I lost 22lbs since Thanksgiving day. If considered one act, that's probably the thing I'm most proud of in 2017.
I learned that my willpower is still there, I've just been failing to exercise it.
Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment of 2017?
31–34 of 34 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment of 2017?
#32I failed to get a remote job on one of those famous remote first oriented kind of startups/companies and realized how much difficult that market is. It's sexy and It would certainly advance me in terms of knowledge and on my carreer path. Though, that failure led me to my current venture where I validated that I am able to stand as a senior developer in a small dev team(3-4 ppl) that builds a robust and maintainable…
which saas product?
It's quotelier.com
Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment of 2017?
#33I failed to get a remote job on one of those famous remote first oriented kind of startups/companies and realized how much difficult that market is. It's sexy and It would certainly advance me in terms of knowledge and on my carreer path. Though, that failure led me to my current venture where I validated that I am able to stand as a senior developer in a small dev team(3-4 ppl) that builds a robust and maintainable…
> realized how much difficult that market is Was it because much more people from around the world applied to the same positions?
Yes plus the competition is high and my resume can't stand next to most of them.
Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment of 2017?
#34I Increased my conscientiousness. I feel like it moved a full standard deviation, but with no real way to measure it, no controls and no documentation it's all guesswork. Still, I can point to certain behavioral changes that haven't regressed in the last 6 months (and a couple surprising ones at that) when I made the change.
How did you do this?
It was a little by accident and a little on purpose. Basically I scared the living bejebus out of myself (it's called "hitting bottom" in AA) and realized I was full of shit, but I didn't need to be (a lot like the Evangelical gambit of "You're a born sinner and on your way to hell, but God can save you if you clean up your act.") which is kinda true if you think of sin as missing-your-goals, hell as avoidable-suffering, and God as the class-of-desirable-goals instead of that dogmatic religious crufty myths.
The destination was high conscientiousness, but the direction from where I was was a higher sensitivity to disgust. Mainly disgust at myself and my living space. Cleaning the clutter around me and myself more frequently was a sign I was on the right track. Not quite OCD, but on the way, still a ways short of disrupting my life.
I outlined a plan (as if I made a reasonable and actionable plan to help someone I cared deeply about) to clean up my act and pinned it right over my desk, then kept to it.
How'd I scare the living bejebus out of myself? YMMV, but psychedelics worked for me. Look up The Marsh Chapel Experiment.
Some more real world actions:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/raising-your-...
And best of luck to you!