Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

I'm no Warren Buffet, so I hesitate to disagree, but these kinds of stories always make me think of a parable about weight lifting.

You go to a gym to learn to lift weights. You see a big strong guy and ask him to teach you. He must know how to lift weights and get big and strong, right? He's done it after all.

Sure enough, the big guy knows just what to do. He's got all sorts of advice, he disagrees with conventional wisdom, he shares his training schedule etc. The only problem is, when you follow the big guy's advice, you don't see much gains - or maybe you get injured, or you plateau.

What you didn't know is that, in addition to all of his advice and idiosyncrasies, the big guy takes steroids. The big guy is big not because of his lifting schedule or the chant he says before he works out or whatever, he's big mostly because he's taking steroids. Following his advice without the steroids won't really be that useful for you.

To relate this back to the Buffet story, Buffet has been rich for decades. His wealth came from his ability to value companies, make deals, etc. Then with money he lives a very different lifestyle.

If you don't have the steroids - the vastly better ability to do something the market puts a lot of value on, then Buffet's advice may not get you very much and may actually hurt you. Where Buffet lets lower priority tasks slide or delegates them they still get done by his employees. If you do it then your house is going unmaintained or a relationship is getting neglected etc.

Might be different nowadays but back when malls were a thing you could just go down to the mall and practice. 1st step for me was to set a goal to approach 100 women (or 50 or 20, whatever you can do) and go do it. They’re all strangers so it doesn’t matter if you goof up or look silly. Don’t focus on the results at first, just the process and mechanics of approaching, and review later what worked and didn’t. It’s like learning any sport or skill. Study, practice, review.

Yep - that's exactly been my experience.

(off-topic) Org mode is really amazing. I've transitioned almost completely from Emacs to Vim over the last few years but I still have Emacs on my dock only because of `org-mode`. I've tried substitutes in vim but nothing really works.

(back on topic) Another advantage of writing comments is coming back to the code becomes so much easier. I can re-read the comments and understand what's going on much faster.

To do this properly I've developed a simple system of 'categories' that allow me to structure the comments properly. I think they works really well. For anyone curious - here's an example in my last weekend project: https://github.com/theproductiveprogrammer/luminate

Check out the comments in the code (`main.js`). I think they make the code much easier to understand and maintain. It's almost an alternative to TDD - Comment Driven Design (CDD!)

Sign up for a dating website. Don't expect too much out of any particular interaction. Just try to learn from each one and get better. It helps knowing that everybody there is more or less on the same page.

Every day is a struggle.

For several years I've struggled to learn enough Japanese for daily living. (Spouse is Japanese and we moved to Japan a few years ago with our 3 school-aged kids). Very little success on this. しょうがないね

My wife is out of town anywhere between 3 days to 2 weeks each month for her job. While she is gone, we rely heavily on her parents (with whom I cannot communicate directly). They take care of laundry and dinner for the kids. I take care of all the other housework and breakfast.

I work at a large corp (English speaking technology department, Japanese company) with very little career progression without business-level Japanese skill. My dev skills feel rusted and I try not to despair about my career.

So what do you do? Do you double down on Japanese and try to get some level of fluency and let your dev skill rot? Or do you focus on polishing those dev skills and push the language learning back even farther? You get maybe an hour a day for this purpose.

Unfortunately I own a house where the mortgage exceeds the value of the property. So I am not in a position to move to greener pastures.

As an added bonus, I've hit mid-forty now and my body is starting to go. Exercise and diet help, but ifaik there is no cure for aging/degrading biologic systems.

...

But here's the thing: As a man -- and especially as a white, English-speaking, North American man -- nobody gives a shit about my problems. Sure, family and old friends care that I have troubles, but from the perspective that they hope the problems go away. (to be clear, I mean this as a general case, not specific to this country)

I painting myself into a corner, and just have to keep working to make things better.

It's simple, but not easy -> Keep working hard. Do whatever you can to improve yourself and your situation. Ask for help when you can. Don't complain.

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Edit to add:

Thank you everyone for your kind comments. I appreciate it very much and will carefully consider your suggestions.