Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 269 posts

Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

#51

Post by chronomex »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #46

Lessons I'm learning: Social protocol has a real impact on people. The quality of your reasoning doesn't provide you an excuse to ignore it. It is incredibly easy to blow thousands of dollars, $20 at a time. Smile. Reserve judgement until judgement is required. Helping people is more satisfying than helping yourself. This is true because you can feel like you've helped others enough, but you will always want more for…

It is incredibly easy to blow thousands of dollars, $20 at a time.

I'm only 22 and I already learned that the hard way. Spend less than you earn.

Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

#52

Post by hardik »

fleitz wrote: post #44
ErrantX wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends; if you like being in your comfort zone and can maintain that indefinitely whats the problem?

The nice thing about being human is you only have to maintain it for about 80 years.

I find myself kicking me out of the zone just as it is created. Sometimes it is tiring, working on it (working on both, that is, "being comfortable" as well as not getting out too soon :) )

Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

#53

Post by shin_lao »

lionhearted wrote: post #21
shin_lao wrote: post #11

It's naive of you to believe you can learn from our past naivety. You will have to do your own mistakes and learn from them. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. -Oscar Wilde

> It's naive of you to believe you can learn from our past naivety. Firmly disagree. You absolutely can learn from others' past mistakes - that doesn't mean you'll make no mistakes, but you absolutely can make less mistakes and recognize and correct them faster. > You will have to do your own mistakes and learn from them. True. But the more you can listen to and apply good guidance from people who've been there, the…

I'm sorry but you're talking about trivial life issue.

Do you think one could teach you how to deal with the loss of a loved one, disease, poverty, finding out who you really are, being a good friend or a good father?

That's what matters.

Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

#54

Post by Zarkonnen »

JacobAldridge wrote: post #15

As a single data point - supporting the idea that your own experience is far more valuable than listening to me talk - I continue to get massive value from this (under-rated imho) essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html

I actually have to disagree with you. I think that's a terrible article. The core idea, that truly competent and motivated people are orders of magnitude more productive than others, is true. But the rest of it is a bad justification for centuries of inequality and exploitation. It confuses Is and Ought To by assuming that any market outcome is always morally good. It ignores the environment, society, and history, while claiming to be more "reality-based" than opposing views.

Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

#55

Post by silvestrov »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #30
Terry_B wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My desire to do this though, causes the problem that I feel like I can't stop working and constantly increasing my savings. The idea that if I take time off for a while to work on something at a loss, the damage will be too great due to the long time effects of compounding interest etc and the desire to build a prosperous life for my family. So I think I have the opposite problem. I have a hard time stepping off the…

it seems as though you are talking about something different from the OP. you are emphasizing building wealth, the OP is emphasizing restraint.

It is two sides of the same coin: you can't build wealth without exercising restraint. Look at all the professional young sport guys who earned millions in no time, and who wasted it all on senseless bling-bling.

And he says, "work on something at a loss", which is definitly not building wealth, it is anti-saving. If you are a saver, you'll always save money no matter how much or how little you earn. Spending your savings is against your nature.

Saving money is living in the possibilities, in the mind.

Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

#56

Post by chegra »

1. Your friends aren't your market, so don't be surprise when they don't read your blog or join your site. It's like offering a guy a skirt to wear; it's just not something they are interested in.

2. Your friends and family really want you to succeed. Even though they might say negative stuff about you trying something new, they want you to succeed. Part of the reason they say these stuff is that they want to prevent you from experiencing failure and all the emotional baggage that comes along with it. What I am saying is to take the negative statements made by families and friends lightly. My family was surprised I sold my website when I started grad school; I thought they didn't care for it.

3. Try to network as much as possible. Most investors wouldn't invest in someone who is not properly introduce. 75% of romantic relationship are established through your network. 90% of jobs are found through networks, at least the upper echelon ones.

4. Actions over words. Do something then talk about it, not the other way around. Talking is satisfying enough that it might not lead to action.

Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

#57

Post by z80 »

Learn by fucking up. It's as simple as that. You will gain friends and loose some too, as well as girlfriends or any other person. But in the end, you will learn what's The Right Thing and your friends will be true friends and your GF/Wife/SO will be a person who respects and love you regardless of your flaws.

Being 36, father of three, married for the second time and doing pretty well for myself these days, I can of course only relate to my own experiences of life.

But I'm pretty sure that if I've asked anyone the question you're asking 15 years ago, I would have gotten some advice on how to get by in life, but I wouldn't have understood why the advice given to me was the right way. Experience gives you that understanding.

z80, Sweden

Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

#58

Post by leelin »

lionhearted wrote: post #25

Man, forgive me for being blunt, but there's a lot of loser talk in this thread. "Oh you can't learn from others mistakes, you'll make them, blah blah blah..." - no, this is how people feel better about themselves for having not listened to advice and getting wrecked in their own life because of it. Sure, you'll make mistakes, but you shouldn't just accept wandering blindly through life dealing with stuff. This is wh…

Weird, isn't your comment a bit self-contradicting?

Above the fold: "Stop the loser talk. You can learn from others' mistakes. Your fate is not sealed."

Below the fold: "Track record is king. It's all DNA. People don't change. Your fate is sealed."

FWIW, I tend to agree more with your below-the-fold views based on most people I've met.

Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

#59

Post by jasonkester »

Two things:

1.) Save money while you're young. Keep living like a college student for 5 years after you leave college and sack away at least $10k/year. Put it into the market and don't touch it again until you retire.

Compound interest is quite a thing to behold, and 5% returns over 40 years will do some amazing things to your money. Start with 100k when you're under 30 and you probably won't ever need to worry about retirement savings.

2. Get to the point where you are provably good at what you do as fast as possible. This will mean switching jobs several times. Build things that are noteworthy and get to the point where people are recommending you to their friends.

Once you've done that, you get secret point 3:

3. You are more valuable to your employer than they are to you.

Companies spend a lot of effort making you think your job is precarious and could be taken away at any minute. In reality it will take six months to find a decent replacement for you. Once you're in and demonstrating that you can find your arse with both hands, they're not going to want to lose you.

That gives you lots of room to explore, and is the reason that I love this industry so much. I can't think of another profession where you can take nine months off every year and still make a good living.

More here:

http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/02/two-weeks-vaca...

Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

#60

Post by HSO »

One of my "naiveties" was to believe others' post-hoc explanations of their success or failure. People usually overestimate their own impact or effectiveness in influencing their life, and that's probably a good misperception to have in order to "take control" or "be proactive", good attitudes to life. But it's a mistake to carry this bias over to interpreting other people's life. Life is usually too complex to figure out from the outside what went down and what was the kicker. Many times, I figure, people themselves don't know much about what ultimately determined their life outcome. I'm not exactly sure what conclusion to draw from this. But just be careful in mimicking other people, or even asking questions like this. It's only superficially smart. The best ways to learn from others may be to read literature or poetry, i.e. to learn from fictive others; good writers are not good writers because they write well but because of their perceptive power.
Post reply on HN