
What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour? - soygul
https://quanticdev.com/articles/most-valuable-thing-to-learn-in-one-hour
======
ethanbond
Taking this also as a bit of an Ask HN:

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.

~~~
melling
The book was released today.

[https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Habits-Changes-Change-
Everything...](https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Habits-Changes-Change-
Everything/dp/0358003326/ref=nodl_)

I wrote some educational apps for language learning. Are there techniques that
I could use to help and motivate my users?

~~~
maroonblazer
I've read "Atomic Habits" by James Clear and "The Power of Habit" by Charles
Duhigg. Does "Tiny Habits" bring anything new to the table? Or is it a
reformulation of these other ideas?

~~~
troydavis
I can't speak about Fogg's new book, but I've read Atomic Habits and read or
listened to some of Fogg's other work. I think you're past the point of
diminishing returns, especially compared to spending that time tweaking how
you apply it. For example, by making triggers more obvious (daily email nag),
progress more consequential (BeeMinder, blog), or goals more fun (choose
valuable habits!).

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...](https://boxofcrayons.com/2016/08/bj-fogg-on-behaviour-change/) .
tl;dl: Have an explicit trigger that you can't ignore.

------
nordsieck
IMO, the single most important thing I've ever learned is: try to be effective
when you're communicating.

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.

~~~
OGWhales
My dad gave me very similar advice growing up, as I love for things to be
factually correct. To me, it didn't bother me if someone corrected me.
However, most people don't appreciate it and it isn't worth upsetting them 90%
of the time. This is something I didn't understand.

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.

~~~
roganartu
> 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.

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.

~~~
F_J_H
I now drop the "I know" and go with something like "so cool that you brought
that up - I was just reading about it last week!"

------
katzgrau
Gratitude. Look around you and consider all of the things that are going well
for your. Your nice remote gig, your fridge full of your favorite beer, the
sunny day outside, your healthy family.

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.

~~~
chasd00
I read a quote last night that went "don't complain about growing old, it's a
privilege denied to many". That really stuck with me.

------
Moodles
First aid is good. Also general investing in index funds like VTSAX and VTIAX.
It is so simple, yet most people I run into on a regular basis just save their
money in a checking account earning 0.01% APY. Follow the reddit personal
finance flowchart. Learn about Roth and HSAs and ESPP and the benefits of
diversification. We’re literally talking about multiples of your net-worth
over your life if you invest compared to saving in a normal bank account. No,
it is not gambling. It is riskier not to invest in the long-term.

~~~
tempsy
What crowd are you in where most people have all their money in a savings
account? That is borderline financial suicide.

~~~
astura
They have all their money in checking probably because they don't have nearly
enough money to invest.

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.

~~~
war1025
I have multiple friends that spend their money on junk they don't need because
"It's better than earning half a percent interest in a bank account." And
since that is their benchmark, they justify it all as a prudent financial
practice.

------
GnarfGnarf
Here it is: when your wife/girlfriend comes to you with a problem, she is not
looking for you to propose a solution.

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)

~~~
theatraine
I have never understood this and this very issue has caused trouble in my
romantic relationships.

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.

~~~
teachrdan
Consider it this way: The person you're talking to is an intelligent human
being who knows they're capable of solving the problem that caused them
distress.

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.

------
rwnspace
Take an hour to sit in a quiet room without any stimulation. You'll learn a
lot about your mental situation, and understanding where you are is really
helpful for understanding where to go (if anywhere).

~~~
nkrisc
I think this is more valuable than it might seem. I'd wager many people
couldn't even sit still for an hour in a room by themselves with nothing but
their own thoughts.

~~~
Insanity
Does it count if you lie awake in bed for an hour unable to sleep because of
rumination? Because in that case, I'm sure plenty of people do it at some
point.

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.

~~~
shantly
> Does it count if you lie awake in bed for an hour unable to sleep because of
> rumination? Because in that case, I'm sure plenty of people do it at some
> point.

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!

~~~
tayo42
I don't think it is. I think meditation is about stopping the rumination by
being present, doing something like focusing on your breath. If your mind
starts to wander/ruminate then you catch your self and return your thought to
being present. It is hard

~~~
shantly
Yeah, it was a bit tongue-in-cheek. Though in fact at this point I _have_ put
many thousands of hours, over decades, into trying to control useless (and
it's usually useless) rumination, with only moderate success. So yeah,
definitely agree that it's hard.

------
majiasheng
How to speak (Professor Patrick Winston from MIT)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY)

~~~
jasonlotito
My short 4 word recommendation for people wanting to learn to speak in public:
slow down, speak up.

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.

------
soygul
Hi all,

This is an article that I've composed based on a previous HN discussion
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21581361](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...](https://quanticdev.com/articles/most-valuable-thing-to-learn-in-one-hour)

* Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F_srpzXQ6o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F_srpzXQ6o)

If you have any ideas, I will add them to the article.

~~~
cboy5675
Links in the resource section are all broken.

~~~
jfoucher
They go to "articles/...." instead of "/articles/...."

e.g. [https://quanticdev.com/articles/most-valuable-thing-to-
learn...](https://quanticdev.com/articles/most-valuable-thing-to-learn-in-one-
hour/articles/raspberry-pi-guide-for-developers)

should be instead [https://quanticdev.com/articles/raspberry-pi-guide-for-
devel...](https://quanticdev.com/articles/raspberry-pi-guide-for-developers)

~~~
soygul
thanks just fixed them. accidentally used relative path instead of absolute.

~~~
carapace
Ah yes, I'm sure we've all been there. :-)

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.

[https://www.coretransformation.org/](https://www.coretransformation.org/)

------
timvisee
Vim.

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.

~~~
fbnlsr
Serious question: I keep seeing Vim thrown up and down like it's the holy
grail. I've been using VS Code for two years maybe now, and I don't see how
Vim could help me be a better/more productive coder. What am I missing?

~~~
atonse
This is how I explain VIM to people (although I used to use it full time, I
now use Atom with the VIM plugin):

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.

~~~
shantly
> Most of what programmers do is a lot of navigation and text manipulation
> correct?

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.

~~~
benji-york
Yes and no. Feedback cycles are important. It's better for a test to fail than
to notice a bug in production. It's also better for you to be able to get that
thought from your head to the file in 3 seconds instead of 10.

~~~
KlayySOC
Doesn't a modern IDE with context aware autocomplete help more with that than
slightly faster text editing? Perhaps it also depends on what kind of
development you're doing

------
mathieubordere
using `Ctrl + r` in your shell, I just hope someone reading this doesn't know
it yet :-)

~~~
KORraN
Wow, thanks! I knew about

    
    
      ## arrow up
      "\e[A":history-search-backward
      ## arrow down
      "\e[B":history-search-forward
    

but it works only for beginning of the line. CTRL + R shows results with
keyword anywhere within the line and pressing it again shows next result. CTRL
+ Shift + R goes back one result.

~~~
weaksauce
Zpresto has a zsh plugin thing that you can enable to get partial substring
search with up/down arrow and color highlighting for the match. Really useful
and one of my favorite features

------
tuesday20
Compound interest. Simply starting early in some boring find/investment and
not obsessing over daily stock prices will do wonders for one’s health and
finances

~~~
tempsy
I always hear this but the theory of compound interest has little to do with
stock investing.

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.

~~~
_se
Historically speaking, you're very wrong. There's no better place you could've
put your money than the s&p.

~~~
tunesmith
A few tidbits to balance in:

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.

~~~
BeetleB
> 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.

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...](http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-invest/)

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.

------
ForHackernews
I will tell you from experience that one cannot learn "cooking" in a single
hour, any more than one can learn "music" in an hour.

~~~
riffraff
I agree 100%, but I would say: it is possible to learn _something useful_
about cooking in 1 hour (e.g. how to chop vegetables, or how to cook a steak).

I am doubtful it is possible to have the same experience with music, although
maybe one can learn things like "what is a canon".

~~~
gonzo41
Watch bon appetit on youtube for an hour. It's fun and you may find yourself
thinking about cooking more for fun rather than a chore afterwards.

~~~
chongli
Whether cooking is fun or a chore is, I think, directly related to how much
stress the rest of your life is causing you. If you’re extremely busy holding
down multiple jobs just to pay the bills and feed your kids, then it’s hard
not to see cooking as a chore.

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.

~~~
shantly
Home food prep takes a lot of time, quite a bit of skill, and a ton of
knowledge, for the _whole_ process, not just the cooking itself, especially if
you want the supposed health benefits and savings it grants.

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.)

------
14
This year I learned to knit and I would say it took about an hour of watching
videos and just trying. Of course like the article mentions it wasn't until
more practice that I became pretty good at it. If anyone has thought about
knitting, it is very easy and I find it relaxing on my mind to just take my
focus off of something.

------
sandfly
If you have a laptop with a trackpoint, become proficient with it. You can
switch between mouse and keyboard without moving your fingers away from the
home row.

~~~
abhijat
I just disable the trackpad in all my laptops, I find it much harder to use
than a trackpoint.

~~~
soygul
> trackpad in all my laptops

even in a macbook? it probably is the best part of macbooks in general

~~~
sandfly
The MacBook trackpads are definitely great. And the trackpoint looks like an
anachronistic holdover from the early 90s next to a modern trackpad. However,
it has survived because it's truly a useful productivity tool.

It's a nice middle ground between having to move your hand between the
keyboard and trackpad, or embracing a keyboard-only Vim approach.

------
ohyes
Really apologizing sincerely when you make a mistake.

~~~
bloopernova
Being able to admit to yourself that you made a mistake, that it was an
accident, and that you will not hate yourself, that's important.

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.

------
axegon_
Having worked with non-technical people, one of the most useful things you can
learn in an hour (less actually) is markdown.

~~~
whatupmd
Please elaborate.

------
stevula
Roman numerals. Not the most useful thing to know these days, but they’re
still common enough and easy to learn in an hour.

------
sunstone
Why is it, exactly, that, as a rule of thumb, almost all people who start life
poor and end up rich do it with real estate.

~~~
omarhaneef
Because it’s really the only place where a non-rich person can get massive 4:1
leverage on their assets, and where there has been a secular growth trend over
the last 50 years.

~~~
H8crilA
This. Never underestimate the power of leverage combined with luck (good asset
selection, which almost always is luck).

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.

~~~
BeetleB
> 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).

------
rtpg
Kinda weird to say that learning cooking takes an hour. Maybe learning one
dish?

I guess the nice thing would be to have actual articles that would show some
principles in an hour

~~~
scaryclam
I think you can do a lot more than a single dish. Learning how to peel common
vegetables, boiling a pan of water, baking a potato, boiling/frying an egg,
making a really simple tomato sauce and boiling pasta could all be taught in
an hour. If you can make a basic pasta + sauce, bake a potato and prep some
vegetables you can start cooking lots of other things as the skills are
transferable.

------
jpxw
Basic First Aid (CPR etc)

~~~
varjag
Among 'etc' I would recommend Heimlich maneuver in particular. Didn't really
ever expect to use it, but ended up doing it on my own kid…

~~~
ddelt
I am alive today because someone close by me knew how to do this. I hope
others never need to use it, but I hope everyone 'knows' how to use it.

------
santa_boy
For me in 2019, it is learning to get started to write and just write.

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.

------
treeman79
Pivot tables in Excel.

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.

------
slowhand09
Learn how to get out of debt!!!

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

~~~
mathieutd
I disagree with this. You should pay your higher interest rate debt first.

~~~
froindt
I've looked at the difference with a few people. It depends on the balances
and interest rates, but the difference is smaller than I would have guessed.
With tens of thousands of dollars of debt, I've seen the difference be just a
couple hundred dollars.

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...](https://www.magnifymoney.com/calculator/snowball-avalanche-
calculator/)

~~~
slowhand09
I tried the calculator. It doesn't seem to work correctly for me. (Chrome
browser...)

------
soygul
Original poster here:

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!

------
tunesmith
The difference between necessity and sufficiency, particularly in regard to
causality. This series of questions:

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.

~~~
dragonwriter
> 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.

~~~
tunesmith
Yeah, that's why I edited and put cause/explain. For the purposes of the
point, it's the same type of thinking whether you are analyzing causes of
effects, or reasons why.

------
RobertRoberts
Say something good to someone that has been hard/impossible to say in the
past. (learning to communicate by doing it)

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.

------
unicornmama
The three links under the following section are broken: “Relevant articles
referred to in this article”

~~~
soygul
thanks, just fixed. classic absolute/relative issue.

------
lammalamma25
Excel hot keys

~~~
hortonew
You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c)

------
amiga_500
Watch this 5 times then spend ten minutes passing it on:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gD_dZvPwAj0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gD_dZvPwAj0)

Questions in this thread about real estate, "investing" etc. Comprehend it
with the above.

~~~
ActsJuvenile
Some sincere feedback: LVT sounds a cooky concept that might solve inherited /
ossified land ownership problem in the UK, but it seems to have little
relevance to the USA. Land is plentiful here.

LVT might also reward families with liquid assets, while burdening lower-
income families whose main asset is their house.

~~~
amiga_500
Major economists like Friedman disagree with you.

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...](http://www.wealthandwant.com/HG/what_the_railroad_will_bring_us.html)

------
cgufus
One thing i‘m missing is a bit a generic one, but here goes: What are the
principles that make a democracy?

(e.g. freedom of opinion, freedom of press, separation of powers a.k.a. checks
and balances, Rule of Law etc.)

~~~
ohyes
You can get a PhD in that subject.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Sure. But if you live in a democracy (or want to), it wouldn't hurt to know
the basics.

------
danielrpa
The Heimlich maneuver
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimlich_maneuver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimlich_maneuver))

------
dcolkitt
I don't know about the most valuable. But the most impressive thing (at least
to the average person) to learn in an hour is probably either juggling or
lock-picking.

~~~
sandov
In that same vein: learning to pronounce Hangul (Korean writing system). You
won't understand a thing of what you're saying, but it's kinda fun anyway.

------
omarhaneef
I can’t criticize the list because it’s so hard to think of something that
might fit in but it seems exercise should have a role in one of the
categories.

------
univalent
Learn to cook one or two simple dishes that don't take a lot of time to
prepare.

------
whatitdobooboo
Extremely basic design principles

------
JensRantil
Meditation.

------
sandov
Touch typing

------
agumonkey
Patience

------
grafelic
sed patching

------
modzu
chess

------
al_form2000
For verly large values of one hour.

------
acvny
Complete BS. Click bait article name.

