Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
Just curious. I personally have nothing in particular yet, wondering if others do.
Her advice fails to accept the reality of social and emotional needs. It also fails to address the (sometimes severe) downside of non-conformance. This advice made me an Outsider whether or not I wanted to be. I now believe that these were tools she formed to get her through her own family and social trauma, which she falsely assumed would be generally useful, and did her best to arm her children with her best tools. I also believe there are upsides to the approach, but the trade-offs are real and cannot and shouldn't be swept under the rug. I imagine others had similar experiences with religious parents.
Advice is dangerous. It has built in moral hazard. Advice is too often given in well-meaning ignorance and pride - but ultimately advice gets someone else to test your hypothesis for you. So if you've not gotten any life-changing advice, be glad!
Perhaps instead of suing the entire school district, GP should rather sue the parents of the offending child? /s
To remove the tongue from the cheek, though, and provide some anecdata in the same breath, let me say that I have a number of close friends who are teachers; their constant complaint is that the children reach school already too spoiled (in the rude and egocentric sense). Which apparently gets worse every year.
It's easier to make a case for a society-wide pandemic of negligent upbringing by parents who - goes without saying - are under-educated in child rearing, lack the traditional support networks ("it takes a village to raise a child") and generally overburdened by life's other demands. The children then get passed over to underpaid and overworked teachers (and overflowing classrooms), where the egos of the little cute monsters clash, occasionally loudly and physically, more frequently in passive-aggressive, bullyish manners.
But yeah, "back in mah day..."
If you are forcing a person to interact daily with bad people the least you should do is ensure that those bad people won't hurt this person.
Definitely not something that twenty minutes a day is enough for. And perhaps such a lack not only allows for bad patterns to emerge and fester, but also traumatizes the child. Modern city life, and its discontents, I guess.
I got bullied by a teacher, probably more, starting in fourth grade. I've written about it on this website. It can develop authority issues, trust issues, or both. It's a lifetime of work to undo those things.
Similar to people posting their stories with names with the hope for justice in some form or fashion, suing someone puts the details out for bare. He would likely never get the state government to actually repeal pensions, but he would get to tell his story in a media that people would definitely be paying attention to.
There's a valid question of whether any of the approaches above are healthy for a society. I'd venture to say no, but that is the way our society is.
It's frustrating that people downvoted your comment. It's a failure, from a lack of empathy, to understand that the reason you want to make an example of the school district is because you were one of the victims of bullying.
Never say anything that couldn’t stand as the last thing you say to someone. You’re words matter more than you realize.
Being beat to that extent can cause both physical and emotional pain for life.
Both forms of abuse hurt. When the abuse goes on for a long time it feels like it takes 10x as long to heal.
It sucks to be in a relationship with someone who can’t forgive or forget. Mean vindictive people who will twist words and who are suppose to love you unconditionally.
Oof that hit home.
I could not disagree more. Words are meaningless. They are sounds. They only matter if you choose to give them meaning.
The proof is incredibly simple. I speak multiple languages, one of them is Spanish. However, it is South American Spanish and not any of the dialects spoken in Spain. A common insult in Spain is "gilipollas". It means absolutely nothing to me, even though I know what it means ant that is an insult. Someone could call me gilipollas all day and I would probably die laughing; frankly, it really sounds funny to me.
What if you are insulted in a language you don't understand? Same thing. Meaningless. At that point it really becomes just sounds. And that's the point. The only process that gives words meaning and can attach them to negative emotions is in your brain.
Put a different way: Nobody can force you to interpret words as an insult or something to get emotional about except for yourself.
I got my kids used to not caring about insults by actually insulting them. Things like "You are a moron!" quickly became the subject of jokes at our home, with them being free to call me anything they want in response. At first I had to do this because one of my kids ran into verbal bullies at school. It is amazing to see just how much power one gains by removing meaning from words used to deliver insults. At the limit they become nothing less than a joke.
Verbal insults, at the end of the day, are signs of weakness. The person who has to resort to diminishing someone else verbally in person or --as is often seen-- online, has to resort to such nonsense because, well, to be kind, they have nothing else to offer. Why give someone like that the power to interpret those words as they wish you would interpret them? The best approach is to turn those words into irrelevant noise. To go from that, to have words affect you for life? No, that's a big mistake.
> I got my kids used to not caring about insults by actually insulting them. Things like "You are a moron!"
I do that too, although just because its fun rather than for any other reason. But your kids know that is friendly banter with you. It's quite different to your boss calling you a moron and insulting you all day.
So you might say, well if my boss did that then I'd leave, fuck them. And I'd be the same. However, not everyone is in a position to be able to just get out and quit.
And that doesn't even address the far more insidious ways people use words to hurt you. Telling other people you're a moron, building up an undeserved contempt. This is what bullies do and it's not so easy to shrug it off. When they get a significant number of people in on it then you can't escape it and feel like a fool. This is the source of my shyness and anxiety about talking to people. Even though I try to push down those feelings I still feel awkward and on guard because for a few of my school years ANYTHING I said unguarded would be pounced on and I'd be laughed at.
Then there's gaslighting and other verbal lead ons where you're sweet talked into believing you're a moron. I don't have any experience with this.
> The best approach is to turn those words into irrelevant noise. To go from that, to have words affect you for life? No, that's a big mistake.
I wish this were the case. Toot toot for you if it is, but for many it's not possible, I think perhaps you could take a more sympathetic view - what has worked for you does not work for everyone and perhaps others had a difficult time when they were more vulnerable to it and that left an unshakable impression on them.
I can definitely understand that. At the same time, I know, without a doubt, that this approach has worked for at least one of my kids. He told me this much a few times after being bullied and pretty much viewing it as a laughable event rather than taking it seriously. And, in fact, the bullying stopped very quickly because he did not engage at all.
> I think perhaps you could take a more sympathetic view - what has worked for you does not work for everyone and perhaps others had a difficult time when they were more vulnerable to it and that left an unshakable impression on them.
Yes, of course, I understand everyone has different life experiences.
I am simply sharing my, our, experience. The perspective might be useful to some or not one person. At the very least someone might have seen what I had to share and, perhaps, understood they might have the power to change the way they interpret what they are experiencing.
It's like being afraid of heights. All else being equal (circumstances, balance, physical condition, health, age, etc.) the only difference between a person who is afraid and one who is not, is in the way the brain interprets reality. That's it. Nothing else. Train the brain to modify that interpretation and going up a tall skinny ladder goes from a horrific paralyzing event to no problem at all.
Bottom line: I really think we need to understand that these things are only real if we make them real. Easier said than done, of course. I don't see that as a reason not to try to, carefully, slowly, go up that ladder and see things differently.
Another example is American parents. Since you can’t spank your kids you have to resort to hurting their feelings with words to discipline them. No wonder teens in this country hate their parents.
My mom enforced clear consequences based on what I valued and she valued. Break rules, I lose computer time. Trespass on someone’s property, I write an apology letter and deliver it to them. Etc
Words are not the cause of these events. They might, in several ways, trigger them, of course. After all, a declaration of war is nothing but words and so is a legal divorce filing.
However, for these and other conflicts, if we dug down to root causes, we always find a lot more than just spoken or written words. Two that come to mind would be, in the case of war, strategic/national interests and, for divorce, infidelity or serious lack of agreement on matters the couple deem to be important.
In a gang of violent ruffians, "be less violent!" is great advice. A gang of extremist pacifists being beaten up by outsiders probably needs "be more violent!" as advice.
Your case particularly hits a nerve with me because "do not care what other people think!" is good advice to someone who makes decisions based on where they think the crowd is going (which is the normal way) but may as well be the kiss of death to the typical engineering mind. Engineers do not need any advice that encourages them towards independent thinking. They already have lots of training in making decisions based on objective or internalised criteria. Engineering types usually need advice on how to read body language and make decisions using social techniques.
When dealing with smart, numerate people it is better to discuss scenarios or statistical frequency of mistakes rather than "give advice". Generic advice is often useless without context.
I wish I'd had some training on how to care what other people think when I was in my teens. Would have done me the power of good.
<<Generic advice is often useless without context.
I agree. Some of the advice we are imbued with is in 'not great' category. The more annoying thing is that it does not get better ( I got ridiculously bad generic advice looking back in my 20s, but I only had enough knowledge in my 30s to know how bad it was ).
<<I wish I'd had some training on how to care what other people think when I was in my teens.
Likewise.
That is: a Jain gang [0]
The point is, the meaning we attach to the words are literally in our heads. We determine the worlds they create. It's not the other way around.
But no this isn't particularly useful to actual humans who are still (easily) overwhelmed to madness with reactive pain, and the stoics compassion feels like that shown by the (non-hysterical) passengers in that one Airplane! scene [0].
(It occurs to me that expressing cruelty toward those suffering from hysterics is more than mere sadism; it may be a legitimate coping mechanism with their own fear. Focusing the mind on something, even hatefully, can save the hater from their own fear that the world is completely out-of-control.)
When someone insults you are they responsible for how much you value their opinion? Are they responsible for how much you want to be accepted? Are they responsible for how many rejections you have had in the past?
Stoicism is about controlling what you have control over. Chief among this… is our thoughts.
Thoughts matter. How one thinks about things, events, situations that happen to us… matter.
Re-framing and interpreting how one thinks about what happened to us. Is important, for peace of mind.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy is an example of how one can apply stoicism.
Stoicism is about realising what you have control over and what you do not. It about acknowledging the agency you have no matter how little it may be.
Even if you have a tendency to be very reactive there is always something you can do to nullify or lessen the impact of an insult.
We are not robots. We are human. And while we cannot be automated, we survived due to our ability to adapt. Where we channel your attention, what we choose to focus on, and what we choose to value *is* something we have control over.
The idea that someone saying something to me and those words control me, my mind, and my world...that's silly.
I don't think this holds, otherwise every libel suit would be thrown out of court on the basis of "that's what you think it means".
Not to mention that we have dictionaries that record the assigned meanings of words :-)
Why would what some random person says break your heart?
These experiences make you tougher - in adult life, you will run into toxic bosses, colleagues, brutal job interviewers...
It is important to have a loving family and/or supportive friends who can provide a different point of reference.
It's justification for being an asshole to people under the guise of 'helping' them. The people who end up believing it are rubes who do the same to others. Making someone tougher is survivorship bias by another name. It fails to account for the people who don't have supportive family members and friends. It's solution to this is saying, "it sucks, but they just couldn't take it," which does nothing to make things even slightly better for the next person. We're left with those who survived.
Toxic bosses, colleagues, brutal job interviewers are no where near as violent or persistent or inescapable as childhood bullies and if those toxic people did half the things kids do to each other they'd be quickly arrested and thrown behind bars.
I think you are taking “heart” too narrowly.
School and work place bullying can definitely hurt you even if it is “just words”.
I do lots of things that basically boil down to “social lubricant.” I really don’t care what most other people think, but I still “play nice” when it’s low-cost and easy because makes everything easier. I won’t go out of my way or expend too much effort to please others though. I’ll make socially acceptable small-talk but I’m not going to bother with designer clothes and fancy cars to fit in.
I like to tell my children that they should not care about what other people think about who my children are as people, but that they should comport themselves in society with kindness and sincerity because that is the right way to behave.
Like, I literally could not care any less about what people think about who I am. I am just me, and I am fine with that. But I try, for my own sake, to be trustworthy, honorable, kind, and just.
The problem is when people take this mentality and justify it to act like a total dickbag.
And ideally you behave well independently of whether the other party doesn't.
If I have a boss, shouldn't I worry about what they think of me? If I have a spouse, a partner, a child, shouldn't I worry about what they think of me?
Now, I know, the usual clarification is about "not worrying about what people who are not your spouse, your child, your parent, your boss think about you" or "not changing our habits to fit in." Which, of course, is about as unfair as it gets.
Sure, if I'm invited to a fancy restaurant, I can show up in shorts and espadrilles because "I'm not going to change my comfortable clothes anyway, if they don't like them they can go for a hike," or maybe I could change my ways to fit in because I care what they think of me, not that they boss me around like a dog, but I understand that I live in a society, other people occupy the same space as me, we share what ecologists call a "niche." And I have opinions about other people.
Between being a sheep, a formidable animal by the way, and looking like an obnoxious "I don't care what other people think of me" character, there is a huge space in which one can live a life of independent thought and social awareness. It was called elegance.
I think you ought to reevaluate your ability to read people from such limited comments and remarks. It’s not as honed as you might think, as evidenced by this comment.
I do not care what other people think about me. I can not control what others think, nor can I ever know it. Instead, I care about the things I can control: how I behave with others, what my relationship is with them, what I think of them, what I do.
I don’t waste my time imagining what others might be thinking about me, because I can’t know. All I can do is listen to what they say, watch what they do, and choose my response accordingly.
Caring about what others think is a fool’s errand because you can never know what they think. And you can’t know if what they say is what they think.
> "I don't care what others think" always sounds like a coping mechanism, a last resort, an out-of-balance response to past insecurities and people-pleasing, as evidenced in this comment by dated references to designer clothes and fancy cars.
You are so far off the mark. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I think. Don’t try to guess.
I'm not doing it justice. And yes, it's a bit abstract. But it might be worth your time.
I've become somewhat convinced of "it takes a village to raise a child" thinking on the back of similar observations. It seems to me that it's a horrible thing to do to a child to force them to learn and absorb from only one to two people. Variations between people, even between parents and their children, and between social and economic needs, even over single generational spans, are too great, especially in the modern age. Which is to say nothing of when a child's parents just happen to be broken people. It feels like a travesty that children, such as yourself in your story, aren't given the opportunity to get different perspectives on how to live and be and to benefit from multiple guiding hands.
I, like you, grew up with religious parents who tried to equip me with the tools that helped them navigate their lives. As an adult, I try to be extremely skeptical of unsolicited advice, but I absolutely seek advice from people who have been in situations similar to mine.
Combined with the other comments, you’re also not allowed to change your own behavior based on what other people say (sticks and stones, outsider).
Sounds like a coping mechanism for dealing with trauma from a family member. Your parent is horrible to you, but you want a parent to love and be loved by, so you decide keeping score is immoral. You also don’t want to feel responsible and lessen the impact, so you decide words don’t hurt.
It’s horrible advice for a kid. You won’t mold yourself to fit into the group (also called socialization, totally normal and healthy) and you won’t cut ties with people that are awful to you. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to find another kid who accepts you. Much more likely a bully will latch on.
This is very poor advice. It's not wrong to dislike people! If you believe it is, then other people are wrong to dislike you. If being wrong is bad than you have no basis to like them, and they are not good people, not worthy of being friends with. Furthermore, that they are not being punished reflects on the failed state of authority (the school teachers and admins). Her advice was untested and didn't take into account basic human social or psychological needs.
FOR WHAT OTHERS THINK:
You shouldn't care what most people think of you. Ones that matter: your boss, your spouse, (if you are religious) your Maker.
The others don't get the same weight.
FOR "STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES...":
This one doesn't work. Words can (and do) hurt, and we should be careful what we say to others. But having the framework of the previous piece of advice, helps take the sting out of it if someone says something to you that is harmful/hurtful.
I agree, but even those can be limited. I care about my boss' opinion when it comes to my work and what I do while paid.
For a spouse, there are limits as well, hard to think of specific examples, but I guess it depends on the couple.
For my creator, he wouldn't care whether I prefer Angular over React, or .Net over Java. As long as the choice is not made out of malice, for example I pick Rust for a greenfield project with a deadline even though I don't know Rust and hoping to learn it.
In my experience, being able to just fly by without thinking too much about others is like traveling light, unencumbered.
1. An estimate is better than a guess. An measurement is better than an estimate.
2. It's never the money. (They will always say it is, but it's not.)
3. Never let anyone eat your lunch.
4. The best time to turn it on is before it's ready. You'll get plenty of data to finish it faster.
5. The only good Powerpoint slide is evergreen. If it's not, it's already obsolete.
6. Your positive mental attitude makes up for most of your shortcomings.
7. Learning the difference between an issue and a detail is half the battle.
8. Avoid introducing new jargon. It's already hard enough to understand.
9. Isolate. Isolate. Isolate.
10. If it's not written down, it's not.
11. The reason everyone we work for sucks is because those who don't suck never call us.
12. If you set aside something urgent to go to Happy Hour, how will our annual report differ? (Hint: It won't.)
13. What's the good news? (No matter how bad things are, never hesitate to answer.)
14. A degree in business is a degree in nothing.
15. The answer to any question is "Who wants to know?" (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1084127)
16. No project ever dies but many are abandoned.
17. Self praise stinks.
18. If someone can do something once, they can do it again.
19. Almost anyone can do almost anything.
And my favorite: 20. Ultimately, go with your gut.I'm too lazy to write a blog post about this at the moment, so here's a quickie reply:
1. An estimate is better than a guess. An measurement is better than an estimate.
Feedback from my mentor at a silly presentation of mine that convinced no one. I added data (as suggested) and it killed.
2. It's never the money. (They will always say it is, but it's not.)
I had trouble selling software. The customer said it was too expensive. That wasn't the real reason. This comment from my mentor taught me to find the real reason.
3. Never let anyone eat your lunch.
From an early mentor who kept noticing others take advantage of me (easy when you're in I.T.) without me fighting back. He taught me that sometimes, going along is worse for everyone in the long run.
4. The best time to turn it on is before it's ready. You'll get plenty of data to finish it faster.
I.T. (in its typical "pass the buck" mode) refused to turn on the Production Work-in-Process module of our ERP system because the base data (standards, routings, recipes, etc.) was so inaccurate and incomplete that "the shop reports would be worthless". To which my mentor responded, "What better way to fix them? The people responsible for fixing the data will be much more motivated because they want better reports." Great advice I've used 100 times since then.
5. The only good Powerpoint slide is evergreen. If it's not, it's already obsolete.
Powerpoint presentations are almost always boring and "powerpointless". UNLESS they're real truth (like most good comedy). The best truths are evergreen. And the slides can be used over and over again.
6. Your positive mental attitude makes up for most of your shortcomings.
From a mentor who saw something no one else saw (including myself). Once I knew "I had PMA", everything changed forever.
7. Learning the difference between an issue and a detail is half the battle.
Almost every corporate dick fight I've ever witnessed was over nothing. Asking the question, "Is this a detail or an issue?" refocused 90% of my attention to what really mattered. And helped me help others do the same thing.
8. Avoid introducing new jargon. It's already hard enough to understand.
I got fancy with new terminology in a sales presentation years ago. It failed miserably. This was why. I'm glad I asked. I've never failed because of that again.
9. Isolate. Isolate. Isolate.
First mentor, our tech lead, about debugging. VERY evergreen.
10. If it's not written down, it's not.
From another mentor. So obvious but so elusive. Born of a stupid argument about building something where no one remembered anything vocalized before.
11. The reason everyone we work for sucks is because those who don't suck never call us.
My cofounder's remark when I was super frustrated dealing with so much suckiness at our customer. Really set me right.
12. If you set aside something urgent to go to Happy Hour, how will our annual report differ? (Hint: It won't.)
My mentor wanted to talk about very important stuff over beers. I resisted. This question was how he got me to see things differently.
Urgent is short-term and tech based. Happy Hour is long-term and people based. Both are necessary.
13. What's the good news? (No matter how bad things are, never hesitate to answer.)
My mentor and boss always focused on the positive, no matter how elusive. I've adopted this philosophy. Sometimes I think that might have been the best thing I ever did.
14. A degree in business is a degree in nothing.
From a professor in my MBA program. Put everything into perspective before I encountered all those silly suits over my career.
15. The answer to any question is "Who wants to know?" (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1084127)
See the link. I've been talking about this for years.
16. No project ever dies but many are abandoned.
One of my mentors liked deadlines for simple urgent projects but hated them for complex important projects. Took me a while to grok this, but has become much more important over the years.
17. Self praise stinks!
From my mother when I did my touchdown dance after building something. Great advice (although I still dance once in a while when something works the first time. Sometimes I just can't help myself.)
18. If someone can do something once, they can do it again.
The underlying principle (provided by my mentor) for a cost absorption system I wrote and implemented in a human based production shop. If they're not doing what they have done before, there must be a reason. Our job is to find that reason." This applies to all of us. I've even used it to "debug myself' many times.
19. Almost anyone can do almost anything.
Hard to grok, but so true. The main reason people fail is that they just give up before they succeed. Again, provided by a mention when I was frustrated by junior programmers weren't coming up to speed fast enough.
And my favorite: 20. Ultimately, go with your gut.
Really important for a right-brained person like me. It reassures me that left-brain thinking is not only OK, but often essential.> “17. Self praise stinks! From my mother when I did my touchdown dance after building something. Great advice (although I still dance once in a while when something works the first time. Sometimes I just can't help myself.)”
In contrast, in the book Tiny Habits by Stanford psychology professor BJ Fogg, self-praise is actually described as critical for making new habits and behaviour change stick, as it allows for positive reinforcement [1]. Anecdotally, I’ve observed friends who never celebrate major positive improvements in their life, and they seem to have depressive symptoms.
Though on the other hand, it’s quite possible that people view self-congratulatory celebratory gestures as negative. Perhaps it’s good to celebrate your achievements, but mostly in private or just with close friends to avoid attracting competition or challenge from others (I wish it was less risky to celebrate in public or among coworkers, but in practice, not everyone is celebratory of others’ success).
[1] More context from Fogg about why he thinks celebrating minor successes is important: https://ideas.ted.com/how-you-can-use-the-power-of-celebrati...
Personally I am very surprised you think some of these held up: pos mental attitude, writing things down, value of mba, and - most especially - almost anyone can do anything.
OK then please allow me to give you a recent example of ALL 4 OF THESE that made my (Fortune 50) employer hundreds of millions of dollars in real profits...
I built specialized supply chain software that did what nothing else (including SAP and JDA) could do. It supported 10,000 daily orders in 240 warehouses.
Our Big 4 Accounting Idiots spent 9 months and $2 million to conclude that it could not be done. I knew better because my users knew better. (I had already earned my own worthless MBA and had worked as an employee for the same Big 4 firm years prior and knew their weaknesses, which were not hard to spot.)
3 different divisions could not agree on anything. I just pulled them together in the same room at corporate headquarters until they got to know each other and hammered out a good design.
I built the prototype in 6 weeks because I knew I could. I got buy-in from the people that mattered because it's what they wanted in the first place.
12 offshore programmers built production ready software in less than a year. Everyone else had given up on them and their giant firm because of previous failures but I knew better. I never met any of them, in person or online (because of the time zone difference). Everything was written down. That's the only way this could have been done.
The 20 items I presented in my original post are solid gold. Not because of me. But because I learned from brilliant mentors.
Personally I am very surprised that you are are very surprised. The tech only takes us so far. I was lucky to have mentors who taught me the soft stuff too. Their advice changed my life much more than any tech advice.
Hope this helps. :-)
"If you think you can't do something, you can't." Is another way I've heard the same thought expressed. Maybe even more semantically respectable would be "Almost everyone who decides they can't do something, is wrong."
The native american expression is one I like a lot: "If you don't know how to do something, that's because you don't want it enough."
(1) grinding is a particular type of experience that deserves explanation. It is not merely working at something- it is the subjective personal experience of the work. I can code for an hour and be psychologically rejuvenated by it and my cousin could feel like she was in a prison for months. You will never grind your way to a satisfactory life; grinding is a symptom that you need to change the “soil” and that the “want” you have was memed into you and is unsuitable for you.
Otherwise, I think we are agreeing, neither I nor the guy I'm in effect defending think that soils (privilege, fer instance) don't matter, or that humans aren't unequal. Four-year-old blocking not equal to 24-year-old blocking. I think I covered that. There are sometimes advantages in not being fully literal, which is lucky because language cannot but be vague (it's just a matter of degree.) Hence the tradeoffs, impressing the message firmly matters because the temptation to give ourselves excuses is difficult to fully elide.
Some one once told me another version of your No. 3 - "A pocket full of thankyous is nice, but won't pay your bills".
On No. 17, I think it's important to get a little fist pump in sometimes. It make's up for the other days when I call myself an idiot for silly mistakes!
And on going with your gut, I do this much more these days. Unfortunately I don't get to find out if I was right on the oppotunities I let go.
What does this mean? That it sticks to high-level, timeless concepts?
And you can use the slides forever.
Kinda like stand-up comedy. Ever notice that there are 2 kinds of comics, those who riff with the drunks to get the cheap laughs and those who work at an act to speak evergreen truth, getting deep laughs (and even a few tears). We should be like the latter.
I think the difference is that you can add evergreen content to the specific numbers.
But I guess if it is a daily 15 minute sales meeting for something like the number of sales made yesterday, it isn't going to require anything but numbers.
But maybe once a week or once a month, the sales meeting could address bigger issues. The "why's" and "wherefores" that are evergreen. These types of meetings can keep people engaged at a deeper level, rather than only look at numbers, where people can become disengaged and not motivated as much.
Does that make sense?
I especially like that one. Me, as a newbie in the industry: "Customer X is a bunch of idiots." Boss: "If they weren't idiots, they wouldn't need us."
This one, on the other hand:
4. The best time to turn it on is before it's ready. You'll get plenty of data to finish it faster.
If it's software, check your backups first.
If it's hardware, ummm, yeeahh, no. Wait 'til it's ready. Trust me on this one.
As a former coworker of mine put it:
"if IT was easy we wouldn't get paid decent money for it"
The best abstract advice I've been given is to say "I don't know" when I don't know. No waffle, no bullshit, no trying to save face. Saves a lot of time.
My doctor advised "milking your urethra" (same thing as OP mentioned). It's good to do it post ejaculation too.
I also try not to express my opinion in absolutes – I tend to tell that "I think that...", "I believe that", "as far as I know", etc. It is, in a way, a philosophical position – I am aware that I do not know about many things, that someone may be more expert in a given field than me. So, I am trying to keep an open mind, be open to discussion, and not impose my own opinion on others just because I feel that I am right.
I have been living by these principles for years and I feel good.
However, I would not advise anyone to take similar stance. It depends on the company culture, probably it differs from country to country too... Still, from my experience, it may hurt you career. In most places where I worked, that kind of behavior was perceived as a weakness.
Hell, I remember being told that I will not become a manager, because there is no place for "don't know". But it was quite toxic workplace anyway.
The lesson, in short, was "if you don't know, say you don't know." Admitting you didn't know the answers was required to "pass" the ritual. (It wasn't actually possible to fail per se)
Many of the things we did with initiates were stupid or pointless, mostly just designed to put them through the ringer. But this one has really stuck with me as a valuable lesson. If you're missing some knowledge, just say you don't know.
It's a good quality!
For some reason, a lot of people seem to have been told to never show weakness by admitting that they don't know something.
I had a professor who gave 20% credit for answering "I don't know" for a question on your homework (plus a little extra if you explain what you do know and why you don't know), and I stole that rule for my own class. One of my students became the VP of a chip company, and told me that the "I don't know" homework rule helped him gain a lot of confidence and save the BS.
Related to this, I "recently" (as in years ago, but already as an adult) discovered a method that, at least for me, performs the same capability without needing to manipulate my testicles. However, it may only be practicable for non-circumcised penes—I don't know.
The process is the following.
After you have finished your urination, even if (you think) you have shaken and squeezed out all that was left, you pull your foreskin back even further so it is behind the glans. Then, you use your thumb and index finger to pinch the foreskin on one side and use it as a handle to stretch your penis by pulling the glans away from you VERY lightly (no pain or discomfort please!), slightly bending the penis diagonally at that point until, usually a second or two later, you start feeling the need to pee again. Then you let go and... voilà! There's a whole new stream of urine that you wouldn't even believe was there when you "finished" peeing a few seconds ago.
I don't know if this is common knowledge, as I have never searched about it or talked about it (not out of any embarrassment or anything, it's just something so trivial). This also means I don't even know if it would work on any equipment or whether it is limited to specific internal wirings or anatomical features.
Examples are my boss and their boss, who instead of saying "I don't know," would sell you their plan for nuclear fusion despite knowing fusion only in the context of fine dining. Many politicians are also allergic to "I don't know," but they continue to get elected, many journalists have no clue but continue to write for major newspapers. They don't say "I don't know," they write while not knowing, but without mentioning it.
- Time is not your most valuable resource. Your attention is.
- Focus your attention only on things that have disproportionate returns.
- Multitasking is a myth. Pick one thing and do it with all your strength.
- Discern between Type 1 & Type 2 decisions. High vs low consequence. If high consequence apply scientific method. Everything else delegate to smart people.
- Prioritize everything systematically. See Eisenhower Matrix or T.R.A.F apply it to everything vying for your attention.
- Keep a distraction list. Write down every idea, review monthly but know 95% of this is going into the trash. You simply don't have enough lifespan to do them all.
- Discard all unnecessary things from your life. Half done projects, old clothes, shoes, ideas, cups, bowls, hackysack, cars. All that crap that's piling up in your basement, garage, closets, cupboards wherever. You don't use it, you don't need it and they rob you of your attention.Let's say you're starting a new software project for your job. And it's up to you to decide what language/framework to build it. This would be a Type 1 decision, if after 6 months of development you realize you picked the wrong stack. It's going to be very difficult or impossible to go back on that decision. Alternatively within that project deciding where to place a button in the user interface is of low consequences. If you put it in the wrong place and realize conversions are down you can just undo it and put it in a better place.
For Type 1 decisions it's important to apply the scientific method. The purpose of which is to use facts to guide your decision and not your gut. Your hypothesis may be software framework X is best to build this project but you should do everything you can to disprove that with evidence. If you can't disprove it then you're probably making a good decision. If you find you have a lot of evidence it's a bad decision then you need to find another path.
You only need to apply scientific method to Type 1. For Type 2 / Low Consequence just make an educated guess or delegate to someone you trust to make the educated guess.
What is meant by “everything else” here? All low-consequence decisions? That doesn’t seem to make sense (e.g. what to eat for lunch today).
Yesterday me's focus was on making the sandwich.
But here's another piece of advice. Don't think in absolutes! Sometimes you'll have to use your gut on a Type 1, sometimes you'll be making the Type 2 decision. It's just advice not the law of Moses.
Type 2 simply means low consequence, again relative. Because everyones appetite for consequence is different. For example a Type 2 decision for me is Health Care. I delegate to my spouse to pick the plan. If a bad decision is made worse case is my out of pocket is higher than I would like but it can be remedied in 12 months. It's an important decision and difficult one but for me personally it's a Type 2. For someone else that might be a Type 1 and they must really pick the right plan.
So apply the advise to your life in the way that makes the most sense. And for me personally what I eat for lunch is always a Type 1 ;)
T.R.A.F stands for (T)rash (R)ead (A)ction (F)ile
The idea is everyday you, "along with your secretary" lol, Go through each item in your inbox and mark each item with either a T R A or F. You don't read or contemplate on the item you simply categorize it and move to the next item.
Mark T - to TRASH item like junk mail, unimportant, not worthy of a response
Mark R - to READ later ie articles, memos, letters, etc.
Mark A - to take an ACTION on this item. Phone call, pay a bill, etc
Mark F - to FILE this item away receipts, tax return, etc.
You are to do this exercise at the beginning of each day. The idea being your action pile is the items you need to work on. Schedule a time daily or weekly to go through your read pile and catch up on reading. Trash all the garbage and file away things you need to keep but don't need to look at.
Whatever you didn't complete from your action & read list you put back in your inbox for the next day. Each day mark a dot in the upper right had corner of the item. Once the item collects 3 dots. Force yourself to handle it that day. No more delay.
This system was designed in the days before computers but apply it to your email inbox and it works very well. I started by just using flags on the email messages. Green flag action, Blue Flag read, Red Flag trash, Orange Flag file.
I have since evolved into a custom system that is a blend of TRAF and Eiesenhower Matrix. I'm actually designing a mail client around this idea. It has greatly improved my ability to handle the onslaught of material that comes my way.
A bit like luck. Sure, you can win the lottery (if you buy a ticket). But a lot of what people call "luck" is a combination of:
1. Opportunity (which you can increase your chances of it occurring). Although some people are born in a highly advantageous environment.
2. Readiness to grab that opportunity (skills, finances, environment).
3. Realizing that you actually have #1 and #2 and going for it. I have sadly not always done that.
Helpers - may not have a vision of their own, but good at contributing to projects they enjoy.
Fixers - good at identifying and solving problems in existing projects.
Lots more, I imagine.
Nowadays the tendency remains: I love study Philosophy, Theology (even if I'm not religious), History, Math, Theoretical Physics and I love speculative or fantastical literature like Sci-fi, Fantasy, Occult, Conspiracy Theories... not because I believe them but because let me explore my own thinking.
Sometimes I wish I were more building oriented: it would help me in the working world. Projects, results, metrics, outcomes are all so tiresome.
[1]Thinking about it I should have done Math instead of Physics.
If you say something “should be a thing” you are automatically now in charge of creating it or convincing someone to create it. Do not tell people who are working on things that they should realize your idea if you are not willing to put down what you are doing and work on it yourself. This advice prevents you from being the annoying ideas person.
Don’t get married. Tax benefits are minor, divorce headache is major. Separate public declaration of love and commitment from your government and financial affairs. You can still have a commitment ceremony and a big party.
Learn how to properly ask for consent. You are likely very bad at this.
The most important thing about a job is not what you work on but who you work with. Pick people, not projects.
Plumbing is easier than you think. Learn to do it yourself.
Related to the above, read Heinlein’s quote on specialization. It is for insects. Learn to do everything.
Stress kills. Get sleep.
Don’t take advice from strangers on the internet :)
Some countries won't even let you do hospital visits if you are not family.
only difference from marriage is that to get out of a marriage you MUST have a divorce; ending common law relationships leaves a 2-year window where a proceeding can be filed, and will behave like a divorce if filed. but it doesn't have to happen.
This really should be the fist rule of the internet.:D
I follow this as well and it makes life better.
I've heard and read this advice numerous times, and it is even very old advice.
"Rulers must never remain neutral. If neighboring rulers fight, you must take sides, because if you do not, the winner will threaten you, and the loser will not befriend you. Whether or not your ally wins, he will be grateful to you. However, if you can avoid it, you should never ally with someone more powerful than yourself, because if he wins, you may be in his power."
-- Niccolò Machiavelli, 1513
There certainly must be something to it, but in my opinion sometimes there is a place for neutrality. If it is expressed without any nuance as above, I don't think it is good advice.
Hard disagree. Sometimes "I don't know, we should research that more" is the best response. Maybe even often rather than sometimes.
This is a good way to piss away incredible amounts of time on irrelevant things. You are definitely not “wrong” by choosing to ignore an argument about which Kardashian is better looking.
1) There is no such thing as "both sides." There are always more than two sides.
2) They should all die in a fire.
Not sure that helps anyone, but I call 'em as I see 'em.
Look at just the US elections coming. There are probably 10,000+ seats of significant municipal, state, or national power up for turnover in two weeks. You cannot form a meaningful opinion on even 1% of those and it will be out of date almost immediately.
Yep, same with electrical work around the house. Obviously not for everyone, but once you get past the initial hurdle of getting comfortable and safe with electricity, there's great pleasure to be had from knowing that you can fix any issue, with minimal cost.
This is really important. Addendum: pick the right spouse if you can, easier said than done. It's better to be single than have a dysfunctional spouse.
Perhaps someone should tell you that consumers hate advertisements, and they are confused by them too :)
I’ll give you a typical example where Google could be great but falls so short: I deliver to it on a silver platter a search query for a specific product “MRCOOL DIY 4th Gen 12k btu”. This is a very specific ductless mini split heat pump that retails for about $1750. I was looking to see if anyone had a cheaper price. Well Google Shopping mostly showed me results for either the 3rd Gen or a different BTU rating, in an apparent attempt to not show too few results. No a 36k btu unit isn’t a substitute. No, just the air handler isn’t a substitute. I have my credit card out and ready to go, buy Google is too busy showing me ads for window units!
You know where I found my answer? Eventually I gave up on Google and went to the manufacturer’s website, looked through the list of authorized dealers and saw that Costco was on the list. I then looked there directly and found the unit at $300 cheaper than elsewhere. Bad search engine, no cookie!
Ads are basically the SEO of our economy as they try to change the ranking of products in our brains.
You can look at it as GP having a vague idea of how much he wants to pay for this product and where to pay for it, but Google failed to help him find clarity. Maybe the GP could have done better by searching "cheapest" or "sellers" or something like that, but one thing I've learned about modern search engines is that providing more query details nets you less applicable results.
It's like every search engine takes all keywords with an "OR" mentality when it really should be an "AND".
And a lot of this does come down to the advertising model. I wouldn't be surprised if this benefits google because having to try 3 or 4 search queries to find what you want puts more advertisements in front of you, and increases the odds you'll click on one.
Google still has powerful boolean operators. If you use those with intentionality, and pick the hidden 'verbatim' option, you'll have a decent chance of finding what you need. However, these are all vestigial features that a minority of users employ.
The vast, vast majority of users are funneled into product choices. In a way, it helps to see that as the core function, and everything else as a secondary funnel towards that primary funnel. The search engine is designed to work so that people use it, but the end goal is for ads/SEO to be effective for the great mass of users that are particularly vulnerable to them. The GP was looking for price differences, which is something many websites base their business off of, but that's still a tiny portion of the whole and not something Google needs to optimize for compared to the misleading but lucrative results the GP had to sift through.
So they’re incentivized to be as vague as possible while still providing “useful” results.
Google Shopping results are so useless I rarely even bother trying.
I really love the thing and installing it was my first big DIY project in many ways. I did all the work myself and the results have been awesome. It can make my garage absolutely frigid (although it's not quite as good at heating, I've got some work to do around shoring up the existing insulation).
You're gonna LOVE Amazon.
/s
All of Google's offerings do indeed have a price, just not a financial one in most cases.
You're lucky you didn't meet Stanislaw Ulam, who, when anyone told him about a project they were working on always responded with "What is that compared to E=mc^2 ?"
"He thought gTLDs were actively harming the Internet."
I might be missing something.
It's a worthy discussion for HN.
You can make no useful inference about the owner of a .com or a .org domain name. They literally signify nothing anymore.
There's never a case where you should accept conferred wisdom uncritically, no matter how much you respect a person or what else they created.
But something like geometry has practical applications that continue even if people don’t know it by that name (most builders know the 3-4-5 triangle right angle trick, for example).
i mean i am not too close to the matter but tensorflow has still been sort of a success hasnt it?
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
I recall taking it to heart and trying to imagine the kind of regrets I would have as a 40 year old me. Shortly after this I sold everything I owned and traveled the world for years. That experience gave me even more confidence to follow my gut and make the most out of my life. I've tried to keep this mentality still as I am about to turn 37. It keeps me moving forward and trying to achieve my goals.
How old were you when you took your trip? Did you continue working or just enjoy the travels?
It had a profound impact on me.
A foldable reader with readable panels on each sides when you open it. You can flip pages either way. Pen for annotation if possible. Create/edit your own documents. An icon tap to overlay another document (a note, book page, research paper) so you can add to it or copy from it to the underlying panel.
A reader mode (distraction free) when simply reading. A document mode when you are doing something that requires writing (including simple annotations).
I like books and flipping through them. However if you can blend a book reader with a great note taker that would be ideal.
I kept the phone turned off and only touched the laptop once I was ready for exercises and after 2-3 hours was too terrified to lose focus if I didn’t go straight into code.
Would have never happened with MOOC, as there would have been all kinds of drifting away. I owe my ability to hyper focus to that time
I presume you did better with your investment.
I mostly follow that rule, but with the caveat that I must begin reading/skimming it immediately after I buy it (otherwise it will just end up in the list of books "to be read"). Yes this means that I have an embarrassing amount of started books.
If you have a life where you pursue autonomy, the development of your capacities, and a sense of meaningfulness in what you do, you'll be able to withstand and enjoy much more than you think. If you don't pursue these things, everything will be harder.
Simply spending your time with more intentionality and being conscious of each moment changes so much.
It's easier to find satisfaction in goals outside of your own self, because they introduce a finite boundary whereas the self is infinite in its desires
Try to picture what a confident and well-adjusted person would do in the same situation, to determine if you are currently acting out because of trauma or fear.
If you have a habit, ask yourself what it will look like if it continues uninterrupted for decades. Conversely, try to picture what a habit you don't currently have could do for you over the same timespan.
Up until then I was not exactly the nicest grandchild, a lot of anger, a lot of confusion reigned in my childhood and my grandmother was the last in the chain. She ended up getting most of my frustration. But that piece of advice had a lasting impact, it has been with me for about forty years now.
I try to always remember that when dealing with other people not because I think I want to improve their lives, I simply don't wish to have a guilty conscience if they do die tomorrow. Of course the effect is the same as if I were to be motivated by altruist ideals.
For most people reading this it might be a nice ideal but not a good piece of advice. The reason this was a very good piece of advice for me was that a few years before my uncle said this to me, my father had died. He died without me being able to say goodbye, to be able to talk to him, nothing. I was left with a mighty large hole.
And that is the second piece of advice: some advice only works if you have had the experience. And some advice makes sense later after you have had the experience. Be open and listen to others, especially those older than you. Be polite, be reflective and be thankful for being the survivor of a long line of ancestors, not everyone gets to survive.
Never quit e really got that one. If I were to die tomorrow, I’d spend most of my money and do too much drugs.
But what if I don’t die tomorrow? Then I’m broke and have a substance abuse problem. I don’t think that’s a particularly good way to make life choices personally.
Like, should I pay for this expensive dinner or travel, or should I save the money? Sometimes saving the money makes sense, sometimes it does not. But you should never rely on the fact that you will be there to use the money you're saving instead of enjoying a nice experience right there.
For example, I wanted to drop out of college to work on climate change, and an adult in that community who I respected immensely told me “calm down, it won’t be too late by the time you graduate“.
Not too many people needed the advice to worry less about climate change (especially 15 years ago), but it was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment so that I could focus on actually learning the fundamentals of engineering before throwing myself in
The Great Recession hit and Obama’s climate push failed[0], so I went into healthcare (as another thing that needed fixing, and which there was political will to do something about).
The lessons of all of those twists are more complex, but I still firmly believe that I got the right advice given what everybody knew at the time.
[0] https://www.politico.com/story/2012/11/obama-says-climate-ch...
There's an old story about a young man who cornered a world-famous violinist and begged to be allowed to play for him. If the master offered him encouragement, he would devote his life to music. But if his talent was not equal to his calling, he wanted to know ahead of time so he could avoid wasting his life. He played, and the great violinist shook his head. "You lack the fire," he said.
Decades later the two met again, and the would-be violinist, now a prosperous businessman, recalled their previous meeting. "You changed my entire life," he explained. "It was a bitter disappointment, giving up music, but I forced myself to accept your judgement. Thus, instead of becoming a fourth-rate musician, I've had a good life in the world of commerce. But tell me, how could you tell so readily that I lacked the fire?"
"Oh, I hardly listened when you played," the old master said. "That's what I tell everyone who plays for me -- that they lack the fire."
"But that's unforgivable!" the businessman cried. "How could you do that? You altered the entire course of my life. Perhaps I could have been another Kreisler, another Heifetz--"
The old man shook his head again. "You don't understand," he said. "If you had had the fire, you would have paid no attention to me."
https://kagi.com/search?q=when+the+master+is+ready+the+stude...
A HS teacher had "Pay yourself first", which I still like, and is especially useful for people who might otherwise help others too much at their own expense (and ability to help a lot more in the future).
I think the real lasting advice that I still think about and would like to more perfectly follow is ch 9 of the tao te ching. One translation goes:
Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
Brim-fill the bowl,
it’ll spill over.
Keep sharpening the blade,
you’ll soon blunt it.
Nobody can protect
a house full of gold and jade.
Wealth, status, pride,
are their own ruin.
To do good, work well, and lie low
is the way of the blessing.Apparently the tao never spent days as a kid running around the house putting pots under the ceiling when it rained, raised multiple kids with severe birth defects, being beaten at home and at school, kept getting shocked by the dryer, or had a wife whose meds cost $50K a year. I did, so I will cheerfully continue my chase for money and security!
I suppose it can be summarised as “stop lying to yourself”.
There’s some subtlety to what this means. For me a big part of that is not living in my imagination. I used to have lots of imaginary conversations with people, predicting what they would say in those situations. This is dangerous since you end up building mental models based on (unfounded) mental models, instead of on reality. Your emotional responses also get coloured by these imaginary exchanges.
This one is really hard to combat. The overthinking brain imagines every scenario ever, really hard to tune the noise down. I've gotten better at it lately but it's still difficult sometimes.
Doesn't matter how many times you have to do it in the beginning, every 30 seconds, whatever, as long as you persist in doing this, it will relatively quickly stop the thinking pattern.
Another important point about this is that if you're in a heated (imaginary) debate with someone, your body reacts as though you are in a heated (real) debate with someone.
This pattern can be a pretty significant source of stress and anxiety.
You’d be amazed how many things you can do in even ONE minute.
It helped me when depressed to come out of immobility and stop postponing even the simplest tasks : take out the garbage literally doable in under 60 seconds including going up and down the stairs, reply to some small emails, do some simple housekeeping tasks.
"You're not competing with the people in your town anymore, you're not even competing with the people here, from now on think of yourselves competing with every engineer across the world. Aim high."
For a kid from Portugal that came from a smaller town, it changed my whole perspective. I loved that guy. Was an excellent professor for the rest of the semester as well. Can't say I met any other student of his that didn't walk away thinking fondly of him. Manuel Oliveira Ricou, you the man.
"Why did you do that?"
"I don't know"
"Then if you don't know why you're doing something, don't do it."
I've heard this convo when I was a teenager, and I believe that it nudged me into having a bit more self-reflection and thoughtfulness than I would have otherwise.
"When people say something to you, most of the time it means either 'I need help' or 'I love you'"
And, closely related: "Don't forget that the person in front of you might just have a bad day".
Those have been immensely useful when dealing with common annoyance from family and strangers alike. It doesn't mean that you have to accept everything, but it certainly help in avoiding getting angry as the default reaction.
No, it doesn't. Especially if it makes the situation worse.
A good way to enter zen due to the Münchhausen trilemma.
This isn’t to say that you must get rid of your conscious mind or ego. Simply understand why they’re useful.
Your conscious mind is a focusing tool, like a coach, and your subconscious mind is like the players in charge of the doing. The conscious mind shouldn’t be the one trying to solve everything. The ego cares too much about things that don’t matter like pride, greed, and ruling the universe. It is just trying to protect you from harm and death.
Let go of these feelings and thoughts, and stop trying to be the supreme ruler of the universe. You cannot control nearly as much as you think you can, including yourself. You can only influence.
Be still, let life happen and flow with it like water. Translation: Be perceptive of what’s happening around you and within, then act appropriately by gently guiding everything toward the desired outcome without using force and striving. Patience is key here. Striving makes you use up your energy too quickly and potentially burn out.
When you achieve this state of mind, it feels like you can solve any problem using your mind and ingenuity, and nothing really bothers you anymore. You’ll only spend time on what truly matters to you and your life will become one that’s truly worth living.
Alan Watts is also a good resource to check out on YouTube for mindfulness meditation, though he’s not for everyone. You can find a few lectures about meditation and Zen Buddhism if you search around. For understanding who you are not, try Learning the Human Game: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SsU9UUtELkw
The point of learning all this is because there’s a lot of stuff happening when you are meditating or being mindful in everyday life. It’s difficult to discern who is the real you. The big questions is: WHY are you behaving a certain way? What do you get out of it and who taught you? Where did it come from?
If society taught you so that you can be proper and fit in, it isn’t you. If you learned it through trauma or for the sake of pride/ego, it is not you. Pay attention to your emotional reactions to things. They are telling you that you want something to change. Then simply do what it takes to move that direction. No need to get mad or sad or wish it were different. That is all a waste of energy. (Avoid saying shoulda, woulda, coulda)
We are not our thoughts. Pay attention to when those arise and let them go. Your true self will have tons of energy and motivation, and you will not have any resistance in doing it. Let that energy carry you till you feel diminishing returns or fatigue, then figure out what you want to do next in the same manner.
Over the years, I’ve suffered from “company man” syndrome and look back to his guidance as a reminder that I should own my skills and interests, and bring them to an employer if and for as long as the job suits them. I shouldn’t go with the job wherever it takes me simply because that’s my employer’s wish.
Not always easy advice to take, but extremely important advice to me.
My skills and interested are more hardware oriented in a company that brought me in is much more software and math. I've felt obligated to become much more software and math capable, spending very late nights and weekends studying. It's not a bad thing to expand one's mind, but at the heart, I know I'm really doing it more so to 'fit-in' better and less to communicate with my peers better.
I will take this advice and double down on bringing my hardware skills/passions to the table, which as my wife has repeatedly told me the past several months is really why they brought me on. They didn't bring me on to mold me into a clone of researchers they already have.
An easy way to increase the value and enjoyment of a conversation is to say a lot less and listen a lot more. This applies obviously in cases where the subject is something you're not an expert on, but can also be extremely valuable in those exact circumstances. Obviously there are limits to this advice, but they are probably much further away than you'd dare believe.
Also, people tend to assume that you share more of their opinions so you can make friends quicker too. You can't put your foot in a closed mouth.
I've found this often leads to people who you don't really want to listen to spend most of the time talking. This advice does apply to learning from people, sales, and dating though
"You're asking me? Soon enough you'll be engineers. You're the experts people will come to for solutions."
More of a reminder than advice, but it affected my approach.
Other, unrelated, but also life-changing, even though I don't remember who gave it:
"Never explain yourself unless explicitly asked to."
EDIT: This one is from my Argentinian AirBnB host in Switzerland:
"If you didn't make time for it, it wasn't actually important enough for you."
Becomes truer the more you want to explain yourself in a situation.
Hm, I wonder what context you use this in? My experience has been different, that succinctly telling people about your motivations and thoughts, and truly being vulnerable, is an important part of forming relationships and preventing misunderstandings. And everything is relationships.
I've worked really hard to figure out how to be clearer with everybody in my life, which has improved things greatly. It's hard to understand other people's experiences and misunderstandings are rife. It doesn't mean that I'm asking for approval. I'm being more authentically myself. Relationships are weak without that vulnerability and shared understanding.
Perhaps it's a cultural thing.
This has been a life-long challenge - in a good way. Whenever I feel boredom approaching, I try to change the situation or come up with a more creative way of viewing the moment. Not always successful, but it's a good practice.
Within a few minutes they always find new ways to not be bored:)
"Get over yourself."
"Don't choose to make enemies"
My big one for anyone reading is that life can be short and difficult. You must balance enjoying your time now with investing in yourself and your future. I have had several friends who died young without living their lives while they could. All of them would have had a better death if they had swapped some of the self sacrifice required to have material and professional success later in life for some enjoyment earlier on. Remember, what we see of life stories is full of survivor bias - many of the dead will tell you that you need to take a break and see the world while you can.
That is, to me, one of the most difficult things to apply in life, and I feel like the rest of your post doesn't exactly provide an answer on how to achieve this. There are so many things that I want to do in life but that I cannot afford to do now, and which I always postpone to later. And it feels like I'll let a great deal of things unachieved because I'm already too busy on things that are consuming my time right now.
The same applies to budget. I try to save as much money as possible for the future, and thus I restrain myself from doing things that I may consider too expensive for what they are worth, or choose not to do/purchase things which I do not consider essential as much as possible. I think I managed to do quite well up to this point (I'm 22 and have 20K in savings, starting from barely zero), but I'm still questioning on the utility of doing all of this. Even if I lost all my sources of revenue tomorrow, I wouldn't survive for a very long time with my savings. And if I wanted to launch some business in the near future, I doubt such an amount of money would take me very far.
With 20k (and if you’re really lucky no debt) and a job that most people on this site have, you are lucky and will be able to do some things others can’t.
I’ll give you one. I spent about $2,000 in 2014 to take my wife to Paris and London (part of the trip was covered by my work, so it was a little less expensive). At the time we had debt, we were young (mid 20’s) and could afford it but the more prudent thing to do would have been to throw that money at debt or invest it. The S&P 500 was roughly 1900 at that time. Today it’s 3900. So invested I would now have $4k in the bank. As someone in my mid-30s, no amount of money can bring me back to my 20s with my wife in her mid 20s, without the responsibility of kids, for a week in Paris and London.
And playing that further out - if that money even 20x’d by the time I’m 80, at that point I’d still give it up to have had the experience with my young wife.
Not sure if that makes sense - but recognizing these tradeoffs while you can and making the decision to take the action is a tricky thing to get right. You can always make more money but you can’t make more time, and you won’t get your youth back again. So have fun. But everything in moderation and recognize that you need to take care of your future self as well (e.g. don’t take two years off around Paris and London and lose your job, etc…)
Choosing when to convert time to money is important but also recognizing when you can convert money to time.
But you will survive longer than not having those savings at all. Or even worse, having debt. The extra burn down maybe the difference between accepting a shitty job or being able to look around for a better one.
I've recently experienced a family emergency and I was glad I was in position to fork out hefty some of money without even thinking about it, thanks to saving agressively.
> And if I wanted to launch some business in the near future, I doubt such an amount of money would take me very far.
Again, at least you will have _some_ run way to try something different. Savings give you options.
I feel like what you are doing is reasonable. Once you have savings (and arguably you already do), maybe take a big adventure!
I was left alone to care for her, my wife needed a break and so went away for a night off. Btw, this is a good thing to arrange if you have a fairly new baby in the house - it gives the person getting the night off something to look forward to and provides real respite.
Back to the story, the baby (unusually, for she was a sweet little thing) would just not stop crying. She sensed mummy was away and was not happy (probably a commentary on my skills). I spent what felt like half the night with a howling baby, but in hindsight was probably a lot less than an hour. During that time I suffered a deep, deep trough of despair. I was under pressure at work, we were frankly bust financially, I wasn't all that physically well at the time and I was a shitty dad. I felt like I could see my life rolling out in front of me like no man's land in the European first world war (think, mud bath/moonscape/wilderness).
The thing that helped me was the fact that I could think back to evenings spent on tropical beaches, weeks in the mountains of different continents and meals in restaurants designed by Michaelangelo. I thought "Well, if this is what life is to be then that's ok. It was my decision and I have had a great time already, there is nothing I regret" and that really helped. Without that I don't know what I would have done, probably gone downstairs and drunk the contents of the booze cabinet, it's terrible to even write it. But, I understand why people in similar situation take drugs or go crazy.
Of course, 1 hr later my daughter was asleep and my mind set altered back to the reality of my privileged middle class existence. My problems didn't go away, but they were of course minor in the scale of real problems (as we all find out eventually). Some people end up in the literal no mans land of a european war, some people end up homeless, some people have their babies taken from them. None of this happened to me, thank whatever deity.
Go take that big adventure, it will give you a perspective that may prove priceless.
>I have had several friends who died young without living their lives while they could.
What does it matter though? To the secular, when you're gone you're gone. What does it matter what you did or didn't do in the end anyways. To the religious, well the fun you had while living doesn't matter because this life is temporary anyways-- the only consideration is that you could have done more good in the world before going to one much longer.
The natural philosophical extension of this is to say it doesn't really matter whether or not you 'lived life'. Wanting the perception of 'a live well lived' is just another desire that creates unhappiness in you when it's not fulfilled. What if it's enough to spend your whole life working? You'd have still spent a whole life as a unique being with unique experiences and perspectives.
I mean what does the past matter at all really? All we have is what we experience now. Ok I see now I might be getting a little too esoterical for 8am lol
The fellas I knew invested their time in unhappy activities hoping for a reward in the future. They didn't get any of that reward; what they did was only rational if they could access some of the expected reward in their lives. They would have been better off if they had missed some paper deadlines and gone on a few more hiking trips or gone to a few more wild parties.
Sure - if working on something is what floats your boat... go for it! Sure - invest something in the future (at least!) because it's likely you are going to live to see 75 winters, but only likely.
It led to me staying faaaaar too long in an unhealthy relationship, trying to cure problems that I imagined myself responsible for causing. Sometimes you need to forgive yourself and move on. The Pottery Barn Rule and the Boy Scout Rule apply to things, not people.
"Leave it better than you found it."
I couldn't care less about golf, but this one stuck with me because it speaks to environmental stewardship. It's like a constructive riff on the mantra for when you're out in Nature: "Don't leave a trace."
i've got an internal, personal 'wikiquote' doc of stuff that I like, and i make a point to review it, add to it, and meditate on its contents periodically.
The trick, naturally, is spotting bad advice and unreliable advice giver.
My lead salesperson asked "do you know what a sunk cost is?" "no" "it's an accounting term for money that can not be retrieved, and going after it will probably only cost you more money, so you just have to write it off" "your being upset is compounding the loss. Let's spend that time and energy creating new sales instead of being sad about old ones. You need to write this off"
Felt 10x better, we then brainstormed and invented.
It's easier to build muscle mass before the age of 30 and the muscle you gain during that time will never go away (with a minimum of training).
The earlier you start exercising, the less difficult it will be to maintain your body as you get older. Someone who has never exercised but wants to lose weight by their 40s will have a much harder time than someone who started exercising early.
More than that, working out has a significant impact on my productivity, mood and psychological health. It changed my life.
Not an exercise guru, just someone who slipped a disc.
but, please no more sit ups. Even the marines figured out it is bad for the spine.
If you're 40ish and new to physical fitness, don't despair. I turn 39 tomorrow and am in the best shape of my life.
Anything done consistently is better than nothing, but done perfect.
Losing fat is a simple calorie deficit. Find a way to do it consistently and you will lose weight. This cannot be scienced out of.
I prescribed myself a bicycle, biked hard while singing every night until I couldn't breathe, and very soon I was regularly hungry and fit.
What did I need to learn? I'm not just a brain on a stick.
Why would that not also be true of muscle you build later in life? It might be harder to acquire it, but it should be similarly long-lasting.
Granting here, I'm sure it's definitely easier to resume old habits after injury recovery than to start completely fresh, so yeah, still start young if you're young. But if you're not, it's never too late until you're in the ground.
Take care of your body for your whole life.
A Ford engineer who had interviewed me implored me to go do anything else (at a Ford reception for college applicants). “Look, you’re going to get an offer from all 3 of us (US automakers) and you should go do something else for 5 years and if you still want to work in SVT or Motorsport (the two divisions I wanted), apply directly to them.”
If I had that guy’s name and address, I’d send him a Christmas card every year as tech was way better than working on glovebox handles and seat belt buckles.
When asked why he would refuse to answer, he would say: "If you aren't confident that your answer is correct, then I would like to mark you as wrong even though you may be right. You are the expert. You should be telling me that your answer is right, not asking me whether it is right."
He would also say that another acceptable answer occasionally might be "Your question is wrong" (along with an explanation as to why it is wrong).
This professor's attitude bothered me at first when I was on the receiving end of this advice, but I have come to regard it as some of the best advice I have received.
Especially in a professional context, I have found that it pays to convince myself that my recommended solution is a good solution, perhaps by confirming it using a few independent methods, and also by anticipating the responses of detractors, and coming prepared with answers to likely objections that others might offer.
I started reading Hardcore Zen out of interest after seeing it recommended in a twitter thread. Still deciding about the book but this one stuck with me, that (physical causes aside) unhappiness can be a choice that you make moment to moment and that you can decide to change your mind
“I don’t know, I hope I’ll get a teaching job, hopefully I’ll get a girlfriend. I want to have a wife, kids.”
“You’ll be happy then?”
“I think so.”
“Great. How would you like to be there and then look back only to see that you were sad the whole time up until then? Try to enjoy the journey too.”
I try and reflect on this advice when I am struggling to communicate with my wife. Having been divorced once I feel that a positive living relationship is always (well, usually maybe) within our own control.
but yes, it is good to reflect on that, and find out if something is actually a problem.
Yes this. There is an always an exception out there but it is never you, so it really pays to think "always".
What I miss the most are the best things about them, and the annoying things I've mostly forgotten or forgiven.
absolutely not. don't miss any of the annoyances, and my life is immensely better.
to quote someone else: "you know why divorces are so expensive? cuz they're worth it."
A classic of unknown origin.
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."
Captain Jean-Luc Picard
another was "women don't owe you just because you're a nice guy." took a while to accept that I had been telling myself a lie, that I would naturally attract women just from being nice, and was getting subconsciously angry at women when my presumption didn't pan out.
and another was "is this what they want, or what you want?" works in a lot of situations. I think it helped me have more compassion/empathy, but also avoid situations where one of us would have been unhappy.
If you put effort into something, you’ll get better at doing it, and it will result in something good, or at least in something tangible. If you do nothing, you get nothing in return.
From: A Summary Of The Best Life Lessons From Movies: Or, Everything I Know So Far
Your job is there to subsidize what you want to do with your life.
Life is too short to waste your free time being somewhere that you don't want to be.
(It's also easier to change a "no" to a "yes" later, then to change from a "yes" to a "no".)
Then again, you might be surprised at who you meet when you're somewhere you don't want to be.
Too many people are shut-ins and never meet anyone, so never get the chance to meet someone who might change their life, help, or stimulate them.
I'd err on the side of meeting more people and giving them a chance, unless you're already a social butterfly with way too little time for yourself or the people you care about.
- Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is potential of power. (Brought me out of the false sense of comfort that reading book or completing course/training will automatically benefit me or is progress towards actual work. You need to apply the knowledge else it is useless.)
- You don't have to complete the book you are currently reading. (First heard from Naval)
- Arrange documents alphabetically and cross reference if required. Any other system will fall apart.(From GTD)
The worst, specific piece of advice I received was when I was choosing a major in my senior year of HS, which informed where I went to college. For some paths like engineering you need to know before you matriculate at some schools.
The bad advice which was handed out in 2001, was that CS as a career had peaked and all those jobs created during the dotcom boom would be outsourced, so there was no point in majoring in it anymore.
I unfortunately took that advice for a few years, before realizing it was bunk and having to spend extra time in school to enter a career in software.
Hah I got a similar advice. My father even got his friend who graduated with a CS degree to tell me not to get that degree which managed to convince me at the time. I still ended up as an engineer though :)
I knew fellow software developers working at sears, driving buses. It was unreal. It looked like software was dead. Silicon Valley. And offshoring was happening big time.
I went to law school, and I was already a software developer. Hard to see the forest when one is in the middle of it.
“This is tech. Nobody cares how many times you’ve been fired.”
He was dead right. Nobody even really asks. I just say we had a good run and then the company changed significantly after a difficult funding round and afterwards I wasn’t as good a fit.
I should let him know that his remark was prophetic.
Product wasn’t having it, and I couldn’t negotiate my way through. In the end we ignored them for the ~4 months needed to get back to systems health. We produced a retro of our findings, before and after states, etc. and consensus, from clients and even from product leadership, was that we did the right thing.
My PM ended up quitting and I permanently broke that relationship.
The best advice I ever received was: you were right. Was it worth it?
What then do I gain by being wise?”
“This too is meaningless.”
the days have already come when both have been forgotten
1.) "Just remember that it's a grand illusion." - Dennis DeYoung.
Human society is a made up thing job titles and heirarchies or castes, companies, governments, money, opinions, labels ("gay", "straight", "married", "healthy", "insane", "impossible")... the whole lot of it - all made up by humans. There is no difference between you, your boss, your CEO, the leader of your country. The truth is, we are all humans living on this earth, eating-feeling-surviving. The rest is something humans just made up.
2.) "...all it takes, really [is] pressure and time." - Red (character in movie Shawshank Redemption).
This montra has never steered me wrong. Something I truly want to achieve may take months or many years, but if I stick to it, it eventually tends to come to fruition. Interestingly, the opposite is true, when I've given up on some opportunity or idea I thought was particularly worthwhile, but I ultimately gave up on and succumbed to the pressure of naysayers and my own weariness, I have seen others succeed on these same ideas/opportunities. It's not a garuntee, but a very strong trend I've observed over my 40+ years on earth.
As a child, I wanted to be a scientist (I've always been an inventor and explorer at heart) but was guided towards enlisting the military due to lack of money and honestly, I did not do well in grade school. After maturing, I've pressed on to course-correct and after 20 years I am finally a well respected research scientist in the field I'm passiknate about. It just took pressure and time (years of pushing through grad school rejections, arduously learning concepts that didn't come naturally to me, ignoring naysayers, etc.).
Sometimes, you won't break through, but I contend that the journey is still worthwhile. I have a HARD math problem that I've been picking a way at for over 10 years and I've made peace with the fact that I may never solve the riddle by the time I'm dead. However, with persistance I've made incremental progress - and I can see that I'm on a road that is being revealed in front of me inch by inch as I apply continuous pressure. Even if I don't know how long that road actually is - if I could live long enough, eventually I know I would solve the puzzle. This montra has helped me keep pushing ahead, despite not truly knowing when a break through will happen, and simply walking the path has led me to observe what feel is great natural beauty. The journey itself can be very rewarding.
"If you really struggle to decide between two options and you begin to waste time by postponing the decision, this often indicates, that both options are very similar in expectable outcome"
At least in situations, where you can't access more info about path A or B, indecisiveness may indicate "go flip a coin"
Sounds simple, but made me aware and helped in a few situations not wasting time already.
and a follow up about coin flips for sufficiently abstract or complex decisions.
Advice is: swallow the appropriately coloured pill and wake up in the real world.
The rule is basically: rotate against the direction of the crank's rotation to undo.
north, east, south, west
For a shit ton of my teens all I did was chase comfort until this hit me earlier last year. Now I wait for pain to make sure what Im doing goes against the current to bend the resistance to my will.
Goggins sums it up: if you like running what you learning? If you like boxing well what are you learning? People say double down on your strengths. Fuck that triple down on your weaknesses.
Jordan Peterson in one of his lectures: if you expose people to what they fear they get stronger and we don’t know the upper limits to that.
In short: fk comfort, chase pain. That is the 21st century’s killer instinct.
I couldn't talk properly in certain situations. I was too self-conscious. That meant my communication was poor at workplace. I was too nervous presenting in front of execs and senior leaders.
On the other hand, my friend was fluent and smooth. We both had same roles. After another poor presentation, my friend gently told me "Everyone wipes their butt the same way."
2) "Is this what you want to be remembered for?", not sure where I've read it, but it's a powerful question.
3) "It's sunny in Venezia today, stop reading HN and go for a walk". Me, just now. Half kidding... But walking is one of the most powerful things you can do to help yourself. In fact, I'm closing my computer now, and I'm going for a walk. Can't wait to see other comments when I come back later tonight.
[0]: https://simon.medium.com/jack-dorsey-meditation-and-a-tip-fr...
Gamal raised his hand and started asking questions about the example. I, not understanding the concepts very well, answered by reading out of the book. Gamal said "Daniel, to hell with that book. Don't tell me what the book says. Tell me what YOU know. How can we explain this with only the things we understand?"
Use what you know to figure out what you don't know. Use your own understanding instead of trying to borrow someone else's.
Doing good enough ... can be enough.
Almost always can you afford taking the time to observe and think through a proper solution, instead of rushing in and doing the first thing that comes to mind. Especially if it seems urgent.
Sometimes when you just observe, the problem will go away by itself!
2). Everyone is just winging it.
3). Life is subject to change without notice.
From an old boss: “Excuses are like assholes. Everyone got one and they all stink.”
From a friend’s dad who was an excellent trial attorney: “If you’re explaining you’re losing.”
From my kids 4th grade teacher: “While that may explain, it does not excuse.”
that was Reagan, IIRC
Helped me with the anxiety I always had about loosing people, opportunities and such
(However, that's not universally applicable.)
- - - -
My dad said, over and over again until I got it:
A fool never learns.
A man learns from his mistakes.
The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
You can't avoid making mistakes, not completely, but you can avoid a lot. Stand on the shoulders of giants, eh?
- - - -
Last but first, Love
Love is our obligation, our responsibility, our duty; it is our right, our riches, our panacea and cornucopia; love answers all things. Even time itself falls before love.
Remember love, remember to love.
And then they finally get to it, work through it, look back years later, and realize the idea they sat on was far below what they were capable of once they finally worked through it.
Advice we should all follow more
"Josh, what's the worst that could happen? Someone will tell us to leave and we will."
This thinking, "what's the worst that could happen" has had a long profound impact on my approach to life and to risks in general. Always ask yourself in a situation of fear: what's the worst that could happen?
Try to be nice and helpful to others.
Nothing that you do or say will matter after a couple of hundred years.
It’s better to regret something you’ve done, than something you haven’t.
I don't think this is true at all.
It may never be written in history books but every person alive today has an unbroken string of “things done” that stretches back in time.
And even if you never had children, anything you did or said that resulted in someone else having children shook the pillars of history.
""" “This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith—or not faith—I don’t know what it is—but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.
“I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.” """
There have been many times in my life where I have reflected on past behavior and things I've done and have been disappointed in myself. Yet no matter how much I try to change certain things, there are certain aspects that are just fundamental to who I am a person and I can't change. The best I can do is keep pushing forward and trying to be the best person I can be.
I’ve watched another SEAL(?), Jocko Willink. He really charges you with “get up regardless, just do it”. And you get up and effing do it, but the next day comes and the game is over.
I start with head rotations, than some arm rotations and stretching, then torso rotations, then stretching the legs by doing lunges (I think they're called), then doing 2 sets of 25 squats with a very wide stance and also stretch my wrist for the last 5 squats of each set, then 10 squats with legs together, then stretching the legs and back by bending forward and reaching for my toes when standing, then some balance, standing on one leg and lifting the other backwards in the air and arms wide apart (this doesn't do anything, but I like improving balance in that stance).
Overall it takes like 3-5 minutes, sometimes after I do some crunches for some core strength and to get the heart pumping.
The squats are the hardest part, and require most motivation, but doing squats in the morning is really good for blood flow (to the brain especially).
I always do the stretches as soon as I wake up, after going to the bathroom but usually before washing my teeth.
Don't believe for one moment that 5 hours on Product Hunt or anywhere else for that matter represents a serious marketing effort.
If you want to run a business rather just create stuff, your work has only just begun. In the light of Facebook and other social media revelations, the idea of a truly disposable email address which means your entire life is not analysed and spammed to death has to be worth something.
You haven't told anyone about it though. And I mean you shout from the rooftops every day and everywhere you can think of. You market. People are not going to come looking for you. You have to start approaching influencers, be seen and be heard everywhere you think your potenial users might lurk.
And, by the way, everyone sees a million new ideas a day so you have to be consistent, appear to be permanent and appear to be solid. No-one is going to entrust communications with you if they think you are a small, one-man band with an idea and little else.
Time to start reading marketing articles and strategies and applying them.
And expect it to take time.
Added bit : I've just watched your video. No, I won't be using your service and nor will anyone else. I have no idea how good it is and I am not going to find out. And nor is anyone else.
Why not? Because you uploaded a silent, technical video. You have made the classic mistake of trying to show me how something works before I even know if I care. This is a technical video, not a selling one.
You need a voice.
You need to tell me what my problem is and make it resonate with me.
You need to tell me how to solve it.
You need to tell me it is simple.
You need to tell me what it costs.
You need to tell me to link right now to the place I can sign up.
You might need some other things but these are the basics.
You need to sell your idea to me, not explain how the software works. I do not give a damn about the bloody software until I give a damn about the bloody problem!
Tell me where I'm hurting, sympathise and then magic-kiss it better. You know - just like Mummy did when I was small!
The corollary is that you must choose to feel pain (pain of studying, pain of exercise, pain of rejection, pain of focus, pain of chance of failure, pain of being unsure) to get what is good in life.
So the Advice: Choose pain so that you can experience growth.
Rather than taking the advice that I need to focus on one thing or else I'm going to fail at life, I've come to realize that I can keep progressing on my "main thing" (in my case, tech), and continue to dive into whatever topics tickle my fancy without guilt. Right now it is energy and power, maybe next it'll be astronomy, and then accounting after that.
In the end it means my mind will be able to make more connections and I'm more "well read", and more importantly it means my enjoyment of life goes way up.
It seems this personality type isn't super common, though I imagine many of you here are the same way. So if you, like me, always felt guilty about these "phases" of interests, don't! Embrace it and you'll live a happier and more interesting life.
Another one would be to try and measure your success at something if what you want is measurable improvement, but try not to measurably improve everything, because you become hollow. Don't let "passion" for something overcome the needs that should be met by it, whether it be a lover or a company.
Likewise, don't do for an employer (and maybe any other entity) what they wouldn't do for you, don't think of your employer as anything more than that, and don't make sacrifices for them if you have no clear pathway and control over how you can be rewarded for it. Promises are bullshit.
Also, one that might just be for me, but I would share with someone else if they were interested, is to not bother trying to learn something unless you can close the feedback loop of practicing it. That means being able to deliberately allocate ongoing time to it and treat it like a hobby rather than just reading or just listening. I used to think that I could just read article after article and technical book after technical book, or listening to podcasts during every piece of downtime, but it more or less ended up being worthless and now I think of it as basically stupid. There has to be an output to match the input, and for you to allocate the time to that, it probably needs to be sufficiently fun or rewarding rather than arbitrary.
Lastly, building on that previous one, taking vacations away from the computer and work. Take the downtime, otherwise you'll be forced to, and you might as well enjoy it before burning out.
This piece of advice started me on the path to deciding to have children. I was fairly adamant about being childless. This advice was given to me by a friend and it made me slightly less sure. It didn't convince me straight away but it was a start and I've never forgotten it.
Completely changed my life in the end and much for the better.
You can be smart, selfish, hateful, and in general a negative value-add to society.
You can also genuinely care for people, have a sub-par IQ, and not “accomplish much” and make a huge impact on many lives.
As a corollary, if “all” you ever do is raise loving, empathetic children you’ve left the world a better place than you find it.
I'm not being glib when I say that it was the best decision I ever made and has improved my life immensely.
- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the U.S
Also, don't get all of your validation from other people, because it can be very inconsistent; instead, get your validation through things you are good at (like hobbies, skills, etc.)
And if something is required to make you happy, you are letting your happiness be controlled by others.
This is a double-edged sword, some say that you should be happy with what you already are and not base your happiness on what you can do. What do you do if something happens to you and you lose the ability to perform that certain skill? Does that mean you are constantly unhappy now?
Re-evaluate your opinions constantly. You won't come to the same conclusions you did 10 years ago.
Money is infinite in that you can earn more or get a second job or get a better paying job or whatever. (Obviously only to a point but stay with me).
Also: your time does have value or it should since it is limited.
What would you pay for an hour of your life "back"? Or an hour to do whatever you wanted?
The truly smart play is trading money for time.
I've been a freelancer for a while but there was a point when I got laid off from my full time job so I ramped up to make ends meet. And I was fortunate enough that I was basically able to work for myself full time...
But when you are doing that, especially in the early stage...like I know that if I burn a couple hours at my billing rate of $50 an hour trying to save a few dollarydoos on a TV by standing in line for a big sale, am I really saving that much money when I effectively paid $100 to stand in line for two hours, something I don't like doing anyway, instead of just paying a bit more and getting a TV right away and not having to do that?
Another example. Changing the oil on my car. Could I? I'm pretty sure I could. I know the process. I'd probably want to watch some YouTube videos and there's tools I'd need to pick up, but I could be a real manly man and change my own oil and not get screwed by the shop.
But...
Let's say it costs me $40 at Autozone for oil and filter.
Let's say it costs $80 at the shop. A real shop not a jiffy lube. PFFT THOSE GUYS ARE SCREWING YA JUST DO IT YOURSELF.
I'd save $40 doing it DIY.
Most people would be on their way to Autozone...but on the other hand, I am not a mechanic that does 20 of these a day. Between watching videos and trying to figure out where everything is and inevitably covering myself in oil and whatnot.
Let's say it takes me 2 hours and the shop 1 hour. Doesn't matter, I saved 40 bucks! Whadda ripoff!
Would you pay 40 bucks for an hour of your life back? Maybe you like tinkering on cars and thats legit. Satisfaction is another benefit.
But for me, I am effectively paying some other person $40 to get dirty and bang his knuckles and whatnot while I sit in the AC and watch cable and dick around on my phone (which I enjoy much more) AND a lot of places will check and top up your other fluids and top off your tires and do an inspection to see if anything else will need work, which I don't know how to do and obviously they know what they are looking for.
AND because the guy knows what he's doing, it's done faster.
So effectively, yes, I will absolutely pay 40 bucks to hang out and watch basic cable in the air conditioning and make sure my car is good to go and all my fluids are topped off and also I get a whole hour of my life for doing whatever I want.
Don't trade time for money. Trade money for time.
View flipped after that. Do your chores yourself as much as your time allows instead of jumping to pay someone to do it. There are other benefits not discussed here beside the time cost factor.
Give yourself the permission to burn say $25/week on lifestyle. It means you can splash out for the more expensive parking, snack or item without feeling like you have to shop around to go somewhere so you aren't "overcharged".
An example might be if you want a can of coke but the vendor in front of you is charging $2 whereas you know the convenience store 3 minutes walk away would have it for $1. Just buy the thing.
Adjust the $25/week to your income.
Same with more important stuff like brakes. It does take some knowledge but I’m more motivated to get it right than any given pro.
Plenty are working two or more jobs just to barely make it, if they even get to make it.
You're missing your opportunity cost. Would you be doing utility during that hour to make 40 bucks? If not then to maximize your profit to time then you want to do it yourself.
While I understand the point you're trying to make for people wandering by:
I've done my own oil, brakes, etc for as long as I remember. As long as you're not working on a supercar an oil change should take you less than an hour. Ideally inside of 30 minutes. 99.9% of vehicles are simple: place oil bucket under car, open oil cap on engine, gently loosen the oil pan bolt, drain oil. While the oil is draining you can get a second bucket and undo the filter. Reverse the process being careful to not strip the oil pan bolt, fill it up with the manufacturer recommended amount, and you're done. At least in America most AutoZones, Pep Boys, O'Reilly's, etc will take your used oil off your hands for free. As for tire inspection, fill up, etc you should also be doing this yourself. It's another 10 minute job with a $5 tool. I'm of the opinion every home should own an air compressor. It is one of the most universally useful things a person can have.
Why is this important? Oil shops are rife with fraud. The quality of your oil can dramatically influence the life of your car. I've had quick lube places rip me off so many times, leave parts off, etc. For what? I saved 30 minutes but gained another expense. Most of the time unless the shop is very reputable "premium" oils aren't actually royal purple. It's just the same crap they put in everyone else's car. By not paying dealer/etc premiums I save hundreds of dollars and get far better quality oil and service doing it myself. This is a skill I picked up being extremely broke before I got into tech and I've dedicated a small portion of my life to being able to fix (most of) my own issues. To the point I only show up to a shop when I need work that requires an engine crane or transmission lift (I've done transmission work myself before but its worth it to make it someone else's problem).
Do your own oil. You do it once or twice a year, you understand your vehicle better, and you get better oil and filters for the money. Moreover, the average tech connects an ODB-2 alarm checker to your car and then writes you an invoice. Cars are not difficult. If spending 2-3 hours a year is too time-expensive for you I'm not sure what to tell you. I just hope you don't run into a situation far from home where a tow truck is 6 hours away and understanding your car could get you home safe and fast.
I've noticed a few things:
- I experience pleasant, neutral and unpleasant feelings more intensely.
- I am better capable of not reacting to my feelings (I have more choice in it). This is both needed with pleasant and unpleasant feelings as both types of feelings can come from (un)wholesome places. E.g. pleasant/unwholesome: alcohol or watching YouTube for way too long. E.g. unpleasant/wholesome: you're noticing work is boring you at the moment. You realize that you're a bit tired and could use a nap in order to feel more sharp.
- I react more intuitively to people their body language, without realizing it much myself
In short: it makes me feel more alive (quality of life has gone up) and it makes me feel more at ease around people.
There's a reason I nicknamed myself mettamage. This is the reason. Meditation (metta meditation being one of them) has changed my life so much that it has become my pseudonym on HN.
Note: the practice is awesome. I'm not a fan of that they dive into Buddhist scripture that much. Fortunately, whenever they have their videos on, you can just meditate through it. More fortunately, they do mention at one of their last videos that the practice is what is important: understanding the theory that is unrelated to the practice is not important.
Examples of what I don't / do believe: I don't believe in water, fire, earth and air being the core elements of the world. I don't believe the Buddha was able to notice subatomic vibrations. However, I do think that the craving/aversion framework is a useful one. I do believe that meditation can teach you a thing or two about addiction and how to overcome it.
It’s a good warning that you make
-you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
My first reaction to that was thinking "No, some people are just annoying and clueless" but after a few days of pondering that I realized that me being dismissive would get in the way of proving him wrong.
Just a few days later the person I was complaining about did suggest a different way of doing something that I had been doing for years and that advice saved me a lot of time, which made me a lot more money, and was a big improvement over how I'd been doing it.
Once, when facing a great personal crisis, I found some wisdom that helped me reframe my worries and fears: "Why do you spend all your time worrying about the blizzard on top of the mountain? Go around the mountain."
Secondly, in grad school I was upset that other students appeared to be cheating during exams, to the point that I could hear messages pinging in the classroom. A friend told me, paraphrased: "You can't control what other people do. You'll just have to do well enough that it doesn't matter." I didn't want to hear it, but once it sunk in, he was right and accepting his advice was the best path forward.
The most important piece of advice I can give to any new parent is "You have between 6 to 10 years where your kid(s) actually wants to hang out with you - take advantage of it, you'll never get another chance"
Take everything with a grain of salt and prioritize the building of your own inner understanding of your situation. It's just like the scientific method: make a hypothesis, control vars, test, analyze and repeat. It takes time but you will arrive where you want to go.
I took him at his word and sort of made it a contest with myself if I could figure something out without asking somebody first even when asking somebody was clearly way easier.
It has served me very well in my career. It has caused me to learn things that nobody else knew. To figure out something without someone telling you, you kind of have to become an expert in whatever you're looking into. This is only served to boost my credibility in the eyes of my peers.
Wow. I’m not saying it was good advice for everyone but it changed my life. But, I run 2 different successful businesses, have an academic career and 3 kids. And I still have tons of side projects (which I love).
One that I could call ~practical is “there is no eternal friendship, only common interests”. And a related one is “never do business with friends and relatives”. I’ve seen enough lifes “changed” by not following these.
Cuts cleaning time and frequency
"Waste not, want not."
"What good shall I do this day?" - From Benjamin Franklin's daily schedule: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Benjamin...
- if you’re at your desk, it’s not your most important work.
- if you’re a contractor or consultant you’re delivering recommendations. Doesn’t matter what form it takes, it’s still just a recommendation. (And it likely matters little to the ongoing business relationship if they’re fully accepted/implemented or not)
- You are, and will always be, your biggest problem
At that time, I was part of an executive master program at a very prestigious university, it cost me a third of my yearly income and had a huge impact on my personal life and finances.
Reading that list made me realize in just a few seconds that I had been studying there for four years for a completely different reason than those around me. I felt heavily depressed first, then I realized it was actually possible to switch my expectations. I focused the last few months on building and strengthening connections, it completely changed my relationship with this university and the people there.
Money:
- You're poor? spend.
- You're middle class? manage.
- You're wealthy? invest.
- You're poor? quantity.
- You're middle class? quality.
- You're wealthy? presentation.
- You're poor? present.
- You're middle class? future.
- You're wealthy? tradition.
- You're poor? abstract.
- You're middle class? success and money.
- You're wealthy? connect.
- You're poor? matriarchal.
- You're middle class? patriarchal.
- You're wealthy? whoever owns the money.
- You're poor? relationships.
- You're middle class? achievements.
- You're wealthy? finances, social life.
- You're poor? casual.
- You're middle class? formal, to negotiate.
- You're wealthy? formal, to network.
- You're poor? inclusion.
- You're middle class? self-sufficiency.
- You're wealthy? exclusion.
- You're poor? be fun.
- You're middle class? be an achiever.
- You're wealthy? connect.
- You're poor? it's fate. You can't change it.
- You're middle class? your choices.
- You're wealthy? your expectations.
Dated movie stars and had total strangers lend me their car because of it. Opened up a world which I didn’t think existed.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
People who appear to be founts of knowledge and wisdom are often fools spreading harmful folk advice just to feed their self importance.
Not all things can be known, even with our flooded-by-evidence culture. But that doesn’t validate folklore.
𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐓𝐔𝐒
This advice came from a coworker who encouraged me to continue down a technical track, rather than switch to management too early.
I am now a manager and love it, but that advice led me to accumulate additional hands-on experience that has been tremendously valuable.
My advice: There is not a single correct way to live life. Everyone finds their own meaning in life and you shouldn't judge someone that found a different meaning than yourself.
— don’t trust anyone’s advice, nobody has ever been in your shoes, nobody really knows anything, and nobody really cares about you as deeply as you should care about yourself
So be brave to think for yourself, trust and learn from your own unique judgements
Breaking things down qualitatively into concepts is a good first step to speculating and hypothesizing about the details and full taxonomy when there are unknowns.
https://github.com/gizmore/anonymous-zen-book
1) If you don't know a world you can't talk about it
Don't let others who talk rubbish about you affect your life. Not everyone will like you and that's fine. They are not even "extras" in the movie that is your life.
Could Our Idea of Reality Be Totally Upside Down? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0_720pPXOg
From the brilliant book “Yes Man”, by Danny Wallace.
To me, the advice is more like "be open to new experiences / be willing to take a chance on the unknown". That doesn't mean you should always say yes to everyone because you're afraid of what they might think of you / might not like you / you owe them anything / etc.
As an example, a work friend of mine invited me to a house party once at their shared house, there were a lot of people going but I didn’t know any of them except her. My instinctive reaction was to say “thanks, but no thanks”, but I decided to take a gamble and say yes.
I ended up having a really good evening, and I met some really great people who I now consider to be friends of my own. All because I took a gamble and said yes to something I’d typically say no to.
Most people are wrong about most things and most of their advice is awful.
Most people aren’t that great at their jobs. They’re doing enough to get by but not much more.
Life lesson from 4 hour work week, news just isn't an important thing to keep track of, if something is really important, you'll hear about it eventually.
Sleep is also a very good canary.
What happens internally is entirely in your control.
Your experience of life is entirely internal.
Therefore, your experience of life is entirely in your control.
Try and look at things from other person's perspective to understand their motivation.
Same as don't complain about breaking eggs when you're making an omelette.
As a teenager and twenty-something I just ate everything, all the time, and often far too much. I was thin so there was no issue. But one day I started to put the weight on, not much but it was there. Then I need some medication for something unrelated and the weight really went on.
Changing my eating habits was hard. I was so used to eating all the time that not eating for just two hours and I felt hungry when clearly I wasn't I was just used to it.
I spoke to my doctor who referred me to a specialist who instructed me to do time restricted eating for two months. It changed my relationship with food totally. I've never been one to sit and enjoy some fancy meal at a posh restaurant. I am a very basic person when it comes to food. But I ate too much and often very shitty food.
Restricting when I could eat was very hard for the first two-ish weeks but after that it was like flipping a switch. I didn't feel hungry anymore and when I sat to eat I ate normal amounts, not going back for a third or forth helping.
I am now down to a healthy weight, I almost never feel hungry (even after not eating for 20 hours I don't feel hungry I just know I should eat something) and I have more mental and physical energy than I have had for at least a decade. I am in my late 30s now and honestly wish I had started doing this years ago.
I don't know nor really care about the science behind it, sometimes ignorance is bliss and I actively avoid reading about "intermittent fasting" and such because there is a little industry popped up around it in recent years wanting to make money of it selling "exceptions" and such. As my doctor put it "you just don't eat between this time and this time, it isn't rocket science".
If you do try it I suggest you ignore all of the "science" online when you research it. You can have water, tea, and coffee (without milk) during your restricted eating window. You don't even need a fancy app just have a fixed start and end time and you're good to go, although you may find one helpful for the first month or so. After a while it became automatic for me so I don't bother with timers anymore.
It works for some and not for others like many things in life. If you need to lose weight I suggest you try it after having some blood work done to ensure you can do it safely. If it works awesome, if not then seek further guidance.
Don't start trying to find exceptions like diet soda (honestly that shit ain't good for you, cut it out of your life anyway with the exception of a glass of coke/pepsi when you go out for some fast food) or "bullet coffee". Just give it two weeks of water/tea/coffee and see how you get on.
But don't feel bad if it isn't for you.
I usually do this every day but if I am going out for a meal one evening I just give myself a day off, it isn't a big deal. I can make it up the next day if I wish or just forget about it that one day. I don't go out for meals late very often so it isn't something I worry about.
So often I hear people say "oh I couldn't do that, it would wreck my social life!". Honestly it has never been an issue for me. Just the other week I went out for a nice meal with some friends until around 3am so just decided not to bother fasting that (next) day. It isn't like "falling off the wagon". You just start again the next day and continue.
I don't calorie count per day but over a week. If I do go out and consume a bigger than normal meal I automatically adjust what I eat the rest of the week to keep my weekly calorie consumption roughly the same.
Like I said it isn't rocket science and I feel people really over think time restricted eating mostly because of all the crap in the media about it in recent years.
1: In my early 20s, I worked as a junior sysadmin during the mid 90s. My manager sent me to a interpersonal skills course after telling me that people thought I was basically a jerk. That shocked me because of course who thinks that about themselves? But I reacted by resolving to be nicer to people, and the course I took introduced me to thinking about how others perceive me and how their inner worlds are vastly different to my own. As an introverted and neglected child, I hadn't been taught many lessons that I needed to learn. I grew up long before social media, so I escaped its toxic influence.
You need people who will call you out and tell you to improve, and more importantly teach you how to improve.
2: I moved out and escaped my mother and her stifling negativity. By striking out on my own, however uncomfortable I was, made me grow. This one isn't very easy these days, I was privileged to live in a time where it was pretty easy compared to today. Even if they love you, your parents/guardians/friends/hometown/job may be subconsciously holding you back.
You have to grow beyond your childhood.
3: After being told I lacked interpersonal skills, I got interested in just what those skills were. I read a lot of books on the subject, but these stood out to me: Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, How to Practice by The Dalai Lama, and Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. You have to find your own lessons from these books, but what I took away from them was that you can choose your reaction to situations, that you're often controlled by your amygdala's fight/flight/fuck/food reactions and you have to be able to recognize that and act accordingly.
You have to be aware of why you think and feel things, and that you can control your reactions to those things.
4: I spent time at parties, going out to the pub, having fun with people in real life. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, so it takes a party to raise an adult.
Learning to be an adult is best taught by being physically around other adults.
5: Knowing that I wanted to be a good person, to try to treat other people with respect. Helping people without the expectation of anything in return is a wonderful feeling that I deeply enjoy. This leads into all sorts of things, like leadership is serving others, not controlling them. That being cut off on a road is just something that happens.
Treat others with kindness.
6: Learning that everyone else in the world has their own complex set of wants and needs, that most people are just trying to live their lives with a minimum of fuss. That you yourself are just one of billions doing just the same as everyone else.
You are not the main character.
Those situations, books, changes all set me on a path that I'm still working at today 25 years later. I was recently described by some coworkers as Ihsan, previously I've been referred to as a Mensch. Those moments make life precious to me :)
Goes to show how little self-awareness matters relative to power held I guess
https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1585804674170355712/ph...
> Frankly, I hate doing mgmt stuff. I kinda don't think anyone should be the boss of anyone. But I love helping solve technical/product design problems.
What I hear is that he doesn’t like playing the boss. And that he would very much prefer a company to work like interconnected computers in a network, with no hierarchy. He aspires to having engineering decisions solved on the basis of first principles, not on the basis of social hierarchy. The part where he deems management necessary, however, is making sure that all the vectors inside a company are aligned towards a single goal. Because he knows from experience that, without that, a company will die. so he does that out of necessity. But deep in his heart, he would really prefer to just do the work of an engineer. I mean, to me, that very much fits in with his INTJ personality type.
There’s nothing necessary about subjecting people to boss-control and even if he knows that, it’s more favorable to him personally. It’s a myth that doesn’t fit the evidence that it’s the only way to productively structure society/orgs at scale
I remember Graeber making the point that some of the indigenous cultures of North America differed from us in that wealth did never mean power over other people. Whereas, in our society, many people seek wealth precisely as a means to that end. That’s what your quote reminded me of, and it seems to me that Elon Musk, even though he’s the richest person on earth, actually cares surprisingly little about power over people, and that that’s a thing many people don’t “get” about him.