Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you?

#211

Post by ochronus » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 8:35 AM UTC

tcmb wrote: post #51

I have a flight reflex which makes me run away when things get tough. I quit a number of jobs because of that and then rationalized it to myself by blaming it on whatever wasn't perfect at these companies. I like to feel I'm the victim of circumstances, blaming hardships on some abstract entity (like fate), subconsciously hoping that 'fate' will prove me wrong by making something good happen to me. I am using substan…

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Re: Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you?

#212

Post by muzani » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #125

omosubi wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to your first point: I added the following to my hosts file 4 months ago and haven't looked back. 0.0.0.0 www.youtube.com 0.0.0.0 youtube.com 0.0.0.0 googlevideo.com 0.0.0.0 ytimg.l.google.com 0.0.0.0 ytimg.com 0.0.0.0 youtube-ui.l.google.com 0.0.0.0 ytstatic.l.google.com 0.0.0.0 youtubei.googleapis.com 0.0.0.0 youtu.be 0.0.0.0 l.google.com 0.0.0.0 m.youtube.com If someone sends me something, I'll watch it on…

YouTube is actually the one major social media network that has a more positive than negative psychological effect: https://www.psychalive.org/worst-mental-health-instagram-fac...

It depends a lot on the person. I don't get distracted at all by anything on YouTube; it's about as entertaining as a library to me. Same with something like TvTropes. My distraction channels are forums like Reddit and FB.

Different people have different closed loops.

Re: Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you?

#213

Post by muzani » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 1:13 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #132

epiphanitus wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>You are what you consume - People, music, news, etc. Real life > HN > tech news > political news >= crazy uncles on antisocial media

A lot of HN is political and it has it's fair share of crazies.

I actually enjoy HN's crazies as they're from an angle that doesn't appear elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you?

#214

Post by muzani » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 1:30 PM UTC

truth_be_told wrote: post #149

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reconsider and start a business There was an interesting chart linked from here a couple of months ago, sadly I didn't bookmark it. It showed that the bottom decile of entrepreneurs earned less than the bottom decile of employees. The top decile eared a lot more than the top decile of employees. Everybody else was roughly equivalent. It seemed most of the entrepreneurs were happy with this, business wasn't a get rich…

Please do try and find the article/chart/video. I think it is very important to give it wider publicity. The reason is that, contrary to what the media might sell, "Small Businesses" make up the majority of Entrepreneurship (particularly in the Developing Nations) and this data might shed some insight on it. Entrepreneurship does NOT mean "go big or go home". It is basically setting an acceptable and steady level of…

Here's the closest I could find on it: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/what-the-literature-says-abou...

It's not as drastic as I expected. It's mostly unincorporated income that's worse (freelancers, hairdressers, corner shops). They're mostly people who try to escape work even if it means a lower salary.

The incorporated businesses earn more money across the board.

Re: Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you?

#215

Post by sethammons » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #157

ethnologica wrote: post #107

•You are what you consume - People, music, news, etc. If you mostly consume the “positive” side of life, your mindset will follow. •Moving upwards in society is not as easy as I thought. “Classes” reproduce themselves in the dress of habitus. •You can only rely on yourself. “Friends” are stage of life companions. •Finding a partner in crime seems like a tough task - don’t settle with someone, who you are only with to…

> Politics will make you depressed. If you are not going to be a politician let things be. Unfortunately, while you are ignoring politics your boss, your landlord, your insurance company etcetera aren't. So by ignoring politics you are leaving it to them. And that is something you probably can't afford.

I think it is a sliding scale where local politics are more important and national/global politics are a backdrop. Heck, when I was in California, my state vote mattered none due to how districts were drawn. My vote very much does not matter at the national level. However, my voice and vote can be important locally (city, county).

Re: Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you?

#216

Post by sethammons » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #65

I've learned that despite earning in the 98th %ile, working a job will likely not make me rich. I define rich as ~5M in assets including primary residence. Thus taking a "career" is a non-starter and I would advise everyone considering working for someone else to either 1) resign themselves to a distinctly middle class life or 2) reconsider and start a business. Careers that reliably earn > 500k could be considered e…

I understand that being an owner will have potential greater upside than being an employee almost ever will. I cannot think of a business idea for anything (at least, nothing with the possibility of profits, haha).

Re: Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you?

#217

Post by prometheus76 » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

civicsquid wrote: post #96

alexk307 wrote: post #18

1. Work-life balance is more important than money. 2. Don't trust your company to do right by you even if you really believe that they will. Only you can look out for you. 3. Cannabis is medicine.

I never believed number 1 until relatively recently. After growing up in a family where work was life, it didn't make sense to me to do anything but work (even if constant work made me miserable). Now that I'm out of school and I have had a chance to see how others live their lives though, I get it now. It's difficult to enforce in myself since I've been set in my ways for a while, but actually doing things outside o…

My experience has been that building a strong boundary between work and not-work life has made me more effective at work and made my not-work life much more enjoyable and refreshing. I don't get work emails on my phone, and my boss has only called me after hours twice in the last year, and both times it was completely understandable and didn't bother me.

Giving your brain a chance to relax and focus on other things rejuvenates its capability to solve problems when you need it to.

Re: Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you?

#218

Post by prometheus76 » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #135

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reconsider and start a business There was an interesting chart linked from here a couple of months ago, sadly I didn't bookmark it. It showed that the bottom decile of entrepreneurs earned less than the bottom decile of employees. The top decile eared a lot more than the top decile of employees. Everybody else was roughly equivalent. It seemed most of the entrepreneurs were happy with this, business wasn't a get rich…

To me the lure of money is in the nit having to go to work. Work becomes a choice. 5mill might do that but a good side hustle might also have the same effect and be a lot easier to achieve.

I have a couple of family members who fall in the category you're talking about here, and here's what I've seen from them: 1) when you have a lot of assets, you still need to keep your eyes on them and have a system for monitoring and managing them quickly. But you never really get to the point of "set and forget". 2) You might be at a point where your income is essentially guaranteed for the rest of your life, and very adequate. But you probably only have a few (if any) friends in the same financial situation. That means that you might be able to stop working and just travel or do things you find interesting, but you will probably find that those things are only interesting for a short time when you are doing them alone. So you start a little side project for fun and for something to do, and it is successful and starts to grow quickly and now you are working again, because permanent vacation is honestly pretty boring.

Re: Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you?

#219

Post by prometheus76 » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #130

tcmb wrote: post #51

I have a flight reflex which makes me run away when things get tough. I quit a number of jobs because of that and then rationalized it to myself by blaming it on whatever wasn't perfect at these companies. I like to feel I'm the victim of circumstances, blaming hardships on some abstract entity (like fate), subconsciously hoping that 'fate' will prove me wrong by making something good happen to me. I am using substan…

There is a Japanese TV show called "How do you like Wednesdays", where 3 or 4 guys go travelling around the world doing crazy things -- not crazy like Youtube crazy. Just things like trying to visit every European country by car in 2 weeks. They do stupid eating challenges, etc, etc. One of the things I like about the show (apart from the improvised humour) is that the director tells them what they are going to do an…

This idea is a major component in stoic philosophy, and it's something I learned from growing up with my dad. He frequently would sleep on the floor with only a blanket, or even sleep outside in the yard sometimes. He would not wear a coat to work one day in the winter. I was working with him in the mountains of Colorado one winter, and about 15 minutes before we got to work (we had about an hour commute to get to the job site in the mountains), he would roll the windows all the way down. He said, "It makes it much easier to get out of the truck when you get to work."

When he got out to fuel up his truck, he would not wear a coat, nor would he get back in the truck while it was fueling.

He had a truck that had a removable top for awhile. He took the top off and left it that way for a whole year. He parked it under an awning at night, so the snow wouldn't be covering his seats, but otherwise he was open to the weather, whatever it brought.

He always took cold showers, and we always parked at the end of the parking lot farthest away from the doors, because "You can always find a parking spot there, and you always remember where you parked."

I could go on with a lot more examples from his (and my) life, but the important insight that I gained from this kind of effort was that by choosing to add discomfort to your life, and learning to be at ease while being uncomfortable, makes it much easier to stay level-headed and relaxed when things happen in your life that are uncomfortable that you didn't choose. You become much more capable of absorbing adversity when you practice absorbing adversity.

Re: Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you?

#220

Post by prometheus76 » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #137

git-pull wrote: post #60

In the last 12 months, I begun understanding: - what attachment theory was, as a tool/framework analyze myself, others, and the world around me - about western philosophy (Plato, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius) - about eastern Europe or it's history (e.g. Alexander the Great, Siege of Constantinople, the Crusades, Subutai) - TypeScript - how to say hi in Polish or Ukrainian - how powerful desktop PC's are compared to lapt…

Typescript... now you are truly enlightened.

Lisp is sitting on another mountain, smiling at you.