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Ask HN: What short activities/projects have had the highest yield in your life?

by lswainemoore on 4/21/19, 7:54 PM with 6 comments

Long projects can obviously have high returns, but what have you done in less than, say, 5-10 hours, that’s had an outsized (positive) impact in your life? Can be in terms of satisfaction, or something more pragmatic.

Couple examples for me: - writing a blog post - learning countries of the world and their locations

  • by buffaloo on 4/21/19, 9:12 PM

    Probably more like 30 hours, but learning to touch type has been a tremendous benefit.

  • by elamje on 4/22/19, 7:35 PM

    Learning Clojure and Emacs from the free online book Clojure for the Brave and True!

    I can’t imagine second order effects learning a lisp will have on my life!

    I think about coding completely differently even though I have barely written anything sizable in Clojure.

  • by quickthrower2 on 4/22/19, 6:16 AM

    Leaving unsatisfactory jobs is probably the biggest one.

    Also touch typing although I’m still getting used to doing it properly.

    Learning Haskell, ok took more than 5 hrs but takes 5 to get started!

  • by jxub on 4/22/19, 5:59 PM

    Going through vimtutor two times increased my editing speed significantly.