What's the best advice you actually use? | Hacker News Reader

What's the best advice you actually use?

19 pointsjkush31 comments

For me it was in a Paul Graham essay, the title of which escapes me now. The advice was simple: if you have a hard time deciding whether to do one thing or the other, always choose the harder thing. That way, you rule out being lazy.

I can't tell you how many times I've used that piece of advice and seen the benefits.

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So I once watched this nutty 70's film series on time management - 43 Folders retro. It was actually pretty good if you could get past the awful fashion. The host, a professor in horn-rimmed glasses and a bowtie, had a piece of advice I found surprising at first. It puts a different spin on doing hard things and I've found it very useful.

He said if something is truly hard to do, put it off as long as possible. But if something is merely distasteful, do it as soon as possible.

The rationale is that if something is truly hard to do, you can spend time thinking about it, researching it, gathering resources and asking others about it while doing other necessary things. Oftentimes, there will be a way to make the hard thing easier or even unnecessary.

But if something is more distasteful than hard-to-do, you need to do it right away. It's worse to put off distasteful things than just get them over with.

Anyway, that bit of wisdom has worked for me. In programming specifically, I also endorse David Heinemeier Hansson's advice: "If something is too hard it means that you're not cheating enough."

Probably to avoid premature optimization. Getting a version 1 done quickly and then iterating works in so many fields besides hacking.

If you are trying to decide between two things, a good trick is to flip a coin. Assign one choice to heads and the other to tails. You'll find yourself subtly "hoping" for one choice over the other. Decision made.

"if you have a hard time deciding whether to do one thing or the other, always choose the harder thing. That way, you rule out being lazy."

This has always made me uncomfortable. There is no inherent value in doing hard things. The basic argument is that doing hard things prevents you from doing easy things only because they are easy.

However, this strikes me as being very similar to the Monty Hall paradox. Let's say you have a billion options to choose from. To expect that the hardest option would be your best bet would be absurd. So why should it work any better for choosing between two options?

There is a lot of good advice I use constantly that has produced great benefits for me over the years. Here is probably the best:

Get enough sleep.

Get enough sunlight.

Maintain a positive attitude.

Know a little about a lot.

Do not pigeonhole people.

Anger is counterproductive.

Keep stress to a minimum.

Exercise regularly.

Eat healthy.

Persistence overcomes a lot.

You can't control everything.

People don't remember much.

A tie, actually best used in conjunction:

"Practice the fundamentals every day". --not sure, but I got it from Jamie Andreas I think (guitar guru).

"The doer alone learneth." --Machiavelli

A few that come to mind:

"Never ever think of yourself as a victim, because once you've done that, you've lost." - One of the Amherst College trustees, on being the first (?) female vice-president at Morgan Stanley

"Control yourself, because you can't control others" - Sunir Shah, possibly quoted from some other source.

"Perfect is the enemy of good enough" - C2 Wiki

"Good enough is the enemy of at all" - Paul Buchheit

'If you continue to do what you do, you will continue to get what you get' -- Anon, Chinese Proverb

& a rather simple one from my Dad:

hard hard hard work!

Don't criticize, condemn or complain. Give honest and sincere appreciation. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Dale Carnegie

"The pencil is mightier than the pen." -Robert Pirsig on the importance of revision

Interesting axiom :)

You might be interested in _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ by Pirsig. I believe it's the source of the quotation. It's a philosophical book about "quality"-- that which makes some things "better" than others. Beware it's a rather tough read; I started it three times before realizing it wasn't a book I could read before bed but rather one I needed to read just after waking up.

All receive advice. Only the wise profit from it. --Syrus

Good advice I got from my mentor: "Learn to suffer fools elegantly and silently".

What's the name of your mentor?

"You don't know anything, so shut up and listen."

Choosing to do the harder thing may not always be productive or practical. If I think it will take me 3 years of research to (maybe) solve a problem and bring a product to market, and I know another problem I can probably solve in 6 months with the same potential financial reward, which one should I choose?

Start the three-month project. In a year, there will be ten different companies competing over the shorter-term project, and you'll be ahead of everyone on the hard problem.

The advice wasn't "always choose the harder thing". Obviously that's not correct, even generally speaking.

Note the part where you're supposed to do this _when you have a hard time deciding_.

always wear clean underwear. always.

Heh. That's not really advice samb, that's something you just do.

debatable.

Never wake a sleeping child. It's never worth it.

In the long run, never half-ass anything.

life is too complex for one advice

Best advice: Not to take one ;)

Heh, another one along that vein: "Overgeneralization + limited life experience = Advice" -- Paul Buchheit

Perfection is difficult

"Wakey wakey!"

There's this:

http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=101&q=40

Wow, i love that site. So sublime.

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