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Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#311

Post by Aeolun »

username77 wrote: post #84

I’m 30 and haven’t really had much dating experience. It boggles my mind how people are already married by 30. How does dating work? Serious question.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever dated as such.

All my relationships came out of meeting with friends/a group of people and having a girl at roughly the same point in life be in the same group.

You interact without any obligations at first, and at some point it becomes clear that even though you didn’t explicitly say so, you are interested in the other.

I’m not quite sure how it proceeds from there to doing ‘something’ exclusively together, but I assume this is generally the point where asking the other out to the movies happens.

To be honest, if that’s accepted after all this, it’s never been a bad relationship for me yet (even though some ended, happily married now).

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#312

Post by [deleted] »

tropo wrote: post #304
gnulinux wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 21, never asked a girl out. I'm same as you, I think I'm pretty outgoing and generally social (not to social, but I'm ok I guess) and I'm good looking too (I go to the gym 5 days a week). But the whole dating thing seems almost pointlessly stressful to me, I don't even quite know how to do it and at this age it seems embarrassing to be this inexperienced.

I was in that situation. I discovered that worst-case situations were actually easier, because failure was expected and thus didn't hurt. Asking out a plain girl was difficult. Asking out an ugly one meant that a rejection would be devastating. ("even the ugly ones reject me") So, what to do...? I marched myself out to the city park and ordered myself to approach the hottest women I could find. One day I walked throu…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#313

Post by corsivo »

Mizza wrote: post #269
legohead wrote: post #219

I don't like the new way of doing things. Kubernetes, node, react, terraform... Everything is more complicated and also more fragile. I feel like the software world is collectively mad and I'm sitting on the outside asking "wtf is going on?" Or maybe I'm the crazy one.

So much of this. React is like one step forwards, 10 steps backwards. Mixing markup and logic, adding a whole front-end compiler, needing imports from third parties to re-implement basic browser functionality - for what? So that users have to see a loading spinner and their back button doesn't work any more? I'm 90% sure it's an accidental conspiracy to keep front end developer salaries high. Talking to older heads,…

SSR and PushState have prevented your "for whats?" from being real issues ever. Mixing markup and logic along with not capturing benefits from the transpiler are more symptoms of poor implementation decisions rather than flaws with the actual tool.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#314

Post by 50 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #240

I have a very wide area of interests, and doing things takes time. But while I'm doing thing 'A', I think about the fact that I'm making no progress on 'B', 'C', ... 'n' and it distracts me both from thinking as deeply as I need to on thing 'A' and the enjoyment I get from getting something done. So I struggle with letting go of the desire to get everything done that I can imagine would be fun and interesting to do.

I egotistically struggle with this, particularly because I'm an undergraduate. I can either be academically-oriented (engulfed in the courses I'm taking, partaking in TA-ing, clubs, etc), career-oriented (engulfed in building side-projects, prepping for interviews, networking, etc), or hobby-oriented (engulfed in things like reading about eastern religions, playing with generative art, playing video games, playing sports, etc). I suppose you have to find a balance and alternate the balance depending on what is most critical. Above all, what is more important, I think, is to take a step back from all that throughout the day - go for a walk during lunch, savor the food you are eating, watch the evening sky, etc - in other words, not becoming too caught up in those things (because then you are more prone to becoming anxious and stressed) and knowing in the back of your mind that in the grand scheme of things it's all play, as cliche as that may sound.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#315

Post by nerform »

tjungblut wrote: post #153
AJRF wrote: post #94

Finishing things. I've started countless projects all with a wave of optimism on how its going to be different this time, how this will be the side project that earns me enough recurring revenue to leave my job and start making things I want to build full time, but I never can finish them. I am in awe at people who can work on things for 4+ years without getting large scale feedback or revenue from them. My attention…

I suffer very much from the same issue, although I'm not motivated by recurring revenue. I also figured out that I'm only motivated on a couple of evenings a month to really contribute to side projects. What helped me in the past was to write down a single thing that I want to add the next time I feel motivated again and then spend the whole evening focussed on shipping that particular thing. Because I always feel mo…

This worked for me too, but only for a while. Now I can't find motivation to even open the projects or start something new. I have way too many responsibilities in my life. I think I gave up on my hopes on building my own business alone. I'm thinking of hiring other people to do my side projects.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#316

Post by thinkingkong »

headcanon wrote: post #209

I'd say I struggle with a few things, but I'll pick one. I overcomplicate and overthink things. If I get into something, like a new hobby, I go in to "engineer mode" and think about all the complexities of what I'm trying to do, and end up going nowhere. Or other times, I will purchase a slew of materials I don't initally need because "I'll need them later" and end up getting bored with the hobby before they ever get…

Been there. Classic analysis paralysis problem for me, at least.

What I had to do was actually just start to show myself how little I was gaining in the “what if” planning. Chances of those problems were small and I was just spending time (years!) dealing with engineering mode.

The key for me was realizing why I acted that way. But thats a personal journey Id encourage you to take but cant tell you where it goes.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#317

Post by nell »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #240

I have a very wide area of interests, and doing things takes time. But while I'm doing thing 'A', I think about the fact that I'm making no progress on 'B', 'C', ... 'n' and it distracts me both from thinking as deeply as I need to on thing 'A' and the enjoyment I get from getting something done. So I struggle with letting go of the desire to get everything done that I can imagine would be fun and interesting to do.

I have the same problem and my diagnosis is that is a symptom of not having a deep bond with any of those interests. I've deceived myself that the ease of discovery will automatically transfer to mastery.

I realized in a world of abundant and instant knowledge, I've been applying the laws of scarcity: "I won't be able to do Y and Z if I spend too much on X". Hence the anxiety to get to the Y when doing X. But it's not going to be a finite list ending in Z. It is an infinite stream and that I have to treat it as drinking from a river vs a cup.

Lately, I've been deliberately giving up on reading about topics, unfollowing people at the edge of my interests and focusing on the areas that are more central. If you look a little bit, you can identify a couple of interests that are stronger than the other. Then it is a matter of eliminating the time spent at the edges.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#318

Post by Aeolun »

legohead wrote: post #219

I don't like the new way of doing things. Kubernetes, node, react, terraform... Everything is more complicated and also more fragile. I feel like the software world is collectively mad and I'm sitting on the outside asking "wtf is going on?" Or maybe I'm the crazy one.

Ah, I recognize this. All these things are cool, amazing, and great proof of concepts, but building a production application on them just feels like hubris.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#319

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

I struggle with avoiding desensitization or the status quo feeling one should just focus on one’s own life and not let external sources of moral or ethical outrage affect you.

It is so critical to be outraged by an ever-increasing number of things that truly, sincerely deserve to evoke outrage. Any solution that proposes to somehow not be outraged just cannot be considered.

Yet at the same time, nobody has the bandwidth to be so outraged, let alone to try to have a happy life.

I think this is a non-trivial problem of modern philosophy. Is it ethically OK to short-circuit your moral outrage because pragmatically there are too many issues to be able to process, or it would be socially offputting to be “on” all the time?

Shouldn’t you take great pains to boycott products or services from bad actors, protest abuses of power and corruption, never ever become exhausted of talking about or listening to discussions of these issues, even unto whatever toll it takes on your personal life?

I’m very skeptical of people who quickly say no.

What a struggle this problem is!

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#320

Post by DoreenMichele »

tropo wrote: post #304
gnulinux wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 21, never asked a girl out. I'm same as you, I think I'm pretty outgoing and generally social (not to social, but I'm ok I guess) and I'm good looking too (I go to the gym 5 days a week). But the whole dating thing seems almost pointlessly stressful to me, I don't even quite know how to do it and at this age it seems embarrassing to be this inexperienced.

I was in that situation. I discovered that worst-case situations were actually easier, because failure was expected and thus didn't hurt. Asking out a plain girl was difficult. Asking out an ugly one meant that a rejection would be devastating. ("even the ugly ones reject me") So, what to do...? I marched myself out to the city park and ordered myself to approach the hottest women I could find. One day I walked throu…

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