[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
Just curious. I personally have nothing in particular yet,
wondering if others do.
Author : NayamAmarshe
Score : 236 points
Date : 2022-10-29 08:13 UTC (14 hours ago)
| javajosh wrote:
| My mother told me to not care what other people thought. She also
| told me that words can't really hurt people ("sticks and
| stones..."). She also believed its "mean" to have any preference
| about people, calling it a version of "keeping score". In fact,
| "keeping score" was one of the worst things you could be accused
| of in my household.
|
| 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!
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Fascinating. I'm finishing up "Art of Possibility" by R and B
| Zander. They make a case for not keeping score, and for
| creating - and believing in - a construct beyond traditional
| bounds. And then walk through examples.
|
| I'm not doing it justice. And yes, it's a bit abstract. But it
| might be worth your time.
| maegul wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| jemmyw wrote:
| To be fair to your mother, this particular advice and view was
| rampant when I grew up in the 80s/90s. My experience was that
| this is quite backwards. Physical altercations at school didn't
| hurt that much, but the name calling, social shunning and
| constant verbal put down was very painful and has affected my
| whole life.
| carabiner wrote:
| It's incredible how common the "it's just words" refrain is
| on HN. Wars happen over words. Marriages and divorces too.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'd agree. I was hurt by bullying enough that if I had ever
| made it big I would have found the most outrageous bullying
| case I could find and try to sue a school district out of
| existence? Maybe if teachers thought they could lose their
| pension maybe they would put a stop to bullying.
| tb_technical wrote:
| I'm sorry that happened to you - I was bullied early in
| life too, and it's horrible.
|
| 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.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Suing to threaten the pensions of underpaid teachers.
| Makin' a difference in the world.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Does raise an interesting question, though: Is it the
| teachers' or the parents' responsibility to teach manners
| to a child? Isn't this something that you'd pick up at
| home first, before ever stepping a foot into an
| institutionalized pedagogical setting?
|
| 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..."
| gabereiser wrote:
| 100% the parents... teachers can influence but it's the
| parents legal responsibility to not raise a monster.
| blooalien wrote:
| Legal, ethical, and moral responsibility...
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's schools responsibility to ensure safety.
|
| 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.
| kodah wrote:
| Eh, look at PaulHoule's statement with some empathy.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| gabereiser wrote:
| "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will hurt for
| life" is how I used to say it.
|
| Never say anything that couldn't stand as the last thing you
| say to someone. You're words matter more than you realize.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| I mean words only hurt if you let them in so that's why we
| think of things this way.
|
| 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.
| booboofixer wrote:
| Something to consider, as more and more people say things
| to you, you start to understand the different ways in
| which people are terrible, which isn't all that bad
| because nobody is perfect. But then you start to
| understand the ways in which all people are flawed,
| that's when you really lose faith in humanity. So words
| might not hurt, but they offer more and more reasons to
| disengage, not just from terrible people, but from
| otherwise "normal, friendly, would-never-commit-a-crime
| people"
| qorrect wrote:
| > So words might not hurt, but they offer more and more
| reasons to disengage, not just from terrible people, but
| from otherwise "normal, friendly, would-never-commit-a-
| crime people"
|
| Oof that hit home.
| aeternum wrote:
| Most people have never come anywhere close to being beat
| sufficiently to have a bone broken. I guarantee you words
| come nothing close to that experience.
|
| Being beat to that extent can cause both physical and
| emotional pain for life.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Not dismissing physical abuse at all. That's not a stick,
| nor a stone. I've had numerous bones broken. Some because
| of me. Some because of others. Some from my parents. One
| from my child (technically my fault).
|
| Both forms of abuse hurt. When the abuse goes on for a
| long time it feels like it takes 10x as long to heal.
| aeternum wrote:
| The rhyme is about physical abuse though, it's not like
| accidentally falling into a pile of sticks and stones was
| a frequent occurrence.
| bergenty wrote:
| Fists fights are great. Quick resolution of said problem and
| emotions. One of my best friends over the last few decades
| was a person I hated till we physically fought each other in
| our 20s.
|
| 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.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Those aren't the only options.
|
| 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
| roenxi wrote:
| I have some similar stories. The issue of generic advice is it
| assumes a social context or a specific mistake that may not be
| relevant.
|
| 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.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I had to re-read the post, because I misunderstood the
| opening statement.
|
| <<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.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| "Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can break
| hearts"
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Not to nitpick, but the words have no value. The value comes
| from what you or me assign to them. Certainly there are
| things in your past (or mine) that we heard and effectively
| ignored. But if heard again we'd laugh or cry.
|
| 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.
| javajosh wrote:
| Your comment is very vague. Words cause an involuntary
| reaction that cannot be turned off. You cannot stop
| understanding English at will. You cannot stop being hurt
| if you're rejected at will. In that sense the statement
| "words don't hurt" is simply false, and contradicts the
| direct lived experience of every human on earth (except
| those who train to not let words get to them, such as
| lawyers and politicians).
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > Not to nitpick, but the words have no value. The value
| comes from what you or me assign to them.
|
| 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 :-)
| kortilla wrote:
| Libel cases aren't about having your feelings hurt, it's
| about reputation damage. Internal vs external.
| annyeonghada wrote:
| Completely disagree. The "heaviness" of an insult is
| determined by various factors: how much you value the
| person holding that opinion, how much you want to be
| accepted, how many rejections you got through... We are not
| robots that can automatically choose to not care: in the
| past I was in the stoic camp, red Epictetus, Marcus
| Aurelius, Seneca and so on but now I recognize that that
| philosophy brought me lots of pain: even if I cannot
| control something, like others opinion, it doesn't mean
| that I should not try to change it. Humanity get by by
| dreaming of something better: being through religion,
| riches, wisdom and so on; stoicism (and in part meditation)
| destroyed that impulse to improve.
| GoldenMonkey wrote:
| I don't think stoicism was applied correctly.
|
| 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.
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| I would put it differently.
|
| 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.
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| I'm no philosopher but my understanding is the stoics
| didn't simply choose not to care, they were selective
| about what they cared about.
|
| 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?
| javajosh wrote:
| The insult is a signal that something is wrong in the
| world, and may require effort and attention, even if you
| aren't suffering because of the insult.
|
| 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.)
|
| 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNkpIDBtC2c
| jazzyk wrote:
| Words can break hearts when they come from a loved one, or
| someone you look up to.
|
| Why would what some random person says break your heart?
| wodenokoto wrote:
| It's just a funny twist on a well known saying.
|
| I think you are taking "heart" too narrowly.
|
| School and work place bullying can definitely hurt you even
| if it is "just words".
| solveit wrote:
| Because you're fourteen, those randos are your peer group,
| and you're stuck with them all day. Also, you're fourteen
| so you haven't quite figured out whose opinions should be
| important to you, and also you're wildly insecure about
| your position in your world.
| jazzyk wrote:
| Life is not fair and not a bed of roses, never will be.
|
| 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.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm frankly not a fan of hyperstitious social pessimism.
| Everyone needs to understand that this isn't knowledge,
| it's justification.
|
| 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.
| elboru wrote:
| Funny enough I haven't encountered bigger a-holes than
| the bullies in my childhood.
| akulbe wrote:
| I think your mother's advice was well-meaning, for sure. I
| would qualify it as follows:
|
| 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.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| > You shouldn't care what _most_ people think of you. Ones
| that matter: your boss, your spouse, (if you are religious)
| your Maker.
|
| 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.
| solardev wrote:
| Not that I disagree with you, but what does "keeping score"
| actually mean? I don't understand how it's related to being
| mean or having "preferences" about people...
| travisjungroth wrote:
| My own interpretation: this person said something negative
| about me. I now like them less and don't want to spend time
| with them. That is not okay, because I'm keeping score
| (remembering their past actions and using it to decide future
| outcomes) and I'm preferring not to spend time with them.
|
| 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.
| solardev wrote:
| Oh yikes. Yeah I can see how that would be horrible
| advice...
| nkrisc wrote:
| Not caring what others think doesn't mean you can't "fit in."
| Of course it sure doesn't sound like that's what she meant, but
| it's still solid advice, I think.
|
| 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.
| borroka wrote:
| "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.
|
| 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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It was also advice to Feynman from his wife, "What do you
| care what other people think?" :-)
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| I think this should also not be seen as free-reign to be an
| asshole. I live by a similar creed, but it is more nuanced.
|
| 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.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| > Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those
| who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia: dispensing it is
| a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off,
| painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than
| it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen.
|
| 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.
| woleium wrote:
| Baz Lurman!
| blooalien wrote:
| Also, advice that works perfectly well for one individual can
| (for various possible reasons) turn out horrifically bad for
| some other individual person. Some of the best advice I ever
| got was from my gran'pa; "Take the advice of others with a
| grain of salt..." ;~)
| jmull wrote:
| Context matters. I don't think it's a good idea to treat advice
| as if it's given as a statement of absolute truth.
| jemmyw wrote:
| After you've been lying or sitting and you get up and go for a
| wee, once done press up just behind your balls. Oftentimes that
| pushes out a big drip that was otherwise going to come out later
| once you had your pants done up.
|
| 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.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > After you've been lying or sitting and you get up and go for
| a wee, once done press up just behind your balls.
|
| 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... voila! 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.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The "I don't know" advice is great, and has done the most to
| enhance my technical credibility of anything. If you admit
| freely what you know and don't know, it helps people believe
| that you do know. By contrast, people who are afraid of
| admitting that they don't know something are always treated
| with skepticism.
|
| 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.
| Vedor wrote:
| Personally I say "I don't know" when I don't know.
|
| 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.
| borroka wrote:
| The advice "I don't know" sounds good, but without further
| qualification it just sounds good.
|
| 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.
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| The peeing advice is gold! One day I just discovered that on my
| own and it changed everything.
| curiousgal wrote:
| No pun intended?
| nkrisc wrote:
| I'm going to go try this. If true, I won't need my Calico Cut
| Pants anymore.
| erybodyknows wrote:
| You gotta give.
|
| https://getcalicocutpants.com/
| code_runner wrote:
| But did you give?
| agentwiggles wrote:
| I was in a fraternity in college. Part of the pledging process
| was learning all kinds of information about the fraternity, its
| history and philosophy, etc. One of our "rituals" for pledges
| involved being put into a situation where you would be asked
| questions you didn't know the answers to. It was a high
| pressure thing, and since you'd been memorizing all this stuff
| and being tested on it, you _really_ wanted to be able to
| answer these questions.
|
| 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!
| typingmonkey wrote:
| In germany it is called the holy-johannes-grasp.
| oarfish wrote:
| Is that a regional thing? Never heard of this term.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| I think it's a joke on long German compound words. Your
| response makes it funnier... German jokes are no laughing
| matter!
| bmn__ wrote:
| What you have been told by mainstream media and society about the
| topics of romantic relationships, sexual attraction and the like
| between male and female humans is mostly a lie.
|
| Advice is: swallow the appropriately coloured pill and wake up in
| the real world.
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| - if it has a deadline, it's not your most important work.
|
| - 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
| shaftoe444 wrote:
| Don't wait for permission.
| orzig wrote:
| The value of advice comes from arriving at the right moment to
| the right person, not some platonic, universal "goodness".
|
| 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
| solanav wrote:
| I've heard a similar story about a young man that wanting to
| become a monk, went to the monastery and one of the old monks
| there told him: "Go get a doctorate, then come back and choose
| if you really want to give up everything to meditate." or
| something along those lines.
| tsol wrote:
| The best piece of advice I received was 'slow and steady wins
| the race'. It's something I heard a 1000 times before and 1000
| times after, and it never meant that much to me. When I heard
| it, though, at just the right time and it made just the right
| amount of sense that it totally changed my perspective on
| everything radically since then. It's totally changed the way I
| operate and the way I look at things. But I can't really
| communicate to other people what _exactly_ it means to me,
| because when I say it to other people they just hear 'slow and
| steady wins the race' the way I did the first 1000 times.
| barrenko wrote:
| When the master is ready the student appears, works as well.
| lalopalota wrote:
| Isn't it the other way around? "When the student is ready,
| the master will appear."
|
| https://kagi.com/search?q=when+the+master+is+ready+the+stud
| e...
| nolroz wrote:
| Did you get into climate change after finishing?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Yes but not in the way you expect it, he works for an oil
| company now.
| orzig wrote:
| That is a totally fair question, and I have to admit I did
| not - nuanced stories don't fit in an online comment!
|
| 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...
| pmoriarty wrote:
| This reminds me of a tale told by Lawrence Block:
|
| _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."_
| legends2k wrote:
| Wow, profound and very true!
| afarrell wrote:
| "Leave someone better than you found them."
|
| 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.
| bnjemian wrote:
| I once took a golf lesson when I was a kid and, in learning
| about the divot removal tool, was told a similar one about the
| way to operate on a golf course:
|
| "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."
| afarrell wrote:
| Right. I can control the rubbish in the natural environment.
| I cannot control the rubbish in another person's worldview --
| only my own.
| carapace wrote:
| "Act like a dumb-ass and they'll treat you like an equal."
|
| (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.
|
| _(I retained the gendered pronouns to keep the flow of the
| English, no offense intended folks.)_
|
| 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.
| moviewise wrote:
| 1) Cause And Effect Is A Force Of Nature
|
| 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
| gampleman wrote:
| There's a chapter on the mind in the book Discourses and Sayings
| by Abba Dorotheus.
|
| 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.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| "I'm in this comment and I don't like it."
|
| 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.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| A technique that can be very effective at breaking patterns
| of cognition is to every time you find yourself doing it,
| name it and let it go. Don't try to resist or get angry or
| attach any emotion to it, just say "I'm just simulating a
| discussion" and drop it.
|
| 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.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| wccrawford wrote:
| OTOH, if you can separate that fantasy from reality, it can
| help you calm down and produce a good result in the real
| situation, instead of going in blind. I often run through
| potential conversations in my head before dealing with bad
| situations, and I think it's been incredibly helpful.
| leobg wrote:
| Happens a lot in dating and in marriages, too!
| andyexeter wrote:
| "Say Yes more. The people without passion are the ones who always
| say no. But the happiest people are the ones who understand that
| good things occur when one allows them to."
|
| From the brilliant book "Yes Man", by Danny Wallace.
| dinkblam wrote:
| Sorry, but awful advice. Being afraid of saying "No" and
| feeling compelled to say "Yes" all the time and trying to make
| everyone except yourself happy is the worst way to life your
| life. Been there, done that, won't go there again.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I don't think it's a question of "feeling compelled to say
| yes", or even being afraid to say no.
|
| 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.
| zoover2020 wrote:
| Did you watch "Yes Man" starring Jim Carry? This is the exact
| plot conclusion you're describing.
| andyexeter wrote:
| You've misinterpreted the advice :) It's not about being
| compelled to say yes all the time to make others happy, it's
| about saying yes _more_ to make yourself happy.
|
| 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.
| chvivib wrote:
| If it's important, you'll hear about it.
|
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| We are deceived into thinking news is important because we need
| to be "informed" to be "responsible voting citizens" but if
| nothing on the news would change your vote who cares? Ignoring
| that statistically the lottery makes more sense than national
| voting ...
| ahwvd37js wrote:
| I'm in my 30s and I could fill up hundreds of pages with all the
| crappy advice I've been given over my life by well-meaning
| people. Yes, some advice is helpful, and it is helpful to know
| when you're stuck and need some new ideas, but I think in most
| cases advice is overrated. Try things out yourself, make your own
| mistakes, figure out what works for you, and what doesn't. You
| will learn more from the struggle, and the lessons will be
| cemented much deeper. Don't be afraid to fail.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Overall, I agree with the spirit of the post, but there is a
| benefit to let others fail and report results to you. If you
| manage to distill wisdom from their failures, you may be able
| to avoid those yourself and save yourself the trouble that
| could result.
|
| The trick, naturally, is spotting bad advice and unreliable
| advice giver.
| loonster wrote:
| "The answer is always no unless you ask."
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| This is so true. Sometimes all it takes to make a thing happen
| is ask, experienced it a lot of times.
| elevaet wrote:
| Reminds me of the sports cliche (but so true)
|
| -you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
| mndgs wrote:
| Ouch, nice one!
| nokya wrote:
| A few years ago, I received a series of "class rules" through an
| instant messaging group. The list describes how everyday things
| are interpreted, depending on your social class.
|
| 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.
|
| Food: - You're poor? quantity. - You're
| middle class? quality. - You're wealthy? presentation.
|
| Time: - You're poor? present. - You're
| middle class? future. - You're wealthy? tradition.
|
| Education: - You're poor? abstract. -
| You're middle class? success and money. - You're wealthy?
| connect.
|
| Family structure: - You're poor? matriarchal.
| - You're middle class? patriarchal. - You're wealthy?
| whoever owns the money.
|
| Driving forces: - You're poor? relationships.
| - You're middle class? achievements. - You're wealthy?
| finances, social life.
|
| Language: - You're poor? casual. - You're
| middle class? formal, to negotiate. - You're wealthy?
| formal, to network.
|
| Social drive: - You're poor? inclusion. -
| You're middle class? self-sufficiency. - You're wealthy?
| exclusion.
|
| Personality: - You're poor? be fun. -
| You're middle class? be an achiever. - You're wealthy?
| connect.
|
| Destiny: - You're poor? it's fate. You can't
| change it. - You're middle class? your choices. -
| You're wealthy? your expectations.
|
| Hope it inspires someone :)
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Always take sides. By not taking a side you are automatically
| wrong. This doesn't mean you should engage in identity politics,
| etc. but when faced with a choice take the time to make an
| informed decision.
|
| 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 :)
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Taking sides require a certain degree of context so if you are
| really clueless, you shouldn't take sides till you know enough
| dmitrybrant wrote:
| > Plumbing is easier than you think. Learn to do it yourself.
|
| 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.
| popotamonga wrote:
| Don't get married depends on country.
|
| Some countries won't even let you do hospital visits if you are
| not family.
| bombcar wrote:
| And some states marry you even if you don't get married. It's
| called common law marriage and you can end up with all the
| divorce stuff without even having had the wedding.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << Don't take advice from strangers on the internet :)
|
| This really should be the fist rule of the internet.:D
| IgorPartola wrote:
| It's more fun to put it at the end :)
| naasking wrote:
| > Always take sides. By not taking a side you are automatically
| wrong.
|
| Hard disagree. Sometimes "I don't know, we should research that
| more" is the best response. Maybe even often rather than
| sometimes.
| Cerium wrote:
| That's a side. It's not the side the person asking wanted,
| but it commits to action unlike: "either is fine".
| nahname wrote:
| >Pick people, not projects.
|
| I follow this as well and it makes life better.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I think "the office" is the best example of this. It seems
| like it would be a terrible job to sell paper but it still
| seems like a really fun place to be.
| weinzierl wrote:
| > _" Always take sides."_
|
| 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."_
|
| -- Niccolo 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.
| kortilla wrote:
| > Always take sides. By not taking a side you are automatically
| wrong. This doesn't mean you should engage in identity
| politics, etc. but when faced with a choice take the time to
| make an informed decision.
|
| 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.
| uoaei wrote:
| Taking a side does not mean submitting yourself to an
| argument. The advice is "take a side", not "advocate/defend a
| side in all circumstances".
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Usually my conclusion is more like:
|
| 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.
| DustinBrett wrote:
| At some point I came across this quote which has been credited to
| Mark Twain:
|
| "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.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Wow! That's quite the path. I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting
| to hear more about it.
|
| How old were you when you took your trip? Did you continue
| working or just enjoy the travels?
| xcmac wrote:
| Woah this is inspirational af. Ive been thinking of doing this
| my self....any way I could get some time to chat with you about
| this?
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| Moving to the new, better place to live makes all the difference
| in the world.
| sssilver wrote:
| "Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this
| world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In
| this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant."
| Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant."
| meltyness wrote:
| Thinking critically is a finite process, and creativity arises
| from the vast space of permuting those elements of knowledge,
| processes, and information.
|
| 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.
| krono wrote:
| "People aren't against you, they're for themselves."
|
| 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
| jawns wrote:
| "It's easier to move from IC track to management than vice
| versa."
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| Bakary wrote:
| Time is the greatest resource, but energy management is your
| greatest goal. You will always run out of energy before you run
| out of time.
|
| 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.
| oldsklgdfth wrote:
| Wear sunscreen.
| frozencell wrote:
| "Don't waste your time on beaming people up or down. Instead,
| consider gravity waves as advanced physics of the universe that
| could be used to travel interstellar distances."
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Take as much responsibility as you possibly can. Continually
| increase the amount of responsibility you take. - mediocre
| paraphrase of mine taken from Jordan B Peterson.
| thorio wrote:
| One thing I read on HN a couple of month back and really clicked
| with me is:
|
| "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.
| barrenko wrote:
| This is like that one on Bezos - if a decision is "revolving"
| door type situation, make as many mistakes as possible. If it's
| a concrete wall and disappearing door type of situation do feel
| free to ponder.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| "No one should be the boss of anybody" - elon musk
| leobg wrote:
| He said that? Sounds like straight out of David Graeber. (I
| agree.)
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Graeber is the real influence for me too, but yes he did say
| that lmao
|
| Goes to show how little self-awareness matters relative to
| power held I guess
|
| https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1585804674170355712/ph.
| ..
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| Shut the fuck up.
|
| 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.
| ativzzz wrote:
| > An easy way to increase the value and enjoyment of a
| conversation is to say a lot less and listen a lot more.
|
| 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
| kren wrote:
| Your ego and your conscious mind are the source of most of your
| problems. Meditate to delve deeper and find out who you truly
| are. (Or more accurately, who you are not.) If you can tap into
| and sync up with this inner self, your problems will melt away
| and you will find happiness without needing much.
|
| 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.
| seaghost wrote:
| Learning to say NO.
| sideproject wrote:
| "Everyone wipes their butt the same way"
|
| 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."
| fortran77 wrote:
| I just press the button on my Toto Neorest.
| franze wrote:
| well, not really true. there are huge cultural differences in
| personal but hygiene. the end result is more or less the same,
| the process differs widely.
| markdown wrote:
| True. The better observation is "everyone's shit stinks".
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Jemm wrote:
| As someone with a bowel disorder, I have to say that one of the
| best pieces of advice I got was "Don't wipe, dab. Better yet,
| get a bidet".
| dwhile wrote:
| I had an awesome math instructor while in college named Gamal. I
| was in a linear algebra class with literally three other
| students, and at first it was a traditional lecture style class.
| Soon though Gamal tired of this and said "Look guys, you're going
| to take turns teaching these lessons". One day it was my turn to
| teach the lesson. I opened the textbook, started reading out of
| it and working an example problem on the board.
|
| 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.
| twapi wrote:
| "Connect the dots".
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| How did it change your life?
| caiobegotti wrote:
| ...that most people don't really spend their time thinking about
| you so don't worry too much thinking negatively about this, do
| your best and that's about it. It's such a simple advice but it
| was life changing, both personally and also professionally.
| [deleted]
| sumosudo wrote:
| "Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How
| long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your
| nobler self cannot wait any longer. From this moment on, vow to
| stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the mob.
| Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do - now."
|
| EPICTETUS
| paulcole wrote:
| Two things that I've come to see as truths about the world are:
|
| 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.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| don't play the victim mentality. you can always change things for
| better.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| About 15 years ago, Christopher Celeste gave me a life-changing
| piece of advice. I wanted his advice because I had been
| coordinating all these different projects and I was struggling to
| figure out which to focus on. He told me "you seem to be good at
| doing lots of different things. Why choose? Why not just do all
| that you want?"
|
| 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).
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Don't be afraid of seeming vulnerable by asking questions if
| you're stuck or unsure. This is easily one of the biggest life
| skills and soooo many people hurt their own progress by avoiding
| it.
| oweiler wrote:
| Not a single advice, but David Goggins "Can't hurt me" was a game
| changer for me.
| wruza wrote:
| It seems there is a plenty of motivation material like this,
| but nothing sticked with me. Isn't that a book that saturates
| you with willpower and then it fades away in a week? What's
| different with it?
|
| 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.
| nnoitra wrote:
| Tade0 wrote:
| My operating systems professor liked to engage his audience
| during lectures, so it was commonly more of a dialogue than a
| lecture. At one point he gave us some problem to consider, we
| didn't know what to make of it, so we started asking how to
| approach this. His reply:
|
| "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."
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > "Never explain yourself unless explicitly asked to."
|
| Becomes truer the more you want to explain yourself in a
| situation.
| mrj wrote:
| "Never explain yourself unless explicitly asked to."
|
| 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.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| 'The fate of the fool will overtake me also.
| What then do I gain by being wise?"
|
| I said to myself, "This too is meaningless."
|
| For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered;
| the days have already come when both have been forgotten
|
| Like the fool, the wise too must die'
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| You are a fool if you believe this
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Great!
| mablopoule wrote:
| I've got a few that definitely had an impact on how I act, or
| perceive a situation.
|
| "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.
| wccrawford wrote:
| One of the things that really makes me mad is telling someone
| not to do something stupid, and them replying, "But something
| has to be done!"
|
| No, it doesn't. Especially if it makes the situation worse.
| itronitron wrote:
| "there is no situation so bad that it can't be made worse"
| -NASA
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > "Then if you don't know why you're doing something, don't do
| it."
|
| A good way to enter zen due to the Munchhausen trilemma.
| jqcoffey wrote:
| A long time ago I was in a fairly desperate technical situation,
| that to my and my lead's minds required a stop the world, must
| fix or all's lost approach.
|
| 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?
| JackOfCrows wrote:
| Most people will use time to save money. However, your time on
| earth is limited unless the Silicon Valley weirdos happen to be
| right.
|
| 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.
| Test0129 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| slyall wrote:
| Agree. It's not just the medium sized things either. It works
| for the little stuff too.
|
| 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.
| plasticchris wrote:
| I went back to changing my own oil when I realized it took a
| lot more time to go there and wait for them to change it vs
| doing it myself in less time than it would take to drive to the
| oil change place. And I know I it is done right.
|
| 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.
| robbiep wrote:
| I agree and it's a bit of a maxim of mine, but the extreme of
| this is absurd. There's lots of life that is worth doing for
| the pleasure of just doing. Sometimes that might be learning
| how to do an oil change (to follow the thread!) but sometimes
| that's the exact absurd trade off you're talking about
| posix86 wrote:
| I think that's his point. The point in life isn't to have
| money, it's to spend time on things you liked. Thus, trading
| time to save money is a bad trade, but trading money for time
| that you enjoy is what you should do. Which in his case means
| spending time on your phone instead of changing oil, but it
| might look different for you.
| robbiep wrote:
| And my point is if you pursue that thread too aggressively,
| without knowing what you want to do - and I've seen quite a
| few friends do this especially after moving to the valley
| and getting into 'always be optimising' mode - they don't
| actually take the time to make mistakes
| dominicdoty wrote:
| While I broadly agree with this, you have to be careful you
| don't slide too far into this mindset. Vacations become hard to
| justify if you view them as both the price of the vacation+lost
| income opportunity. It's easy to find yourself in a place where
| it's hard to justify doing anything but working.
| tomcam wrote:
| Well I looked at it like this. A good two week vacation in
| Paris costs at least $10,000. I could instead bill out
| approximately $12,000 during that time. Therefore, the best
| thing to do is for me to pay a Parisian $2,000 to have my
| vacation for me. I stayed at home, and earned a lot more
| money. I can then spend that on another vacation. You can
| thank me later for this gem.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even better - you can hire a Parisian and a Roman and a
| Londoner to each have a vacation _for you_ at the same
| time! 2 weeks of work and 6 weeks of vacation in just two
| weeks of clock time. This is the way.
| tomcam wrote:
| That's what I call out-of-the-box thinking
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Vacations are already hard to justify IMO. All the garbage
| and fuel so you can go somewhere for a few days and
| inconvenience folks that live there?
| habibur wrote:
| That's what I thought in my 20s and 30s.
|
| 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.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| ananiochita wrote:
| While I get the general point ( and mostly agree, and practice
| myself ) for many people, if not most, this is not a choice or
| an option.
|
| Plenty are working two or more jobs just to barely make it, if
| they even get to make it.
| [deleted]
| Sparkenstein wrote:
| 1. learn to firmly say "NO", no matter how difficult it sounds.
| 2. If YOU think "what will world think", then what will world
| think? (it sounds way better in my mother tongue, but basically
| don't care about what will people think about you) 3. You don't
| work for the company, the company works because of you.
| hendry wrote:
| "Don't be afraid to become the Editor of a document" is along the
| lines my ex-boss told me. It changed the way I think about
| contributing to just about anything. When you become the editor
| you take responsibility and you're in a much better operating
| position, even if you don't know everything about the subject
| matter of the document.
| john_the_writer wrote:
| "The opinions of others are none of my business."
|
| 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.
| wetpaws wrote:
| Washing my butt instead of wiping it
| dundercoder wrote:
| As a male, sitting down to pee at home keeps the toilet and floor
| significantly cleaner. Even with perfect aim, you don't see the
| micro droplets until they build up.
|
| Cuts cleaning time and frequency
| bombcar wrote:
| Until you encounter a bowl that flows up when hit with a
| forward-facing stream instead of down. Too many times has this
| happened so pay attention.
| [deleted]
| dazc wrote:
| If you work for nothing you'll always be busy.
| greendestiny_re wrote:
| "Build deep personal and professional relationships."
| jart wrote:
| I was one of the people who implemented Google's top-level domain
| system. One day in the microkitchen I met Vint Cerf and told him
| what I worked on. He very curtly told me that he hates generic
| top-level domains, they confuse consumers, and ICANN should have
| been focusing on making .com / .org / .net better instead. It
| surprised me when I learned that I'd spent the last four years of
| my life working on a project where Google had bet big on gTLDs
| without the support of the father of the Internet. So I got a job
| on the TensorFlow team instead.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" One day in the microkitchen I met Vint Cerf and told him
| what I worked on. He very curtly told me that he hates generic
| top-level domains, they confuse consumers, and ICANN should
| have been focusing on making .com / .org / .net better
| instead."_
|
| 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 ?"
| jart wrote:
| That's totally not the same thing though. Vint Cerf wasn't
| telling me I was but a mere footnote compared to his
| invention of TCP/IP. He thought gTLDs were actively harming
| the Internet.
| esperent wrote:
| If I was to share a piece of advice here it would be "even
| the smartest people in the world are wrong a lot of the
| time".
|
| 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.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Wait. Could you elaborate on this? What was his argument
| for that statement:
|
| "He thought gTLDs were actively harming the Internet."
|
| I might be missing something.
| javajosh wrote:
| I will hazard a guess. Cerf liked the top-level
| organization scheme com/org/edu because he worked hard on
| it and it carries meaningful information about the owner
| of the domain. E.g. identifies the domain-owner as either
| a for-profit corp, a non-profit org, or a school. By
| contrast new tlds like "app" or "website" imply
| absolutely nothing about the domain or the person/org
| that owns it. So there's a net loss in meaning.
| Effectively the domain variability has leaked into the
| tld.
|
| It's a worthy discussion for HN.
| arbitrage wrote:
| The .com and .org namespace has been diluted in meaning
| for decades.
|
| You can make no useful inference about the owner of a
| .com or a .org domain name. They literally signify
| nothing anymore.
| bombcar wrote:
| Originally the hierarchy was supposed to be much more
| defined. But domains are so cheap nobody bothers. You see
| it a bit in .gov and .edu where subdomains are actually
| delegated somewhat sometimes.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Do you think he is right or wrong about gTLDs?
| jart wrote:
| My executables end with .com and my website ends with
| .lol so I disagree with him, even though he's right. My
| work doesn't target consumers though. What matters is
| that he's not just speaking only for himself and I would
| have liked his views to have carried more weight in
| ICANN's vision. Perhaps they would have addressed the
| domainer problem rather than simply making new digital
| land where the same problems would once again take root.
| [deleted]
| javajosh wrote:
| Ulam picked a strange place to stop zooming out. After all,
| E=mc^2 will be forgotten, too. Even now it is "forgotten" in
| the sense of not being understood by most of humanity. There
| is no static human achievement (scientific, artistic, or
| political) that survives into Deep Time. Consider that our
| most durable artifacts are the religious ones - some humans
| truly believe them to be otherworldly and precious beyond
| measure. Yet even those artifacts eventually get lost in the
| couch cushions and forgotten. Science text books will fair
| worse, in the long run.
| jart wrote:
| You talk about E=mc^2 like it was some kind of Mayan idol
| waiting for Indian Jones to uncover. In a way I guess
| that's true. But Einstein wasn't the one who placed it
| there, so if the knowledge is forgotten then that just
| means someone else will eventually get the thrill of
| discovery.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's less that it gets forgotten and more that it's not
| really _useful_ to the vast majority of people. Most
| people who "know" E=mc2 have zero use for it.
|
| 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).
| onos wrote:
| Out of the pot and into the frying pan, eh?
| amelius wrote:
| > He very curtly told me that he hates generic top-level
| domains, they confuse consumers
|
| Perhaps someone should tell you that consumers hate
| advertisements, and they are confused by them too :)
| jart wrote:
| Consumers also hate paying for things. I've always thought
| when Google came along that it was a shining beacon for being
| the one corporation that gives everything away for free.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > Consumers also hate paying for things. I've always
| thought when Google came along that it was a shining beacon
| for being the one corporation that gives everything away
| for free.
|
| All of Google's offerings do indeed have a price, just not
| a financial one in most cases.
| amelius wrote:
| On top of that, consumers still pay financially for ads
| since the price for them is built into the price of the
| products and services people buy.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| As a consumer I am totally fine paying for things. But I
| _hate_ being interrupted with ads for irrelevant shit I
| don't want or need. Google and every other online
| advertiser is hilariously bad at guessing what I might be
| shopping for at the moment. Amazon comes close by
| remembering what products I looked at last. But Google is
| worse than dogshit when it comes to this.
|
| 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!
| Bakary wrote:
| If you already know the product you are buying down to
| the model, Google isn't tailored for you. It's meant for
| people who have a vague idea and then pick what's at the
| top of the search results. This is why SEO has grown to
| be an entire profession.
| bombcar wrote:
| More importantly Google wants to sell ads to _everyone_
| not just the company with the current cheapest product.
|
| 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.
| ysavir wrote:
| I think that's a very narrow interpretation of what a
| search engine does. Or a narrow interpretation of what
| the GP was doing. Probably both.
|
| 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.
| Bakary wrote:
| Essentially I see two competing processes here.
|
| 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.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I thought Google was a search engine. Why doesn't it
| search as much as it misleads and distracts?
| Bakary wrote:
| Google is an ad company that produces a search engine,
| rather than a search engine that features ads. Although
| it may have been the latter in the olden days
| amelius wrote:
| > This is why SEO has grown to be an entire profession.
|
| Ads are basically the SEO of our economy as they try to
| change the ranking of products in our brains.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _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're gonna LOVE Amazon.
|
| /s
| agentwiggles wrote:
| Slightly off topic but salutations to a fellow mini split
| owner, I have a Senville unit in my garage (which has
| been converted to an office/gym/also still a garage).
|
| 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).
| pmoriarty wrote:
| You pay Google for its services with your privacy.
| Kiro wrote:
| This kind of employee shaming is the reason we see less and
| less people posting amazing anecdotes as the one above.
| jbaudanza wrote:
| Righty tighty, lefty loosey
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| never eat soggy waffles
|
| north, east, south, west
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Wise words, machine man.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I always have to Google which of my bike pedals is reverse
| threaded. It's a bit embarrassing, as I always think I should
| be able to figure it out from the whole angular momentum -
| torque thing.
| scombridae wrote:
| I almost lost a wrist trying to twist off a bike pedal the
| wrong way. Also, toilet handles, but those were more
| transparently reversed.
| Daneel_ wrote:
| With the crank in the position closest to the front tyre
| (horizontal and forward), put your allen key in the socket
| while aimed at 12 o'clock (ie, upward) and rotate toward the
| rear of the bike.
|
| The rule is basically: rotate against the direction of the
| crank's rotation to undo.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Awesome, thanks.
| elevaet wrote:
| I never liked this one because it's not correct from half the
| perspectives.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| one was "if you want someone to like you, become a person they
| would want to like." turns out there's lots of reasons why
| someone might like someone else. I just assumed they only liked
| people for the same reasons I did (like vanity).
|
| 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.
| electrondood wrote:
| "You don't have to get upset about anything unless you want to."
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I'm happy to see some of the examples here are of bad advice.
|
| 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.
| creakingstairs wrote:
| > 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
|
| 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 :)
| tuffacton wrote:
| My friend's mother told me advice that made her successful and
| has been a North Star for my career: "Your ONLY job is finding
| your next job."
| mywacaday wrote:
| Does advice I didn't take count, I was in my first year of
| college and living with a family that took in students. I went
| for a pint with the Dad who would have been in his early 40s and
| he told me start your pension now, even if it's only EUR10 a
| week. Really wish I took his advice. That was in the mis 90s.
| entropicgravity wrote:
| I read about a very capable young woman who was advised,"You
| should never work for a boss." She then decided to become a
| lawyer and eventually became a highly regarded judge. Young
| people should at least be aware that they might not be suited for
| "normal jobs" in organizations even if they are academically
| successful.
| groffee wrote:
| When you play to win don't complain about shuffling the deck.
|
| Same as don't complain about breaking eggs when you're making an
| omelette.
| mettamage wrote:
| I went to a Vipassana retreat [1] for the 4th time in my life
| (over a 10 year period). It has been a while, last time since
| 2016. It's hard to keep up a practice, but I'm in a position to
| do so now that's must better suited than before. I can't go into
| that, since I want to keep this comment short ;-)
|
| 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.
|
| [1] https://www.dhamma.org/
|
| 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.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This should come with a warning. Vipassana and other meditation
| retreats have also caused profound psychosis in people. Be
| warned about an irreversible mental breakdown. Your mind is
| unnaturally put in a hyper insensitive environment that it is
| not meant to be in, nor is it designed to from an evolutionary
| standpoint. It is designed to stay alert with its environment
| and defend you from threats, seek mate/food. There were a bunch
| of posts about this on HN.
| brailsafe wrote:
| If I can define advice as lessens that I've learned over time and
| would give others, it would be to always say hello or acknowledge
| an acquaintance's presence when you get the chance, even if you
| don't have the time or necessarily want to chat. You never know
| when they won't be there anymore.
|
| 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.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| The fact that I am a "scanner" personality type and that I should
| accept that about myself rather than try to change myself to fit
| more conventional lifestyles. A scanner is someone who finds
| interest in a wide variety of topics but often becomes bored with
| it once you understand it sufficiently.
|
| 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.
| kqr wrote:
| "Don't just do something; stand there."
|
| 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!
| kyleblarson wrote:
| Never whittle towards yourself or piss into the wind.
| edw519 wrote:
| Mentor advice: 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.
| iKevinShah wrote:
| Some of these are amazing. Specially - The answer to any
| question is "Who wants to know?"
| Yhippa wrote:
| > 5. The only good Powerpoint slide is evergreen. If it's not,
| it's already obsolete.
|
| What does this mean? That it sticks to high-level, timeless
| concepts?
| edw519 wrote:
| Yes, that's part of it. It has to speak deep (sometimes
| elusive) truth. People will be engaged. They will learn. They
| will use it.
|
| 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.
| thaw13579 wrote:
| I could see that working for presentations for a general
| audience like a TED talk or maybe intro/closing slides, but
| otherwise many presentations are context-specific, and
| trying to frame the content as a "deep truth" might not fly
| with the audience.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _11. The reason everyone we work for sucks is because those who
| don 't suck never call us._
|
| 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.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| > 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."
|
| As a former coworker of mine put it:
|
| "if IT was easy we wouldn't get paid decent money for it"
| elboru wrote:
| Not a hardware guy. But I guess you can turn on modules
| individually before everything is done.
| gbro3n wrote:
| Would be great to get some context / examples around some of
| these
| edw519 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback, gbro3n.
|
| 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.
| club_tropical wrote:
| Appreciate your generosity in typing the OG 20 and then
| expanding upon it when people were curious.
|
| 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.
| edw519 wrote:
| _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. :-)
| club_tropical wrote:
| Appreciate the example. We remain drawing different
| conclusions from it, but this further explanation will
| benefit many readers, so thank you.
| insightcheck wrote:
| Thank you greatly for sharing and updating with examples
| and context, though I would like to gently suggest an
| alternative to one piece of wisdom.
|
| > "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...
| gbro3n wrote:
| Thank you, makes more sense and some for me to think about
| there.
|
| 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.
| CPLX wrote:
| I dunno. I've been around half a century and I'm pretty sure
| when people say it's not about the money most of the time it's
| about the money.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "When do you expect you'll finally be happy?"
|
| "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."
| nazgulnarsil wrote:
| Shinzen Young, in The Science of Enlightenment, posits a strong
| time dilation effect from regularly meditating. After
| experimenting, I found this to be true, and have at least doubled
| my subjective life span.
| etempleton wrote:
| Be kind. You will rarely regret it and people will remember it.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Manners are free, and they're and investment. - Something that
| always stuck with me.
| sidcool wrote:
| Dwight Shrute. "Don't be an idiot". /S
| xchip wrote:
| Worry only about the things that are under your control .
| Epictetus.
| rozenmd wrote:
| This landing page roast I found years ago completely changed how
| I think about marketing:
|
| 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!
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Work hard. Don't listen to HN and the current worker's zeitgeist.
| eesmith wrote:
| "'If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well' is bunkum."
|
| Doing good enough ... can be enough.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Doing good enough is generally good enough. I always used this
| maxim in education to get just enough marks to pass with a high
| enough grade to study ratio. Today's perfectionists are
| tomorrow's procrastinators.
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly
| freediver wrote:
| "Poor Dad, Rich Dad" was eye opening to me growing in a
| developing eastern european country. It is probably this book
| more than anything else that made me want to be an entrepreneur.
| satysin wrote:
| Eat less and restrict when you eat.
|
| 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.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| When do you eat your meals?
| satysin wrote:
| I have settled on a 17h non-eating window so I generally eat
| between 1pm and 8pm each day. What I mean is that I have
| lunch around 1pm, usually something small to "break the
| fast". Maybe a little snack around 4 or 5pm and then dinner
| around 7:30-8pm then I start fasting after dinner until 1pm
| the next day.
|
| 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.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Sounds like bullshit, to be honest.
| [deleted]
| satysin wrote:
| I would be interested as to why you feel weight loss and
| consuming a healthier amount of food is bullshit?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The way you do anything is the way you do everything.
| adabaed wrote:
| You will die and no one will remember you again.
| skydhash wrote:
| Not really an advice, but just a phrase: "Can you show me
| something you have done?". My brother was introducing me as a
| developer for a project he was responsible and the supervisor
| wanted to meet me first. I was prattling about all the stuff I
| know about and I was real proud about it. He interrupt me with
| this. That's when I realise all the things you know don't really
| matter to people if you can't actually solve their problems and
| they aren't confident that you can. I switched my methods after
| that. And instead of pursuing knowledge for its own sake, I make
| sure, I actually practice and build thibgs instead of just be
| satisfied with "I know this". 2 years later, I started making
| money on gigs and contracts as a programmer.
| barrenko wrote:
| Had a similar epiphany. Worked really hard on it and while it
| kinda changed my life, I eventually realized I'm simply not a
| builder type person.
| vasco wrote:
| What other types are there? Genuine question.
| lalopalota wrote:
| Leaders - good at organizing others to get things done.
|
| 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.
| aBitPlayer wrote:
| Teachers
| annyeonghada wrote:
| Talking about me: I'm very much abstract and academic and
| do not really care about practical applications. I went
| into Physics and realized how much I hated the lab and the
| more experimental oriented subjects: I love the Math
| sequences, love Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Mechanics, loved
| Special and General Relativity but hated Laser and Optics,
| hated Electrical Circuits, hated Nuclear Physics (prof was
| an experimentalist who talked endlessly about
| detectors).[1]
|
| 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.
| 0x445442 wrote:
| That's interesting. I began as a Physics major, and loved
| Laser and Optics, Electrical Circuits, Mechanics, all the
| labs really. But then I got to upper division Quantum
| Mechanics and I hated it. I was pushing around
| Schroedinger equations all day to get the correct answers
| but I never had a firm mental model on what was actually
| going on behind the math. I ended up switching my major
| to Mechanical Engineering. In hind sight I should have
| jus stuck it out because I ended writing software for a
| living anyway :)
| rroot wrote:
| Good story. I think advice can come in many form and shape, you
| just have to recognize it as such.
|
| 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.
| huffer wrote:
| fortune favors those prepared
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Plastics
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Focus on making money or pushing the boundaries of human
| knowledge. Everything else is a waste of time.
| miraji wrote:
| "Much of what you do today (or don't do) was decided by the
| person you were years ago, a person with less life experience and
| less insight into your values." -- David Cain
|
| Re-evaluate your opinions constantly. You won't come to the same
| conclusions you did 10 years ago.
| mojomark wrote:
| I have two mantras that I heard at some point early in life and
| they have immensely helped me over the years:
|
| 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.
| leobg wrote:
| Very true. The fabric of society is much more permeable than
| one would think. Many rules are not as hard as you think.
| Things that you'd think can never happen can actually happen,
| and will, if you just ask. Not asking is like the elephant that
| allows himself to be tied down by a flimsy string, simply
| because he never dares to pull and test its strength (which
| seems to be the prime metaphor of learned helplessness).
| rdudekul wrote:
| Here is a life changing advice:
|
| Could Our Idea of Reality Be Totally Upside Down?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0_720pPXOg
| broahmed wrote:
| If you can learn to differentiate between what you want and what
| you need, you'll be a lot happier.
| Ghoyome wrote:
| Comfort is a drug. Once you get used to it becomes addicting.
| Give a weak person consistent stimulation, good food, cheap
| entertainment and they will throw their ambitions right out the
| window. Comfort is a graveyard of dreams.
|
| 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.
| thirdplace_ wrote:
| Here's how to live: Pursue pain
| seaman1921 wrote:
| not sure why this is being downvoted - apparently you need to
| post only "feel-good" advice else your voice will be suppressed
| lol
| randcraw wrote:
| I like the epitaph author David McCullough chose to sum up his
| life. "He always did his best".
| cmos wrote:
| In my startup we had a customer who said they weren't going to
| pay us. I was upset and pissed as I had given them another chance
| after a previous payment issue to help them out of their hole. It
| felt personal.
|
| 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.
| pagade wrote:
| - Compare yourself with your previous version and not with
| others. (Taught in school to us to not compare grades with other
| students but with yourself. This stuck with me for life.)
|
| - 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)
| Gnarl wrote:
| 1). Its none of your business what other people think.
|
| 2). Everyone is just winging it.
|
| 3). Life is subject to change without notice.
| more_corn wrote:
| I was working in a small firm. Just killing it. My billable hours
| were twice what my colleagues were doing. I asked my boss (who I
| didn't have a great relationship with) "Where do I go from here?
| What's my promotion path?" He said "the top of the company is
| full, if you want to go up, you're going to have to go out" I was
| astounded. He's telling his most lucrative employee to quit. But,
| boy was it the right thing for me. I've never looked back and
| I've acted on that advice twice since then to achieve more upward
| trajectory. Thanks Ben, I know you didn't mean it in a positive
| way but it was just the advice I needed.
| jm20 wrote:
| A therapist once told me: Let your actions dictate your emotions.
| Don't let your emotions dictate your actions.
|
| Advice we should all follow more
| abcd_f wrote:
| Disagreements between rational people stem from the differences
| in assumptions.
|
| Try and look at things from other person's perspective to
| understand their motivation.
| lnalx wrote:
| "Take care of your body in your 20s"
|
| 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.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| This sounds like a universally good advice. Sometimes, it's
| really hard to put projects and work aside and devote time to
| excercise and health. It's not that amusing when you do it
| alone and really hard to make it a habit in the beginning.
| jwally wrote:
| I started with 100 situps and push-ups over an hour while
| watching tv and cutting dessert. One month later I looked in
| the mirror and was inspired to do more. Little things add up.
| Try something small, daily for 2 weeks.
| mahoro wrote:
| 100 situps is a lot for a beginner. Actually, after 3 years
| in gym I did ~80 in 4 sets. Not because I can't do more but
| 1) it is a high stress for a spine and 2) there are other
| exercises to do.
| uptownJimmy wrote:
| Sit ups can be really hard on the spine, even if done
| "properly". You slip a disc in your neck even slightly
| while working on your abs, and you won't be working on
| your abs or anything else for a long time. Slipped discs
| can cause an astonishing amount of pain.
|
| Not an exercise guru, just someone who slipped a disc.
| jwally wrote:
| Just something to keep in mind:
|
| 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.
| henryaj wrote:
| > 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).
|
| 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.
| elevaet wrote:
| Health is your greatest wealth.
|
| Take care of your body for your whole life.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This needs to include not getting injured as well. I worked out
| plenty in my 20s, but was also reckless as hell, and lost most
| of my 30s to severe spinal degeneration. It's not too late in
| your 40s, though. It took about six years, but even after
| spending most of a decade unable to consistently put my own
| shoes on and ending up with ten screws in my spine, I'm still
| lifting just about everyday and putting up lifetime PRs. To be
| clear, I'm not saying those are huge numbers, since I was more
| of an endurance athlete in my 20s and only lifted to have a
| solid strength base for longer-duration activity, but even so.
|
| 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.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Yes! I figured this out in my mid-20's and it wasn't too late.
| I had gone to the doctor with the complaint that I just did not
| want to eat. He prescribed some substance, which of course
| didn't work. I was working from home, and my girlfriend had a
| back injury and a car so I had essentially no exercise.
|
| 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.
| setgree wrote:
| Context: I was leaving a startup (so as to avoid getting asked to
| leave), and I had a final lunch with a member of the C-suite. He
| had not exactly been my friend at work but at that point we were
| in the same boat. I expressed concern about how the whole thing
| was going to look to future employers, and he said:
|
| "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.
| codexjourneys wrote:
| Two things:
|
| 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.
| oblib wrote:
| I was complaining to a friend about someone who "didn't know shit
| about what I was working on" and they told me "You can learn from
| everyone you if you listen to them".
|
| 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.
| Daunk wrote:
| "just do it"
| peterkelly wrote:
| It's easier to get forgiveness than permission
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Well not really changed my life, but somethings I frequently
| think and try to follow.
|
| 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.
| zaik wrote:
| > Nothing that you do or say will matter after a couple of
| hundred years.
|
| I don't think this is true at all.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| Our names will be unremembered but that's a different thing.
| To the future we are as gods.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| If you're Newton, Einstein, Gates, Elon or some other
| important figure, then I agree with you. But for the vast
| majority of all the rest of normal people (~99%), no one is
| going to remember us, no one is going to remember what we
| said or did and for sure our actions are going to have almost
| zero impact on the course of this timeline. It's true that
| some individuals will play a very important role in the
| continuation of our civilization, but these are just a few
| compared to the billions of humans.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Think of all the people alive 200 years ago. I would say
| that, for the overwhelmingly vast majority, nothing they said
| or did matters now.
| zaik wrote:
| At the very least they had children, but also a lot of
| small things probably have a very long lasting effect.
| Bakary wrote:
| The point is more that it doesn't matter in the way the
| person wanting to be remembered would want it to be, or
| in the way the person wanting to be forgotten fears it to
| be.
| bombcar wrote:
| The most memorable thing most normal people could do is
| change their last name before having children.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you have children and they have children, etc, then at
| least something you did will matter to someone.
|
| 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.
| djha-skin wrote:
| My first boss told me that if I can figure out an answer without
| asking somebody for help but I should try to figure it out first.
|
| 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.
| rrwo wrote:
| Your job isn't your identity.
|
| Your job is there to subsidize what you want to do with your
| life.
| aynawn wrote:
| feiss wrote:
| Also: Your money isn't your identity.
| rrwo wrote:
| Also, for social invitations, "If it's not absolutely yes, it's
| definitely no."
|
| 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".)
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Life is too short to waste your free time being somewhere
| that you don't want to be."_
|
| 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.
| agentultra wrote:
| The world doesn't need fewer people, it needs smart people.
|
| 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.
| blitz_skull wrote:
| I'd go a step further and say less than it needs smart people,
| the world needs loving people.
|
| 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.
| agentultra wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| I'm not being glib when I say that it was the best decision I
| ever made and has improved my life immensely.
| sokoloff wrote:
| After doing an internship at Daimler in autonomous vehicles, I
| planned to achieve my long-term plan to go work for the US auto
| industry in 1993.
|
| 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.
| monster_group wrote:
| Before making any decision look at the risk/reward ratio and then
| make the decision based on how much risk and bad consequences you
| can handle.
| Jach wrote:
| With respect to comparing oneself with other people, "Better at,
| not better than" -- can't remember when this was given, want to
| say 8th grade from some counselor interviewing me for something
| or another (career guidance? I remember him asking me about a
| phrase I liked back then, "Through knowledge, power"). I don't
| really agree , but I mulled over it then and still remember it,
| and it's not terrible as far as generic advice goes, especially
| if it can help someone avoid a superiority complex, which I'm
| sure back then I looked like I might develop.
|
| 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.
|
| Another translation: 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.
| [deleted]
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Levin's quote from the end of Anna Karenina:
|
| """ "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.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| This is some advice I wish I received as a teen/young adult: good
| sleep is more important than you think, for your quality of life,
| longevity and achievements.
|
| Sleep is also a very good canary.
| abraae wrote:
| The things that annoy you the most about your partner will be the
| same things that you will miss the most when they are gone.
|
| 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.
| em-bee wrote:
| only when those things that annoy you are not also things that
| hurt you.
|
| but yes, it is good to reflect on that, and find out if
| something is actually a problem.
| darkerside wrote:
| That's the difference between pain and discomfort. Learning
| that difference physically and emotionally had been one of my
| biggest awakenings as a person.
| arcbyte wrote:
| > always (well, usually maybe)
|
| Yes this. There is an always an exception out there but it is
| never you, so it really pays to think "always".
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Completely not my experience.
|
| What I miss the most are the best things about them, and the
| annoying things I've mostly forgotten or forgiven.
| menshiki wrote:
| "If a person's behavior doesn't make sense to you, it is because
| you are missing a part of their context. It's that simple." I
| have no idea where I saw that quote for the first time but it had
| a huge impact on my ability to comprehend people around me. Both
| in the private and work setting. Be kind to those around you even
| if their behavior does not make any sense to you.
| Bakary wrote:
| Look up the fundamental attribution error
| zwischenzug wrote:
| A business owner neighbour told me that marketing is the first
| chapter in all business books. No marketing, no business. Applied
| to my career, that advice changed my life.
| tomcdonnell wrote:
| When I was at university, one professor of electrical engineering
| would refuse to answer any student who asked whether their answer
| to a circuit theory problem was correct.
|
| 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.
| mccorrinall wrote:
| This would have broken my neck when I had zero to none self-
| confidence a few years ago :')
| glenstein wrote:
| Yeah the road to confidence involves some intermediary steps
| where you begin to understand that your answers are correct,
| and walking that path brings you to confidence imo.
| djmips wrote:
| I find this just annoying.
| JackFr wrote:
| Some thoughts about taking responsibility.
|
| 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."
| bombcar wrote:
| Along these lines is "sorry with an explanation/excuse is not
| sorry".
| JackFr wrote:
| There is no room for the word "but" in an apology.
| blackflame7000 wrote:
| That you can be honest in your responses while still remembering
| that you don't have to be honest right now. That you can be
| honest
| sys_64738 wrote:
| "Move to America."
| exabrial wrote:
| "Never let being bad at a hobby preclude you from enjoying it."
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| 1) "You should develop a thick skin." - advice provided by Jeff
| Bezos. I think it's one of the least obvious, and most important,
| things especially if you have a bit of ambition in life, and you
| need to swim with the sharks. I mention the advice here [0].
|
| 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...
| tsujamin wrote:
| "Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be
| don't match how they really are."
|
| 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
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| Checking this book out, thanks.
| asimovfan wrote:
| Buddha's explanation of why life is not satisfactory and his
| solution to it.
| benja123 wrote:
| I am not sure where I read this or who told this to me, but my
| favorite piece of advice (prior to having kids) was "don't waste
| your time with people that don't give you positive energy". It's
| really easy to get brought down by other people's negativity, be
| at work or in your personal life. Staying away from people that
| bring you down is key to being happy and successful.
|
| 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"
| ghstcode wrote:
| Before spending the last money I had on a coding book, the
| cashier could see my hesitation and said "don't worry, investing
| in yourself is never a waste of money".
|
| It had a profound impact on me.
| picsao wrote:
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I've bought thousands of books that I never read... so... yeah,
| that was a waste of money.
|
| I presume you did better with your investment.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Then again, the most valuable book in the world isn't the
| Gutenberg Bible or a first folio of Shakespeare or a
| handwritten draft of _Principia_. It 's the one you need at 2
| AM on a Sunday morning but don't have on your shelf.
| nonasktell wrote:
| For anyone reading this and thinking about spending your last
| 10 bucks on a programming book please use Libgen or a free mooc
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Idk I got a grasp on programming because I spent a summer in
| the library with books on programming and a hard rule of not
| leaving for even a coffee until i have done at least a full
| chapter and all exercises.
|
| 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
| solatic wrote:
| I get the feeling OP bought that book a long, long time ago,
| long before libgen was ever a thing.
| Otek wrote:
| Well yes and no. Spending money on something, especially when
| you're short on money, makes you value it more and overall
| for me this would make it more likely to actually go through
| that book. But that's me.
| annyeonghada wrote:
| For me it's totally irrelevant how many money I spent in
| how much I value something. I have numerous overpriced
| textbook in my shelf that I've never read, on the other end
| my libgen textbook are used constantly and got me through
| university.
| Bakary wrote:
| Reference books are the one thing it's a good idea to spend
| money on, because flipping back and forth through a digital
| copy is still a miserable experience
| deskamess wrote:
| If they can make flipping a finger pinch worth of pages
| somehow doable that would be killer. Some sort of wide-
| pinch gesture with a semi transparent overlay of the page
| you are going to flip to with your current pinch width.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| codexjourneys wrote:
| Funny enough VCRs had this decades ago, the double-fast-
| forward skipped forward a few minutes. Why e-readers
| can't do this with a similar symbol to skip forward 25
| pages is a mystery to me.
| ornornor wrote:
| Or even your local library
| rroot wrote:
| It was an amazing day when I discovered b-ok.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Also library suggestions are great too if you can wait a few
| months. I usually suggest a bunch of books not just for me,
| but other people that might be on the same career path as me.
| GregLan wrote:
| The best advice I ever received was never compare yourself to
| anybody else. As a person who came from a humble family, in
| Africa, that advice got me going. I would see children from
| privileged families having better opportunities but I worked hard
| and was happy every time I looked back on where I have come from.
| statquontrarian wrote:
| Try harder with everything
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| It isn't advice, but my Dad told me that when you love a woman
| you see her as that age when you fell in love with her for the
| rest of your life. And I have found that to be true.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Robert Frost, not sure if it was meant as advice:
|
| 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.
| thirdplace_ wrote:
| Earlier in the poem he says that the two roads were equally
| worn. But looking back on it he remembers the chosen one as
| less worn. Unclear what is the meaning. Self-delusion maybe
| because our memories change?
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Each app on your phone serves a useful purpose but also as a
| distraction. Make an intention each time you pick up your phone,
| execute it and put it away immediately afterwards.
| impoppy wrote:
| Never be humble. Business does not care about you, it's not the
| world to be humble in.
| annyeonghada wrote:
| I'm learning it in the academic world: not Science is rewarded
| but grandiosity.
| kevin_vanilla wrote:
| Meta-advice: When reading advice collection posts such as this
| one, find the first one that really resonates with you, then stop
| reading. The brain can't absorb several life-changing concepts
| within a few minutes of another. After stopping and thinking
| deeply about one bit of advice and ideally doing something else
| for a while, you can come back if you want.
| djmips wrote:
| Don't work 40 years without taking a vacation.
| Frummy wrote:
| Identity is not the self
| leobg wrote:
| Ask and it shall be given.
|
| Dated movie stars and had total strangers lend me their car
| because of it. Opened up a world which I didn't think existed.
| sgt101 wrote:
| "Don't beat yourself up about your failures and failings. There
| are loads of people out there who will do that for you."
|
| "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.
| tsol wrote:
| To play a devils advocate for a second
|
| >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
| sgt101 wrote:
| You are right about the past not mattering, but I think that
| people sometimes discount their happiness now too much in
| favour of expected future happiness and rewards.
|
| 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.
| spidersouris wrote:
| > You must balance enjoying your time now with investing in
| yourself and your future.
|
| 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.
| mlac wrote:
| You're young. You could die early, but it's statistically
| unlikely. There's a balance.
|
| 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...)
| sgt101 wrote:
| I think that is a wonderful story and a wonderful
| illustration of the idea I was trying to get across.
| bombcar wrote:
| The only currency we really have is time and that can't be
| banked or stored, only spent wisely or foolishly.
|
| Choosing when to convert time to money is important but
| also recognizing when you can convert money to time.
| creakingstairs wrote:
| > Even if I lost all my sources of revenue tomorrow, I
| wouldn't survive for a very long time with my savings
|
| 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!
| sgt101 wrote:
| One story I have that I think agrees with you is from when
| I was looking after my first child.
|
| 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.
| Asooka wrote:
| Check if you are vitamin D deficient. Take magnesium, calcium and
| zinc supplements.
| trinovantes wrote:
| Most people will not remember what you said or did but they will
| remember how you made them feel
| cgtyoder wrote:
| Big one right here ^^^
| wruza wrote:
| An interesting question. A bunch of seemingly important advices
| on my mind right now, but none of them actually _changed_ my
| life. This is probably one the of things that you never notice
| because most of them are in the form of "never". Did "never stick
| a fork into a socket" change my life? Probably so.
|
| 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.
| dr_j_ wrote:
| I was due to be in a meeting and was super anxious about it due
| to having to report out on some stuff I'd been working on. That
| morning, before the meeting, my dad texted me with the line
| "there is fear in all of them". Had a profound impact on me and
| reminded me that we are all human and are all prone to worrying
| about stuff.
| dhruvkar wrote:
| What happens externally is not in your control.
|
| 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.
| zonovar wrote:
| Time is the only thing you can't buy.
| nathias wrote:
| this isn't true, there are many things I can't buy
| monster_group wrote:
| You absolutely can. We do it all the time by paying others to
| do simple jobs for us. When I pay someone else to mow my lawn I
| am buying time. If I didn't mind spending time mowing the lawn
| I would just do it myself.
| randomdata wrote:
| You might even say that time is the only thing you can buy.
| Everything else is the outcome of time.
| blaydator wrote:
| Happiness is a choice. << Have you choose to be happy ? >> That's
| was the question a mentor asked me. Since then I have made it a
| priority in my life, and I am much more happy 7 years after. It
| so basic but since I meet so many people who don't know what they
| want in life; have no purpose, never asked them selves what do
| they want and fell like shit. I think having the honest goal to
| be Happy, it is a good starting point.
| greenail wrote:
| It is not who you know, it is who knows you! Seems like a small
| nuance but realizing this changes how you think about building
| relationships.
| vasco wrote:
| First class I got when I got to university, freshly arrived to
| the capital for my studies, still a kid. The calculus professor
| walks in and proceeds to do the "1/3 times 3 isn't 1, but it is"
| shtick, blowing everyone's minds. Continues doing this for 40
| minutes and at the end he says:
|
| "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.
| mromanuk wrote:
| Why competing? what about cooperation? nothing you do today is
| done in a vacuum, everything you use to build in your corner,
| was built by others.
| vasco wrote:
| The point went past you. The core of the message is that you
| should not limit yourself to those you see around you in your
| small country, and keep a small country mentality. It's
| telling young people they are as good as anyone else, and
| that they should aim as high as someone that grew up say in
| the US and went to Stanford, because they are no better than
| you. I thought it was a great message.
| block_dagger wrote:
| "Isolation is the gift" - Bukowski. This quote has given me the
| reassurance to continue down my own unique path "less traveled"
| (a quote from another great poet).
| werber wrote:
| In art school I had a professor tell us something like," when
| you're sick you say you're going to appreciate all these small
| things, like smelling the flowers after you had no sense of
| smell, and make all these changes but by the time you're better
| you never do ", it's something I think about pretty regularly two
| decades later. I think that telling a bunch of young people they
| would never do something made it a really great thing to "Rebel
| against". Like, at some of my lowest points it's been the thing
| that always replays first. How am I going to learn from this crap
| and find more enjoyment and humility from it.
| mherrmann wrote:
| The janitor of my building said something very similar and imo
| wise: "Healthy people have a thousand wishes. Sick people only
| have one."
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| "One must cultivate one's own garden."
|
| "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...
| jemurray wrote:
| If someone asks you how to do something or your opinion, give
| them a thoughtful answer. Many times I would say, "I don't have a
| strong opinion" or "whatever you think is best". It took a friend
| to tell me people value my advice and they are truly interested
| in what I have to say. When someone asks, they want to know what
| I think. Answer them thoughtfully. Ever since that moment I
| always give a thoughtful answer when someone asks for my advice.
| elsamuko wrote:
| It'll be a success or a good story.
| mndgs wrote:
| This one is a beautiful phrase before starting something scary.
| mattjaynes wrote:
| "Only boring people get bored."
|
| 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.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is also parenting advice I use. When the kids say they are
| bored (because they want to drone away on the iPad), I say 'it
| is good to be bored!'
|
| Within a few minutes they always find new ways to not be
| bored:)
| fluxinflex wrote:
| My most significant piece of advice came from my uncle. It was
| simply this "how would you feel if your grandmother died
| tomorrow?". It had an immediate effect. From that moment on I
| began to respect and honour my grandmother.
|
| 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.
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| Similarly I think "what if I die tomorrow"? This really helps
| me prioritize the experience I want from life over status,
| money, etc.
| ornornor wrote:
| > what if I die tomorrow
|
| 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.
| fluxinflex wrote:
| I guess it's more about what if _they_ die tomorrow ... if
| I died tomorrow, dunno I guess I would a little sad that I
| _didn 't_ have a substance abuse problem - but would depend
| on the substance.
| skydhash wrote:
| It's what if, not a certainty. Most of the decisions rely
| heavily on the certainty of living tomorrow. Which can be
| highly probable, but not 100% certain. So, that makes it
| possible to reconsider some decisions.
|
| 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.
| gizmore wrote:
| Most of them are bullocks, made when i went crazy:
|
| https://github.com/gizmore/anonymous-zen-book
|
| 1) If you don't know a world you can't talk about it
| CPLNTN wrote:
| "All endings are also beginnings, you just don't know it at the
| time"
|
| Helped me with the anxiety I always had about loosing people,
| opportunities and such
| acrophiliac wrote:
| Floss. A hygienist told me all my teeth were going to fall out if
| I didn't start flossing. I started that day and have been
| religious about it every since. Haven't lost a tooth yet :)
| guerrilla wrote:
| Start at the beginning. Master the basics. If you get off course,
| get back on.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| Never internalize advice based on folklore. That means you must
| critically review, and mostly reject, all common-wisdom advice
| given to you.
|
| 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.
| lunchladydoris wrote:
| At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back into the
| same box.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Not just advice, but a series of events, some books I read and a
| change in situation:
|
| 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 :)
| [deleted]
| carabiner wrote:
| yolo
| narag wrote:
| Same, in _Azucar Moreno_ 's version.
| misterspaceman wrote:
| Happiness is a state of mind. You don't find happiness hiding
| under a rock one day, you have to make it for yourself.
|
| 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.)
| bombcar wrote:
| And if you can't be happy now, you won't be happy later.
|
| And if something is required to make you happy, you are letting
| your happiness be controlled by others.
| crankin wrote:
| I have found that all the best advice I've received centers on
| how to focus your attention. As humans when we can give something
| our full attention it's almost impossible that what we are doing
| won't bear fruit. Here are some axioms around that idea that if
| you implement you will progress. - 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.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| What is a type 1 or type 2 decision? How do I apply the
| scientific method to those?
| crankin wrote:
| A Type 1 decision is a decision with high consequences if you
| get it wrong the results could be catastrophic. Alternatively
| a Type 2 decision has low consequences, if you get it wrong
| you can undo what you did and try again.
|
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Discern between Type 1 & Type 2 decisions. High vs low
| consequence. If high consequence apply scientific method.
| Everything else delegate to smart people.
|
| 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).
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Use a TODO list. Life changing advice? You betcha.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| That's why I made Please:
| https://github.com/NayamAmarshe/please
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Ha, that's cool :)
| selfhifive wrote:
| It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have
| gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying
| to be very intelligent. -- Charlie Munger
| hizxy wrote:
| Wash your buttload.
| NaN1352 wrote:
| From GTD methodology if I could remember only one simple thing it
| was "if ypu can do xyz in less than 5 mins do it now".
|
| 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.
| aBitPlayer wrote:
| When I was a new developer just a couple months out of school,
| and was very eager to be a part of my company and fit in, an
| older developer told me "remember that your interests and your
| path are your own."
|
| 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.
| mojomark wrote:
| Thank you for contributing this. I'm 22 years into my career,
| mostly spent in mundane engineering roles compared to the deep
| research I worked on as a hobby but really wanted to do
| professionally. After pushing very hard for many years, I
| finally landed that deep R&D gig and am well compensated.
|
| 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.
| Kye wrote:
| Don't sit on creative ideas waiting for the skills to apply them.
| The ideas you come up with developing those skills will be so
| much better, and you'll have a lot of noob stuff to look on
| fondly. Applying the noob ideas is how you get there. I see too
| many writers, musicians, etc holding on to some idea they've
| always wanted to work on until they somehow develop the skills
| with ideas they don't, so they never do anything.
|
| 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.
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