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

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81–90 of 138 posts

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

#81

Wearing earplugs at night. Vastly improved my quality of sleep. I use a vibrating watch to wake me in the morning.

This. And occasionally also Melatonin (see https://www.gwern.net/Melatonin )

I tried Melatonin and it gave me weird vivid dreams. I didn't sleep as well - or as long. But it's still useful against jet lag.

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

#82
post #21

Wearing earplugs at night. Vastly improved my quality of sleep. I use a vibrating watch to wake me in the morning.

Is your environment noisy, or does this help you even in a quiet room?

It's not especially noisy, but it helps me sleep anywhere. It's a godsend in hotels. I don't know why I never considered them before.

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

#83
post #27

1: Kids. My wife and I waited to get married, and then were part scared after we got married, and part selfish and wanted freedom to play and travel, so we waited more. I don't regret our adventures at all, but after we had kids, I realized my fear was unfounded and we still had a lot of freedom to play and travel. 2: Startup. I wanted to start my own business my whole life, and I waited to try until I had enough of…

Is there some factor you can share that allowed you still to enjoy your “freedom” even after having kids? I share that same fear.

For me it hasn't so much been that I can still travel, it's just that the source of life's deep joys has shifted. It's hard to describe. Kind of feels like telling an alcoholic that smoothies can taste just as good as a cocktail -- there's just no way to describe it until experienced.

It's just indescribable to be able to share something new with your child. Taking them to a local park or into the city brings me more joy than traveling the world once did. The joys feel less fleeting.

I still hope to get back to traveling, but I really don't feel like it's been a sacrifice as much as a trade where the thing I got was secretly worth well more than what it cost.

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

#85
post #84

Wearing earplugs at night. Vastly improved my quality of sleep. I use a vibrating watch to wake me in the morning.

Wich type of earplugs? I use the common type and my ears are sore at morning.

I wear Hearos Xtreme. But I have big ears.

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

#86
post #13
post #8

Accepting that I was an introvert. I remember the exact moment: I was traveling, had just settled down with a good book at a hostel, and then heard some folks heading to the bar. I remember thinking "gosh, I should be social," and then "nah, I'd rather be here." Self acceptance of that was a big change for me.

I was going to add almost the exact same experience. Congrats to us both!

I was going to add exactly the opposite experience. Why didn't I start approaching people just for fun sooner? :)

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

#87
post #6

For me, it was using version control on my code. I was up late finishing a large programming assignment for class, when inexplicably at 3 am, my code stopped compiling with a super generic error message. Turns out I had somehow added a random character at the top line, but it took me the next 1-2 hours being dumbfounded, confused, over-tired and frustrated before I found the problem. It would have been a 60 second fi…

I would prefer linter's. Go's tools just make your code stand out in vscode especially.

No reason not to use both.

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

#88

Stop blaming my feelings on other people. Always take ownership of how you feel; I'm responsible for my feelings. For example, if I feel lonely because my friends didn't invite me to the party, don't blame them. Loneliness is my feeling, so I should do something about it. i.e. Go out and do something that I like, invite some other friends over, whatever... If I don't take any action, blaming other people for my feeli…

Amen to that. I still have that reflex of "blaming" others (thinking something happens because THEY believe something instead of what I am doing) and I really have to step back from the situation and think about it. Absolutely hate it when my brain does this

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

#89
Partnership.

Literally everything in this world is easier with partners you can trust. Because of this I do everything with every others now.

* Real Estate - Find people you want to live with and split the cost. Everyone wins.

* Friendships - These are people who can emotionally support you, teach you, mentor you, etc.

* Marriage - For obvious reasons.

---

I'm attempting to "split everything". So far I split rent, my phone bill, all utilities, Netflix, Google Play, etc. People are rightfully concerned about the potential downside to such partnership, but I realize now, more than ever that somehow, paradoxically the more you want partners the better it will work out. The key is that you should try to make it so that all people involved have similar stake. All for one, one for all, so to speak.

TLDR: Life is a multiplayer game. Find your players immediately.

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

#90
Leaving grad school and getting a real, balanced job. It really hit me when during an internship I asked 'is the building open on weekends', and I was told 'yes, but why would you want to be here?' A further 'reckoning' was when I realized each year of grad school cost me 100k+. Opportunity costs.

Also if you are obese, you need to fix that sooner rather than later.

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