Listening to Sarah Coponat play piano on Twitch. Her live, epic, flowing improvisation is the perfect companion to the workday.
Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
71–80 of 545 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#72Cooking. Always enjoyed it but over the pandemic, I got serious about it. Watched more YouTube videos than I can count, even took some online live classes.
Cooking is great because it not only gives you joy, but it also gives joy to those you feed. Such a pure way to spread happiness.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#73Waking up without an alarm clock. It's the single best productivity boost I got this past year.
And yes: when I'm productive, I'm happy. When I'm happy, I'm productive.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#74Listening to Sarah Coponat play piano on Twitch. Her live, epic, flowing improvisation is the perfect companion to the workday. https://www.twitch.tv/sarahcoponat
Here's a recent example of her playing: https://youtu.be/TARBRZPDfWs
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#75Intermittent Fasting + Meditation. A bit difficult to explain but bear with me. Imagine you wake up one day to a rumbling tummy (happens when you do IF). I noticed that such sensations would lead me to a bad mood. It's a subtle process but one day it clicked that I was "inventing" stories in my head to account for the physiological reactions in my body (due to hunger etc.) . Take it to its logical conclusion and you'll realise that this happens with other sensations, too. Now I am a lot more conscious of sensations (especially the "negative" ones) and it has made me happier and calmer :). The WFH helps maintain IF + meditation schedules, too!
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can second this. That and building a homegym into our basement. Both result in a total extra 8h of free time per week which is crazy.
I moved in with my parents for WFH, and apart from the time, I've saved so much money. No longer having to pay rent in itself made for a much bigger boost to my savings than any raise could've.
Do you not bring... special friends over?
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#77Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#78Got an eMTB 8 month ago, visited places in my local area that didn’t even know existed.
No weather is too bad for going outside for a ride anymore.
Cops stopped me once asking what I was doing outside on a bike in freezing rain, suspected drug smuggling.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#79Video walks on Youtube. If you haven't heard of them before, they're simple first-person videos where the filmer walks around some area with a stabilized video camera - no talking, just walking. I've really missed traveling and watching video walks while exercising has been a great way to satisfy that travel craving a bit and also trick my brain into experiencing some semblance of normalcy (not sure I could remember…
Yeah, I dig such stuff too. For this, I go for Reddit live streams where you can QnA with the streamer and it's quite fun. In last few months I have been to Rome, Kenya, Germany and of course Japan has it's own charm.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#80Working from home. I realised being in an office - especially an open-plan office - was setting off my social anxiety all the time. Working in a place where I could choose to engage with people instead of having it forced upon me made it so much easier to work. I became a lot more productive and started enjoying what I did, even picking up more side projects and learning actively. It's a shame it's coming to an end,…
I felt this so much. When I'm in the office I spend so much time thinking about if my cough was too loud and distracting people, of if my hair is neat enough, or if I should walk to get a cup of water or if I should wait 20 minutes because I just got back to my desk from the toilet.
Working from home I don't care about anything and just get things done.