28 ms·

Ask HN: What are some available force multipliers that most people don't know?

• bg117 6y ago
  1) Take a deep breath 2) Hold for 4-5 seconds 3) Exhale slowly 4) Repeat
• 0xfaded 6y ago
  Worm gears, centrifugal transmissions, bridge rectifiers, ...
  • njsubedi 6y ago
    Didn’t know what worm gears are until I saw this the other day https://youtu.be/oHg5SJYRHA0 https://youtu.be/oHg5SJYRHA0
• leugim 6y ago
  Programming itself. That click of understanding the basics and being able to develop problem-fitted solutions although not perfect/professional is a game changers for most of the people. Specially people with jobs outside IT.
  • TeMPOraL 6y ago
    In particular programming without writing code in a proper programming language. Knowing how to use Tasker (Android), or AutoHotkey (Windows) or Excel to automate the things you need. Like in manufacturing, the leverage of technology comes mainly from automating and scaling the repetitive. It's a shame most tools aimed at regular computer users de-emphasize, or fail to recognize entirely, the concept of batch processing.
    • EForEndeavour 6y ago
      > It's a shame most tools aimed at regular computer users de-emphasize, or fail to recognize entirely, the concept of batch processing. I don't see it this way at all. - In MS Word, OSX TextEdit, and most other editors/word processors, search and replace is front and center. Heck, search itself (both within local files and search engines) is the ultimate example of automating and scaling the repetitive, and it's everywhere. - In OS X Finder, you can batch-rename files by highlighting them, right-clicking, and clicking "Rename [N] Files..." - Mail merging has been a thing in MS Word and other processors for a long time. - In Excel, all kinds of repetitive, menial tasks are immediately discoverable to even a complete beginner: highlight more than one numeric cell and the status bar instantly displays the average, count, and sum. Conditional formatting, number formatting, sorting, filtering, and all kinds of data-reshaping tasks are baked into the UI.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • TeMPOraL 6y ago
        > In MS Word, OSX TextEdit, and most other editors/word processors, search and replace is front and center. What about batch S&R in multiple files? What about S&R by regular expressions? What about both? There are entire dimensions of basic automation that aren't covered, except in editors used by programmers. > In OS X Finder, you can batch-rename files by highlighting them, right-clicking, and clicking "Rename [N] Files..." Didn't know that. I have only seen "batch rename" in Windows Explorer, and it's pretty basic (and not even advertised - whether you select one or multiple files, the option is always called just "Rename"). So if you want to turn "foo.exe" and "foo.dll" into "bar.exe" and "bar.dll", that'll work. If you want to turn a bunch of files into "foo1", "foo2", "foo3", I'm not sure if you can do that. > In Excel, all kinds of repetitive, menial tasks are immediately discoverable to even a complete beginner Agreed. On top of that, working with Excel is essentially programming (FRP at that), just not advertised as such. Altogether, this makes Excel one of the best pieces of software written in the history of mankind. But it's an exception that proves the rule.
• nikivi 6y ago
  Learning in public I think [1]. That is asking things on social media, starting a blog or even better, digital garden [2]. Removing all kinds of friction between sharing, creating and learning. That assumes the essentials of proper sleep, nutrition and basic fitness are taken care of [3]. Aside from this meta 'help' stuff, the one tool that was a 100x force multiplier for me is Karabiner [4]. Share it on HN all the time but no one uses it. :| 1: https://www.swyx.io/writing/learn-in-public/ https://www.swyx.io/writing/learn-in-public/ 2: https://joelhooks.com/digital-garden https://joelhooks.com/digital-garden 3: https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/health https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/health 4: https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macos/macos-apps/karabiner https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macos/macos-apps/karabiner
  • ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    The one thing I have against learning in public is that it often seems like pandering to the lowest common denominator with generic learnings/advice. I think the people who are inclined to be constantly learning are probably less inclined to focus on broadcasting their life to others. That's not to say that there aren't people who learn in public and create valuable content in the process, they just seem rare.
    • nikivi 6y ago
      It's up to the person how deep he/she wants to go in learning. The idea behind wiki/notes is that you are the main user of it. You just open it up for everyone. Right now so many notes are done privately and that's a shame. I also hope more people make an open learning repo [1] where they test out new technology in the open. It's been a nice productivity boost for me. 1: https://github.com/lpil/learning https://github.com/lpil/learning & https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/learning https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/learning as examples
      • btrettel 6y ago
        > Right now so many notes are done privately and that's a shame. I have a notes SVN repository dating back about a decade with over 600 text files. I could split them into many more files as these notes aren't "atomic" as Zettelkasten folks say. The main barrier to release at this point is that many of these notes contain private information, or have brutally honest assessments of certain things that I don't want to be made public. If I had written them with public consumption in mind from the start then I would have done things differently. Another problem is that the quality of many of these notes is not at a level I'd be comfortable releasing. If I had intended to release these notes in the first place I would have spent some extra time to clean them up earlier on. My current plan is to slowly ramp up a public repository once I revamp my personal website, but as with many plans, I keep pushing that into the future.
• vgchh 6y ago
  Exercising regularly and eating/drinking clean
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• _Microft 6y ago
  Social skills. Nobody can achieve anything worthwhile completely on their own [0]. Successfully cooperating, motivating and especially inspiring people allows to achieve lots more than working on one's own, no matter how skilled one might be. [0] Of course there are exceptions to this rule, especially in e.g. mathematics. I bet Terrence Tao can eat almost everybody's lunch in math.
  • maxov 6y ago
    I think your point applies, especially to math. These days research math is a very collaborative and social endeavor. Terry Tao would probably disagree very strongly with you: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-t... “The popular image of the lone genius ... is a charming and romantic image, but also a wildly inaccurate one, at least in the world of modern mathematics.”
    • _Microft 6y ago
      Ha, thanks for letting me know :)
• irjustin 6y ago
  This torque multiplier lug nut remover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vesBDXCWrUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vesBDXCWrUw All jokes aside - Learning a section of domain you interact with regularly just enough to be dangerous. Example is, as a programmer, doing product management job for 6 months or vice versa. Danger here is it's easy to wield that new found knowledge as a weapon for evil - such as talking down at people, when really you want to be using it to be more effective. But thankfully, most people have seen it done well in one form or another - a product person who can speak technical and not be jerked around or an engineer who has a keen eye for product flow or growth efforts.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• bsenftner 6y ago
  You may find the collected set of the most popular articles from Harvard Business Review to be a treasure trove of force multipliers, various types of success mechanisms, well written compact general solutions rolled into a pithy sentences and paragraphs easily quoted. I was skeptical at first, but HBR is a surprisingly engaging read that rarely suffers from hubris or conceit, as one might expect from a publication with "Harvard" in it's name. This is the entire collected set, but individual collections for each specialization are also available. https://store.hbr.org/product/harvard-business-review-guides-ultimate-boxed-set-16-books/10278 https://store.hbr.org/product/harvard-business-review-guides... It is shocking how fantastic this series is and how little the tech world knows about it.
  • vsskanth 6y ago
    Are they better than their articles ? I find the articles pretty mundane
    • bsenftner 6y ago
      It is the collected set of "Best Articles" - like the "Best of Reddit" they are the articles that shine like the sun.
• yummypaint 6y ago
  Get enough sleep every night that you wake up naturally before your alarm goes off. Drink enough water that your pee is clear. Merely not being chronically sleep deprived or dehydrated greatly improves every aspect of productivity, learning capacity, and subjective experience. Most workflows can benefit from multiple monitors. it's a silly thing to be bottlenecked by screen area on a fancy computer when used 1080p monitors are nearly free in 2020. Take regular walks and use that time to think. There is something about a steady walk that seems to improve problem solving, especially for more abstract/creative things. When working, put the cell phone out of view and out of reach. It's too easy to subconsciously pick it up and start scrolling a feed before realizing focus had been broken.
  • znpy 6y ago
    I agree on the multiple displays point. However, keep in mind that the 16:9 aspect ratio is better suited for movie watching and somehow the whole industry (except for Apple, and Dell also seems to have picked that up in its latest XPS line) uses that, even in professional settings. 16:10 is way better. 1920x1200 displays do exist and I recommend that. Used ones are a bit more expensive than used 1920x1080. I'll forever miss the 1400x1050 display that I had on my ThinkPad T42. It was awesome for displaying content vertically (think code and/or documents).
    • yummypaint 6y ago
      Yeah, i miss the days of 4:3 displays on laptops. This reminds me one of my favorite things to do with 2x 1080p monitors is orient one of them vertically. It works great for documents and code.
      • rightbyte 6y ago
        4:3 is underrated. I was watching Star Trek the other day and realized it is easier to focus on a square screen. I wonder if the widescreen era was driven by some technical detail in ease of manufacturing.
        • 6y ago
• ahelwer 6y ago
  Eyerollingly boring advice, but quitting (and deleting!) reddit, twitter, facebook, instagram, and maybe even HN. Anything designed with the explicit goal of occupying your attention. Maybe you've noticed that you haven't managed to read a book in a year. There's a reason for that. And none of those sites can give you knowledge of the depth found in even a particularly crappily-written book. People get all worried about losing their followers & social connections. The social fabric is very adaptable. It does not require public technological codification. You realistically only need fewer than five good friends to be happy; text them. I can guarantee your followers don't care about you at all. The ones who do will reach out to you in other ways. Since the OP also listed a fallacy, one in the same vein is the endowment effect - where people value things more simply because they already possess them. Consider the example of you holding a stock priced at $200. Now consider an alternate universe where you didn't own that stock but had $200 cash (plus some extra for transaction costs). Would you buy the stock? If not, you should probably consider selling it. This same thought process can be applied to nearly anything in your life: job, significant other, city in which you live. It's good for keeping you out of traps.
  • violetgarden 6y ago
    I quit reddit a year or so ago. I knew it was getting bad when I felt like my way of speaking was getting taken over by reddit speak and memes. Screw something silly up at work “that face when...” I worked hard to start reading longer form articles and books again, but my attention span was so crippled! It was a really weird experience to quit reddit and social media. I still get memes from my friends, and I would have found them funny before, but now I’m so out of the loop I find the majority of them to be so half hearted. I guess memes are funnier when you’re reading tons of them and get that quick jolt of amusement.
  • alecr95 6y ago
    > quitting (and deleting!) reddit, twitter, facebook, instagram, and maybe even HN. I've completely dropped twitter/facebook/etc, but have found that I keep coming back to HN and reddit primarily to keep some level of awareness of things that happen outside of my "bubble". How would you maintain that level of awareness while still dropping those social media platforms?
• leephillips 6y ago
  Touch typing.
  • collyw 6y ago
    I have tried to learn a few time, but I am so much faster without touch typing. Especially with an IDE where it auto suggests the rest of the word.
    • e12e 6y ago
      Tab doesn't dissappear from the keyboard, just because you touch type - so it's not really one or the other. If anything - being able to look at the screen, not the keyboard makes auto completion work better?
• flyinglizard 6y ago
  Write down your tasks and ideas. Find a method which works and stick to it. Not forgetting things is the side benefit; the primary benefit is not worrying about forgetting things.
• TamDenholm 6y ago
  Having 2 (or more) completely unrelated skills provide a shitload of advantage to yourself. The intersection of those skills helps a lot. I run 2 businesses, software and a property renovation business. Local independent trademen are for the most part great at the actually doing the job, plumbing, electrics, tiling, fitting, joinery, etc. What they suck at is running the business, finances, marketing, customer service, reliability and anything to do with computers. I can use my tech skills to MASSIVELY enhance the trades side of the business. While i can do enough of the trades myself to cover my employees sick days, emergencies, etc, i dont do it day to day. I run the business and make sure i'm using my primary tech skills to grow us. Its working well so far.
  • bennysonething 6y ago
    I really want to get into property renovations. I currently have one rental property mortgage fully paid (I was lucky I pretty much inherited it). I work as a software developer but I'm really starting to hate it. I pretty much grew up on building sites as my dad was a property developer. Unfortunately I didn't take an interest in the business and he's dead now so I've just been reading a few books on getting in to it. Would you mind telling me roughly how you started your business?
    • TamDenholm 6y ago
      While I have invested in property and renovated it (1 rented out flat and my own home) my current work for the business is primarily bathroom and kitchen renovations for homeowners. This is primarily to bring in a more stable cashflow that will be used for purchasing more property long term. When we started we did anything, painting, small handyman jobs, fences, carpets, gardening, etc. But I ended up just concentrating on kitchens and bathrooms, as they are generally the most investment worthy home improvements a homeowner will want, which means larger profit per job and also they're more room to take away a homeowners problems. Typically if they project managed it themselves, they'd need to bring in a large list of separate trades. Labourers for demolition, plumbers, electricians, joiners, tilers, cabinet fitters, flooring fitters, decorators etc. The people i hire, with backup from myself, can do everything the job needs, which means they only need 1 company to do it. We have a wonderful woman in the office that does all the customer service, we take away all the old crap we've removed, we help them pick the new bathroom suites and kitchens they want, etc. Its a full service. I think in America, the term for this is General Contractor, over here in the UK, its not typically used. My advice for you, if you're starting from scratch, is to get some DIY skills to begin with, start with your own home. Try things, Youtube is the second best tool for learning anything in my opinion, only surpassed by actually doing it. If at all possible, whatever you are trying for the first time or are unsure of, try it, then pay a professional to inspect your work AS your doing it and sign it off at the end. Get them in before you start too. Any tradesperson that wont do give you advice that you're willing to pay for isnt worth knowing IMO. The ones that are, are the ones you hire when you do bigger projects that you need help on. Plus anyone that can explain their own job to an outsider, generally is pretty good at what they do. I'd be able to give you more specific advice with more information, happy to answer any questions.
• raverbashing 6y ago
  YAGNI. This is not so much as a force multiplier but as greasing the wheels, and I see it all the time Shipping and revenue should be your goal. Sure, aim for a polished product, but don't waste time with things that don't further your goal (unless it's a security/correctness/legal issue, sure) - You don't need to rewrite your frontend in the latest .js library just because. Ship first, think about rewriting later - You don't need to apply those 5% micro-optimizations if your site is working fine (at least not before shipping) - You don't need your resources in a global redundant CDN right off the bat. Use existing CDNs (for .js for example) - The thing that will break is not how you initially thought it would go. Avoid premature optimization unless it's really obvious (example: front page optimizations). You might not even need code at first. MVP your thing.
  • davnicwil 6y ago
    YAGNI is such a powerful philosophy that I think within reason you should look at it as a hypothesis to disprove on every new thing that you work on. It's really difficult advice to follow because, very often, the thing you don't need is actually quite fun to work on. You start out wanting to work on it, so the hypothesis becomes flipped: "why shouldn't I build this", or, "If I can build this, I should". Focusing on the category of things that fall under 'optimizations', the key here is that the problems they solve are not the problems you have when you launch something, and you will only have them at all if your thing is a significant success. They're nice problems to have. I wrote a short blog post on this theme recently: https://davnicwil.com/if-its-a-nice-problem-to-have-dont-solve-it-now/ https://davnicwil.com/if-its-a-nice-problem-to-have-dont-sol...
• larrydag 6y ago
  Finding and working with mentors. Learn from their successes and mistakes. Learn and understand a niche business or industry. Gain expertise in a knowledge or industry domain. Software is just a tool that brings a means to an end.
  • motohagiography 6y ago
    Finding a mentor is unbelievable. Even if it's just "taking lessons." Oddly, other autodidacts I know don't seem to get mentors, and the people with advanced educations seem to stop bothering to learn anything outside their jobs after they graduated.
  • dominotw 6y ago
    how i can i find a mentor. I've always been a lone wolf, shy person. I really want to find a mentor but not sure where to even begin.
    • motohagiography 6y ago
      Learn something new from someone old. The way I have found mentors is by starting with taking lessons in a skill from people, which establishes the necessary boundaries in the relationship. If they are the best at what they do, mentoring becomes the effect of the relationship itself, since mastery above the skill is what you are learning. Mentoring someone means sharing the right experience at the right time, which means you have to be around to do it, so it's less of a transaction than a way of relating, but it can start with the lessons/transaction based relationship.
    • larrydag 6y ago
      Great question. Find someone in your skillset, hobby, industry or knowledge domain that has been doing it longer (preferably much longer) than you. Don't think because you are a lone wolf that there aren't others like you. They are out there and they would love to share with you. Also you can establish the boundaries of your mentor relationship. You can meet and set the frequency at your own choosing.
• LVB 6y ago
  Giving away material things, especially directly to a person. Our local FB BuyNothing group is excellent, and the sole remaining reason for my FB account. The receiver is happy, I’m happy at the time of giving, and my house (and the world’s) environment is better with less crap in it.
• Briel 6y ago
  How you speak. It's something that almost all of us have to do everyday for work and our personal lives and how you speak has a huge effect on how your message is perceived, and each of these interactions over time shapes your relationships. Since many of us are taking online calls now, this is a great time to record your side to hear how you really sound like. You may be quite surprised - it's not just that your voice sounds different, how often you use filler words, repeat yourself, ramble and the tone that you used can be quite different than what you thought it was. From there, you can identify your weak points, practice (speak on your own and record it) and improve.
  • jimhefferon 6y ago
    I've been making some YouTube videos, and editing the automatic cc makes very clear how many um's, and stutters I have. It is a bad habit I have gotten myself into. Shocking.
  • mavelikara 6y ago
    What are effective ways to improve on this aspect?
    • keenmaster 6y ago
      1. Talk to people who don't dominate the conversation. Talking to conversation dominators is anti-practice: you're practicing how not to finish your thoughts and express yourself fully. 2. Read smarter material. 3. Write more and edit your writing more than you normally would. That will force you to think about where you can improve your verbal expression.
      • oblio 6y ago
        > 1. Talk to people who don't dominate the conversation. Talking to conversation dominators is anti-practice: you're practicing how not to finish your thoughts and express yourself fully. I guess the opposite is true if you're the one dominating conversations :-)
• whalesalad 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque_converter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque_converter
• rossgordon 6y ago
  Feedback. The more you seek it out, the faster you can improve. People tend to shy away from asking people to tell them ways they fall short. Don't be one of those people. Read more here: https://gridology.substack.com/p/how-do-you-incorporate-feedback-into https://gridology.substack.com/p/how-do-you-incorporate-feed...
• SubuSS 6y ago
  Prompt and heartfelt attribution of contributions + thanks/praise that helped you get your work done in public or to the donor's manager. Tacit feedback to the person in private as necessary. Even as the greatest developer, in most settings you have to work with people. You can get very little done all alone nowadays - The basics of making people feel appreciated takes you really far. I am not very socially adept - so this was a revelation for me when I stumbled on it after years of 'reward for good work is more work' philosophy.
• endori97 6y ago
  Buy rental property with the bank's money, pay bank back with renter's money, rinse repeat.
  • throwaway98797 6y ago
    Great when it works.
  • bananaface 6y ago
    Terrible advice, this is just leverage. What if you did this in 2004 in Detroit? Leverage magnifies gains and magnifies losses. It increases risk. If the housing market tanks or rental prices drop too far below mortgage payments + upkeep then you're fucked. The more you did this, the more you're fucked.
• sidyapa 6y ago
  Creating something. I am not a maker/creator but I have seen gazillion examples of people building/creating things that ultimately gives them an exponential push in life. Creating can be blog posts, photographs, videos, software anything, doesn't matter as long as atleast one other benefits from it, just one.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• gonzo41 6y ago
  Stop Drinking. You can still eat like crap, and not exercise, but if you stop drinking you'll feel better. The force multiplier is that most adult have a few glasses of wine a night and Alcohol is up there with cigarettes for problems it'll cause you. But exercising and eating well are also good to do.
• throwaway98797 6y ago
  You only have time to read 300-3,000 books in your life. Pick wisely.
  • iamkroot 6y ago
    Can you show your work for how you arrived at this range of values?
    • jimhefferon 6y ago
      Not OP. But suppose you read books from when you are 10 until you are 70. How many books a year? For me, 5-10. Now multiply.
      • AQuantized 6y ago
        That doesn't seem to be a matter of "not enough time" but "not going to read many books."
        • jimhefferon 6y ago
          Well, everybody is different but I have a stack of to-be-read that I just never get time for. (Almost done How I Wish I'd Taught Maths and next is A Nation of Deadbeats.)
        • iamkroot 6y ago
          Agree, I can do several books a week if I'm motivated and they're excellent enough to keep me engaged.
  • chrisshroba 6y ago
    As a tangent, I find audiobooks offer a great multiplier to the number of books I can read. I'd say I get maybe 80% as much out of a book I listen to versus reading it in print, but I end up reading 3-4x as many books because I can listen while I bike to work, drive to errands, etc. They also force me to stay focused while I'm listening, versus how my mind tends to wander while I'm reading a print book (where I realize I've been on the same page for five minutes).
• Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  What helped me, •Staying in present. Philosophers called it 'optimal state of consciousness', Psychologists call it Flow, Rich kids call it as Mindfulness. What ever it's called, its just simple focus on the present and it works wonders on mental health. •Using DND/Aeroplane mode more i.e. limiting phone calls to absolutely when needed. As a side-effect saves battery as well & good for privacy too. •Using email over chat, improved the quality of communication & again good for privacy too.
  • Shraal 6y ago
    I differentiate between "Flow" and "Mindfulness". Mindfulness can help you to achieve Flow much easier but that's more a side-effect. IMHO: -> Mindfulness is "constant emotional self-awareness". It's a skill that enables you to being aware of your emotions and state of mind while experiencing your day to day life. This sounds ridiculous until you realize that most people aren't aware of how emotions influence their rational decision-making. We can easily see how others become temporary irrational for emotional reasons but somehow we also try to denial that the same happens to us on a regular basis. A mindful person is in a way constantly calling theirself out in their mind (e.g. "I'm currently overenthusiastic/angry/anxious/etc. because of ...") -> I think of "Flow" as a state of mind. It can be achieved by doing something that creates a positive feedback loop with challenges and achievements. This series of challenges can be of physical/cognitive/etc. nature but needs to be always of the right difficulty level. Too hard tasks will make you feel overwhelmed while easy tasks create boredom. Both extremes will make you lose your focus and/or motivation and that's where mindfulness can be helpful. Once you become aware of the problem, you can adjust the difficulty level by adjusting the difficulty with better goal-setting and other productivity tricks. Hit the sweet spot multiple times in a row and you achieve Flow.
• cs702 6y ago
  Develop an intuitive understanding of the key mental models mentioned by Charlie Munger in his classic speech given to a Harvard class 25 years ago: "The Psychology of Human Misjudgment," by Charlie Munger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqzcCfUglws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqzcCfUglws http://web.archive.org/web/20151004200748/http://law.indiana.edu/instruction/profession/doc/16_1.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20151004200748/http://law.indiana... If I may paraphrase Mr. Munger, you never want to be a one-legged man in the ass-kicking contest of life.
• theriddlr 6y ago
  Bicycles. Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well." http://www.bikeboom.info/efficiency/ http://www.bikeboom.info/efficiency/
  • andai 6y ago
    This fact is the inspiration behind Steve Jobs' idea that computers are bicycles for the mind.
  • karl_gluck 6y ago
    One of my force-multipliers is the Inmotion V5F monowheel [1] This is among my favorite devices of all time. It is quick, nimble, and lightweight. It has completely replaced walking, a car or a bicycle for my local trips. While there is a learning curve, unlike a bicycle, it has required almost [2] no maintenance in ~4000 miles of riding, and both hands are free to hold things so I can carry much more than I ever could on a bike. I've transported a desk, groceries, a 50 lb box of firewood, gardening tools, and so on. Plus, riding one is just plain FUN: it feels like skiing or flying. You really have to try it to know. A pessimistic estimate of the V5F monowheel's efficiency: * Battery = 320 Wh = 275335 calories * Weight = 12 kg for the device, so with a rider around 95kg * Range = 20 km on the low end (25-30 km is typical, manufacturer claims 38±3 km) Efficiency = 275335 calories / 95000g / 20km = 0.14 calories/g/km An optimistic estimate given my actual riding experience: Efficiency = 275335 calories / 91175g / 30km = 0.10 calories/g/km [1] https://www.myinmotion.com/products/solowheel-glide-2 https://www.myinmotion.com/products/solowheel-glide-2 [2] It still works just fine despite me beating the hell out of it, but the battery has worn down to ~70%
    • flavius29663 6y ago
      Aren't monowheels very nasty when you fall? If it gets stuck you will just flop at high speeds.
• valw 6y ago
  Might sound cheesy, but cultivating love and passion for what you do, especially targeting the tedious aspects of it. Most people tend to assume that they have a fixed amount of energy, motivation and ability for their work, and don't realize how much these can be inflated by positive emotions. This is where a musician finds the perseverance to do the technical exercises that get her to playing a piece. And where a budding scientist finds the patience to work through a complex topic in spite of all the overwhelming conceptual hurdles. And where a programmer gets the motivation to learn arcanes of some obscure tool.
  • grugagag 6y ago
    Where does the motivation come from to learn a n-th new tool that you know will turn to useless knowledge in 2-3 years time? If one can be assures that what they learn will be useful and the utility will compound in the future, as in the musician’s exercises then I see no problem.
    • valw 6y ago
      Hopefully, you're learning that new tool to achieve some worthwhile goal? For example, I recently had to learn a desktop programming toolkit in Python, which I found very tedious and uninteresting. But knowing that I was doing it to help a team of engineers design a new kind of lightweight electric vehicle really drove me to put my heart in it. Even when your project isn't aiming for such impacts, just putting (good) food on the table of your family can be a motivation I guess.
      • grugagag 6y ago
        Surely, I do care about putting (good) food on the table and that seems the only motivation that keeps me doing this. But it used to be more manageable in the past and I certainly do miss those times when when you learned something new you felt empowered and almost giddy with joy. That happens less and less and I feel the dread coming down in advance when the new fad comes in and having to learn something new that isn't just better, in many cases something arguably worse and needlessly more complicated. Recently I had to develop an app in Microsoft Powerapps and while I admit to some good business uses the whole experience was an exercise in frustration. And it felt more like monkey around than programming if you know what I mean.
• mke 6y ago
  This thread is predicated on the value of time, but ICYMI: https://fs.blog/2017/03/seneca-on-the-shortness-of-time/ https://fs.blog/2017/03/seneca-on-the-shortness-of-time/
• theriddlr 6y ago
  Typing, touch-typing, writing shorthand will make transcribing speed match the speed of speech.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  Super powers for me include: Pareto distributions: start with hypothesis that any attribute you are looking for in a given sample is Pareto distributed in the whole. Applies to everything. It's more than the 80:20 rule. The shape of probability distributions in general (s-curves, bathtub curves, etc) is a useful filter for a fast path. Negotiation: I recommend starting with the classic, "getting to yes." The level of confidence you can bring to a discussion when you have a clear idea of what the outcomes look like, and to have pre-accepted them, is a form of charisma. Learning it is also good for the culture in general.
  • thih9 6y ago
    > Negotiation: I recommend starting with the classic, "getting to yes." Could you elaborate?
    • tra3 6y ago
      Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0143118757/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_C2bmFb3ABANV2 https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0143118757/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_C2b...
    • pjmorris 6y ago
      Not the GP, but it's a book, 'Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In' by Roger Fisher , William L. Ury, et al. I read it ~30 years ago, the only thing I remember is that you always want to understand your "Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement" (BATNA), e.g. knowing that you can walk away from a car dealer's deal, if you don't like the terms.
  • miketery 6y ago
    I haven't read getting to yes. But I read "never split the difference" and highly recommend it (caveat the author thinks getting to yes is not the best approach).
• ryanmarsh 6y ago
  “The only rules that matter are the ones that matter” Most of the rules that most people live by are bullshit and only serve to hold you back. The key is in figuring out which is which. In the extreme, many laws are not even enforced. I’ve mad my living breaking all the “rules” and by doing everything wrong. The pearl clutching rule followers equate rule following with ethics. They’re often wrong.
  • newsbinator 6y ago
    > I’ve made my living breaking all the “rules” and by doing everything wrong. I'd like to hear more about this.
    • ryanmarsh 6y ago
      I dropped out of high school, didn't go to college, took a break from my career to serve in the Army, started a business with an empty bank account (multiple times), didn't pay my taxes until I could afford to do so, took big risks, never asked permission at clients just did what I thought was best for them (breaking all kinds of internal rules), violated contracts and non-competes, skirted the law on international movements of money and doing business with sketchy places, other things I won't mention that are technically legal but could get me in hot water if someone didn't like me, sold things I didn't have (yet), and much more.
      • zarkov99 6y ago
        Do people in your life like you?
        • ryanmarsh 6y ago
          IDK, I assume so, I have long close friendships and a stable happy family. Why wouldn't they?
          • zarkov99 6y ago
• PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Consistency. Achieving ambitious goals is much easier when you break it down into weekly or daily habits. Practicing something once per week means 52 times per year, or 520 times per decade. Practicing something every other day becomes 182 times per year, or a massive 1,825 times in a decade. Just imagine how your life would be different if you had 500 x 30 minute workouts over the next decade. Or 1,825 x 30 minutes of reading another book. Putting 30 spare minutes to use once a week isn't as difficult as it sounds if you make it a priority. The results add up over time.
  • k__ 6y ago
    This. Don't think in goals, think in consistent habits. Don't think in weeks or months, think in years. Most people will fail at everything that takes more than half a year to see success. Losing weight, getting fit, learn a language, learn an instrument.
• natch 6y ago
  Car safety features that make driving way less stressful and less dangerous. Example any advanced cruise control / auto pilot system. bash or any substitute. Knowledge of a scripting language and general idea of what libraries are available for use. Relationships with non-toxic people. Ability to defer rewards and pleasure sometimes if needed to achieve goals on a different time scale. Getting clues early by learning from the mistakes of others. Making your own mistakes leads to strong learning but sometimes the cost is very high and a lot of time is lost.
• DanBC 6y ago
  Learning how to use the trackpoint properly. Learning how to use a good dictionary instead of just banging something into Google / Bing / DDG.
• quelsolaar 6y ago
  An integrated debugger. Writing code without a editor with integrated debugger is madness to me. I think a lot of people who are used to using text editor/command line, don't appreciate how effective its is to debug in something like VS/VSCode. Its also the thing people dont talk about enough when choosing languages: Does the language have rock solid debuger?
  • noir_lord 6y ago
    Couldn't agree more, a proper debugger is not just a glorified printf. Where I currently work there are two of us who actually leverage the debugger everyone else is using printf() style debugging. I can find an issue faster in a codebase I've never seen than devs who've worked on it for years but in another part - the superpower? hit a breakpoint nearby and single step through it at high speed adding stuff to the watch list then repeating it and watching the watchlist mutate.
    • k__ 6y ago
      I really liked working with xdebug in my PHP days. But in my experience JS debuggers (outside the browser and inside the IDE) were kinda brittle, probably because of all that bundling and compilation going on.
      • noir_lord 6y ago
        Funnily enough in this case it's exactly xdebug I'm talking about and yes, it is a really good debugger, Derick Rethans is a hell of a programmer.
  • isatty 6y ago
    Using a text editor and command line does not mean no debuggers - it just means switching a window to get to one. vim+tmux+gdb/pdb.
  • wtetzner 6y ago
    I do think this also has to do with personal preference, too. Even when I'm working in an IDE that has great debugger support, I tend not to use it. I just prefer to put println's in a bunch of places, then run the code, and look through the log to see what happened. I just find it easier to see a full log of the execution that I can open in Emacs and search through than to step through. However, one thing I'd love to have is the ability to effectively capture the entire execution of a program, and be able to display it in log format, but then be able to jump into what the execution context was at the time of a particular log line and inspect things/step through what happened.
• DenisM 6y ago
  Iteration speed is magic. The faster I can write and deploy code the more motivated and energized I am to do more of it. Compile time, local source control, one-click deployment, phased rollout, monitoring, solid roll-back story, anything that gives you confidence to just roll it out. It's magic, I'm telling you. Static typing. It's like having a secretary who is doing all the writing, and you only have to think big things. It's a relief. Higher-level abstractions such as query languages (SQL, LINQ) or markup languages (eh...). Forest for the trees etc. Also DSLs (consult someone with experience first - far too easy to get bogged down). The most productive way to write software is to borrow something already written. Don't hesitate to buy components from professionals - you're paying for better support, longevity, and less version churn.
  • nsilvestri 6y ago
    Iteration speed is momentum. Waiting multiple minutes for code to compile or an environment to boot up kills the momentum, and it takes time to recollect the 7 +/- 2 things I was holding in my brain.
  • nlitened 6y ago
    Static typing — yet higher lever abstractions that you mention (like SQL or markup languages) are dynamically typed.
    • saltypal 6y ago
      This is something I'm very curious about! There's a strong meme that SQL is dynamically typed, but it is very much static. ("Compile time" is "prepare time", so it feels dynamic compared to host program compilation, but the vast majority of problems are caught before query execution, and with widespread, better tooling, could be caught at host program compile time too.) Do you call it dynamic because of the delay in getting error feedback, because the RDBMS you use is genuinely loosey-goosey with types, or for another reason?
      • nlitened 6y ago
        A good question. I think I consider “prepare time” not “compile time”, but “run time”, because it happens not at my will on my dev machine, but on demand on client’s machine or production server, and all the types will be inferred only when the program is run.
• sorum 6y ago
  How to structure your writing. Not talking about your style, prose or grammar, but how you structure the points you want to come across. It's not just useful in the context of "business writing", it's useful whenever you want something from someone else: to take an action of any kind. I see it every week at work where people put a presentation together at first glance seems to be coherent, but if it had been written out as a document / memo, you'd easily see the gaps in their thinking. Forcing yourself to write out full sentences (not bullet points) into paragraphs and those paragraphs having a logical connection to each other, shines a spotlight on places where your thinking is weak or there are unfounded conclusions. Here's the good news: there's one book that will teach you this thoroughly: Barbara Minto's - "The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking". Bad news: the book is out of print, since the author wants people to either buy her courses or her updated textbook which she charges $150 for (not a typo): http://www.barbaraminto.com/textbook.html http://www.barbaraminto.com/textbook.html The book is insanely useful, so find a used copy of the 1987 or 2002 edition in a used bookstore.
  • DenisM 6y ago
    Does anyone still read though? I feel most of what I write goes unread, but people do engage with screenshots or videos.
    • sorum 6y ago
      Two thoughts here: 1. Even if the end-medium is something else than a written document (presentation, video etc), you're still presenting your ideas from a->b->c, so the gaps are still there and aren't as apparent, but the recipients' brain still observe it. 2. If your writing goes unread, it can actually be a symptom of the lack of convincing presentation of the ideas. I spend probably 50% on the time on the introduction and it's what I write dead last. Another problem may be length: if it's too long it'll tire the reader (unless your writing is very good). Problem is that to write something compelling that is also short, is very very hard. I can bang out a 10-page document on a deadline in a day without much problem, but a 2-pager I'll have to spend much more time on. Writing is very much a must-have, in the corporate or business environment especially.
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• Bhilai 6y ago
  Deep work time. I heard about it through an meditation app. I basically block four hours per week on my work calendar for a time when I don't take any meetings, turn off slack, email or anything else that might distracting and try to give my full attention to a problem or a project or reading a technical paper etc. This has helped me improve my knowledge over time and has improved my ability to focus on a problem for a limited amount of time.
• nagarjun 6y ago
  Here are a few that I find especially helpful: 1. iOS Shortcuts - Lets you perform repeatable actions in the tap of a button. Most of us do the same thing over and over again every day. The few seconds you save not having to re-do something everyday really adds up over time. I'll give you a personal example. I've been trying to maintain a journaling habit for a while. None of the existing tools fit my need. I now have a Shortcut that creates a journal entry in Bear (https://bear.app https://bear.app) every afternoon for me to fill in. This simple automation helps me maintain my journaling habit because I don't have to use another journaling tool. I already use Bear for everything. Bear doesn't have an in-built journaling feature but Shortcuts lets me use it the way I want. 2. Learn keyboard shortcuts - you probably use a bunch of different software every day. Take some time to learn and get used to using keyboard shortcuts. The instant gratification you get from being able to rapidly navigate through the UI boosts your productivity. 3. Use checklists - checklists are useful for your personal and professional life. I have a Todoist project called #checklists where I store a bunch of different checklists like: start of the month, everyday checklist etc. In my everyday checklist for example, I have tasks like "Drink 3 litres of water", "Read for 30 minutes", "Workout", "Top 3 priorities for today", etc. I set these lists to repeat monthly, every day etc. (something you can do very easily in Todoist). This helps me form habits easily. A huge part of habit forming is to have someone (or some tool, like Todoist) nudge you to get started or remember to do something.
  • myself248 6y ago
    I've noticed a trend in recent years that apps don't have keyboard shortcuts anymore. Why is this? And what can we do about it?
• chris_wot 6y ago
  I found that when I started to write about a module in LibreOffice I started to understand it much better. For instance, I’m currently trying to understand how UNO works, I have a chapter I’m writing: https://chris-sherlock.gitbook.io/inside-libreoffice/universal-network-objects https://chris-sherlock.gitbook.io/inside-libreoffice/univers... The other thing - very programming specific - is to understand a long confusing function I found extracting if, while and for constructs to their own functions with decent names suddenly explained what was going on far more clearly.
• ak39 6y ago
  Hiring help for things that you can't or won't do but needs to be done. Other people helping you with tasks is the biggest force-multipliers human society has known.
• yagyu 6y ago
  Learn to communicate efficiently and directly in writing. I personally like McCaskill's handbook from NASA Langley because it's focused on practical matters: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19900017394/downloads/19900017394.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19900017394/downloads/19... "Effective writing involves far more than following rules of grammar. There is a craft to creating phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that ensure communication."
• nachteilig 6y ago
  Quit caffeine from time to time. Then it’s way more effective when you need it.
  • jetpackjoe 6y ago
    I drink coffee less than once a month... All I get is anxiety instead of any effectiveness
• tyingq 6y ago
  Traditional troubleshooting techniques that seem obvious, like "half split" or "rubber ducking", are often not used. Teaching some of these can dramatically reduce downtime.
  • SomewhatLikely 6y ago
    Wasn't familiar with the terminology, but looking it up I've called the split half technique binary searching because of its similarity to that algorithm from computer science.
    • tyingq 6y ago
      Ah, yes. The "split half" is the common term for troubleshooting electronics, and as you say, similar to a binary search.
• polynomial 6y ago
  Is this a GPT-3 post?
  • newsbinator 6y ago
    Why do you ask? Is it phrased strangely?
    • polynomial 6y ago
      Depends on what we mean by strange. As communication styles evolve to imitate their imitators, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish, not just because NLG is increasingly closer to natural language, but also as natural language increasingly takes on the clumsy constructions of NLG.
• WhompingWindows 6y ago
  Habits. Pretty much all of the comments here boil down to habits. Sleep, diet, exercise, attention, focus, productivity, knowledge, workflow, socializing -- anything we do repeatedly is a habit. Right now, in each and every moment, we are all the average/sum of the daily habits of the past few years. So, the "level" we achieve in each domain is a lagging indicator of our habits; fat stores up over time, dirty dishes stack up, lack of knowledge is the result of lack of learning habits, etc. If you make weekly improvements to your habits, that means small changes are sticking each week. While 1% better doesn't seem to matter much in the short run, if you stack 1% every week, in one year you're now 50% better in your routines. How to do so? Here are some ideas: -Make the bad habits harder to do. Keep the snacks, games, distractions out of reach, so you have to expend extra effort to get to them. You want high-effort barriers to beginning bad habits. -Make good habits easier to do. Prepare yourself for workouts in advance. Commit yourself to things that will be helpful. use daily streaks, motivation, positive thinking, and imagination to encourage your good habits. For more information, check out James Clear + Sam Harris' conversation on the Making Sense podcast (or the Waking Up app).
  • abhayhegde 6y ago
    This is an amazing piece of advice. At the risk of sounding cliche, I would still like to recommend The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. The basic premise of the book is this: The Habit loop is a neurological pattern that governs any habit. It consists of three elements: a cue, a routine, and a reward. Understanding these components can help in understanding how to change bad habits or form good ones.
    • hanley 6y ago
      Alternately, I found Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg to be more actionable and was able to stick a number of new habits using the recommendations from the book.
      • Graziano_M 6y ago
        What new habits have you picked up? I've picked up a few handy ones, but I am running out of ideas, and some were very 'fragile' in that a shift in routine (e.g. a vacation) completely broke the new habit.
• WJW 6y ago
  Margin of error. In financial matters, this can be savings or a relative lack of leverage. In planning, this can be extra time for unforeseen circumstances. In construction of buildings or software, it is that little over-engineering that saves you when people do unexpected things with what you built. The general principle is never to go all out and gain the maximum efficiency, for then you lose the slack you will need when something unexpected inevitably happens. Even the best can so easily lose themselves in competitions where their desire to win drives them to take unwise risks and forego a reasonable margin of error. This is not so much a force multiplier that people don't know about, but more one that they disregard because it never seems important until you need it.
• holtkam2 6y ago
  Exercise. Your body and mind (brain) are not separate, they are one highly integrated system. The performance capability of one will impact the other. Furthermore, getting a solid workout in the beginning or middle of the day can do wonders for clearing the mind and stimulating creativity & problem solving.
• everyone 6y ago
  This is such a garbage question. "force multiplier" in this context is a meaningless phrase cribbed from military jargon. You may as well have asked "What is something useful that most people don't know" The answer could be literally almost anything.
  • newsbinator 6y ago
    From Wikipedia: > The expected size increase required to have the same effectiveness without that advantage is the multiplication factor. For example, if a certain technology like GPS enables a force to accomplish the same results of a force five times as large but without GPS, then the multiplier is five. I am asking about concepts or tools that hackers have in their back pockets which 5x or 10x or 1000x their effectiveness in life or work. This is more specific than something useful that most people don't know, though it does fall under that umbrella. For example, "how to take apart your laptop to clean the fan and replace thermal paste" is something useful that most people don't know, but that knowledge is not much of a force multiplier.
• fullshark 6y ago
  Asking questions when you don't know what's going on. If you are willing to "look dumb" you will end up saving yourself hours struggling to understand something when you are lacking key information / context that a simple question/answer would provide.
• Balgair 6y ago
  A work journal. I know this one seems a bit obvious, but in the workforce, I rarely see people with them. Work journals are not very exciting. But just writing things down really makes a difference somehow. Those boring meetings become slightly less boring when you take notes. That thing from six weeks ago doesn't slip by you as readily. That person's name on that one call isn't a mystery. Your year end report is chock full of stuff, not just a few .ppt bullet points of a few highlights. It's pretty straightforward, and just takes about two weeks of practice to get into the habit. For the effort, it really does multiply.
  • xcubic 6y ago
    How do you organise your journal?
    • Balgair 6y ago
      Personally, I try to use the Cornell note taking method [0], just with every meeting being a 'class'. In practice, I list the name of the 'activity' (a meeting, a work session, some forms filing, etc), the people at the activity, and then note whatever it is that needs notes to be taken. To be clear, I'm not taking minutes in a meeting, just more like action items for myself, and anything really important that came up. Like I said, it's not 'hard' stuff or very complicated, I may only have like two bullet points for an hour meeting sometimes. The habit is what matters. [0] http://lsc.cornell.edu/study-skills/cornell-note-taking-system/ http://lsc.cornell.edu/study-skills/cornell-note-taking-syst...
  • Mandatum 6y ago
    Obsidian has been the biggest help for me here. Originally I was going to set up a Wiki for work journaling, but I found it was a pain in the butt to get working nicely.. Obs worked out of the box, and supported things like Screenshot and File pasting. Yummers!
  • roland35 6y ago
    Keeping a log also makes you seem more on top of things to colleagues and managers! I have a poor memory myself (at least with conversations... I seem to remember just fine where most athletes played college ball or other random useless facts!) But I have had a much easier time referencing old decisions or meetings since I've kept a journal. My journal is a simple org notes file in emacs. I have a to do list on top and a daily log at the bottom and use search to find old info. The more I try to organize it, the harder it is to use, so I keep it linear now!
• thewebcount 6y ago
  Learn how money works. This means learning how to save money effectively, how much to save, when it’s appropriate to spend and when you’re better off either waiting, borrowing, or going without.
• jrm4 6y ago
  With all of this workflow advice: Favor EXPERIMENTATION over "reading threads like this and trying to analyze how they will work for you beforehand." E.g. If you've used one smallish monitor over your life and you're deciding between adding one more or one bigger one -- there is NO objective answer. To the best you can, try them both.
• kk58 6y ago
  2nd degree contacts in social network. You don't realise how many influential people you are weakly connected by 2nd or 3rd degree. Harnessing this network for mentors, benefactors, investors advisors is hardly done. Secondly, breathing.. everybody breathes , very few people learn how to use breath control to direct attention, calmness, clarity of thought, Lastly, mindfulness, when we eat, indulge in binge gaming sessions, basically when we give way to our immediate gratification instead of being in the present and doing the right thing. Doing many small things right compounds.
  • dataduck 6y ago
    > Secondly, breathing.. everybody breathes , very few people learn how to use breath control to direct attention, calmness, clarity of thought, Are there any good resources online for learning this?
  • samstave 6y ago
    https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breath-vids https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breath-vids
• hokkos 6y ago
  Pulleys
• blargmaster33 6y ago
  Guns
• k__ 6y ago
  Passive income. The problem is, most easily accessible passive income sources aren't enough to live from, so people don't start investing time/money into them. But multiple of them can add up over the years.
  • throwaway98797 6y ago
    Any examples to share?
    • k__ 6y ago
      If you publish a course on Skillshare, Educative, or a book on Gumroad, you probably won't make $1000 a month. But you will earn more and more every time you create more.
  • muin 6y ago
    Any tips to get started?
    • k__ 6y ago
      Write a book, create online courses. Publish on Skillshare, Educative, Gumroad, etc.
  • PaulStatezny 6y ago
    What are some good, low risk examples of this?
    • k__ 6y ago
      Publish an online course on an online education platform.
• szatkus 6y ago
  VerbalExpressions Not for short regular expressions, but if you need to write longer ones you probably would want to use it.
• swayvil 6y ago
  Meditation. However, a good butterfly is a bad worm.
• greenie_beans 6y ago
  Markdown! It has helped my writing so much
• dragontamer 6y ago
  Print stuff. Its like multiple monitors, except its cheaper. Like $0.05 a page. A lot of paper-style documentation is still a gross force mutiplier, even in the age of multiple monitors. Learn to use paper tools to create booklets that are useful to you. I like 2-hole punch (2.75" US Standard) and comb binders. Spending a few minutes honing your paper documentation for your current task can make you grossly faster.
  • saltypal 6y ago
    This! A printout of the Paredit reference card [1] taped near my monitor is the only way I was able to learn it. [1] http://pub.gajendra.net/src/paredit-refcard.pdf http://pub.gajendra.net/src/paredit-refcard.pdf
  • duggable 6y ago
    Genius, love it.
• wwarner 6y ago
  Keeping track of the little things. And of course saying no. If you take 30-60 minutes a day to be sure that little things that are easy to take care of are actually complete, over time your coworkers will think you're 5x as productive as you are now. I have to work at this; I instinctively bury myself in 1 problem and put every single other thing aside. It's really the same trade-off as working hard on a low priority issue, but being careful not to neglect the smaller, easier, but more important issues as they come up.
• austincheney 6y ago
  Nonverbal communication.
• phineyes 6y ago
  Investing in promising people that are new to the industry - the easiest way to do this is through Twitter. I've found some amazing new developers which have great mindsets that I knew would do well in their careers, which I've capitalized on by following them early on and having regular chats with them about what they're working on, etc. It allows you to maintain leverage in your field because once they're successful, you both already have a relationship and it becomes a lot easier to network and strike deals. It has a huge upside with almost no risk - all it takes is a Twitter follow.
  • lapaz17 6y ago
    Could you share a few twitter accounts if you don't mind?
• steventey 6y ago
  Might be a little clichéd but I'd say a simple for-loop is super powerful and can cut down the time spent processing a dataset by a large multiple. I'd go as far as to say recursion too but then that might also be a little clichéd so I'll say that a simple for-loop is super powerful and can cut down the time spent processing a dataset by a large multiple. I'd go as far as to say recursion too but then...
• huijzer 6y ago
  > All software is a force multiplier, but some tools, like Zapier/IFTTT are in a class of their own. I have been looking through both sites but could not find one actual force multiplier for my life or work, even though I would love to automate workflows. Would you have suggestions for someone doing a PhD project and communicates with a few colleagues and the occasional student?
• simonsarris 6y ago
  Getting married.
• nojvek 6y ago
  Write down what you plan to do each morning and why you’re doing it. To create any sort of impact it takes effort. Effort is your input, and impact is output. Prioritize impact/effort first. Automate and delegate things that take effort but don’t have much impact. Easier said then done, but incrementally moving in the direction of where the puck’s going to be makes all the difference in the long term.
• cprayingmantis 6y ago
  Someone already mentioned sleep so I’ll mention the next most powerful force multiplier: Kindness. Kindness in your workplace and home is a huge force multiplier. Machiavelli asked is it better to feared or loved and my answer is loved 1000x over. People will do for one they love things that couldn’t be imagined for one they fear. Furthermore it’s relatively easy to be kind. Kindness comes in many forms: remember someone’s birthday, give them a ride home, try out their app, buy something cheep from their side hustle , check their mail for them when they’re gone and water their plants, be honest about their performance at work and what they can do to improve, buy your team donuts one morning. All these are easy ways to show a little kindness. Don’t try and take the shortcut and try to be nice or liked that’s not the same as showing kindness. It’s so easy when someone asks how they’re doing at work to brush it off and say “you’re doing fine!” all cheery but it’s another thing entirely to say “hey you’re doing good but you can improve on x and here’s the way I did it”. It doesn’t cost anything to be nice but true kindness can cost quite a bit and be uncomfortable.
• growlist 6y ago
  'Force multiplier'??? I've never understood this peculiarly American obsession with military metaphors, and I'd say this one is particularly ridiculous.
  • newsbinator 6y ago
    I find this to be a useful label for "a tool, technique, or approach that multiplies my ability to get useful things done by 5x, 50x, 1000x, etc" Is there a better term for this? We have "life hacks", but this isn't that.
• Hippocrates 6y ago
  Tune your push notifications for need-to-know information. This directly influences how many times I pick up my phone (usually needlessly) and get distracted. You can disable push on most apps that just use it for marketing or to get your attention into their app daily. Ecom and news apps are the worst offenders.
• blaser-waffle 6y ago
  As someone with a military background and experience working for contractors, I really hate using this kind of jargon for non-military stuff. These tools are not force multipliers. Adding in concepts like "compound interest" or "sunk cost fallacy" stretches that meaning even further. Just stop.
• wly_cdgr 6y ago
  Constraints. Using simpler, less powerful tools; self-imposing arbitrary design restrictions; publicly committing to tight deadlines; etc. Makes your brain go into must-beat-this-game mode, stimulates creativity, and channels your energy.
• alsargent 6y ago
  Hacker Newsletter. The best* of Hacker News, delivered once a week. Each newsletter contains a few useful articles that have helped me in work and life. * not sure how they figure out “best” but the articles are general good.
• wly_cdgr 6y ago
  Ego death