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

You are not 'behind'

zackkanter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 218 posts

Re: You are not 'behind'

#181

Post by ck425 »

tigershark wrote: post #169
maccard wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

640/month is probably more than a lot of working people have left over after they've paid rent/mortgage, childcare, commuting costs. Not that it's an exorbitant lifestyle, but it's "moderately" comfortable (assuming you own your own home and qwualofy for all the relevant support).

Even if you own your home you need to pay the service charge. In my house is ~1800/year = 150£/month. The council tax is pretty cheap for my house, it's only ~100£/month. Other bills let's say 100£/month. To eat at home, unless you want to eat sh#t, it's 400£/month. Total: ~750£ So if you don't do absolutely anything at all apart from surviving and eating at home you are already spending 110£ more than your pension.…

If you're genuinely spending £400 pcm on just food then you really need to sort your budgeting out. Especially in retirement, when you've way more time to cook big meals and freeze stuff.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#182

Post by ck425 »

closeparen wrote: post #98
coldtea wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes it particularly difficult is that I was working really hard the whole time If working hard made a difference by itself, tons of minimum wage workers will be rich by now... > In retrospect, being lazy isn't too bad. Money isn't everything, especially "success" in the BS way the US rat race defines it. You don't need millions, heck not even one million. 99% of the world, and most of the US live their liveσ…

You probably need at least one million to avoid poverty conditions in retirement.

You can live indefinitely on way less a million. :)

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

Re: You are not 'behind'

#183

Post by ck425 »

inimino wrote: post #155
enraged_camel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, I want "fuck you money" so that work becomes optional. I want to work on what I want, not what someone else wants. I want to work because I want to, not because I have to. Retirement isn't good enough. By the time you retire you are in your 60s, which is too late for me.

Or you could waste a decade chasing fuck-you money, not get it, and be left in the same financial position but ten years older. The default outcome for startup founders is not "filthy rich" but rather "older and poorer".

I don't think the parent was referring to making money via start ups. Just get a decently paid engineering job and live frugally.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#184

Post by kakarot »

jaggederest wrote: post #76
tastyface wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me personally, "being lazy" is awful because I'm stuck in a constant battle between my personality (which wants to mould to the shape of my couch and watch TV forever) and my mind (which desperately wants to leave a mark on the world). Every day I spend couch potatoing feels like a complete and utter failure of the soul, and it seems like most of my effort is actually spent on trying to bend my personality into t…

I've felt like this my entire life. Turns out for me that it is a symptom of (undiagnosed) ADHD - an execution problem, not a motivational problem. Having gotten that diagnosed, it's a very significant change in my life. To be cliche, the first day of the rest of my life. For many people, "trying to bend their personality into the shape [they] want it to be" is fruitless, totally counterproductive. The first thing I…

Ha. I once heard ADHD described by a behavioral scientist as "making a list of chores and putting it up on the fridge so you'll see it every day, and every day you see it but forget the moment you're out of the kitchen" (not verbatim)

Having severe ADHD, coupled with a seemingly unalterable indifferent outlook on life due to manic depressive disorder and childhood trauma has given me a morbid sense of satisfaction in making time to squander my time here on Earth... And intense salf hatred. I just hope I can consolidate these two aspects of my personality in a reasonable timeframe. One half of my role models are all polyglots, men of science and patrons of the arts, and the other half are all dead from speedballing or suicide.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#185

Post by jaggederest »

pm wrote: post #166
jaggederest wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR - I found this book effective, you should read it instead of listening to me blather below: https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Charge-Adult-Russell-Barkley-e... --- The biggest things, broadly, are: Step 0: Get engaged medically - with diagnosis, collaboration, and medication. ADHD is not something you can manage on your own. It's literally "the disorder of not being able to fix the problems you can clearly see", so…

> Do not label the cats. They do not like it. I feel this is the "take out all the brown M&Ms" moment in your reply. I did laugh a lot though - the timing was unexpected.

I mean, I'm not going to lie and say that I didn't learn that empirically. But I am totally glad you caught it and had a chuckle.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#186

Post by UK-AL »

johnvonneumann wrote: post #135
leggomylibro wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luck is a huge common factor in all of the big success stories I see, but you do still have to make a moonshot to get lucky with one. I'm sure a lot of garage computer engineers in the '80s have a few boxes of boards that could well have been the Next Big Thing, if only X/Y/Z.

Whilst the luck element is true, I think people place to much emphasis on it, in reality, pretty much every person that "got lucky" had been working hard at whatever it was they "got lucky" in for a while. It's just exposure, I guess if I was making a bad analogy, it's kinda like spreading the board with chips on a roulette table, yeah you got lucky, but you set yourself up for it. Same applies in life. The differenc…

Depends. If you don't try your change of that extremely rich outcome is 0%.

If you do try really hard, its maybe a 20% chance.

The question you have to ask is that 20% chance worth not being able to do other things with my time.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#187

Post by UK-AL »

jondubois wrote: post #88
bsg75 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Financially, I have nothing to show Was this because individual projects or endeavors were not successful, or the companies you invested time in were not? Also, the results of the last 10 years can help determine the approach of the next 10. Until you are too old or sick to move, there is always time for R&R. (Disclaimer: I'm approaching 50 and always feel behind)

Both; I've always had a side project over the years while I was working for startups as well. I must have gone through at least 12 startups (in addition to 3 of my own side projects; each taking up about 3 years of my spare time). All the startups I joined sounded promising but the tech environment in Australia was really tough back then (still is, I think). I did manage to get a small number of shares in a startup w…

The test of true entrepreneur is being able to build multiple companies.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#188

Post by jaggederest »

ztjio wrote: post #167
jaggederest wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR - I found this book effective, you should read it instead of listening to me blather below: https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Charge-Adult-Russell-Barkley-e... --- The biggest things, broadly, are: Step 0: Get engaged medically - with diagnosis, collaboration, and medication. ADHD is not something you can manage on your own. It's literally "the disorder of not being able to fix the problems you can clearly see", so…

I'd just like to point out, as a person who was not diagnosed with any particular kind of disorder (and boy, did my family try to make that happen when I wouldn't change my interests to meet their expectations,) that all of this advice is good advice for anyone. Everyone. It may be more critical for someone with ADHD, but, even so, it's an outline of habits common to effective people. And frankly much of it is a grea…

Absolutely true, certainly executive functions are energetically "expensive", and very tiring to exercise continuously, regardless of neurological quirks. People also often have a lot more trouble with executive functioning than they think - as an example, checklists vastly improve the performance of even virtuoso experts at complex tasks.

Re: You are not 'behind'

#189

Post by eli_gottlieb »

kakarot wrote: post #184
jaggederest wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've felt like this my entire life. Turns out for me that it is a symptom of (undiagnosed) ADHD - an execution problem, not a motivational problem. Having gotten that diagnosed, it's a very significant change in my life. To be cliche, the first day of the rest of my life. For many people, "trying to bend their personality into the shape [they] want it to be" is fruitless, totally counterproductive. The first thing I…

Ha. I once heard ADHD described by a behavioral scientist as "making a list of chores and putting it up on the fridge so you'll see it every day, and every day you see it but forget the moment you're out of the kitchen" (not verbatim) Having severe ADHD, coupled with a seemingly unalterable indifferent outlook on life due to manic depressive disorder and childhood trauma has given me a morbid sense of satisfaction in…

Wait a second. Future me?

Ok, so there's time travel in the future. But why did you come back? Did our goals all fail? Was global warming that bad? What are you trying to alter in the timeline?

Use the code-phrase I'm logging in my private folder on Keybase and get in touch.

(But seriously, damn our lives sound similar. Any advice for dealing with the problem?)

Re: You are not 'behind'

#190

Post by eli_gottlieb »

fratlas wrote: post #71
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think it's overrated. Let's take Trump for example - he has both money and power (arguably more than mainstream media since he won in spite of them). Do you think he's happy? He doesn't seem to be. Would even more money and power make him happier? I doubt it.

I think Musk is a better example. Money is just a medium for him to change the world for the better. I'm sure being rich makes Musk happy, only because it enables him to make a difference.

If Musk was trying to change the world for the better, he wouldn't have done that thing with the worker's childbirth leave.
Post reply on HN