Category: Quora

The One Life Hack I Think Everyone Should Know

Nik

Keep your phone out of sight. I’ll say that again, very slowly, because it might not make sense at first.

Keep. Your phone. Out. Of. Sight.

The difference between this…

…and this…

…is an increase in your productivity with a magnitude of at least 5x-10x.

A study at the University of California, Irvine, found that “the typical office worker is interrupted or switches tasks, on average, every three minutes and five seconds.”

3 minutes and 5 seconds. That’s 185 seconds in total between one interruption and the next.

What’s more, “it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task.”

23 minutes! That’s over 7 times as long as it takes for you to be interrupted again.

Hm. How does that work? Oh, right, it doesn’t.

What does that tell us? The average worker never even gets close to the zone of deep work, where complex tasks are accomplished with good results.

As if that wasn’t enough — your phone is only one of many sources of distractions, after all — we keep our biggest nemesis right in front of us.

Not only will we look at it every time it vibrates or makes a noise, when our phone is within arm’s reach, we’ll naturally pick it up every couple minutes, just because we can.

You know “just in case.” Don’t give me that look. I know you do it too. We’re all weak.

Well, Justin, you can stay in your case from now on (pun alert), because we won’t be playing your game any more.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Put your phone…

  • into your desk drawer,
  • behind your laptop,
  • slip it under a couch cushion,
  • leave it in your bag,
  • store it in your locker

…or keep it in another room altogether.

The level of peace, relaxation and productivity you’ll face will be unprecedented.

Stop being “the typical office worker.” Start being an awesome office worker.

Sometimes, all it takes is something as small as moving your phone a few centimeters. That’s the life hack I’d like everyone to know.

The One Thing Nobody Tells You About Growing Up

Nik

When you were 1 year old, you thought trying to touch everything you could get your tiny hands on was a good idea. Whatever would happen next, it sure would be amazing.

When you were 2 years old, you first learned to speak. You used that ability to be brutally honest. When you wanted mom, you said “Maaa!” and when you wanted dad you said “Dada!”

When you were 3 years old, you yelled in the grocery store that you wanted the cereal in the red box. And you didn’t give a damn what anyone walking by thought about it.

When you were 4 years old, you built the best Lego or Barbie house in the world. You were your own biggest fan, and you meant it.

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Which Skills Have the Highest Hourly Pay? Cover

Which Skills Have the Highest Hourly Pay?

Nik

Meet Charles Proteus Steinmetz.

Charles was a German-born, American mathematician, electrical engineer, who spent most of his life in Schenectady, New York, as a professor at Union College.

You can thank him for the thing we all most depend on in life: Electricity.

Charles helped shape the development of alternating current (AC), and is the reason you can plug your toaster, blender, TV or lamps into the sockets on your wall.

As soon as General Electric got word of this little (he was indeed just 4 feet tall) genius’s work in New York, they bought out the company he worked for in 1892, and with it, the man’s expertise.

In 1965, a Life magazine reader, Jack B. Scott, wrote in to tell the story of an encounter his father had made with the so-called “Wizard of Schenectady” at Henry Ford’s River Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan.

Ford’s engineers had a problem they couldn’t fix, and so Steinmetz went down there on behalf of GE. Here’s the excerpt from Smithsonian Magazine:

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How To Compete With People Cover

How To Compete With People Who Are Better Than You

Nik

If we get on the treadmill together, there are two options: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die.

— Will Smith

But who are you running against? For most of your life, the person on the other treadmill is yourself.

Right now, the field might be crowded. Many people are ahead of you, and you can’t see who leads the pack. But once you start running faster than everyone else, you’ll soon be the only one left in the race.

  • You’ll be the only one left in the study room at school at 7 AM.
  • You’ll be the only one left who sends emails at 10 PM.
  • You’ll be the only one left working, while your friends are out partying.

Very few people have an outstanding work ethic. That’s what makes them outstanding. But it also means it’ll get lonely.

You don’t want what your friends want. You want what you want. So you shouldn’t care about winning against them.

Your true competitor is also your greatest fan.

(Barack Obama on 20th of January, 2009, about to take the oath of office)

Look at Will Smith again. He could’ve long stopped running. There’s no one for him to beat any more. As of 2016, his movies have grossed $7.5 billion at the global box office.

Why does a guy like that turn around and go straight to making more films?

When people like Will Smith glance at the other treadmill, they see a different version of themselves. One that’s not as good, as generous, as humble, as disciplined, as honest or as dedicated as they are.

That’s who they’re running against. Running from. Before long, you’ll be running against yourself too. You’ll have to, in order to keep going.

When you get there, I hope you’ll do what Will Smith does: keep running anyway.

Alan Turing: The Man Who Changed History Twice in a Single Moment Cover

Alan Turing: The Man Who Changed History Twice in a Single Moment

Nik

The first time I heard Alan Turing’s name was in a computer science class where we studied different kinds of basic machines and how they work. One of them was called a Turing machine. Alan invented it.

In modern academia, the focus lies on the theoretical model behind the machine, but this is what his implementation looked like:

The Bombe.

It looks big and clunky and mysterious, but on the inside, you can imagine it a bit like this:

The idea of a Turing machine.

A Turing machine really only does a few things:

  • It moves a tape back and forward. The tape has symbols on it, each written down in a single cell.
  • The machine reads these symbols, one at a time.
  • Then, it decides what outputs to generate based on the inputs it receives.
  • Finally, it writes the output on the tape and moves on to the next cell.

Despite its seeming simplicity, the Turing machine changed the course of history unlike any other invention ever made. The moment Alan Turing got his theoretical model to work inside a real-world machine is one of the greatest moments in the history of mankind.

Here’s why.

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