Ask HN: What do you struggle with? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#351

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:50 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #281

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #201

Everything worth doing and about half of the things that aren't. If I had to pick one thing, it'd be my weight. I've lost 150lbs and have been keeping it off for years. People who've never lost a significant amount of weight (north of 50lbs) probably can't understand what it is like to have to fight your body every day of your life. I have to avoid temptation as much as possible, which means keeping only enough food…

The idea that caloric restriction diets cause metabolic damage is basically a myth. If it happens at all the effect is very small. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22327054/ Chances are you are underestimating your intake, or overestimating how much you burn through exercise. I don't mean that as a personal critique: most people are terrible at that kind of estimation.

I make no adjustment for calories burned through exercise at all. 1600/day is 1600/day regardless of how long I spent at the gym.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#352

Post by nojvek » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:51 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #332

JaumeGreen wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look into pickup communities. Don't take it as gospel, in fact ignore most of it (specially negging, and any other kind of power plays). But you'll see that it's possible, you will also learn to read signs. Mostly dating consists of improving oneself, be social, don't objectify people and learn the unwritten rules.

+1 to at least familiarizing yourself with PUA culture and literature. Ignore the people who say it’s shady. Ignore the bad advice to “just be yourself and one day magic will happen.” If you want to learn a skill (meeting women) where you have no inherent talent, then you have to study and practice. It’s like any sport. Some people have natural talent but most people are no good. The more you practice and learn, the…

There’s some bad stuff in PUA and some reasonable things.

Some genuinely helpful things I found.

1) Try making small talk conversations to every day strangers. It removes approach anxiety. Talk about the weather, the city, politics, anything. Being able to hold a stream of connected topics in a conversation is sort of a skill. Also kinda helps understand what’s creepy and what’s not. Good conversations skills are a great life skill.

2) Eye contact, volume and posture. Look into the other persons eye when talking to them. Don’t be too soft, but also not too loud. Don’t speak too fast too. When people don’t struggle to understand you, you project confidence. Dress with fitting clothes, be well trimmed and walk with a good posture.

3) have your own things, find your own happiness. Whether it’s work, hobbies, hikes, whatever. Something that you’re enjoy and you’re decently good at. Great if you have a group of friends that you regular do things with. Be happy and contempt.

4) Life is not a race. You don’t need to try too hard. Good things will eventually happen if you’re meeting women your age and having decent conversations.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#353

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:51 AM UTC

floofyreal wrote: post #263

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #201

Everything worth doing and about half of the things that aren't. If I had to pick one thing, it'd be my weight. I've lost 150lbs and have been keeping it off for years. People who've never lost a significant amount of weight (north of 50lbs) probably can't understand what it is like to have to fight your body every day of your life. I have to avoid temptation as much as possible, which means keeping only enough food…

Did you try fasting? I can imagine sharing your story will lead to many people trying to offer you their ultimate solution, but from my personal experience with never ending hunger, fasting for more than 24 hours (only water) helped me "reset" my hunger. I then continued with method of eating only 1 meal a day (intermittent fasting), while focusing on lowering carbohydrates, since they always make me the hungriest. I…

Dude, I tried everything. Fasting works for a time, but eventually you get sick of nearly fainting every time you stand up and you end up overeating on days you're not fasting.

> I can imagine sharing your story will lead to many people trying to offer you their ultimate solution

The irony.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#354

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

sp527 wrote: post #291

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #201

Everything worth doing and about half of the things that aren't. If I had to pick one thing, it'd be my weight. I've lost 150lbs and have been keeping it off for years. People who've never lost a significant amount of weight (north of 50lbs) probably can't understand what it is like to have to fight your body every day of your life. I have to avoid temptation as much as possible, which means keeping only enough food…

Your caloric intake is dangerously low (assuming you're a dude). That's what's slowing down your metabolism. There's tons of research on this. Also, your goal should be to put on lean mass and reduce your bodyfat percentage (with a goal of keeping it under 15%) - it makes staying in good shape a lot easier.

When my caloric intake goes up, my weight also goes up. Trust me, I keep meticulous data. You don't know what you're talking about.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#355

Post by etatoby » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:54 AM UTC

zombieprocess wrote: post #41

etatoby wrote: post #26

Long-term: dating/relationships. I'm very outgoing, but I have love shyness or something like that. I basically don't date. I find the entire thing extremely stressful and unbearable. I've always been alone. Short-term: not much! I recently dropped everything and moved to the other side of the globe (Japan) on a student visa. I'm studying a very interesting language and culture and making friends with people from all…

If you don't mind me asking, how old are you? I always dream of this kind of stuff but then convince myself I am too old for this. I am 31.

I'm 38, almost 39 next month ;-)

I'm having a blast. Best move of my life! The only thing I slightly regret is not doing it 10 years ago. But it's still ok.

I'm loving the place (Tokyo), the culture, the opportunities, the food, the way of life, and I'm making tons of friends.

If I can get proficient in the language (it's looking good, I'm top of the class for now) I'll look for a job here, hopefully for an American tech company. I have a CS degree and 10+ years of experience. English is my 2nd language, but I'm way ahead than in Japanese, plus I'd rather work in a US- or EU-style workplace, because Japanese companies are scary places.

I'd love to make a tech startup, I have tons of ideas. But that will depend on connections, opportunities, and visa status.

Finally, girls seem to be more interested in me here, and the social dynamics seem more... relaxed? so I may have a chance to overcome my struggle. But the first step is getting good at the actual language.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#356

Post by oceanman888 » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:56 AM UTC

Sukotto wrote: post #349

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 l…

Seems you are suffering from what a lot of Japanese married man have, no one gives a shit about your problems except that you bring back the bills. There is a reasons people don't even date anymore here. Take some time for yourself and don't stop hustling.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#357

Post by 100kg » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:56 AM UTC

Neff wrote: post #154

1. Finding things that drive and recharge me. I feel like I tend to mindlessly go through motions but I am not getting much value out of my day-to-day and find after a while I am worn out and tend to blow up at some part of my life. 2. Ensuring I build time for myself and not lose my personal identity while being in a relationship. I tend to put my personal needs on the back burner and go out of my way to please my p…

I made an account to let you know that I'm also facing these very same issues. If you'd ever like to talk about it let me know.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#358

Post by agracey » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

Sukotto wrote: post #349

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 l…

At the risk of trivializing your situation because I can't even begin to imagine the frustration that I would feel in your situation.

Do you have coworkers who are bilingual and can start speaking to you daily in Japanese and English? Are your kids learning Japanese in a way that you might be able to learn it with them and sharing in that experience?

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#359

Post by yahyaheee » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

wetpaste wrote: post #339

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.

This is just some MVP java app with an nginx proxy, elastic-search, and mysql? Why is this running in k8s on aws via Kops in conjunction with a cloudformation template for aurora inside of a VPC? With containers separately built via packer +ansible kicked off via jenkins after each pull request merge? The CI pipeline also kicks off a canary deployment in our UAT environment with a prometheus exporter for monitoring o…

rofl, it sounds pretty bad when you put it like that. I think what we’ve been doing in software for sometime has been complex, were just beginning to draw more lines as we learn more

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#360

Post by Baeocystin » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 2:01 AM UTC

Sukotto wrote: post #349

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 l…

>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?

Honest answer, from someone who grew up as a child of a diplomat (and is also a white, mid-40's middle-aged man)- this isn't even close to an even question. Push your language training as hard as you possibly can.

Linguistic and cultural competency will gain you access to not only the people of the country you live in, but will also gain you the ability to better understand your children as they grow up in a Japanese environment.

Compare that to honing, what, experience with some APIs that will be out of favor in half a decade anyway? There's no path forward if you don't speak the language as it is. Focus on the important stuff (communication) first. Dev skills can be resharpened rapidly as needed.