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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

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.
- dragonsngoblins 7y ago
  I've always been confused by people talking about losing things like keys/wallet a lot. I take them out of my pockets and put them on a flat surface when I get home which means they are always in one of like 4 different places tops, but in two of them the vast majority of the time (dining table or desk). Surely there are natural places those things end up?
  - RobertRoberts 7y ago
    We have a similar technique, I put my stuff in the same place all the time. But only because I was sick of misplacing them for many years. I think there are a lot of people that don't have tendencies towards systems/self rules to solve issues like this, so they casually smash through life care free and forget where they put their keys "this time". (based on many people I know)
    - dragonsngoblins 7y ago
      It isn't a system I developed to remember though, it is just... I put them somewhere sensible where they won't fall behind something or scratch anything etc. My keys are often in different places, it is just that the list of "sensible" places isn't very large so if I have forgotten checking them all takes practically no time EDIT: I should say not a system I developed consciously, I do have ADD so my habit of putting things in sensible places generally might be an adaption to that, though if so it happened before I even had keys to lose
      - RobertRoberts 7y ago
        We may be mincing words, but when I say "system" I mean "I decided to try and only place my keys in reasonable places, always... and these 4 are the most reasonable." Where other people may have made no considerations at all where they put stuff.
        dragonsngoblins 7y ago
        I feel like "System" is a bit of an extreme term. "Sensible" also means natural. Like, either they go on the kitchen counter, the dining table, or my desk, or occasionally the arms of the couch usually because those are the places that have space to put things like phone/keys/etc when I empty my pockets. The only considerations are: Is the place convenient (read nearby when I'm likely to be putting things down)? Are they a flat and stable surface? That's it. I feel like if people don't make those sorts of considerations surely they are just dropping shit on the floor
ken 7y ago
> CPR/Choking/First Aid course is probably close to an hour. What can you teach in only an hour? I work with some people who teach basic first aid, and the shortest course any of them does is 4.5 hours.
- elbows 7y ago
  The American Red Cross has Adult CPR/AED/First Aid classes where the classroom portion is only an hour. There's an online component that you have to do beforehand, so the whole class is probably closer to 4 hours, but I think if you took only the classroom part you'd come out with a decent idea of how to perform CPR.
- skocznymroczny 7y ago
  How to call an ambulance, what kind of info to give, how to put people in a safe position, how to determine if they're breathing or not, how to protect yourself when offering first aid to someone else.
- JshWright 7y ago
  Step 0: Tell a specific person to call 911, or do it yourself if you're alone. If the person isn't responding and doesn't appear to be breathing, move them to a hard, flat surface (if possible). Put your hands one on top of the other (both palms facing down) and interlock your fingers. Place your hands in the center of the chest (at approximately the level of the nipples) and push hard and fast, letting the chest recoil fully between each compression. If you're pushing hard enough, you will feel popping and cracking as the bones and cartilage of the rib cage move/dislocate. If you're allowing the chest to recoil back up fully between each compression you really can't push too fast (going too slowly is the far more common failure mode). There... those are the important bits of adult CPR (for the layperson). The courses are hours long so that the Red Cross/AHA can justify the fees and sell textbooks.
  - XaspR8d 7y ago
    Step 0 is the really high-yield tip here because it applies in so many emergencies. The natural shout of "someone call 911" is so often less effective: even if folks aren't halted by outright shock or confusion, their disorganization and/or assumption that somebody else will do it introduces miscommunications and delay. Nearly everyone takes to direct, simple instructions much better and faster.
kasey_junk 7y ago
I’m always amazed when the “change your own oil” option comes up in these discussions as it’s a very classic example where having specialized tools s and doing it a lot really speeds you up. And it’s a dirty job without a lot of intellectual interest. Further you can get it done for you in 10 minutes for approaching minimum wage. Unless you work on your car for fun and have things like a lift sitting around it seems like a fairly useless thing to do yourself.
- wenc 7y ago
  Agreed. Which brings me to something I learned in an hour (from Ricky Yean's insightful piece on "mindset inequality" [1]) and which I'm still learning recognize in myself -- i.e. the disadvantaging qualities of a poverty mindset. Quote from article: "Being poor makes you suck at using money as a resource. My time was always cheaper growing up, so I got used to opting to spend time rather than money. I had to fix this way of thinking when we raised our first seed round, but it took quite some time. A simple decision to hire a new employee, for example, took a very long time–to the point that it cost us growth." When you're raised in poverty or a poor student (like I was), resources are expensive but time is cheap, so the tendency is/was to use my own time to save a couple of bucks here and there. When you're no longer a poor student, this poverty mindset can actually work against you if you apply it to everything. It can be growth limiting step. When you have money, time is much more precious and and the time/money trade-off looks very different. In many situations, money is "cheaper" than time. One therefore needs to learn how to redeploy that money to access cheaper less expensive resources than time. But if you have a poverty-mindset, you never learn how to do this and hence are at a disadvantage in life, even as you become middle-class or better. Take oil changes for instance. 5W20 non-synthetic oil costs about $10. An oil change costs about $25 here in Chicago, and can be done in 15 minutes -- and done impeccably. The difference is $15. If I were to do it myself -- without the right tools, plus I don't have a garage and it's really cold outside -- it would take an hour and it would be a sloppy job. $15 is a fraction of what I make per hour, and I figure if I pay someone to do it, I can redeploy that time (plus any number of 1 hour chunks spent on things where I have no competitive advantage) to thinking and cultivating myself or even just relaxing (idleness is crucial to creative thinking), the culmination of which is top-line growth, and I figure I'd make back that $15 (3 times a year = $45/yr) many times over. It's ok to DIY for fun and for self-enrichment (I admire handy people), but as a universal prescription, it can potentially be a rate limiting step for many people. Side note: if you're landlord/homeowner however, DIY is very high leverage (vs. paying tradespeople) and one's payback can be huge. One has to make that calculation for oneself. [1] Silicon Valley founders who grew up poor can’t shake “mindset inequality” https://qz.com/602770/silicon-valley-founders-who-grew-up-poor-cant-shake-mindset-inequality/ https://qz.com/602770/silicon-valley-founders-who-grew-up-po...
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
I've always been under the impression that for people living in multifamily housing, changing oil yourself isn't an option. It isn't "your" driveway (everyone else parks their car in the same garage), and I've never seen anybody do it. Lease terms might actually prevent oil changes, but I haven't confirmed that any place.
- ethhics 7y ago
  I can add that 3 of 3 multi-family dwelling leases I’ve signed in Texas have a specific prohibition to changing oil.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  My lease in the bay area explicitly forbids it. That said, my neighbor does all kinds of work in the carport and no one has narced on him yet.
eschneider 7y ago
Without a doubt, CPR.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I'm not so sure. You're probably a lot more likely to actually save someone's life with an abdominal thrust than you are with CPR--outside of some specific scenarios like drowning.
viggity 7y ago
my gf's daughter (age 5) had a cyanotic spell last night (turned blue from being frightened and crying). She straight up stopped breathing. Having the CPR steps drilled in to my head put me on autopilot, which was really reassuring, even though it's been awhile since I last took the class. Thankfully the sternum rub caused a lot of pain and her to start crying (and thus breathing) so I didn't need to call 911.
maremp 7y ago
I’m always curious how people use IFTTT, Zapier or aletrnatives (e.g. Shortcuts on iOS). I’m a developer and I like to automate a lot of the stuff I do, either with bash commands/script or nodejs/python for more complex stuff, and user scripts in the browser. I can’t find a good use-case for IFTTT and I feel like I’m missing out on a big part here. I’m not sure if I’m not thinking about it right, or if it just doesn’t apply to my workflow.
- harrisonjackson 7y ago
  You've probably already optimized most of your painful workflows, but as a developer, you could probably be saving a ton of dev time using your own Zapier integrations. I use the following workflow all the time for slackbots and prototyping a new feature: Step 1 Zapier Webhook - Triggers on POST request to hooks.zapier.com/abc123 (Zapier provides this URL for each "Zap" while you are setting it up) Step 2 Zapier Code Step - (python or javascript) basically a lambda function - parse your incoming POST request and do whatever with it Step 3 Some sort of Output - send email/slack/sms Realworld example - I submitted an iOS app that got rejected because of their community management policy - basically I needed to add a way for users to report abusive content. It took me 15 minutes to add this using the above Zap. I probably could have added it to our API in a similar amount of time, but forwarding each report to slack and aggregating them in airtable would have added to this - not to mention building out a web frontend somewhere to see/review them. We also have a bunch of slackbots to pull stats and run jobs. Zapier enables us to do a lot of "chatops" with less code and more flexibility. edit - I used to work at Zapier - loved the product before I worked there and still do

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.
dragonsngoblins 7y ago
I've always been confused by people talking about losing things like keys/wallet a lot. I take them out of my pockets and put them on a flat surface when I get home which means they are always in one of like 4 different places tops, but in two of them the vast majority of the time (dining table or desk). Surely there are natural places those things end up?
- RobertRoberts 7y ago
  We have a similar technique, I put my stuff in the same place all the time. But only because I was sick of misplacing them for many years. I think there are a lot of people that don't have tendencies towards systems/self rules to solve issues like this, so they casually smash through life care free and forget where they put their keys "this time". (based on many people I know)
  - dragonsngoblins 7y ago
    It isn't a system I developed to remember though, it is just... I put them somewhere sensible where they won't fall behind something or scratch anything etc. My keys are often in different places, it is just that the list of "sensible" places isn't very large so if I have forgotten checking them all takes practically no time EDIT: I should say not a system I developed consciously, I do have ADD so my habit of putting things in sensible places generally might be an adaption to that, though if so it happened before I even had keys to lose
    - RobertRoberts 7y ago
      We may be mincing words, but when I say "system" I mean "I decided to try and only place my keys in reasonable places, always... and these 4 are the most reasonable." Where other people may have made no considerations at all where they put stuff.
      - dragonsngoblins 7y ago
        I feel like "System" is a bit of an extreme term. "Sensible" also means natural. Like, either they go on the kitchen counter, the dining table, or my desk, or occasionally the arms of the couch usually because those are the places that have space to put things like phone/keys/etc when I empty my pockets. The only considerations are: Is the place convenient (read nearby when I'm likely to be putting things down)? Are they a flat and stable surface? That's it. I feel like if people don't make those sorts of considerations surely they are just dropping shit on the floor

ken 7y ago

> CPR/Choking/First Aid course is probably close to an hour. What can you teach in only an hour? I work with some people who teach basic first aid, and the shortest course any of them does is 4.5 hours.

elbows 7y ago
The American Red Cross has Adult CPR/AED/First Aid classes where the classroom portion is only an hour. There's an online component that you have to do beforehand, so the whole class is probably closer to 4 hours, but I think if you took only the classroom part you'd come out with a decent idea of how to perform CPR.
skocznymroczny 7y ago
How to call an ambulance, what kind of info to give, how to put people in a safe position, how to determine if they're breathing or not, how to protect yourself when offering first aid to someone else.
JshWright 7y ago
Step 0: Tell a specific person to call 911, or do it yourself if you're alone. If the person isn't responding and doesn't appear to be breathing, move them to a hard, flat surface (if possible). Put your hands one on top of the other (both palms facing down) and interlock your fingers. Place your hands in the center of the chest (at approximately the level of the nipples) and push hard and fast, letting the chest recoil fully between each compression. If you're pushing hard enough, you will feel popping and cracking as the bones and cartilage of the rib cage move/dislocate. If you're allowing the chest to recoil back up fully between each compression you really can't push too fast (going too slowly is the far more common failure mode). There... those are the important bits of adult CPR (for the layperson). The courses are hours long so that the Red Cross/AHA can justify the fees and sell textbooks.
- XaspR8d 7y ago
  Step 0 is the really high-yield tip here because it applies in so many emergencies. The natural shout of "someone call 911" is so often less effective: even if folks aren't halted by outright shock or confusion, their disorganization and/or assumption that somebody else will do it introduces miscommunications and delay. Nearly everyone takes to direct, simple instructions much better and faster.

kasey_junk 7y ago

I’m always amazed when the “change your own oil” option comes up in these discussions as it’s a very classic example where having specialized tools s and doing it a lot really speeds you up. And it’s a dirty job without a lot of intellectual interest. Further you can get it done for you in 10 minutes for approaching minimum wage. Unless you work on your car for fun and have things like a lift sitting around it seems like a fairly useless thing to do yourself.

wenc 7y ago
Agreed. Which brings me to something I learned in an hour (from Ricky Yean's insightful piece on "mindset inequality" [1]) and which I'm still learning recognize in myself -- i.e. the disadvantaging qualities of a poverty mindset. Quote from article: "Being poor makes you suck at using money as a resource. My time was always cheaper growing up, so I got used to opting to spend time rather than money. I had to fix this way of thinking when we raised our first seed round, but it took quite some time. A simple decision to hire a new employee, for example, took a very long time–to the point that it cost us growth." When you're raised in poverty or a poor student (like I was), resources are expensive but time is cheap, so the tendency is/was to use my own time to save a couple of bucks here and there. When you're no longer a poor student, this poverty mindset can actually work against you if you apply it to everything. It can be growth limiting step. When you have money, time is much more precious and and the time/money trade-off looks very different. In many situations, money is "cheaper" than time. One therefore needs to learn how to redeploy that money to access cheaper less expensive resources than time. But if you have a poverty-mindset, you never learn how to do this and hence are at a disadvantage in life, even as you become middle-class or better. Take oil changes for instance. 5W20 non-synthetic oil costs about $10. An oil change costs about $25 here in Chicago, and can be done in 15 minutes -- and done impeccably. The difference is $15. If I were to do it myself -- without the right tools, plus I don't have a garage and it's really cold outside -- it would take an hour and it would be a sloppy job. $15 is a fraction of what I make per hour, and I figure if I pay someone to do it, I can redeploy that time (plus any number of 1 hour chunks spent on things where I have no competitive advantage) to thinking and cultivating myself or even just relaxing (idleness is crucial to creative thinking), the culmination of which is top-line growth, and I figure I'd make back that $15 (3 times a year = $45/yr) many times over. It's ok to DIY for fun and for self-enrichment (I admire handy people), but as a universal prescription, it can potentially be a rate limiting step for many people. Side note: if you're landlord/homeowner however, DIY is very high leverage (vs. paying tradespeople) and one's payback can be huge. One has to make that calculation for oneself. [1] Silicon Valley founders who grew up poor can’t shake “mindset inequality” https://qz.com/602770/silicon-valley-founders-who-grew-up-poor-cant-shake-mindset-inequality/ https://qz.com/602770/silicon-valley-founders-who-grew-up-po...

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

I've always been under the impression that for people living in multifamily housing, changing oil yourself isn't an option. It isn't "your" driveway (everyone else parks their car in the same garage), and I've never seen anybody do it. Lease terms might actually prevent oil changes, but I haven't confirmed that any place.

ethhics 7y ago
I can add that 3 of 3 multi-family dwelling leases I’ve signed in Texas have a specific prohibition to changing oil.
0xffff2 7y ago
My lease in the bay area explicitly forbids it. That said, my neighbor does all kinds of work in the carport and no one has narced on him yet.

eschneider 7y ago

Without a doubt, CPR.

ghaff 7y ago
I'm not so sure. You're probably a lot more likely to actually save someone's life with an abdominal thrust than you are with CPR--outside of some specific scenarios like drowning.

viggity 7y ago

my gf's daughter (age 5) had a cyanotic spell last night (turned blue from being frightened and crying). She straight up stopped breathing. Having the CPR steps drilled in to my head put me on autopilot, which was really reassuring, even though it's been awhile since I last took the class. Thankfully the sternum rub caused a lot of pain and her to start crying (and thus breathing) so I didn't need to call 911.

maremp 7y ago

I’m always curious how people use IFTTT, Zapier or aletrnatives (e.g. Shortcuts on iOS). I’m a developer and I like to automate a lot of the stuff I do, either with bash commands/script or nodejs/python for more complex stuff, and user scripts in the browser. I can’t find a good use-case for IFTTT and I feel like I’m missing out on a big part here. I’m not sure if I’m not thinking about it right, or if it just doesn’t apply to my workflow.

harrisonjackson 7y ago
You've probably already optimized most of your painful workflows, but as a developer, you could probably be saving a ton of dev time using your own Zapier integrations. I use the following workflow all the time for slackbots and prototyping a new feature: Step 1 Zapier Webhook - Triggers on POST request to hooks.zapier.com/abc123 (Zapier provides this URL for each "Zap" while you are setting it up) Step 2 Zapier Code Step - (python or javascript) basically a lambda function - parse your incoming POST request and do whatever with it Step 3 Some sort of Output - send email/slack/sms Realworld example - I submitted an iOS app that got rejected because of their community management policy - basically I needed to add a way for users to report abusive content. It took me 15 minutes to add this using the above Zap. I probably could have added it to our API in a similar amount of time, but forwarding each report to slack and aggregating them in airtable would have added to this - not to mention building out a web frontend somewhere to see/review them. We also have a bunch of slackbots to pull stats and run jobs. Zapier enables us to do a lot of "chatops" with less code and more flexibility. edit - I used to work at Zapier - loved the product before I worked there and still do