-work https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-dumbest-psychology-trick... https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-cool-computer-hacks https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-cool-computer-hacks https://www.quora.com/What-words-of-wisdom-can-really-make-a-difference https://www.quora.com/What-words-of-wisdom-can-really-make-a... https://www.quora.com/How-did-China-eradicate-a-large-amount-of-poverty https://www.quora.com/How-did-China-eradicate-a-large-amount...
• throw1234651234 7y ago
  The truth is that you can't learn anything useful in an hour unless you don't know really, really basic things about life.
  • Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    I disagree. I learned the basics of the Variant library (which provides open sum types) for Haskell yesterday in about 90 minutes. It was awesome.
    • throw1234651234 7y ago
      Because you already knew Haskell and you knew what open sum types are. You learned some semantics.
      • Jeff_Brown 7y ago
        All true. I would only add that learning "mere semantics" in many cases allows you to use a powerful new tool.
• progval 7y ago
  Learning to use a fire extinguisher. It's not hard, but not obvious either. And you don't want to have to figure it out on your own when you actually need it. I personally had a training course at work, but I guess you can also find videos on the internet.
• uber-geek 7y ago
  Algorithms are used in nearly every aspect of computing. If you could learn the basic flow of how an algorithm works, that would be very beneficial.
• eralps 7y ago
  It is probably a bit out of context but my car's battery died yesterday. Apparently I left the headlight open and for some reason it did not beep while I was leaving the car. I learned how to jumpstart a car. Definitely a valuable skill.
• yodsanklai 7y ago
  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.
• crispweed 7y ago
  The concept of diminishing returns, perhaps, together with the corollary, by which I mean the fact that you can often get easier profits or make progress a lot more easily by switching to some less explored avenue.
  • notelonmusk 7y ago
    Does this apply to PhDs?
• vanni 7y ago
  How to Solve a Rubik's Cube: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-solve-a-rubiks-cube-step-by-step/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-solve-a-rubiks-cube-step-...
• dqpb 7y ago
  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.
• krosaen 7y ago
  Setup and learn how to use Anki to practice spaced repetition. Going forward you can now decide what you would like to remember (so long as you are willing to spend 5-15 mins a day reviewing)! People's names, that command you always look up, your credit card number, interesting statistics (e.g number of passenger miles per death for bicycles vs cars vs planes) foundational facts in your field that will allow you to ponder and recognize them over and over (e.g multivariate Gaussian distribution). https://apps.ankiweb.net/ https://apps.ankiweb.net/
  • insickness 7y ago
    Anki is the compound interest of learning. It makes learning far more rigorous and less stressful and makes it possible to remember things years after you've initially memorized it.
  • chirag64 7y ago
    There's also Quizlet which is similar but I find it better because you can preview entire pre-built card decks on it which makes it searchable on google https://quizlet.com https://quizlet.com
    • hartleybrody 7y ago
      Quizlet is great if you're looking for pre-built decks, as you mentioned. As far as I'm aware, there's no spaced repetition feature, which is the main value in Anki. Also, one of the values to me in using Anki is creating the cards myself. It allows me to mull things over and decide what part of a fact is important, and how I'd like to recall it. Relatedly, the value isn't necessarily in reading someone else's study guide before a test, it's in creating your own study guide. That process helps you understand and retain the material far better.
      • hikarudo 7y ago
        Like you, I used to think that creating my own decks is better than using someone else's. But then I listened to a podcast episode, by The Learning Scientists, in which they say that research evidence shows that your time is better spent doing only retrieval practice (reviewing flashcards) than creating cards + retrieval practice. Retrieval practice and spaced repetition (which is what one is doing when reviewing cards with Anki) are the most effective methods for learning for which we have strong evidence, according to the same podcast.
• abeyki 7y ago
  30~60 minutes is really a vague amount to time to learn something new. Maybe you could learn the basics of trading in that time.
• georgewsinger 7y ago
  Reading a syntax overview to the Wolfram Programming Language: https://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/Syntax.html https://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/Syntax.html This will allow you to program in the (in my opinion: extremely underrated) language that WolframAlpha is built over. WPL is more concise than any other LISP, and has extremely powerful visualization capabilities built in. In fact everything is built in. You almost never need to import a library to get something done.
  • Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    And it recently became free software! And it lets you play graphs as sound!
  • swframe2 7y ago
    I tried the Syntax guide. I found https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/wolfram/ https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/wolfram/ to be easier to learn.
• foobarbecue 7y ago
  Obviously, it depends on what you already know. Otherwise I would say spend an hour learning addition.
• ajot 7y ago
  I've seen it in a subcomment, but here it goes anyway: to tie your shoes properly. At least avoiding the granny knot [0], and I would suggest using Ian's secure knot [1], too. It's been a life changer for me not to stop all thr time to re-tie my shoes. [0] https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm [1] https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm
  • saalweachter 7y ago
    I use a similar knot derived from the "standard" (bunny) knot, rather than the two-loop knot. You just send the bunny around the tree twice, and you similarly never need to retie your shoes while wearing them.
  • jgwil2 7y ago
    This is a great and very useful site.
• justinclift 7y ago
  Soldering is a useful skill that's easy to learn the basics of, and can be done in an hour. You'll need to have bought a basic soldering kit before you get to it though. :)
  • AnnoyingSwede 7y ago
    I agree on this, but even better, stick welding. I learned how to stick-weld in my shower (since it was the only place i could do it without risking of burning down my apartment) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Ro9VqLwfU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Ro9VqLwfU
    • justinclift 7y ago
      Oh, interesting idea. Recently learned to do gasless MIG welding, as it's pretty easy and the gear is cheap. Similar to stick in that way. Wanted to learn it a few years ago, but didn't have a suitable place I could do so. Hadn't thought of "in the shower cubicle".
• cjfd 7y ago
  I think some decades ago I read the manual of gnu make in about an hour. After that is not great at it but can write a Makefile for a simple project.
  • Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    There's a much simpler Python-based alternative[1] called make.py. I rely heavily on Makefiles, and only recently learned about make.py. What Makefiles let you do is great, but make syntax is an absolute minefield. [1] https://github.com/zwegner/make.py https://github.com/zwegner/make.py
• Dangeranger 7y ago
  Learn how to meditate. You cannot master meditation within one hour, but you can learn the skills you need to begin your practice. With six guided sessions of ten minutes each you can be well on your way to a more focused, less anxious, and happier life. My recommendation would be to find a practitioner near you, or use one of the guided practice apps like Headspace or Calm. Good luck on your journey.
• aazaa 7y ago
  Two suggestions. 1. Research a daily exercise routine that requires no equipment class, or gym, can be finished in 30 minutes and can be done while traveling. The goal should be to increase flexibility and strength, but not necessary build muscle. This stacks the deck in your favor against the main enemy of fitness - failure to do some kind of activity every day. 2. Understand the periodic table. It's one of the most successful mental models in science, and the basic principles can be grasped quickly. The most important division is the columns (groups). The column an element appears in tells you the ratio with which it will combine with other elements to form compounds. From table salt to amino acids, these rules predict elemental compositions of the things in this world you interact with all the time but may only rarely think about. From there, you can predict the products of reactions that you know nothing about. This macroscopic predictability can be explained rigorously through quantum mechanics or heuristically through Lewis theory, depending on how deep you want to go. For simplicity stick to the 8 main groups. The transition metals are a can of worms best opened after grasping the rest of the table.
  • jonnycoder 7y ago
    Your first point reminds me of this talk about consistency in training and why russian wrestlers are supposedly always the best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fbCcWyYthQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fbCcWyYthQ I've been applying this concept 5 days a week to do 20 min of exercise. It's so much easier to do more in the long run by doing it everyday and not going all out exertion.
• AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  Here are a couple that have changed my life: - Learn the basics of how to meditate. Any of the top guided meditation mobile apps is enough to get started, as is an hour with a teacher. - Learn to create a WordPress blog. Doing this was the first step on my path to becoming a developer, learning about online marketing and even meeting some of my best friends!
• teeray 7y ago
  I learned morse code in about an hour using: https://morse.withgoogle.com/learn/ https://morse.withgoogle.com/learn/ It’s a surprisingly good trainer that includes good mnemonics and follows the advice of spaced repetition research. It also covers digits and punctuation too.
• chrisweekly 7y ago
  Learn to sit "zazen" (seated meditation). Even 30 minutes is enough to convey the basics of posture, breathing technique, and context; actually practice a first meditation for 10 minutes; and briefly discuss afterwards. I received such instruction following my cancer diagnosis about 7 years ago, and have made meditation part of my daily ritual ever since. It's been transformative.
• lemurmoreno 7y ago
  The hour when I learn a lot is when I talk with my grandfather or elder people. They have a lot of knowledge to share.
• xchaotic 7y ago
  Read 640 comments on HN
• giarc 7y ago
  How to use a password manager (and then spending the next 45 minutes changing your passwords).
• valuegram 7y ago
  Regular expressions (regexp) can be understood at a pretty impactful level within a solid hour of focus. For all the developers or even just heavy computer users, the ability to find and replace exactly what you're looking for is a game-changer.
• cynusx 7y ago
  Understand the emotional intelligence matrix. It is almost trivial to learn but since it's not taught in computer science schools, I had to spend a decade learning its' lessons the hard way. https://positivepsychology.com/emotional-intelligence-frameworks/ https://positivepsychology.com/emotional-intelligence-framew... Your performance on all its' disciplines can scientifically be assessed with an emotional intelligence test and given that all organizations consist of people it is very important to get good at it.
• slouch 7y ago
  Take the meeting with the free financial advisor your credit union provides. Meet with them once a year for an hour. I just found out that managed money accounts aren't just for people with more than one million dollars anymore, and moving my money this year will likely make me thousands of dollars over the next 30.
• johnsimer 7y ago
  Negotiation. Very basic rules you can learn, that will increase your earning potential by over 7 figures throughout your life.
• tim333 7y ago
  Maybe the basics of "How to Win Friends and Influence People." https://fs.blog/2012/07/how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people/ https://fs.blog/2012/07/how-to-win-friends-and-influence-peo... Then applying it will take longer though.
  • _wzsf 7y ago
    Real friends don't let friends read "HtWFaIP".
    • pjmorris 7y ago
      The key for reading HtWFaIP is to understand and practice sincerity. "The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made." - Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux Don't be that person. Cultivating genuine sincerity is part of your own self-respect. If you genuinely do that, you can safely read HtWFaIP.
• lakesta 7y ago
  to swim
• balabaster 7y ago
  I can't be sure that my path to relative success will work for everyone, so take my tips with a pinch of salt. I find though that the steps I've taken below have made me a valuable team member that continues to be sought after for years at a time with teams I have and continue to work with... 1. Learn to drop your ego. This is one of the single biggest things that change the dynamic of your interactions with those around you. It will change the quality of every relationship you have for the better. It will make you more approachable. It will make people want to include you, confide in you and will help them trust you. 2. Meaningful interaction with your peers. Learn to understand things from the point of view of others, and I don't mean just those that think and believe the same as you. I mean those that in some cases think and believe the exact opposite. Become someone valuable to others. Someone they can rely on. Someone they will not go to battle without, and someone they will not leave behind in a firefight. This takes time and effort. Do what you say you're going to do. Be there when you say you're going to be there. Say you're going to be there. Show up. Like Othello, this one you can learn the principles in 10 minutes, but it takes a lifetime to master and takes conscious discipline every day. But like compound interest, it adds up exponentially. 3. Learn to be seen in a way that people respect. People tend to respect those that grant them respect. Don't let their respect or any resulting admiration give you a big head. Your greatest value is being there to serve others. These were the most difficult ones but are the ones that will catapult your relationships forward. Relationships are the key to your success. I believe they're the key to all of our successes. They're the difference between making it because of sheer dumb luck, and making it because you made a difference to those that have the power to drag you forward and effect positive change in your life. The fun thing about these points is they're all free and you can do them whether you're homeless living on the streets with no money or already earning millions of dollars a year. ... next up, some tangible skills that are valuable... these are likely to cost some money, so unfortunately, they're pretty inaccessible to those that don't have access to resources that will allow them to learn. 4. Right now the market is making a steady and urgent march towards AI and machine learning. If you're not already aware of it, get on board. Maintain discipline enough to learn something every day capitalizing on what you learned yesterday, even if it's the tiniest steps. The few people you can't automate out of a job are the ones that are building the automation and work in areas that benefit the march towards automating all the things. You don't need to learn AI specifically, this is but one niche. Take a look at market trends more than specific things. Especially in our industry tools go in and out of vogue overnight. But trends stick around for the longer haul. The trend towards cloud computing, the trend towards machine learning, the trend towards what will come after which will be related to the problems we cause today developing things we're not capable of fully comprehending until it's too late - which is a trend humanity has proven we fail at since the dawn of time. 5. Learn to apply your skills with massive growth and scalability. Learn how to execute, predictably and reliably. This is what will earn you a great reputation that you can build on for your entire career. 6. Now you've built all that up, if you've done everything right along the way, you're now in the perfect spot to do it all for yourself and earn a billion dollars. I presently sit between 5 and 6 and hope that my journey into building my own company will allow me to use what I have learned in my career to help drive those behind me forward. I know Kevin Spacey may not be the greatest role model, all things considered, but he did say one thing that stuck with me. "If you're lucky enough to do well, it is your responsibility to send the elevator back down."
• meiraleal 7y ago
  - How to exercise - How to eat (or better, when to not eat).
• _wzsf 7y ago
  Learn how to stop posting "Ask HN" questions that are really AskReddit posts.
• jvanderbot 7y ago
  CPR. Basic first aid. When your child or spouse is choking, bleeding, or unconscious, you will not care about anything else.
• Bambo 7y ago
  Encryption!
• pixelpoet 7y ago
  Ray tracing will always get my vote.
• ottomanbob 7y ago
  Any shorthand Roman alphabet. Saves time and offers not insignificant amount of encryption.
• Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
  Python
• zerubeus 7y ago
  reactjs
• jstummbillig 7y ago
  I see a bunch of vague and non answers to this question. Here is mine: Git rebase + squash Actually sitting down and understanding what it's about, trying it out and implementing it should be possible within 1 hour without ever having touched it before, and has at least a huge potential to make you way better at Git.
  • jobigoud 7y ago
    I only have a vague idea about what this does so I may be missing the point. I only ever saw this as a way to hide the multiple commits that go in the creation of a given piece of code, in order to present a neat commit as if everything was figured out first try. First, I don't like to have too many commits that aren't pushed to the remote repo, if my machine fails, I would loose work, so usually I only have one or two commits unpushed. Secondly, I like to think of the history as containing these previous tries, and sometimes I will realize that the end result has a subtle bug that was introduced somewhere along the line while piling on the feature. I work mostly on repositories with very few team members (1 to 5). What am I missing? Why would I destroy history? Is it reversible? Is it just to hide messy progression?
• Jeff_Brown 7y ago
  In five or ten minutes you can learn make.py[1], a dead-simple alternative to Makefiles. Those are both examples of "automated build tools". If you do data science, and have even a moderately complex graph of dependencies (i.e. some files need to be built before others can be built), such a tool is an absolute lifesaver. [1] https://github.com/zwegner/make.py https://github.com/zwegner/make.py
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• Spankophile 7y ago
  Compound interest is a great call. I'll add: "Never spend your principal." In fact, people should all read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Richest_Man_in_Babylon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Richest_Man_in_Babylon
• saalweachter 7y ago
  How to use a library. The organization of the books, how to look them up by subject or title, the different media available, how to request inter-library loan, and how to ask a librarian for help finding what you are looking for when you aren't sure.
• rutierut 7y ago
  To be wrong. Don't identify with your point of view, you are not your opinion and your worth is not defined by its validity.
• toddwprice 7y ago
  Meditation. It's a skill that can be learned quickly and teach you to notice not just your constant firehose of thoughts, but the emotions that come with them and which often steer you towards poor decisions.
• zelly 7y ago
  the man pages for git
• jraedisch 7y ago
  Whether or not Bitcoin should be worth anything.
• ThinkingGuy 7y ago
  The NATO spelling alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie, delta ... yankee, zulu). I learned it through my background in amateur radio, but I've found it to be very useful, even outside my IT career, where I had to convey some precise series of letters over a voice link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet
• geerlingguy 7y ago
  Honestly, Ansible. I spent a week on Puppet a couple years ago, and was barely making progress. (Disclosure: I'm not a Ruby developer and only have basic understanding of that language). I picked up Ansible in about one hour and already had a server's setup automated by the end of that hour. Now I automate 99% of everything using Ansible... and it's not much more complicated today than it was when I started.
• vajrapani666 7y ago
  Holotropic breathing. Someone in my town offers workshops on Conscious Connected Breathing. I would have never thought that just breathing for an hour would fundamentally change my life, yet here I am. My relationship with deep seated trauma has been completely transformed. Technically the breathing was 2 hours, but it felt like 45 minutes. It feels like I now have access to a powerful drug, and an accessible way of asserting agency over my feelings and body. This is one of those body upgrades that falls in the same category as Lasik. Tuning your core senses and ways of obtaining your needs tends to ripple throughout everything you experience and do. This breathing upgrade changed everything.
  • powerset 7y ago
    Do you feel like learning this from someone in person was necessary, or could you get most of the benefit from reading or watching a video somewhere? If so, any recommendations?
  • nazgulnarsil 7y ago
    inducing euphoria via mild hypoxia is not a good idea. The people touting this in the west mostly don't have the qualifications for doing this practice safely.
    • vajrapani666 7y ago
      It wasn't euphoria. It was the realization that the finest intricate details embedded in the way I breathe, reflect my experiences, and my emotional connection to those details is strongly influenced by what I experienced when I was too young to remember. If anything, the way we breathed -- wouldn't cause hypoxia. Despite years of mindfulness meditation, in which I focused on my breath, that experience changed how I fundamentally relate to my breath.
• tempsy 7y ago
  Basic options trading. Most people should learn how to use a covered calls strategy to build income outside of owning stock outright. With a covered call, the idea is to sell/write out of the money call options with a strike price higher than what it is today. You collect this premium while still owning the underlying stock, and if at expiration the shares are lower than the strike price you wrote the option for it expires worthless and you keep the premium. If it expires in the money, then you are "assigned" and you will sell the shares you have at the agreed upon strike price while still keeping the premium. It's the least risky options strategy, safer than owning stock outright, and can create steady income for you in the form of the options premiums.
• jldugger 7y ago
  > Are there any quick wins that 30 ~ 60 minutes of intense concentration can generate? Well, the _most_ valuable ones were probably taught to you in kindergarten, eg tying ones shoes, writing your name, etc. ;) I feel like in my profession (AI/Devops/SRE), a lot of knowledge is high risk (you never end up using it) high reward (if you do need it, it's super valuable). Look at those 'things every programmer should know about X' pdfs. They're like 100 pages long and full of obscure stuff programmers don't actually need to know. Similarly, the LDAP for Rocket Scientists book most folks don't need to know, until you're trying to debug and authentication issue, adding a new schema, or trying to speed the system up. If there is anything truly simple yet valuable, it's probably pretty basic, like 'know your IDE, know your VCS'. And probably kinda meta -- learning about learning. Random ideas: - An hour running through chapter 10 of the git book can help users understand what git is actually doing - an hour running through a debugger tutorial on your IDE of choice can make up for a lifetime of printfs - learn a note taking system like Stanford Notetaking system I suspect what people really want from this question is more "whats the most valuable thing people haven't yet learned in an hour?" Which kinda depends on the person, no? But I do plenty of interviews, and here's a small idea set: 1. Learn statistics. Virtually nobody knows anything about them. Even AI engineers can't discuss the central limit theorem. I'm still re-learning this stuff but it seems dang useful for discussing how to tune alerts. 2. Learn spreadsheets. With the advent of google docs and shared storage, spreadsheets you make are basically for life. That dramatically changes the cost benefit analysis of planning documents. Learning how to build and reuse them can help in a variety of contexts. 3. Use git for settings and configs, even personal and minor stuff. I have my homedir in git, and that forms a framework for studying settings. Learn a new timesaving vim setting, add it to git and it's mine for life. Add a new shell alias, and it's available on every system I use regularly -- I have a Chef cookbook for setting up my user that includes checking this repo out.
• saalweachter 7y ago
  Spend an hour learning whether you can safely attempt something. There are two complimentary problems: some people don't realize that they can do something, and will never attempt it because they assume it requires training and skills and materials and time beyond their reach; other people don't realize that they shouldn't do something, because it is dangerous, because it is illegal, because it would require far more resources than they can reasonably devote to the project, because they just aren't good enough. Regardless of which camp you tend to fall into, spend an hour every now and again determining whether something you're thinking about is feasible. Maybe you discover, "Huh, it's really easy to repair my running toilet, and very little can go wrong in this case". Maybe you discover, "Wow, if I screw up that electrical work I could electrocute myself or burn my house down, and I'd still have to get it inspected in my jurisdiction anyway so I might as well hire someone.". Maybe you discover that your startup idea would require an absurd amount of capital and would probably only ever have razor-thin profit margins at best, maybe you discover you could make a reasonable living self-employed.
  • hnick 7y ago
    This is underrated. Of course I knew most plumbing probably isn't too hard but I never gave it a try until I complained about fixing a leaking tap and a friend showed me how. I bought my own simple tools and have fixed a bunch more in our house by myself (it's just getting to that ~10 year age right now). Here a plumber will charge $150 just to show up. That really opened things up for me and now I often check things like repairing drywall or replacing a door handle on YouTube. It's a really good way to gauge if you think it's something you can handle.
• andrew_ 7y ago
  In the area of the U.S. I currently live in - a few common phrases of conversational Spanish.
• quickdocu 7y ago
  am pretty sure that only applies to certain people. I stay fairly skinny no matter what, though I do move about a lot http://buypassport-idcards.company.com http://buypassport-idcards.company.com
• mcgwiz 7y ago
  Learn the basic techniques and the rationale behind non-violent communication. It is a tool that can make the most difficult, risky discussions in your personal life a lot more constructive and beneficial.
• plg 7y ago
  How to take criticism
• rolltiide 7y ago
  Estate planning Having assets fully owned before a marriage basically exempts you from all socioeconomic gotchas in a divorce, even in “community property” states. This misconception has occurred primarily because nobody owns anything and instead go into marriages with nothing or a 30-year mortgage. So they are subject to the full whims of the state.
• slowhand09 7y ago
  Learn how to get out of debt!!! https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/how-the-debt-snowball-method-works https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/how-the-debt-snowball-method... 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.
  • wyxuan 7y ago
    Dave Ramsey had been called out for questionable advice, and it's not something you could change and learn in an hour
    • slowhand09 7y ago
      Questionable? Meaning different from somebody else' advice? Show me somebody else giving advice for free that has gotten thousands of people out of debt. My guess is his advice is questioned by those who don't show the willpower to follow the steps. When they fail, they criticize the program. What he says here is solid. edit: I just googled his name. On results page 5, yes five, I found one "advisor" disparaging his advice. And I think that guy's advice was questionable. You can do all the paperwork you need easily in an hour. If you have any spreadsheet skills you can show in detail when you'll have each loan repaid. I would challenge you to follow the steps, put it on paper, calculate how much and when. Then show me any fault with that process.
    • Jarwain 7y ago
      From what I understand, there are two ways to optimize the climb out of debt: optimizing for financial efficiency and optimizing for motivation Financial efficiency typically calls for paying off the debt with the highest interest first, followed by the next highest, so on and so forth. This minimizes the amount a user has to pay in the long term. However, some people have trouble following this kind of abstract strategy, staying motivated and continuing to pay off their debts. Dave Ramsey's advice focuses on optimizing for motivation. Pay off the smallest debts first, get those easy wins before tackling the harder debts. In the long term, this might be more expensive for the individual, but for some it is a more effective technique for staying motivated and continuing to pay off their debt. Ultimately, people should do whatever works for them. Either way is a valid path to becoming debt free
• undoware 7y ago
  This post occasioned me to coin "dunning-krugerbait". If you think you have cooking sussed in an hour, you're doing it very wrong
  • kleer001 7y ago
    OP said "learn" not "master"
    • undoware 7y ago
      You can't learn cooking in an hour. Period.
      • kleer001 7y ago
        A gate keeping comment like that makes you look ignorant, petulant, and antisocial. Nobody is attacking your knowledge of cooking or your value as a human being.
        • undoware 7y ago
          I don't feel attacked, and my knowledge of food is far from comprehensive, and I certainly didn't intend it as such. I stand by what I said: you can't learn anything about cooking in an hour except what you need to take the next class on cooking. Do that for a few months, or even a few weeks, and you get somewhere. Scope, my friend. Scope.
• undoware 7y ago
  learn how to tie a good knot. Just one. Practice. I recommend the alpine loop or shoreline hitch.
• jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  Winning lottery numbers.
• nightnight 7y ago
  Redux gave me superpowers.
• Havoc 7y ago
  Basic understanding of accounting concepts. A successful hacker will presumably find themselves one day staring at a balancesheet of sorts for his/her startup. e.g. That credit will sometimes increase a balance, sometimes decrease it depending on nature of the account. i.e. it's reversed for say asset versus equity.
• achenatx 7y ago
  How and why to eat a low carb, high protein/fat diet. Most people are obese because of 20-30 years of marketing around high carb low fat diets. How to make and follow a budget to save money. Including all of the yearly or even every 10 year expenses that you might have. How to invest your savings in index funds to become financially independent How to handle and shoot a firearm to protect yourself and your family
• probinso 7y ago
  fishing knots
• suneeshtr 7y ago
  You can learn tailoring in an hour.
• n0pe_p0pe 7y ago
  Keyboard shortcuts. Entirely changed my computing experience once I stopped using a mouse for everything except graphic design-related tasks. You can learn most of the big ones for your most used apps in an hour, keep a cheat sheet nearby yr PC in case you forget some. Like cooking its an easy skill to build quickly if you're a knowledge worker since you're always in front of a computer anyway.
• drited 7y ago
  There's a book called Mathemagics with chapters which take about an hour to read which will teach you how to remember numbers and do mental arithmetic
• joecool1029 7y ago
  Learning basic regex (regular expressions) will save literal days (maybe weeks) of time when editing code, text, or searching/organizing anything. I can't think of a single skill more useful on a computer. While regex turns pretty hard fast, the basics can be picked up within an hour, or at least the ability to know what to reference when something needs to be done.
• rglover 7y ago
  How to not talk and just listen.
• ricg 7y ago
  Learn how to juggle 3 balls. Not only is this a lot of fun, it will also train your reflexes. It's like having a hidden superpower. The next time you are about to drop something, you'll be amazed how quickly you'll be able to reach and catch (don't try this with sharp objects, obviously). Lots of resources available on how to start. Here's one: https://youtu.be/x2_j6kMg1co https://youtu.be/x2_j6kMg1co
• nancycut9 7y ago
  https://www.hackerslist.co/ https://www.hackerslist.co/
• nancycut9 7y ago
  certified ethical hackers for hire : https://www.hackerslist.co/ https://www.hackerslist.co/
• kodebrew 7y ago
  Understand what "cost" means to an economist. To understand cost in economics you'll learn topics like externalities (positive and negative) as well as internalities and their meaning. You'll dive into concepts like opportunity cost as well as fixed vs sunk costs. Once you get at truly what cost means to an economist you will be so much better informed in making business and personal decisions. In my line of work (software development) so many products and daily decisions hit the sunk cost fallacy of wanting to hang onto projects we are in love with. Other ideas like negative externalities really are the underpinning of understanding why climate change is out of control. Cost is always oversimplified. Spending some time to understand it deeply and learn the concepts and common language is incredibly valuable.
• shahin841 7y ago
  professional hackers for hire : https://www.hackerslist.co/ https://www.hackerslist.co/
• jstrieb 7y ago
  Simple physical penetration testing tactics are easy to learn and apply widely. These skills can be a quick way to have better security awareness, and can be a fun party trick. For example, many of the techniques listed in this (<1hr) video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnmcRTnTNC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnmcRTnTNC8
• diehunde 7y ago
  Personal Finance concepts. There are several books you can read the most essentials chapters in an hour
• janee 7y ago
  Play frisbee or table tennis for an hour straight. It's surprising how quickly you can go from complete noob to ok with both of those.
• maerF0x0 7y ago
  Your true hourly income (something like days worked * average hours - costs of your job) and then automate/outsource anything worth less than that so you can focus on increasing your income/salary. Hypothetical -- 240 days / year , 10hr days ("gotta hustle!") , + 2 hours of commuting, +30 mins of preparation you wouldnt do if it werent for your job ==> 3k hours per year. say you make 90k per year => $30 an hour. * Automate healthy meals for $15 per saved hour? Do it. * Automate maid services for $25 per saved hour? Do it. * Fix your care in 8 hours when the shop quotes you 3*125 an hour? => Do it. * Clip coupons for an hour to save $12? Skip it.
  • Anon84 7y ago
    This should be calculated on the "take home" pay not the pre-tax value
    • maerF0x0 7y ago
      +1 This is a fantastic point! I no longer can edit my post though
  • supernova87a 7y ago
    Sorry, I disagree with many of these, especially if you make the mistake of thinking that the amount you get paid at work applies to your free time. Or at least, these kinds of decisions to outsource a task aren't so clear cut as the above makes it seem. Also, some (I caveat, some) people who start to think their personal time is "billable" turn into insufferable jerks. Most people cannot turn a random free hour into extra salary. And if you outsource all the things above, you may end up having learned nothing about how to live or relate and understand normal life. You're not going to become a billionaire by doing this. Learn to do the things that you should do yourself, and judiciously outsource those that legit save you time and unnecessary mental exhaustion.
• mv4 7y ago
  CPR.
• scienthusiast 7y ago
  You can learn the method of loci (also known as "art of memory"), a very efficient memory technique that unlocks the potential to remember things you never dreamt of remembering, like a long list of digits. The steps of memorizing are: - choose a journey of specific locations to look at that you already know (like going around the place you live, look at your bed, then your desk, then at the door of your room, etc) - at every location you visualize a mental picture, whose components code for the information you want to remember When you want to retrieve the info, go through the journey, find the pictures, and decode them into the info you want. Obviously, the thing that requires some work is the code. A simple code for numbers would be to assign to every digit to a consonant sound, and make words with those consonants, filling gaps with free/non coding vowels. For example (I'm French and adapted my French code here, so this code might be unadapted for the frequency of English consonants, but you may change it as you see fit): - 0 to Z/soft S (zero starts with z) - 1 to L (they look like) - 2 to N (2 vertical bars in 'n') - 3 to M (3 vertical bars in 'm') - 4 to R (four ends with r) - 5 to V (five ends with v) - 6 to S (six ends with a S sound) - 7 to T (7 looks like a reversed t) - 8 to Sh/Ch (eight contains an H, which is pronounced with a sh) - 9 to B (b looks like a reversed 9) Now, you can use this consonants (actually, consonants sounds rather than the letters) to form words that are easy to visualize. 94 could be a BeeR, 30 a MaZe, 18 a LeaSH, and so on. You can also combine the words in some ways to remember more info per location. Memory athletes spend a lot of time training their journeys and codes and stuff to achieve some amazing/unbelivable performances (http://world-memory-statistics.com/disciplines.php http://world-memory-statistics.com/disciplines.php), but it's an extremely gratifying skill that develops really fast. If you have aphantasia or a hard time orienting yourself though, it's probably not for you, but I would estimate that at least 95% of people can develop a seemingly amazing memory with this method.
• hnick 7y ago
  I don't think it's been said which surprises me, but basic programming of course. Programming properly requires a mindset where you are thinking about 'what will happen if this happens?'. A lot of people don't seem to naturally think like that. It can be helpful. For a more practical example, you can easily start a blog and learn the basics of Wordpress in an hour. A lot of small business owners in particular can really benefit from this.
• mcswell 7y ago
  "Oh, God. I've lost him. And I never told him anything. I just wasn't ready, Marcus. Five minutes would have been enough." --Henry Jones, Sr. (five minutes, not 30-60!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np4OojYGixI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np4OojYGixI @1:00
• shartshooter 7y ago
  Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to use it in a fruit salad. Learning facts are great if you’ve got an hour but really understanding should take time. I’d say if you have an hour that is free try to be completely independent of thought. No music no podcasts no interacting with(or influenced by) other peopl. Try to be present
• AnnoyingSwede 7y ago
  Any DIY skills, may it be plastering a wall, hanging a mirror, painting a wall, unclogging a waste pipe. Youtube is filled of videos from people that gets your inspiration going, and many things that seemed like a drag are actually both relaxing and enjoyable as you broaden your skill-set, and it will save you tons of money as you become more independent as a human being.
• nancycut9 7y ago
  hire a hacker : https://www.hackerslist.co/ https://www.hackerslist.co/
• buboard 7y ago
  - SQL - Quaternion operations
• throw1234651234 7y ago
  "For example an average person, if focused, can learn to read (but not understand) Korean decently in under an hour." Correct. I also recommend reading 3 books a day to change your life for the better.
• wayneco 7y ago
  learning basic electrician skills for use in power outage/natural disasters. Everything in our world is powered by electricity, nobody knows how to help themselves in creating their own when the power goes off. Use of generator to power their house, basic setup and ops of batteries and solar panels, etc.
• davidhariri 7y ago
  Compound interest
• ishwarjha 7y ago
  Here is what I suggest — Just loose yourself in a dense forest in the early morning for an hour. Walk and reflect on your journey so far. The alone time will help you loosen yourself and know where you stand for real.
• sgarst 7y ago
  Learn to type.
• astrophysics 7y ago
  Valuable? Giving a proper blowjob. You can learn it in an hour and make insane amounts of money doing just that.
• hariis 7y ago
  Fasting... in fact, if you simply stick to just one simple rule which is, eat ONLY when you become hungry, you will reap rewards. Hint: Not everyone needs 3 meals a day. In order to this, you need to become aware of your body and mind. And for this, you need to learn Meditation which is simply a practice of mindfulness for a set period of time.
• amarjeet007 7y ago
  I utilise my time on my website creation , Seo of my site . This is nat waste of time I am making my future.
• gaurangagg 7y ago
  One of the most valuable things which I learnt was how to tie shoe laces using Ian Knot - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgSwvDkJVxE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgSwvDkJVxE Saved me incredible amount of mental harrassment which I used to get when shoe laces used to get unwound which I used to brisk walk. Life is good after learning it.
  • udfalkso 7y ago
    Same. Totally worth learning.
  • setman2 7y ago
    I wonder why no one learns to tie it this way? It is less common because it's not as intuitive?
• ca98am79 7y ago
  One of the most valuable things that I have learned, which you can learn the basics of in 30-60 mins or less, is how to meditate (Vipassana). Basically you sit and close your eyes and focus on the feeling of your breath below the nostrils. When another thought comes into your mind, bring your attention back to the sensation of the breath coming in and out of your nostrils. That's pretty much it. And it is the only thing that was able to treat my panic disorder, and I tried many other things before meditation. It's also helped me in many other aspects of my life, but mostly because it has help my peace of mind.