Comment by rmellow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmellow | Hacker News Reader

I turned my loser life around at 27. I actually had spent years trying to optimize it, seeking success and happiness, but I was stuck.

What was the big move? Little did I know it back then, but the solution has many parallels with non-convex optimization: I got the heck out of the local minimum I was stuck in life - moved continents, changed careers, changed the people in my life, changed the culture around me.

Concretely, I went to grad school abroad and settled there. It took adjusting and lots of work, but I now make multiples of my previous salary, dated beautiful women I never would have in my local culture and had a choice of awesome people to become my close friends.

You might be stuck in a local minimum too - starting anew can be good for you if you manage to do it. Maybe you won't even need to go to a new continent, but the lesson is, make big changes!

This is good advice and so is the more general idea behind it: if you aren't enjoying your current situation, find a new one.

If you found yourself at a house party and you found a particular room annoying, depressing, boring, etc, you'd go find a different room. Change the scenery.

Trying something new like moving to a new city or country is certainly an option. But another surprisingly low effort way to achieve something similar is to pick up a new hobby, start working out and eating right, etc.

I personally found myself in a terrible rutt in my mid twenties. I couldn't imagine a future where things were better.

I decided to get into shape, which gave me a huge boost in confidence and outlook. I decided to read some books on topics I was always curious about and realized how little I knew about the world around me. I really tried to broaden my perspective and at the same time, develop an idea for who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do with life.

But it all starts with deciding to make that change.

There's so much out there, and OP's current situation is an infinitely small slice of what life has to offer.

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