What should you do every day to improve your life? | Hacker News Reader

What should you do every day to improve your life?

bakadesuyo.com

47 pointsWump42 comments

At the risk of sounding too harsh, I'll admit that I was expecting some kind of groundbreaking insight on improving my life. Instead, all I got was the same generic "exercise" and "laugh more" bullshit. Gosh, perhaps I should just tickle myself!

At the abstract level, I find it a bit depressing that the blogosphere seems to be chock full of people who regurgitate common knowledge and attempt to present it as something new. There seems to be very few people who have unique insights worth following and sharing.

My rule with my personal blog has always been: don't write it if it is not new, original, or at least somewhat interesting. This is perhaps why I stopped doing it. :P

Do you exercise daily? Do you take walks in nature? Do you keep a gratitude journal? Do you meditate?

Because if there is a single one of these that you don't do, maybe the problem is that you don't execute on the good advice already around you.

No, I think what the parent is expressing is the same thing that happens when someone gets the flu. They often say "Get rest and drink plenty of fluids." and my thoughts were always "Really? I was going to go dehydrate myself and lift weights. Thank goodness I ran into you..."

It is so common at this point, I"m not sure it needs repeated by yet another blog. I can kinda see the parent's point in that regard.

Am I the only one who almost literally vomits when I hear the phrase, "gratitude journal"?

Maybe it is just me, and I'm some kind of happiness hating troll (I really don't think so, though!) but there's a certain point at which I feel like a person keeping gratitude journal is trying to stave off a deeper and more problematic depression that ought to honestly be addressed with more serious activities besides writing down what you're grateful for every day.

I never heard of the concept until a few moments ago and I already know that I don't like it.

EDIT: Now I reflected why I didn't like it. And it is the word gratitude. Granted, I am not a native English speaker but Wikipedia tells me this: "Gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness, or appreciation is a feeling or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. " In other words, it implies that there is someone in the other end of a happy feeling to be feel thankful to. And sometimes there is, but being grateful for nice weather, hearing birds singing or being able to walk (not being disabled) implies to me that there is someone "larger" (read a God) out there to be grateful to. And that does not sit well with me. For example, I can be happy to be in good health, but that does not imply that gratitude goes with it.

Spot on analysis.

I think it would be interesting to have a gratitude journal in which gratitude to myself is copiously recorded. e.g. "I'm really grateful that I had the dedication to get up early this morning so that I could make this day more useful to myself."

Meh. I'm not religious but I feel grateful and thankful for precious time I get to spend with my kids, for beautiful weather, etc. That doesn't mean I'm grateful to anyone or anything in particular.

Honestly, some people are so militantly anti-religion that they get up in arms (so to speak) at anything that could even be construed as having religious connotations.

I happen to like Eric Barker's work, so I'm going to defend it. Judging by your response, you just read the subheadings and not the supporting text that accompanied them. If you did, you'd see links to the research that supports these "generic" pieces of advice.

It's not enough to know that exercising and laughter will improve your health, but you need to know why--the stuff that Barker puts on his site or on Wired is research-based. It isn't just garbage from link bait sites like pickthebrain.com.

Why do I need to know why laughter improves my health? This is a serious question. Do people laugh because humor helps cope with stress, which leads to better immune systems, reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, less pain during dental work and a longer life? Or do they laugh because they find something funny? I would posit that there is not a single person who read that blog post and thought "gee, I should laugh more often because it has all these health benefits!"

Perhaps that's the problem with the post in general: it is not practical. For example, instead of (or in addition to) saying that exercise is good for you, it could say "here are some exercise programs for beginners" and post links to P90X or Couch-to-5K. That way, the post could become a useful resource for people who actually want to improve their life, rather than a regurgitation of commonly-known facts.

Having an explanation of why helps our bullshit detector, and lets us re-evaluate claims if the explanation's basis falters later. If someone says, "X is bad for you because of Y", that may sound plausible. If they say that "Study Z shows that X causes Y, so don't do X", it's VERY much more plausible.

More importantly, if study Z turns out to be a hoax, we can look at the claims that used that as their basis and re-evaluate them.

You make a pretty good point about ways to make the blog posts more useful, though.

    Why do I need to know why laughter improves my health?

Because otherwise someone else on HN will say: "citation needed!"

As another commenter says, it helps the bullshit detector. Why know why anything works? If we just follow advice blindly, it may do us no good.

Your line of questioning is all wrong. You said, "I would posit that there is not a single person who read that blog post and thought 'gee, I should laugh more often because it has all these health benefits!'"

Therein lies the flaw in your thinking. You don't read something like this and think you should laugh more just for the sake of laughing and its health benefits. Instead, you'd read something like that, understand WHY laughter has those benefits, and then make an effort to put yourself in situations where you'd be more relaxed and open to laughter, like hanging out with funny friends or taking a date to a comedy club.

In fact, you answered your own question: Why do we need to know why laughter improves health? Is it because laughter helps cope with stress?

BOOM. You answered your question.

Maybe that's one of the reasons, but if you dig deeper, maybe there are more. Then once you begin to understand how and why certain behaviors and situations affect our lives, you can adjust accordingly. Maybe you don't need to laugh all the time if you understand that laughter is primarily a coping or stress-reduction mechanism. Maybe you can go do other activities that have the same effects.

You need to think about this stuff differently.

My rule with criticism is that if it doesn't work to improve the original, it's a waste of your time, my time, and the author's time. :p

What groundbreaking insights would you provide? It's somewhat obvious which points you'd remove; with what would you replace them?

See my response to Cl4rity.

Point taken, I'll stop wasting my time and your time.

"same generic "exercise" and "laugh more""

Sure this is a no-shit sherlock kind of moment. But how many of us are actually doing the same generic "exercise" and "laugh more" and make conscious effort to do it well ? It is hard and always worth stressing.

Welcome to the Internet!

It has increased the speed and frequency at which we share ideas, almost all of them unoriginal.

Ironically, you came to Hacker News to get ideas, which is in itself a giant arena for everyone to discover things that others have already discovered.

If you're looking for newness and originality, you should probably unplug.

I come to HN mostly for the discussions. In fact in most cases I read the discussion first to decide whether the article posted is worth reading in the first place. So the purpose of my comment was to warn others who do the same not to waste their time. :)

Well in that case, perhaps you are consuming a slightly larger helping of original thought.

here's a list that i've compiled over the years.

Daily Habits:

get rid of idle internet time

morning self reflection: what structual and systemic things can be improved today (improve one of the systems)

mental excercise: pick a subject, try to come up with 40 ideas.

go over goals

learn 1 thing before work (could be done in 15 min of reading)

throught the day, stop and classify thoughts as "useful" , "not useful"

do the hardest thing first.. before breakfast..

step out of the comfort zone at least once. (challenge promotes growth)

work on verbal communication (5-15 min practice)

get at least one thing done and off the TODO list

1 HR of quality reading

while being at work, WORK (be results oriented)

spend some time to clear mind clutter and BE IN THE PRESENT

short term sacrifices for long term rewards (expenses, nutrition, excercise)

plan out next day in advance (next week, month)

before taking any action (or not taking action) project forward (30 seconds, 5 minutes, day, year, 30 years) would you be better off with different choice.

recharge emotional energy

Many of these are excellent. Very in line with proven-to-work CBT strategies.

It's exhausting just reading this.

Obviously since you're here wasting time typing out long comments you don't take your own advice.

copy / paste my man! big time saver. unfortunately i can't do anything about having wasted your time. sorry

I don'r profess to performing a litany of self help routines.

If you take the time to read a stupid blog post about the usual pathways to happiness, then take the time to comment on hn, even if you are copy/pasting from some reservoir you keep of stock comments, you're still wasting time on the internet as you just professed not to. I'm sorry if it offends, but the hypocrisy is almost as distasteful as the blog post we're all commenting on.

HN can actually be a really great resource for learning, inspiration, comraderie, etc. And that includes actually contributing to the discussion, as SonicSoul was.

so, initially you complained about my comment being too long, and too "exhausting" to read. now you're complaining that i should have added more comments.. troll much?

and i don't consider HN as wasting time.

How do you work on verbal communicaton?

English is my 2nd language so a lot of it is American English pronunciation exercises. I imagine native speakers would do something similar in the form of tongue twisters (the kind of thing anchors do to warm up). Or if you got that down, practice the Australian accent. Can never go wrong at parties :)

I think the best reason to laugh is: you're laughing. You're exposed to something funny. Humans connect over laughter and funny things. How do you build your sense of humor if you aren't laughing?

I had a roommate last year that moved to Austin from Iraq. He was self-conscious and had trouble socializing. I introduced him to some of my favorite American TV comedies like "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". The transformation in his sense of humor was incredible.

One of my favorite things to do before a date is to watch something that makes me laugh. Totally changes my mood.

I find laughing difficult. Not because I don't have a sense of humour, I get jokes but I very rarely find something funny enough that I can't help but laugh out loud.

I'm not sure if I've ever laughed out loud at a sitcom, even ones that I enjoy. The same for stand up comedy, the rest of the room can be in stitches but my expression rarely changes beyond a slight grin.

This can sometimes be awkward when somebody is telling me an anecdote that is intended to be humorous, because I always end up feeling like I should force out a fake laugh.

I personally tend to have a lot of underlying "social abnormality," including being a chronic grouch, but not laughing at stuff is actually not a problem I have, surprisingly enough.

Do you think this is related to some other aspect(s) of your personality? If so, what? (if you don't mind sharing)

I really believe that expressing gratitude every day has a positive effect, so much so that I made a clojure-based site, http://gratefulplace.com/ (and wrote about the code at http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/programming/dissecting-g...).

For the past year I've spent a few minutes every morning thinking about what I'm grateful for and it's had a big positive influence on my life. I'm definitely happier.

I agree with most of the commentators below (especially enraged_camel)... I mean did the blogger put any actual thought into writing this post or did they just copy paste stuff that umpteen other blogs have regurgitated over and over a million times ?

I exercise regularly and it definitely helps me in other areas of my life but I wont just advise "exercise daily" as the solution to anyone and everyone who has any questions about getting better.

What has worked for me so far is to set just 1 concrete goal for the year or 6 months and break it down into the smallest possible pieces and act on it daily.

What doesnt work... 1. Setting too many goals... I mean cmon are you going to start mediating, execising, going out in the nature, maintain a gratitude journal daily ? Sure maybe for 3 days..but once the novelty/willpower wears off, you will be back to square one...

2. All or nothing... Either you exercise daily or you quit..All of us get trapped into the perfection trap and end up doing nothing.. I would rather exercise/meditate/scratch-my-ass 2-3 times a week until THAT becomes a habit.

3. Giving up at the first sign of failure and blaming yourself... Too many people say to themselves "Oh I went on a diet but I ate that cookie..I am a failure... might as well eat the entire box and start afresh from tomorrow"/ "I just dont have the discipline, I am giving up".. Know that you will fail a few times before you get the hang of it..which goes back to #2...dont focus on perfection, focus on progress.

That's it... Just 1 goal to be broken into smallest possible pieces...something you can act on daily...or perhaps a few times a week...

This seems like a great excuse to pimp my startup! http://Beeminder.com is a goal-tracking tool where you have to keep all your datapoints on a "yellow brick road" to your goal or we charge you (actual money). It's less perverse than it sounds though -- you can think of it as a fee for a service that happens to be waived if you never actually needed its kick in the pants.

It's perfect for things you want to commit to doing daily. In fact, it's all about that, as opposed to StickK which is not so data-oriented and just has weekly reports.

Our litmus test for whether you should beemind things like in TFA is:

    1. How certain are you that you *want* to do this?
    2. How certain are you that you *can* do this?
    3. How certain are you that you *will* do this?

If your answers are "absolutely", "definitely", and "given historical evidence, not entirely" then you'll probably think Beeminder is super great.

Sounds like the people in this discussion need to do some exercise, have more sex and laugh a bit more.

Preferably at the same time.

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Am I the only one who's turned off by this number? I understand that's what you're supposed to do and doing this is a nice way to get a bump on your traffic but being bombarded by the links just gives me the feeling that the entire content is there to do just that, rather than conveying any useful information.

I would put writing right up there too. It forces you to think creatively and/or analytically and you become a better communicator. Communication can not be underrated as a key to successful relationships.

Exercise 30 minutes.

Spend at least 15 minutes journaling the events of the day.

Spend at least 15 minutes planning out your schedule and goals for the next day.

Punch a velociraptor in the jaw.*

Each some greens.

*Optional

Read Hacker News... Someone had to say it :-)

eat more goji berries </sarcasm>

Spend less time on social news sites.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com