Don't have sex until you're older.
Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?
81–90 of 248 posts
Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds more like you're a shy extrovert rather than an introvert.
No, it doesn't. Introverts are perfectly capable of overcoming their personality tendencies. Introversion or extraversion refer to your natural inclination, but it determines nothing.
Back up a minute...
"Introverts are perfectly capable of overcoming their personality tendencies."
The first thing you're assuming is that introverts either want or need to overcome their introversion. There isn't anything wrong with being an introvert. There is something wrong with being an extreme introvert.
Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because suddenly you are too old.
As a father, I'd say that being "too old" for kids is probably a good thing, because it means they weren't high enough on your priority list for you to do a good job at anyway.
I think you adapt quickly to being a father, though. I get your point, but on the other hand, sometimes time just flies by.
Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?
#84Everybody in college pretends to be not working hard as they like to admit, thus the advice that comes from colleagues along the lines of "don't do the homework, it's really a waste of time" when everybody is actually doing it, could screw you over. It didn't mess up my life per se, but definitely had an impact on my grades when I was a naive freshman.
If there's anything you don't want as a role model in college, it's the mythical "slacker genius" (I say mythical because pretty much everyone who falls into this category is either a work of fiction or someone who works both hard and efficiently). Go to class, do the homework, study (and if you don't know how, learn!). If you get good at those things, there's plenty of time left over to have fun.
Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?
#85Variations of "you'll just meet someone" and "dating will get easier in your 30s" and "the important thing is you do well in school, and everything else will follow". Fuck that. Someone should have shaken the shit out of me when I was 18, forced me to go to a school with a normal gender ratio, and gotten me to strike while the iron was still hot while I still had some sexual attraction to women, and never take for granted any time a woman is vaguely interested.
Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?
#86In 1987 or 88, when I was a teenager, my parents, noting my emerging passion for coding, tried to sign me up for a Explorer Scout "post" whose focus was programming.
This should have been good, but I came back from the first meeting not wanting to go back. I just didn't click with the group, and the language/environment they were using (Fortran on an IBM System/3x0 variant, I think) were of no interest to me.
This upset my father, in particular, because he was convinced that the programming I was doing in my bedroom (C, on a Commodore Amiga) was of no value. Programming a personal computer was fine for a kid, but making a career in software meant doing "serious" work, which to my (very non-tech) parents, meant programming IBM mainframes.
In retrospect, their career advice was about as bad as it could have been. I was learning exactly what I should have been learning. I was completely right to ignore them and continue doing what I was doing.
Except I could never shake the idea of "serious" vs. "not serious" software development. So while I continued to learn C, then learned C++, when I finished college in the mid-90s I went into a "serious" industry . Despite living within walking distance of Netscape's old headquarters, I completely missed out on the dot-com era, justifying it by telling myself that I was doing "serious" work. And while I've never been unemployed, until this year, I can't say I ever did anything remotely notable, or fun, either.
And worse of all: it became obvious within the last 3-4 years that my industry was a career dead-end. If I stuck with it, I'd eventually be one of those stereotypical unemployed, and unemployable, 40-something developers.
But there is a silver lining: over the last couple of years I started playing around with some new technologies and ended up reinventing myself. Earlier this year, I quit my old job and am now working for a startup that's doing stuff that's nowhere near my Dad's old idea of "serious". But I've treated my new job seriously, working harder than at any time in my career. And I'm happier now than I've been in nearly a decade.
Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're trolling this post with spectacularly bad advice about bad advice, well done. If you truly believe that, you have a very cynical worldview. I am quite introverted but whenever I force myself to go to a social event where I don't know anyone and make friends, I always have a great time and meet awesome people, and it invariably goes better than I thought it would. If you just assume the people there WANT to…
It sounds more like you're a shy extrovert rather than an introvert.
As I've heard it defined, extroverts gain energy from social interactions, introverts are fatigued by them. If, like me, after a few hours of small talk you feel exhausted and want to sit in front of a screen alone, you're probably an introvert. I have some extroverted friends who will not go to the grocery store unless someone goes with them to keep them company. I prefer taking walks alone, and so on.
Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea behind stepping outside of your comfort zone is that you keep doing it until it becomes your new comfort zone. If you're not ready to invest the effort needed to see it through, you shouldn't do it. Every time I've tried stepping out of my comfort zone "just for the hell of it", it usually ends up being pointless at best and embarrassing at worst. I'm not changed at all, I don't really accomplish anything be…
> The idea behind stepping outside of your comfort zone is that you keep doing it until it becomes your new comfort zone. That's kinda worse. The only good way to venture into new areas, in my opinion, is to make little steps forward, to the extent that you're not standing still "as-is" but also while you're still in control of your emotions. This will expand your comfort zone gradually until the thing that was origi…
Two things:
1. Take "temperament theory" with a grain of salt. It's somewhat in vogue right now with a lot of psychologists, but there are also plenty of reasons to think that it's conflating two separate issues (temperament and typology) and is an oversimplification.
2. The only way to develop your personality is to step outside your comfort zone. Your type only determines where that comfort zone is, not whether you can or should do it often. For SP (really more ESP, but whatever) types, doing crazy things physically is their comfort zone. They need to learn to get in touch with their more subdued side.
Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?
#89Stuff they tell you in Sunday school which is impossible/undesirable in practical terms yet leaves a lingering sense of unworthiness about one's own character and a lack of healthy ambition:
- love thy neighbour
- don't be selfish
- don't care about money/possessions
- don't judge
Oh, and also: install OpenOffice.org
Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?
#90Not from any specific person, but the idea that you have to step outside your comfort zone and do X and Y even though it doesn't come naturally to you. Every time I did that things got messed up and I ended up worse than I was before. If you're outside your comfort zone, you will act in non-authentic ways, and when you're not being authentic, you can't be the best possible you. Examples of stepping outside comfort zo…
Just to add to this, it's good to do things outside of your comfort zone in low pressure/stress situations where the consequences of failure are minor. It's not a good idea to pick up skydiving when you're in a burning plane and it's the only option.
"It's not a good idea to pick up skydiving when you're in a burning plane and it's the only option."
Well, if it's the only option apart from dying in a plane crash, I'd argue it's a very good idea.