Find ways to sustain and improve your mental health. The future will get only more stressful and the thing between your ears will largely determine if your life is well lived or not. So far I have seen three areas that you should really look into. Sleep, meditation and exercise. In that order. They all do one thing well and that is to reduce stress and increase your resistance to stress. All other areas in your life will improve, but it’s a slow process which results are only visible after roughly two months of consistent effort.
Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
871–876 of 876 posts
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#872Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would never recommend deadlifts. Those are really dangerous and easy to do wrong. My friend shattered his spine doing deadlifts and needed surgery and months of recovery and he still can't bend down or sit in certain positions.
Being weak and overweight is way more dangerous than deadlifts. Muscle mass helps build and maintain bone mass (depending on your age) which avoids broken bones, and osteoporosis later in life. Strong people get injured less and recover faster from injuries. Yes, there are some ways deadlifts can go horribly wrong, but these are pretty avoidable.
> Being weak and overweight is way more dangerous than deadlifts
Good thing there are many things you can do which are not deadlifts and which prevent being weak and overweight.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#873Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another N=1. My (horrendously self-destructive) MO is usually to: 1. Fast all day out of laziness: no food in the house, in the middle of something, one more thing, etc. etc. 2. Get incredibly hungry all of the sudden 3. Optionally push through for a couple more hours upon which my hunger subsides somewhat 4. Desperately need food, upon which I order out or walk down the street for something I end up eating 1-2 meals…
You just described pretty much every day of my life for the past 8 years. I think there's nothing wrong with this. (Though of course I'm biased.) The intermittent fasting seems to benefit my concentration and energy, even if the fasting happens to be unintentional and due to distraction or laziness. The only externality is if you end up eating a lot right before sleeping, which tends to impact my sleep and digestion.…
Yeah, unfortunately, I do that externality a lot: scarfing food before bed to the point that I either stay up, or feel crappy in the morning
I'm working on it
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#874Earlier quoted context omitted.
I cook or eat left overs 6 nights a week at this point. Beyond saving a massive amount of money it's shocking how much better the steak I make myself is than one I can get out. Most cities have kitchen equipment stores (not just Bed Bath) that actually have cooking courses you can take. Now "home made pasta" starts with flour and eggs.
Saving massive amount of money? Judging just from demographic that uses hackernews (mostly tech workers), I think it's actually cheaper to eat out if you measure price of your time by how much money would you earn in that time while working compared to shopping for the ingredients, cooking and doing dishes.
If I go to H-E-B and buy a rib eye steak for $15.99 a pound and cook it. I'm out less than $15.99, because I don't want a pound of steak. If I go to a mid range steak restaurant I'm going to get a rib-eye for $29.99 for 12 oz of steak. And it's going to be of lower grade and less seasoned. Why would I do that?
Also, I'm not working all the time. Cooking is a way of relaxing.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#875Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you measure return? Not doubting your approach - just curious how you measure the return of various unrelated tasks (e.g. cooking vs. spending that time working)
Time and money. Example: I grew up in a large joint family. In the family kitchen, everyone had a chore. Often around 20-40 mts time investment each benefited 12 people’s meals. Cooking for myself or even two people is at least one hour. My time is better spent doing other things. I would rather hire a cook. Otoh, it’s also a timesaver and money saver if we could have a hired a cook to feed 12 people, but the family…
Very detailed, thank you! I like the way you think.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#876Earlier quoted context omitted.
What made my post-college mental state so much better (as well as my friends' quality of life) was that I forced my flatmates to cook with me all the time and we would have people over for lunch/dinner like I used to do back home, in Greece. Our stomachs and wallets are still thanking us to this day. For context, I studied in the US and moved to London for work right after graduation.
US is not a homogeneous set of cities
You are right, life in New York isn't exactly close to that in other US cities