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Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#591

Post by LA_Banker »

rdegges wrote: post #415
LA_Banker wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy hell, that's quite a transformation. Congrats to you. Yes, that's the biggest thing that's under-stressed about exercise: the benefits are not just physical/health related. Like you, exercise has made me far less averse to interacting with people, and resulted in me being more outgoing, more open meeting new people, and just living a better life as a result. There's a book called Spark: The Revolutionary New Sci…

100% Being healthy is great and all, but you know what's REALLY fucking awesome? Feeling confident and not being afraid to just be a person. I can't tell you how many times I used to sit at home alone feeling bad for myself, vs now: I don't have the same fear. It's so much healthier (mentally) to be proud of yourself and just not worry about the way you look (or feel afraid of being judged by people) constantly.

I couldn't agree more. I think if everyone just got to experience this dramatic difference, even briefly, there'd be no obesity epidemic.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#592

Post by dorfsmay »

Using vim, and learning it in depth.

I'm an old AIX/HP-UX hand, and stuck to vi and clones because I was afraid I'd start using a vim-only command that wouldn't work on vi.

Then Unicode became more and more prevalent and vi and it's clones didn't support it well + I started doing mainly Linux, so I switched to vim. Then finally I started learning all the vim-specific extras... Yeah totally wish I started earlier!

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#593

Post by paxcoder »

rdegges wrote: post #411
icefo wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice work M. muscle :) I should probably do that too, I'm somehow staying skinny despite eating a lot but I know I'm not healthy.

You should just get started! It honestly isn't that hard. If you can write software, you can get into amazing shape =)

You are not a role model (anymore, at least). Don't set up people for failure, or alternatively, an unhealthy lifestyle like yours.

Whatever phisique requires steroids to achieve is literally too big and anyone who is not into bodybuilding will think that.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#594

Post by nickpsecurity »

andrepd wrote: post #221
redipiny wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that you can accomplish meaningful things in reality with those numbers.

I think it's very presumptuous to tell people what is meaningful and not. I have no interest in yachts or sports cars, something stereotypically bought by rich people. OTOH, I have great pride in my current DF save, and in being good at speedrunning some games, for instance. Neither of this things cost me a penny. What makes this less meaningful that something bought with money?

The parent comment didn't say anything about sports cars or yachts. Those are potential answers but lowest on list of meaningful things far as I consider. You could be investing in business, learning new skills/hobbies, going interesting places, forming lasting relationships, working on any number of problems in the world around you, working on problems in your life, and so on. Yet, your most meaningful moment is the numbers you've achieved in a virtual box a private company created for profit while they and the rest of the world keep moving on with such meaningful pursuits. Even these companies are rarely loyal to their virtual boxes.

So, certainly do it if you want and enjoy it. Some things do have objectively more impact than others, though, with your save and games probably not existing unless someone stopped playing theirs for a while to create them with expectation of such impact. That you even like it sort of endorses getting out to create or improve something similar as more meaningful.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#595

Post by nickpsecurity »

benologist wrote: post #182
ChuckMcM wrote: post #122

How about stopped doing? There was a weekend where I had spent close to 20 hours playing World of Warcraft to farm materials and reagents for the epic engineering mount. After I had finished it, and spent the requisite time showing it off in-game, I looked around and realized that all of thrill of lifelong learning and making things in the "real" world has been subsumed when all my spare time was consumed in a virtua…

I stopped using my computer after 9pm, that was hard but it makes a huge difference later when I go to sleep!

The suggestion of stopping caffeine after 6pm helped me. Yet, I am on my computer late at night with HN and other places waking me up with ideas. So, yeah, that might be a great way to improve sleep. Might have to try it when I can muster up the willpower.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#597

Post by oriel »

elorant wrote: post #255

Reading Hacker News. Seriously, this place from an intellectual point of view is the most important aspect in my life. It has opened my mind to so many viewpoints. It's one of the few healthy places on the Internet where you can have a decent conversation without things getting out of hand, while in the same time learn something new.

I'd clarify this as reading Hacker News comments, something I've only started doing recently. Its turned an adventure in increasing my browser tab density (shiny articles), to a deep discussion on the finer points of an important knowledge item (Implications of Oracle buying NetSuite).

i.e. Depth of knowledge rather than breadth of shallow knowledge (reading the headlines only).

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#598

Post by nickpsecurity »

knocte wrote: post #118
carlesfe wrote: post #44

Exercise, though others have said that. Personally, I'd say that the thing that changed my life for the best has been Not Giving Tech Support. When I was a teenager I was kinda miserable because some people abused me for tech support. You know, it's nice to give favors, but at some point you're fed up of reinstalling every computer in your block every 6 months. People stop you on the streets and the first thing they…

As for me, I stopped giving tech support by saying "I don't use Windows anymore, probably I forgot how to do it; if you want to install Linux, I'm happy to help".

That's exactly what I started saying! They always see me on a Linux desktop, too, so it's quite believable and has some truth. Like carlesfe said, it saves sooooo much time. The ridiculous thing is that people think having tech knowledge means we should spend hours solving their problems but they with their skills sure aren't going to spend hours on my transmission, running my retail operation, planning my estate, & so on. Ridiculous the expectation is so common for tech skills.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#599

Post by bigbang »

Sukotto wrote: post #70
patio11 wrote: post #9

Every time I start seriously exercising this hits in about week ~4. Sadly, I only generally keep it up for 6 months before falling back to old habits. Professionally: email lists. If you have any reason to have a blog, you should have an email list. It surfaces the identities of the people who are actually interested in what you have to say, and ties people to you much, much tighter than "Oh yeah, that thing you wrot…

If you want better luck making the exercise (or any other) habit stick better. Try one or more of the following: * reduce the habit down to a ridiculously small subset of the habit. Eg. "I will floss every day" becomes "I will floss my upper, front two teeth". Or "I will exercise every day" becomes "I will change into my exercise clothes and step out my front door.". You don't have to floss all your teeth... just one…

Great tips - I especially loved the 4th one. Thanks for writing it up.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#600

Post by oriel »

kevindeasis wrote: post #584

Most of these haven't become second nature yet, but I'm getting there. The hard part is having momentum and flow. But, generally, my day works out great if I can do all of this in a day. 1) Meditation 2) IFTTT that syncs trello and google calendar 3) Eating Healthier 4) Running 5) ABC: Always be coding 6) Talking to people who are really good at their domain 7) Sleeping: Flux helps 8) App that tracks how much time I…

Can you elaborate more on 14 (decision fatigue)? It sounds like something I've encountered recently (as autonomy increases) but never pinned as a concept that I can talk about.
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