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Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

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

#61

Post by chegra »

lionhearted wrote: post #50
noname123 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me also for being blunt ... what if the person who has the poor track records is yourself? I'm of course referring to myself and others who don't have as a tough sounding username as lionhearted. I think we give the benefit of doubt to people that we could relate to, who have had the same disadvantages and flaws as ourselves (after all, to not do so is to reject ourselves). Does your statement imply that we s…

> what if the person who has the poor track records is yourself? Build a track record! :) The problem with people without track records is that often they talk a good game but haven't built up their game. You goal shouldn't be to convince people that you're now [loyal / effective / honest / disciplined / whatever], it should be to actually build that quality in yourself. Everyone's got no track record at some point.…

I agree with the track record thing but it is important to compartmentalize here. Somebody might have a track record of being a womanizer but might be good at what they do eg. Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, JFK, or they might have a gambling problem, reference Michael Jordon. With that said, only judge people on track record in the category you need them to perform in.

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

#62

Post by kleevr »

chronomex wrote: post #51
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.

I couldn't find the original quote, but if I can paraphrase it:

Spend two pence less than you make and you'll be content, maybe even happy. Spend two pence more than you make and you'll be miserable.

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

#64

Post by M_Sanger »

patrickk wrote: post #49
cammil wrote: post #23

Don't believe everything they tell you. If you listen to too many people too often, you will be average at best. Have the conviction to be better. If you can't convince people of your ideas, it doesn't mean the ideas are bad, it just means they didn't think of them first.

Don't believe everything they tell you. If you listen to too many people too often, you will be average at best. In other words, don't go to med school because daddy's a doctor and told you so. There's a reason a lot of highly successful people dropped out of college or never went.

I studied engineering because daddy's an engineer. At a young age I didn't comprehend how fulfilling math and science could be, I didn't understand the creativity and depth and purpose it could bring to me. It turns out daddy has been right a lot of the time.

Also, sure some highly successful people dropped out of college, but perhaps even more highly successful people stuck with it so I'm not sure I agree with "a lot". How often does impulsiveness and ego result in one's downfall as opposed to one's success? I certainly think taking the jump is much more interesting, but we also mostly hear about the success stories. After watching plenty of crappy actresses on screen one could conclude it's easy to earn millions smiling in front of a camera, but that's not the case.

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

#65

Post by lionhearted »

leelin wrote: post #58
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.

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

You read it wrong - it's not about DNA or fate. It's about what a person has done recently. It's a good predictor of what they're going to do next. As soon as someone changes for real, they build a new and healthy track record.

In general, you should weight a person's actions - track record - over what they say. It's a people skills thing more than a destiny-predicting thing.

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

Huh, well, I admire you saying that, it's not a fashionable viewpoint these days. I'd predict a person's actions 95% by what they've done recently and 5% what they talk about, but I think it's possible for anyone to change through incremental improvement. Many people won't, but everyone could. There's always some little incremental improvement you could make. But for important roles in your life, you can't gamble - look for someone with a good track unless you're in a position to make a good evaluation, and be careful even then.

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

#66

Post by cookiecaper »

dan00 wrote: post #39
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…

"Like, there's tons of literature on good parenting. How many people read it? Like, none." I think that's a really bad example. There's a lot of bullshit in the parenting literature. In a way I find it very disturbing, that we need to learn how to parent our children.

I agree that there's a lot of junk out there. Almost all the "professional", published advice I've skimmed or read on pregnancy, for instance, amounts to "do whatever the pregnant lady says". Somehow I find this less likely to be good advice and more likely to be fodder for sales, to get women to buy a so-called "authoritative" source that justifies unreasonable behavior under the guise of pregnancy.

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

#67

Post by whatusername »

kleevr wrote: post #62
chronomex wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I couldn't find the original quote, but if I can paraphrase it: Spend two pence less than you make and you'll be content, maybe even happy. Spend two pence more than you make and you'll be miserable.

Wilkins Micawber -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkins_Micawber (A character in Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield)

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

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

#68

Post by cookiecaper »

chegra wrote: post #61
lionhearted wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what if the person who has the poor track records is yourself? Build a track record! :) The problem with people without track records is that often they talk a good game but haven't built up their game. You goal shouldn't be to convince people that you're now [loyal / effective / honest / disciplined / whatever], it should be to actually build that quality in yourself. Everyone's got no track record at some point.…

I agree with the track record thing but it is important to compartmentalize here. Somebody might have a track record of being a womanizer but might be good at what they do eg. Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, JFK, or they might have a gambling problem, reference Michael Jordon. With that said, only judge people on track record in the category you need them to perform in.

I don't know, I think character is a really important trait. If someone is a womanizer and consistently breaks his commitment to his spouse, why should we believe that he will deal any differently with us? One is to have the most intimate, enduring, unbreakable commitment to his spouse, and if this person considers such an intimate connection worthless, why would he place any value on your professional relationship?

The best way to find success in hiring is to hire people who are honest and moral all-around. Don't make exceptions just because someone is supposedly a "rockstar programmer"; even if he can write code 10x more efficient than anyone else, it's almost never worth the added interpersonal friction. Life -- and business -- is all about relationships, not technicalities.

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

#69

Post by dangravell »

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's not just about restraint. His point on frugality (I think) was it's important to release capital for reallocation. It depends what you read into "save", because you'll not build much wealth by holding cash on deposit. I would put it more as "invest, invest, invest". Read "The Intelligent Investor" and go from there.
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