Here are this week’s Life Pro Tips.
1. Don’t put your life on hold waiting for closure on something you’re struggling with.
Many of life’s most difficult situations don’t have reasonable explanations.
2. The Fibonacci sequence can help you quickly convert between miles and kilometers.
The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers where every new number is the sum of the two previous ones in the series.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.
The next number would be 13 + 21 = 34.
Here’s the thing: 5 mi = 8 km. 8 mi = 13 km. 13 mi = 21 km, and so on.
Edit: You can also do this with multiples of these numbers (e.g. 5*10 = 8*10, 50 mi = 80 km). If you’ve got an odd number that doesn’t fit in the sequence, you can also just round to the nearest Fibonacci number and compensate for this in the answer. E.g. 70 mi ≈ 80 mi. 80 mi = 130 km. Subtract a small value like 15 km to compensate for the rounding, and the end result is 115 km.
This works because the Fibonacci sequence increases following the golden ratio (1:1.618). The ratio between miles and km is 1:1.609, or very, very close to the golden ratio. Hence, the Fibonacci sequence provides very good approximations when converting between km and miles.
3. “If you opened a Paypal Account before turning 18 years old, close it now.”
Found this article on the front page of HackerNews today
The author of the article created a PayPal account ten years ago, when he was 17, and Paypal terminated his account (which he uses for online payments and business) because he signed up several months too early, with no way of recovering what was lost.
If you created your account before you turned 18, close the account and open a new one to make sure this doesn’t happen to you as well.
4. When you are visiting a friend who is unemployed, don’t ask him how the job search is going.
Let them bring it up first if they need to do so. Your friend has been dealing with the stress of looking for work all day long, isolated, ruminating over what could happen, feeling self-doubts. Having you come over is a mental health break from all that, a welcome distraction. Don’t harsh that by asking this common questions and getting his mind back on that track again.
5. Drink a couple of glasses of water when feeling hungry.
Most likely you’re dehydrated too and this will prevent you from overeating.
