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Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

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Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#271

Post by giantg2 »

_spoonman wrote: post #265
break_the_bank wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am far away from being a dad but curious, how do you balance "providing for your kid" and "being there for your kid"?

The two aren’t mutually exclusive and the roles change as the kid gets older. When they’re newborns you are focused totally on providing: they can’t feed themselves, change their diapers, or bathe themselves. When they get older they can do those things but then start having questions about the world and girls and faith. That’s when it really gets fun because you strengthen the bond. So you’re always providing for th…

Any two things involving time that can't be done simultaneously are, to a degree, mutually exclusive.

You can't be running a code review and chasing a two year old around the house.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#272

Post by giantg2 »

mettamage wrote: post #245
pilom wrote: post #220

I "retired" at 33 after working in tech for 12 years and saving a ton of money. With my free time I run a fun hobby business teaching kayaking which is way more fun and brings me way more happiness than anything I did in 2019 or before.

I wish I could do that but I only think this is possible by getting a job in the US or Switzerland. They’re both not easy to get if you’re not a citizen there. There was even this Swiss recruiter that scours HN, but after he finds out you’re a recent college grad he vanishes. At least, in my case. Maybe not in other cases.

This isn't even that common in the US. Sure, there's a chance of retiring early. For most of us, that won't happen prior to age 50, if at all.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#273

Post by 1123581321 »

neolog wrote: post #7
1123581321 wrote: post #3

Fixing chronic shoulder pain. My resting heart rate at night dropped by about 15 points in the week after an intense therapy session.

Wow. Is that a real measured number, or are you guessing?

It’s based on wearing an Apple Watch to bed with HeartWatch and AutoSleep running. About a month of night data preceding the therapy and two months since then.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#274

Post by padthai »

mettamage wrote: post #245
pilom wrote: post #220

I "retired" at 33 after working in tech for 12 years and saving a ton of money. With my free time I run a fun hobby business teaching kayaking which is way more fun and brings me way more happiness than anything I did in 2019 or before.

I wish I could do that but I only think this is possible by getting a job in the US or Switzerland. They’re both not easy to get if you’re not a citizen there. There was even this Swiss recruiter that scours HN, but after he finds out you’re a recent college grad he vanishes. At least, in my case. Maybe not in other cases.

I think I know who you are talking about. He was unfailingly polite with me, but it was very clear that he was not very interested too. I also was coming back from a semi-academic position.

Do not be very hard on you (or him). Every job opening I interview candidates for we receive piles and piles of academia refugees, mostly postgrads fleeing their postdocs. They tend to know very little about software (or domain knowledge of our field) but they will try anything: junior, senior and even managerial roles. Signal to noise tends to be very low, so any competitive places ignore most of them. It is a problem for competent people in this life situation, because they get ignored too.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#275

Post by giantg2 »

d3nj4l wrote: post #65

Working 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,…

The move to remote work is saving me about 1.5 hours of commute each day, plus a couple hundred in gas money each month. The return to the office later this year will be brutal.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#276

Post by anoncow »

Audio books.

Because of WFH, found a lot of additional time. Used that for listening to around 10 audio books in the past year. Most of the books I read were from a project management and entrepreneurship perspective. I used/discussed concepts learnt for work and felt slightly better off because of that. An example was using 5-whys for process improvement from The Lean Startup.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#277

Post by loloquwowndueo »

sethammons wrote: post #236
pilom wrote: post #220

I "retired" at 33 after working in tech for 12 years and saving a ton of money. With my free time I run a fun hobby business teaching kayaking which is way more fun and brings me way more happiness than anything I did in 2019 or before.

What do you do for health insurance?

Go read https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/blog/ if you filter out the snarky “I’m so badass” posts there’s actually good advice in a ton of topics such as health insurance / coverage, investments, and how not to be a wasteful person mostly :)

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#279

Post by jhrozek »

xyzelement wrote: post #209
jhrozek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll become a working western father soon and my paternity leave will be ~6 months regardless of pandemic. So I don’t buy the “no other time” argument.

I am guessing this comment is a reference to paternity leave lengths in some of the eastern part of the western world? :) Ok fair enough, but not exactly the point I was making. Even once I was back "at the office" the fact that I could walk out between meetings and play with my son for 5 minutes is incredible. And yes some further pedantry is possible: some people have been all remote for years. Nonetheless, for mos…

Yeah sorry if it sounded too entitled (otoh there is not much “entitlement” I paid for all this with my taxes several times over). I’m happy that you have he the chance to be with your kid more I just read your post as “it’s impossible for fathers who work to enjoy kids prior to the pandemic”.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#280

Post by edge17 »

dmerrick wrote: post #204
rococode wrote: post #40

Video 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…

I don't get opportunities to share this very often... my sideproject is a 24/7 Twitch channel[1] of driving footage with a companion chatbot. If you like slow-tv you might enjoy it. [1] https://www.twitch.tv/ADanaLife_

Out of curiosity, how much does it cost to stream 24/7 off cellular like that?
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