What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?
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Easily the Tiny Habits habit formation regime created by Stanford researcher BJ Fogg. A lot of the addictive design patterns you see in apps like Snapchat, Instagram, etc. are built off his research. Quite nefarious use of psychology for advertising/“engagement”, but the plus side is you can use the same strategies to build habits you want to build.
Step 1: Consider the habit you want to build, e.g. “I want to meditate 10 minutes every day”
Step 2: Make it the absolute smallest possible version of itself; so small that it requires zero motivation/willpower, e.g. “I want to close my eyes and take 3 deep breaths every day”
Step 3: Place this habit immediately following an existing habit, e.g. “After I brush my teeth in the morning, I will close my eyes and take 3 deep breaths”
Step 4: Do this activity, and after each time you do it, reward yourself with a small celebration. It sounds ridiculous but I literally just say “Victory!” and force a smile on my face. The small rush of good-feeling-chemicals will keep you coming back.
I’ve used this method to pick up daily meditation, journaling, and flossing (acquired simultaneously!) after years of struggling to pick up any one of them. The first two habits have been monumental in my ability to learn, take on stress, and improve virtually every one of my relationships.
A shameless plug for BJ because he’s a great guy: his book, Tiny Habits, happened to be released today (what a coincidence!). I haven’t read it but if this is remotely interesting to you, I’m sure it’ll be extremely useful and engaging. It’s on Amazon, you can find it!
Sidenotes:
* Don’t worry about the habit scale down, it will naturally grow over time into its fuller form. I spent a month of the year just flossing 1 tooth each night (ridiculous, I know!), then 5 months just flossing 1 row (better!)
* Part of the trick is finding a good habit to put your new habit after. You probably already have a lot more habits than you know, since the whole point of a habit is to be automatic.
Other thing he recommends is “practicing” your habit, especially if your context changes e.g. you’re staying in a hotel for a week. This would mean for example to mimic brushing your teeth in front of the mirror then walking to the bed to sit and close your eyes 5 times or so.
To start it’s probably worth picking something up that you can easily prompt yourself to do (such as a note on your mirror). The only one that failed for me was posture related which relied on a too-irregular prompt.
It went from this very unpleasant finger tourniquets and hands inside my mouth to doing it one handed while I read or watch a clip online.
I floss semi-regularly but will go periods of time without flossing due to the annoyance factor. I will try these. Just looked them up and are decently cheap.
My dentist recommended those, works like a charm for me. Although keep in mind they're thicker than dental floss, meaning they may not fit between certain pairs of teeth if they're very close together.
For me, that was the key development. Up to that point, I hadn't understood that the goal is to scrape plaque off the teeth, and had only been flossing to get food out from between my teeth. Once I understood that, flossing became much easier, not to mention, after a couple of weeks of reduced gun inflammation, more comfortable.
It was a dental hygienist who explained it to me, not a dentist... I think for dentists, there may be a bit of a conflict of interest.
https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Habits-Changes-Change-Everything...
I wrote some educational apps for language learning. Are there techniques that I could use to help and motivate my users?
Motivation is a fickle beast that ought never to be counted on.
If you want Fogg's take in a nutshell, here's a short podcast interview: https://boxofcrayons.com/2016/08/bj-fogg-on-behaviour-change... . tl;dl: Have an explicit trigger that you can't ignore.
(I'm unaffiliated)
Was this because you hated it so much that you couldn't bring yourself to do more than one at a time, or is it important to effective habit building that you intentionall hold yourself back? (I can't imagine getting as far as remembering to do it, getting out the floss, tearing off a piece, flossing one tooth and then not saying, eh, I'm already here, might as well do more.)
Not directly related to the habit formation part, but this reminded me of something my dad used to tell us as kids about flossing and brushing teeth when we'd complain about it:
Dad: You know, you don't have to floss and brush them all.
Us (amazedly): Really?
Dad: Nope, just the ones you want to keep.
Thanks so much for the book recommendation and the pointer towards BJ Fogg.
What a wonderful mental model. Thank you for that phrasing.
My tendency, and I think most people's tendency around me, is to discuss stress in terms of how to limit it.
Taking it on changes my relationship to it (at least in my mind). Taking it on, gives me control over it.
I highly recommend everyone buys his new Tiny Habits book and gives the program a try.
I used to feel an obligation to correct other people if they had false beliefs. This was not an endearing trait, and even worse, I was never particularly successful at convincing the other people.
One day, I read a passage from "How to make friends and influence people". It said something along the lines of:
"The point of an argument is to convince the other person of something. If what you're doing is not working, then do something else."
BAM
I'm not perfect, but these days, I try to listen a lot and speak a little. And the little I do speak is designed to appeal, as much as possible, to my audience.
As a small bonus: I really try not to get drawn into arguments with people who just like to argue (instead of those arguing in good faith). "OK" is an amazing response to shut those kinds of interactions down in a hurry. You can't out box the heavy bag.
That's not the point of most arguments. Most arguments have an audience, and often that audience is also involved in making choices.
If neither your opponent nor your audience is swayed, yeah, you could just be entrenching everyone in an oppositional attitude.
That being said, discussions are typically better than arguments when that is an option.
Another thing he told me was not to be a know it all. One example would be when people said something and I had learned before, instead of diminishing their statement by saying I knew that, I should say something like "wow that's cool" as it makes the person feel better.
He gave me lots of small little interaction tips that helped me come across as a better person even though none of them were nefarious in nature.
Taking this a step further, if you know the topic well you can instead say something like "I know, it's very cool isn't it? Did you also know that <related factoid>".
Delivery is important of course, with the "I know" part needing to be energetic and supportive, but I've found this approach to be an effective way to build rapport and it has lead to some really interesting discussions.
That's really great. I'll have to pick that up.
Sounds like your dad was/is a pretty smart guy.
I would get super annoyed at his doing that when I was a kid and felt that he was hard on me for no reason, but man do I really appreciate that now. I still have lots to learn from that man.
I know someone like this. Their reply is always, "I'm not stupid". Clearly they were offended when I told them something they already knew, even though my intentions were to educate rather than offend. But their reply actually always created two offended people because to me, it's obvious I had no ill intentions and I'm left resenting their reply.
So now I just don't tell them anything unless they ask and I'm highly specific in my answer to their question. That ensures I'm only providing information they have indicated they don't know. If they want to know more, they'll ask more.
For my part, there was almost certainly an element of my being a know-it-all which is what got this person so riled up in the first place. Regardless; this simple change has helped me a lot and has improved my relationship with other people in addition to this one person.
Similarly I once watched a woman at work struggle opening a jar. She congratulated me for not offering to do it for her. When in fact I felt like a jerk in that moment for watching her struggle. There’s an odd difference of perspective here I don’t fully understand.
Sure, "I know that" isn't great either, but hopefully there's some way of dealing with that situation (which happens constantly in everyday conversation) without lying like that. Seems like manipulating the other person to me, not treating them as a person just like you. Imagine the roles swapped. Would you want the other person to pretend and be condescending, or to be honest? Saying "Wow that's cool" when you don't at all mean it, an honest, real conversation can never get started.
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" really helped me understand where I was running into problems when interacting with people. It was written mainly for those who are in sales and need to learn how to persuade, but I've found it overall helpful in my career (not sales). It's one of the three books I would recommend for those who either manage people or are customer-facing (the others being "Nonviolent Communication" and "Carrots and Sticks Don't Work").
That said, I don't really observe the book's dogma in my personal life. To an extent, it has basic advice that's good no matter what. On the other hand, carefully speaking to make someone like you and to persuade them can be awfully inauthentic. I've learned to be careful about being rude or pedantic, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy a good argument. I like it when I disagree with people. I like to dig down into it with them to uncover the truth. I like to share the truth that I know with others, and I really like it when someone helps me discover a truth I didn't know before, changing the way I see things.
Unfortunately that means that, while I try to avoid it (without sacrificing authenticity), I will be perceived as unlikable to some. This tends to be people who hate confrontation, those who are maybe a bit insecure about their beliefs, and those who tend toward valuing what the group thinks opposed to what the individual thinks.
I like this too.
But I've found that it's basically a disaster in real life. Very few people are educated, and even those who are have enough sacred goats that real serious conversations about difficult topics are near impossible.
I find that, instead, consuming the best books and videos is far more rewarding. You can expose yourself to the best version of ideas with less effort than trying to squeeze it out of people you meet.
To me it's more rewarding to know that I may not agree with everything everyone says all the time, but at least we can find our common ground and share our disagreements with each other to reach an understanding.
Basic conversations about basic things are almost impossible.
Sciency/hackery software devs are a unique breed, we like to talk, debate, consider. To everyone else it's just 'disagreeable'.
Making people like and respect you is sadly, the only way to get most people to agree with you.
The most important 'tactic' when trying to get people to agree with you is ... to be tall, slightly good looking, reasonably well kept, and for the other person to believe you are listening to them, and that you agree with them maybe about 'some issue' but more importantly about some deeply held value they have. Then you are 'right' about whatever it is you are supposed to be talking about.
In other words, it's not about facts, but about relationships, which is why so much of sales is about that, and not product/price.
For some reason humans are really, really bad at objectivity and I think we information nerds are only just a little bit better than the rest.
One of my big revelations was ‘we are /all/ in sales’.
Anecdote... one of the proudest moments in my life was when I finally did outbox the heavy bag. I put a hole in the side where I my left hooks to the body hit. It probably took me 10 years to make that hole, and even though I needed to buy a new bag. I can't make myself throw away the old one.
Not going to lie: that's pretty badass!
Another thing that I've found helpful is to adopt a frame of mind where you don't want to be wrong for a moment longer than necessary. Therefore open to being incorrect, and would rather be corrected than continue being wrong. When your model has been updated, view it as a positive.
Steelman instead of strawman. Seek the strongest opposition to your idea.
It can be hard to do, but worth trying as much as possible.
Also somewhat related:
“Never miss a good chance to shut up.” - Will Rogers
Do that at the start of every day and really meditate on awesome it is that you have those things. Sincerely and quietly thank whoever you feel is responsible for them.
You'd be amazed how that 3 minute exercise changes your perspective.
Gratitude does wonders for your mental health!
The Hacker News crowd probably knows above average, though even then a lot of my colleagues could know more, e.g. haven’t heard of VTSAX, didn’t know our 401(k) does a mega backdoor Roth, etc.
Perhaps less true if you have a large savings of over $1M already, but otherwise no.
If you’re more income strained then yes though.
For example it's common that you will regularly have lunch with a work colleague, and then later they will recruit you to work at another company. Or they will give you insight on how to get support behind your project at your current company.
I'd have been better off just letting it sit in a bank. When you're a normal American - increasingly lower-"middle class," if that, these financial schemes are worthless to you. You're in perpetual survival mode.
But try to convince wealthy capitalists to pay the average worker enough to allow them to actually be in control of their financial destiny. You'll be laughed out of the room.
I wouldn't say that that 'disadvantages the poor and middle class'. It's the other way around - it disadvantages the upper-middle and wealthy because they hit the limit and have to find other ways to accumulate wealth.
[EDIT] to be clear it's not an absolute disadvantage to the poor and middle class versus having no such system, it's just that the way it's structured the overwhelming bulk of the tax savings goes to people who are already very well off, and those "beneath" them cannot possibly, no matter how frugal or responsible or fairly-well (but not excellently) compensated, hope to touch the level of benefit the very-well-off derive from 401k accounts. It's impossible, thanks to the way they're structured.
[EDIT EDIT] they're actually ideal for rich people who want to transfer ~$56k/yr to each of their kids (about $1.5m over 30 years), tax-free. I'd bet there's a further scheme one can work out to direct the investment of the fund such that the personal benefit is much greater than that, even (oh, kid of mine, you want to start a business? Funny, our 401k fund also "wants" to invest in it!). How? Employ them at one of your C or S corps (LLC or partnership won't let you get anywhere near the contribution limit, because... reasons? I dunno, it's a really dumb system if [cough] you're trying to make it broadly available to and useful for normal people) in one of the many positions near the top that're well-compensated but are so easy that lots of folks (stalk some from-money C-suite or "investor" types on Linkedin to see what I mean) seem to find time to hold one of them and also a few other "jobs" at the same time, so it won't look out-of-the-ordinary.
That really seems like an overstatement. 401k contribution limits (without catch-up) are about $20K/year. That's no doubt more than most people save in a year but it's not that far out on the fringes of what mid-career professionals are/should be saving for retirement.
I don't completely disagree with your broader point. 401ks (especially with significant contribution match) and IRAs (and ESPPs such as they still are) do tend to most benefit workers who are fairly well-compensated. But they're actually less of a big deal for top execs etc. for whom the dollar amounts are relatively small.
[EDIT] OK so 50% is not necessarily right, obvious, I realized as soon as I posted, but the benefits are very disproportionately in the favor of people who aren't exactly the ones one might hope a government-supported retirement system would be mainly designed to help, and the best possible benefits aren't practically available at all to middle-class people even if they do somehow manage to put the actual total contribution limit away for retirement (they'll lose out on probably at least half the max benefit of the system, since they can only put ~$19k or $20k in tax-free themselves and probably only get low-thousands contribution from their employer at best, so the rest is getting taxed before being invested, and IIRC you can't even stack an IRA on top of a maxed-out 401k contribution)
The GP may be referring to the $57K limit which is the total employee + employer contribution. The $20K/year limit is salary contributions. I think there's also a backdoor that lets the employee contribute more, but the real limit is $57K.
> But they're actually less of a big deal for top execs etc. for whom the dollar amounts are relatively small.
Indeed, few highly compensated execs rely on 401K. They cannot even get tax benefits for IRA's. The 401K and IRAs are designed for the middle class. The main problem is that you need an employer who provides a 401K. If my employer doesn't, I can't go and get one on my own (correct me if I'm wrong). On top of that, you are constrained by the funds provided by your employer's choice of 401K provider (e.g. may only have access to high fund fees).
I'm not sure about backdoors but there is a catchup contribution if you're 50 or over that lets you contribute about another $6K.
401Ks are really this weird little quirk in US tax law that, as I understand the history, came about almost by accident. And they're suboptimal in a lot of ways. Of course, they're now so entrenched as a middle class benefit that it would be political suicide to touch them.
Defined benefit plans would be better for a lot of people although they have their own issues--including underfunding and, at least historically, a very strong bias towards long-term employment at a single company.
I came to the opposite conclusion: Defined benefit plans tend to be suboptimal. As you mention, underfunding is a problem. In the private sector what protections are there if the fund goes bankrupt because they overpromised? The safe thing is to make the defined benefits smaller so the account is always funded, but that's leaving money on the table. At least with my 401K (with decent low cost fund choices), I never have to worry about this. The money is mine and it cannot go bankrupt (unless the market dies, of course).
My state's employee pension is a defined benefit pension and everyone who is not a state employee agrees that we're heading for disaster. There's no bankruptcy escape clause - the Supreme Court has ruled that what has been promised must be paid out - even if it means raising everyone's taxes or shutting down all non-essential services. The fund doesn't have enough to pay what's been promised, so the state keeps borrowing money to pay existing pensioners. All the mayors in the city hate it, because pretty much any time they get extra money (via taxes, etc) almost all the money must be diverted to pay the existing pensions. Some smaller towns have increased in population quite a bit in the last decade, yet the cities cannot afford to increase the capacity of schools or increase police/fire presence because all the extra tax money from the new residents needs to be diverted to the pension funds.
Also, there is no cap to the benefit - and it is based on your income while you worked. So we have one retired person getting paid $80K/month from the pension because he was the president of a state university.
It's gotten to the point where many people automatically vote against any increase in funding in, say, schools etc because they know the money will simply be diverted to pay pensions. So legislators try playing games by adding riders to bills that say "None of the extra money raised by this bill can be used for pensions" - but of course that doesn't work because they simply shift the money from elsewhere.
Certainly public pensions in particular have been a big issue because of overpromising and underfunding. But, from the perspective of the worker, they do provide a level of (mostly) guaranteed retirement payments that lots of people end up not getting through a 401K. Sure, we can take the attitude as a society that's not our problem but it sort of is.
Personally I will have a somewhat nominal pension through a private employer in addition to savings but I understand why we may issues down the road where many people have nothing besides Social Security as opposed to more common defined benefit pensions as in times past.
A poor person can put 100% of their wealth in. Someone who's well off can't.
I think you're just saying that a poor person has less money than a rich person.
Of course they do - that's what the words mean!
Those people would be much better off learning to either spend less, earn more, and get out of debt instead of learning about how to invest hypothetical money that they'll never have with their habits.
I certainly didn't know a damn thing about index funds, investments, stock markets, etc until I actually had the extra money to invest. Now people come to me for advice.
The default best option isn't always to invest except for long-term goals like retirement. It depends on what you want to do. (Reddit flowchart agrees with this)
Also, some of us don't believe in retirement. It's a concept more applicable to blue-collar workers (whose decline in physical ability in old age prevents them from continuing) or people who want to kick-back and relax after a certain age, or be financially independent to pursue certain dreams.
But some of us (especially cerebral types) really love our jobs and are reinventing ourselves every decade or so in order to do new things within our professions. My learning rate is actually accelerating with age because knowledge pays compound interest and I've finally built up a large enough knowledge base for this to be happening at an appreciable clip. I'm in my 5th decade, and I'm no longer as quick with computational tasks but my knowledge acquisition and processing abilities are surprisingly much sharper than they were in my 20s.
I can't see myself ever retiring unless my health completely fails (in which case I have buffer funds for that, but I don't call it a "retirement fund"). My parents have been retired for years and in my opinion they are declining faster than if they didn't.
Those numbers sound optimistic when I look at the rural, low income town that I grew up in where my family still lives.
If those numbers don't seem to match what you see in your social group, you probably live in a bubble.
They are too scared to invest.
Essentially, each time you use your debit card, they round up the amount you owe the shop, and put that in a special account. For each 10 euro in that account - they invest it.
So for example, let's say I go to the shops and pay 9.30 for groceries. Then I'd end up paying 10 euro to the shop, and 70c will go to the investment account. Once the investment account reached a multiple of 10 - it gets invested.
It's a way to slowly build up owning more funds.
Of course, you can also just put X euro in it to start of instead of waiting for the initial 10 euro. :P
edit: typos
Woa it's really good. Didn't even know that it existed.
For future wanderer: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics
What I think would be more valuable would be to list college majors by future earnings perennial and also the idea of compound interest. So many people who graduate college still don’t have any idea about this. But as a society we’ve been drilling into everyone’s heads that going to college is a good idea when most people it is questionable at best.
She will work out the problem herself. She just needs you to be a sounding board. Listen and nod. Be patient. Pay attention. Shut up unless you are asked a direct question.
This is the secret to a successful relationship.
(Married thirty-three years)
I think figured out the actual problem there. Your wife/girlfriend needs a rubber ducky!
Here's my thought process: why would someone talk about something if they don't want input? It seems like a waste of time.
Where's the gap in my thinking? Is there some way I can mentally reframe my thought process so that I 1) Don't immediately try to solve the problem and 2) Don't get annoyed at my significant other for wasting my time.
The remedy they need right now is not a solution. The remedy they need is having someone listen to their situation and empathize.
Bonus: If they really are unable to think of a solution to the underlying problem, after venting about it they will be in a position to better think constructively and even take advice from you.
Them: My foot is broken
You: Have you considered not walking on it? Have you considered putting a cast on it?
vs
You: That sucks. (mentally: don't ask them to walk on it until it heals)
2) Do you have enough information yet to make a reasonable suggestion? (Smile and nod, shut up)
Them: I don't like my boss and yesterday I ...
You: Why don't you quit?
3) Your suggestion will fix their problem, but what are the consequences of your solution?
Them: I can't walk upstairs to get my medicine (they are on crutches)
You: Let me help you up the stairs (they then need to find you every time they go upstairs. Instead, make sure everything they need is downstairs)
Contrary to GP, I don't think "wait until they ask a direct question" is a perfect strategy; though it's a great strategy compared to shooting your mouth off. Waiting until they ask a direct question is a shortcut to make sure you don't imply that they were too dumb to think of your half-baked solution.
I mean, if your SO or anyone that you care about is talking with/to you and you could ever possibly think it's a waste of your time no matter what it is that they are saying, then I think you may need to re-evaluate a few things in the new year.
I know where it is you are coming from here, as I also had the same thought process for a long time. Honestly, you just have to find the right kinda people to be around. If you have siblings or parents, you know how it is that everything that you manage to talk about is interesting in some way and how you both know when it's not. Like, during a TV show/movie you really like, even the 'dull' parts are interesting and you are super pumped that they explored the world of the film/show just a bit more. How you want to learn everything there is to know about Star Wars, Marvel, Python 2.7, etc? Even how a Wookie sneezes or Thor shaves?
Yeah, people that you like to be around that much, those are the people to become romantically involved with. Don't become romantically involved with people that 'waste your time' when they tell you about their issues and problems.
"Is this person trying to solve a problem, or are they trying to be heard and commiserated with?"
But what helps me is taking walks. You're alone with your thoughts, but the act of walking through nature is stimulating for more positive thinking, from my experience anyway.
Heh, shit, if that counts I "meditate" for an hour or more a couple times a week. It's absolutely horrible.
[EDIT] in fact, running with that, most of my life has been a struggle to "meditate" less for the sake of my own health and sanity. I'm way down from the every single night for like two damn hours of ages ~7-16!
That is not meditation though. Learning to meditate has helped me a ton in being able to calm my mind down and get to sleep. I'd recommend checking out the Sam Harris Waking Up app, just do it for a few days and see if it clicks.
That sounds like a good start. Learning how to let go of ruminating thoughts is still a struggle for me, but when it happens it will change your life.
I salute you for the suggestion.
For me, those two things get you a lot farther than you might think, and solve two of the biggest issues I see from people.
This is an article that I've composed based on a previous HN discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21581361) and other discussions on the net.
There are things like cooking, first aid & CPR, setting up a Raspberry Pi, cable management, etc. that you can learn in an hour and can make a meaningful difference in your life. Both article and video mention many topics and gives tips on them.
* Article: (as posted above) https://quanticdev.com/articles/most-valuable-thing-to-learn...
* Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F_srpzXQ6o
If you have any ideas, I will add them to the article.
e.g. https://quanticdev.com/articles/most-valuable-thing-to-learn...
should be instead https://quanticdev.com/articles/raspberry-pi-guide-for-devel...
Check out something called "Core Transformation Process", it's a simple algorithm, you can learn it in an hour (although I think the full training is ~3 days, but that includes other stuff as well), and it has very profound effects.
I think it can be in the list as well. It takes a long time to properly learn. But one hours is defiantly enough to get to know the main Vim bindings, to be as productive as in other editors. In the end it makes you super productive.
Nothing has influenced my use of computers as much as Vim, and I'm really glad this tool exists. It makes editing text a great experience, and has a couple feature you can't find anywhere else(not even Emacs offers such a flexible, intuitive keybinding functionality or reliable, quirk-free controls).
The problem is, the opposite is true until you reach some level of proficiency. Until then, vim is hard to get used to.
I know I haven't provided a concrete answer, but many blog posts have been written on the matter. I personally started learning vim by running through vimtutor once a day as part of a New Year's resolution about ten years ago.
If your productivity is limited by how fast you can type then you are either a far, far better programmer than most people or your skills are being under utilized.
I can get to any location in a massive codebase within seconds. I can drop the cursor to any character I see damn near instantly. I can construct entire macros on the fly and repeat them endlessly until I’m satisfied and destroy repetitive tasks. I can move entire sections of code to anywhere else I please, just tell the line numbers and it’s done. I don’t even have to open the files. When you’re working really fast in Vim it’s easy to get a high from the amount of code you are slicing through.
In short, classical editors are like a ball and chain for developers trying to get shit done, and I cringe every time I see a developer using a mouse or trackpad while working. It’s so slow, so inefficient, I can’t stand it anymore. I need vim-like shortcuts in every application I use.
I think just about any modern programmer's editor can do all the things you describe. I work most of the day in Visual Studio and I know it can do all that.
For programming I think vim is handicapped somewhat because it doesn't "understand" what it's working on.
I'm digging moving things around quickly and all that. But I don't know how to get my cursor where I want it quickly.
This makes it really easy to get to the line you are looking at. You look at the relative line number, see it's 9 lines above, so you start out with pressing 9k to jump up 9 lines.
Let's say you're trying to get to an instance of the 'a' character. The character is to the right of your cursor, so you press fa to jump to the next instance of the 'a' character. However, it turns out that there are multiple instances of the 'a' character before the one you are trying to get to. So you repeatedly press ; to keep going to the next 'a' character until you get to the one you want. You've accidentally passed the one you want, so you press , to go back one.
So all together you something like 9kfa;;
Also related to the f motion are the F, t, and T motions. I use the t motion all the time. t and T are like f and F but they put you on the character before the one you specify. Very useful for jumping to the first character before the next parentheses and things like that.
purely for putting the cursor exactly where you want it there are more powerful things like the emacs acejump plugin or easymotion for vim but they aren't all that necessary IMO.
The reason folks talk about feeling crippled when they use a regular editor is that you get used to things like `f(` to take you to the front of some function's arg list, or `ci{` to quickly change some block of code.
I get that. My point is that I decide to move that chunk of code after looking at the screen for 4 minutes so it doesn't matter if it's 3 or 4 keystrokes or 5 or 6.
Once you know your editor well, you aren't thinking about the keystrokes anyway. It becomes entirely automatic. There are lots of editor operations that I couldn't tell you what the keystrokes actually are without sitting at a keyboard and doing it.
Most of what programmers do is a lot of navigation and text manipulation correct? In normal scenarios, what keys are available to us to do that? Just the arrow keys and modifiers (Ctrl, Alt, Command).
But what if we had essentially the entire keyboard available to us for either text manipulation or navigation? We could move around or manipulate text in more efficient ways because we have more keys available to us to do different things (like say "delete until the next closed parenthesis" rather than control shift right-arrow 20 times).
That's why VIM is useful for programmers or anyone who manipulates plain text all day.
Possibly I'm a terrible programmer, but most of what I do is thinking and looking shit up. Entering or modifying code, and navigating non-linearly within one file is like... a couple percent of what I do on an average day? Maybe 5% tops? Some days it may get as high as 20% of my time. Maybe.
[EDIT] add "communicating", broadly, to the list of things I do a lot of at work that's not editing code.
It just so happens that this paradigm (which is a much-maligned word!) is still useful today.
You interact with text in a couple of different ways, which vim maps onto "modes". You type in text, you select text, and you transform text. Insert mode, where you type in text, is how most editors work these days.
Let's look at an example, I hope I can do this justice:
You've been asked to refactor and update some code. In vim, you open up the right file and you hit '}' a few times to jump down "paragraphs" to get to the right spot to add your code. You hit 'i' to enter insert mode, then type in the extra class methods or whatever you need. Once done typing, you hit escape to exit insert mode. Now you have to remove some methods, so you type '/' to search, followed by the method name, then hit enter until you find the right part of the code. You hit '^' to go to the beginning of the line, then you hit 'd}'. That's the combination of an action 'd' and movement '}'. That removes up to the next blank line. Now you need to update places within this file that reference that method, and update them to the new method you added. You type ':%s/productComponent/productExponent/gc' which is a search and replace, 'g'lobally with 'c'onfirmation. Once the changes are made, you type ':wq' to write the file and exit out of vim. Your consulting firm charge the client $50,000.
And your hands didn't leave the keyboard to mess with the mouse.
Think of vim like a computer game where you have to learn a bunch of moves, or a simulator where you have to learn a lot of key combos to control a spaceship or aeroplane.
I hope that helped, I don't advocate trying to jump in and replace vscode with vim immediately. But definitely install vim and try some tutorials and experiment with your normal workflows to see if you feel it is a good match to your keyboard usage/style.
It's not. People tend to be religious about their choices, you can achieve the same result in any editor. Also most likely the bottleneck in your productivity is not the speed at which you manipulate text.
Anyway I will highlight few things that I consider great about vim.
1. It's more about consistency. (vim shortcuts are used in a lot of other places, ex: linux commands like `less`, `screen` etc.., tmux or other pane manager, etc..) When you learn linux you start to get a feeling about it, at some point you enter a command you somehow magically know the shortcuts to navigate/close/search inside there, Vim feels like a complementary thing to the whole linux environment knowledge.
2. It is everywhere! You need 0 time to prepare your work environment if you switch your job/workstation, and you also don't need to exit the remote machine/datacenter to write your stuff. You basically ssh into the machine[s]/datacenter and there you go, at the end of you day you just detach from the session, go home, and next day attach back and continue, all the commands, fancy log searches, processes monitoring, everything is there still running and waiting for you.
P.S. I also use VS Code sometimes especially for pet projects.
Touching your mouse less.
Might sound weird, but that's honestly my main reason for learning modal editing and emacs with evil.
Less flip flopping between mouse and keyboard might not be "more productive", but it's more comfortable.
And beneath that you start to find better fuzzy project searching with tools like ripgrep, an easier time navigating your project, powerful in-file movement commands, etc.
I'm mostly an emacs evil user, so I also have workspaces, projectile, magit, and a whole host of other extremely powerful tools.
And I don't really lose out on much wrt code completion, or other functionalities you normally get from an IDE. Since I can use the same language servers you would use in vscode.
That's not to say there aren't things that suck though. Emacs in particular isn't for someone that's unwilling to make changes to their config.
For example, right now, how do you make a blank line above your cursor and move your cursor there? Do you maybe go ctrl-a to move the cursor to the front of the current line, carriage return to move the current line own, then press up-arrow to move your cursor to the new, empty line? In Vim, it's just capital O. lower-case o to create an empty line below you and move your cursor there. And I could go on for all sorts of simple tasks that have most people reaching for their mouse.
Entry-level Vim keybindings just make these basic tasks more pleasant.
I got pretty hard-core into Vim when I was in uni and had time to care and credentialize in Vim. Nowadays, I'm switching between so many editors that I'm happy just using basic Vim keybindings.
A perennial answer to this question: https://gist.github.com/nifl/1178878
Still, I always use vim plugins in my IDE, it's just not as useful there, but it can save a small amount of time depending on your level of vim skills.
I'm going to do an experiment. I've been struggling with Vim for a long time. I need to leave in about one hour. Instead of wasting time here on HN, I'll now spend an hour learning Vim.
I doubt that this will get me very far, but I'll let you know how far I got.
- there's a visual mode for selecting text
- I can now yank and paste text in normal mode
- I learned to use :split and :vsplit to open new files, and ctrl-w to switch between them
- I learned a few new navigation commands
- I learned that there's a replace mode (R)
Definitely useful, and I hope I remember everything the next time I open vim!
But I still feel like I'm just scraping the surface. One hour is very little time to learn about the power of vim.
> In the last year, How to exit the Vim editor has made up about .005% of question traffic: that is, one out of every 20,000 visits to Stack Overflow questions. That means during peak traffic hours on weekdays, there are about 80 people per hour that need help getting out of Vim.
The first and most important things to understand are:
- Normal mode is the default mode. Only leave it when you already know what you want to write.
- Movement follows the [<count>] <verb> <target> model. The most used verbs are: d, y, p
The most used targets are j, k, f, F, /, w, W, e, b
Other useful keys to know and use: a, A, o, O, *, ., %
And lastly, learn how to use macros! (q, @)
If you just learn everything I listed here (and it isn't much), until it feels natural, you already know 90% of what you need to boost your editing speed and use vim like a pro.
My struggle with vim is that it just slows me down. I'm used to the way that text editors work on the Mac, and I'm really fast with them. Working in Textmate or Sublime or Xcode or even BBedit feels natural to me. But as soon as I switch to Vim, everything feels difficult.
I think a big problem with Vim is that it's really hard to learn when it's not your primary editor.
Next time you're stuck somewhere without internet, as I was, give vimtutor a shot.
Fun way to get used to vim
Thanks!
## arrow up
"\e[A":history-search-backward
## arrow down
"\e[B":history-search-forward
$ cd ~/src/app/foo/bar/baz
$ pushd /etc/qux/quux/quuz/corge/grault/garply/waldo
$ popd
$ pwd
/home/you/src/app/foo/bar/baz
It's a stack of directories. You pushd the current directory on to the stack and cd to a new directory all in a single command, then you popd back to the previous directory (i.e., the one on the top of the stack). It's useful if you're jumping all over the filesystem to do work, or if someone interrupts you and you want to cd somewhere to show them the contents of a file without losing your own context.
so if you cd to /usr/home/me/tacos once, from then on you can just > j taco
and it will cd to that directory. Saves so much time! Instead of typing out /etc/nginx you can just type "j e ng" and it will jump there.
It’ll copy the text in your current command line into your $EDITOR. Saving and quitting your editor will put the modified text back into your command line. Never fear long commands again!
I didn't, thank you. It works both in bash and powershell.
Not all stocks pay dividends. Most actually do not. And betting on a general YoY rise in stock prices into retirement is not the same thing as compound interest.
Investing in 100 shares of company XYZ that does not pay a dividend, or investing in a company that does pay a dividend but isn’t being reinvested, is not compound interest in the classic sense at all.
Compounded interest is reliable, even boring. You know exactly what you'll have at any moment in time.
Your ten-year index returns are reasonably reliable, historically. But your 2007-2009 returns aren't your 2016-2018 returns, at all.
They're different concepts and deserve to be conceptualized differently, especially in the modern era, where interest rates on Treasure are lower than inflation.
On average, S&P performance over 40 years is very good. However, if you look at every possible 40-year period so far, some are really good and some are lousy. If you instead ask "What performance would I have gotten in 90% of those cases?" the performance is not as high.
Performance over 30 years is naturally worse than over 40 years, and so on.
Due to volatility, you generally score better (in terms of percentage of x-year periods) if you do 70/30 stocks/bonds rather than 100% in stocks. Meaning, you can leverage it to either aim for the same performance with less volatility, or same volatility with greater return.
Finally, people tend to put more money in the market when times are good at stocks are high, and less when times are bad and stocks are low. This has a dragging effect on what performance a person can expect.
For example, I keep pretty good records and have a list of every date/amount of each retirement contribution I've made. I'm able to simulate what my current balance would be if I have immediately put each sum into S&P (by using the adjusted close for that period). It's not as good as the reported S&P average over that period.
What is "high" for you?
I basically did what you suggest (although stopped at 30 years instead of 40):
http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-in...
On a 30 year horizon, even the worst 30 years (involving the Great Depression) gained money - equivalent of 4% per year after inflation for a lumped sum investment. For a periodic contribution, it was more like 2%.
Still, the average for the last 30 years is about 7%.
> Due to volatility, you generally score better (in terms of percentage of x-year periods) if you do 70/30 stocks/bonds rather than 100% in stocks. Meaning, you can leverage it to either aim for the same performance with less volatility, or same volatility with greater return.
Can you find me a 30 or 40 year period where 70/30 outperformed the 100/0 case?
If you're close to retirement, putting more money in bonds is beneficial due to the reduced volatility. It still has lower returns.
> For example, I keep pretty good records and have a list of every date/amount of each retirement contribution I've made. I'm able to simulate what my current balance would be if I have immediately put each sum into S&P (by using the adjusted close for that period). It's not as good as the reported S&P average over that period.
How long is that period? As the plots on my page show, you need to be well above 10 years to reduce the effect of volatility. I mean - a 10 year window has been as high as 22% per year and as low as -7%/year (i.e. lost money in the 10 year period). Contrast with a 30 year window: The swing is from 11% to 2% - much more stable. If you're looking at your simulated performance over just a few years, you are essentially looking at noise.
Yes, but the historical performance of, say, the S&P 500 has more to do with dividend reinvesting than the actual value of the shares appreciating. If they did not reinvest the dividends, the S&P 500 would not be as attractive as it is.
It's still not compound interest, but it is compounding.
As of now, a 10y US treasury bill will pay less than 2%, and 2% compounded is still not much ("your $1000 saved today will become $1999 if you don't touch it for 35 years!").
Learning to save in general is probably the more fundamental information, imho.
EDIT: obviously investing in stocks-based funds comes with extra risks, and extra profit. If anything learning that risk and profit are connected is an even more important insight.
I am not sure what other choices Americans have ...
For example, I look at one of the richest bank accounts balances of a company I work for and the savings account become a net loss after each year.
The way to get some money is for people itself perform in a kind of lottery we call a "natillera" where people put together money and try to create some profits running events from it.
This demoralize me a lot, because if with all that money in an account you lost anyway, what chance get the rest of us?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4
(Exponential Growth Arithmetic, Population and Energy, Dr. Albert A. Bartlett)
I am doubtful it is possible to have the same experience with music, although maybe one can learn things like "what is a canon".
A person in such a situation is going to get very impatient trying to watch most cooking videos which tend to waste a lot of time talking about things unrelated to the recipe at hand.
1) Shopping. What's a good price on X? Meal planning's a factor and takes time, and you've gotta already have some notion of what's cheap right now for that, or else much better cooking skills to be able to make something with whatever you happen to pick up, in which case you also need to be a good judge of how much of each thing to pick up to cover meals for a given period of time. All this also takes time.
2) The actual cooking. Obviously. Takes time, takes skill, takes schedule stability if you don't want to end up with a bunch of "well shit, I guess we're ordering delivery pizza again" days.
3) Cleaning. Even if you're great about clean-as-you-go while also trying to watch kids or whatever, is your spouse? Uh huh. And cleaning as you go is another skill in the cooking department, gotta know when you're done with things, when you have minute to wash a pot without ruining anything, how to prep your ingredients and space and in what order for maximum effect (being other-than-awesome at this adds quite a bit of time to your cooking process). How to clean various things requires a little knowledge and experience, too.
(Of course it can be super cheap and incredibly easy and low-time-commitment if you can convince your family to be OK with rice-cooker rice, beans, and steamed whatever-frozen-veggie-was-on-sale for every dinner. Good luck.)
I'm definitely like that with cooking. It's a hobby of mine but there are nights when I just need something to eat and get on with other things.
Yes, I recently took a knife skills class with a some friends. Technically ran a couple hours and $60, but well worth the expense.
You could presumably figure out the same stuff by watching online videos, but the social experience and getting immediate feedback on physical skills was nice.
Some reviews of this book point to the recipes being dull compared to some newer books, which while true, misses the point entirely. This is a book that introduces the fundamental concepts of cooking with simple recipes that can be made in 10 minutes. It may be the single best cookery book ever written. It won't teach you a bunch of recipes so much as it will teach you how to think about cooking.
It's also very short, so you could probably read the whole thing in an hour (and if you pause near the start to boil some water, you might even cook something too).
Now when you know how to cook one thing you can try out some other stuff which will be small investment because you have some base from cooking that one meal for some time.
I am by no means a chef (so not going to impress anyone with my cooking skills because it still is just basic stuff) but I am not afraid of cooking, I can now quite confidently experiment and I started with baking chicken breasts and boiling rice.
One time I bought a 50 pound bag of onions and practiced cutting/dicing/etc for an hour plus. These days, I cut up an onion (or multiple onions) very nearly on a daily basis in my cooking at home.
even in a macbook? it probably is the best part of macbooks in general
It's a nice middle ground between having to move your hand between the keyboard and trackpad, or embracing a keyboard-only Vim approach.
Being able to say to others, "oh, sorry, my mistake, I assumed something incorrectly." Or "I admit I wasn't paying enough attention to what you were saying, I'll put my phone/game/video down and listen better now, please continue." Those are really powerful: you're admitting that you aren't perfect, and that the people you are with are OK with that, and that everyone is comfortable with admitting mistakes to help each other grow.
Better to start at home and be able to help your romantic relationship. Then you can work on making your workplace the kind of environment where people help each other rather than shoot each other down.
TQQQ, a NASDAQ 3x leveraged ETF is up almost 50x since 2010.
Real estate has insane leverage via mortgage. 10% downpayment results in a 10x leverage, 5% downpayment is a 20x leverage.
Imagine a house that was purchased at 10% downpayment. A 2x (+100%) house value appreciation gives you a 11x (+1000%) return on that 10% downpayment.
A 2x appreciation is probably something 95+% of houses will never get to in a decent amount of time. As a benchmark, the S&P 500 tends to double every 10 years after adjusting for inflation. Not many houses do that. Yes, there are always markets where this happens, but it's not the norm and is pretty much a speculation game like stocks are.
Of course, taking leverage into account you don't need it to appreciate 2x. With a 10% downpayment you just need it to appreciate about 9-10% to double your investment (probably more than 10% to make up for all the fees you'll pay).
And don't forget to subtract all the interest payments you made while you wait for it to appreciate. Factor that in your ROI.
Most of the gains in real estate these days is finding crappy houses that you cannot get a bank loan for. So you buy it at a big discount if you have the funds, or you get a private loan at high interest. Spend 3-6 months bringing the house up to code and then refinance to rent or sell (i.e. flip).
I wouldn't bet on asset price appreciation being a reliable route to wealth any more without an information or leverage edge, like planning decisions, political and regulation shifts, etc. which have long-term effects that result in net present value asset price changes. Sometimes the edge is basically corruption, but sometimes it's bets based on trends.
Buy low, sell high, and you get leverage provided to you by a bank. It shouldn't surprise anybody that it's an easy source of wealth!
There are also poor people who get rich with a carpet cleaning or cement delivery business, but they have to overcome challenges unique to their situation. So every success story looks like an irreplicable outlier.
I am thrilled with the discussion up to this point. I cannot update the video any more but I will incorporate the suggestions into the article. Thanks for all the tips!
I guess the nice thing would be to have actual articles that would show some principles in an hour
The Ultimate Steak Sandwich - Gordon Ramsay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwu2y9x5OlM
He adds a bit of nuance to every single step of the process. I found myself wowing repeatedly.
I even had an existential crisis about it briefly as I realized that I don't love anything as much as he loves cooking. I used to love programming, but now practically hate it as often as not. I don't know how to reconnect with that kind of love and meaning in my life anymore. I sincerely don't want to do anything that society tells me to do. My days are planned around coping and avoidance. Without hope, I lack passion. Without passion, I lack focus. Without focus, I lack a means of income. Seriously, I'm stuck paralyzed at step one and have been for over 6 months.
If you aren't paralyzed with doubt, great! Be thankful for that and pay it forward. Hope this video inspires someone.
One of my complaints about first aid courses that I've taken is that they seem to spend a lot of time on things like splinting and often skip lightly over stuff you're more likely to run into in everyday life.
I'm at an age where my wife and many of my friends are 50+, so I will probably go ahead and pay for one of the courses.
Ideas to long form content that is fully developed, fully formed and fully proofchecked content is an extremely laborious process.
PG had a tweet out once ... just write ... publish or not publish is secondary. (something like that). I tried to implement and do that now.
Just beginning to write can be learned easily in an hour and the return on effort is, IMHO, fantastic. It can commercially be pretty useful but the mental clarity itself makes it worth it.
The second is meditation ... read The Mind Illuminated ... just the first stage (the author lays out a lot of progressive experience). Jump straight to the first stage chapter and just do it and repeat! I don't even try to progress further in practice ... it's pretty tough! The first stage is itself worth it.
Manager came to me and showed me this spreadsheet he spent 2 weeks making. ( he was very proud ).
I asked why he didn’t use a pivot table. He’d never heard of them.
60 seconds later I had recreated his report from scratch.
I’m a programmer and I still use them to try out ideas before going to code.
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
Smallest to largest balance frees up cash flow faster, making it more likely the person won't go into additional debt (and hopefully won't get discouraged and quit the program all together).
For anyone wanting to explore, here's a handy calculator: https://www.magnifymoney.com/calculator/snowball-avalanche-c...
So the government allowing usurious interest rates is a ploy to incentivize working for employers, similarly to how employer-provided insurance works.
So one of the steps to liberate us from corporate work is to limit interest rates along with offering public healthcare.
Not saying this is good or bad, just something to keep in mind while viewing the issues from alternate perspectives.
Consider either the snowball or avalanche method depending on your financial and psychological situation.
Assuming A actually causes B:
Can A alone cause/explain B? (sufficiency)
Can anything else also cause/explain B other than A? (necessity)
There's a lot more than that, but those are the basics and they'll get you far with critical thinking. Pretty much any logical fallacy in those never-ending "lists of logical fallacies" can be rephrased in terms of causality, necessity, and sufficiency.
Most are unrelated to causality, because they are based on logical implication not causality. Sufficiency and necessity are relevant, but logical sufficiency and necessity, not causal sufficiency and necessity.
Many people can just say how much they appreciate someone in their life or "I love you".
It may start to open up something in your relationship that either has been lost or missing.
It's hard to do, but a good exercise in fighting against self destruction and takes less than an hour.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gD_dZvPwAj0
Questions in this thread about real estate, "investing" etc. Comprehend it with the above.
LVT might also reward families with liquid assets, while burdening lower-income families whose main asset is their house.
It has huge relevance in the USA. George was American.
Read this essay on raised land values by proxy (railroads or today tech or infra):
http://www.wealthandwant.com/HG/what_the_railroad_will_bring...
(e.g. freedom of opinion, freedom of press, separation of powers a.k.a. checks and balances, Rule of Law etc.)