Not working for several months.
Nothing else ever worked so much wonders for my mental health as this.
Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
291–300 of 545 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#292Being a better dad, husband and friend.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#293Organizing a weekly drop-in zoom call for guys who are mostly over 65 and into their 80's, taking on a second side gig helping an interesting startup work on the problem of how to scale direct anonymous attestation, discovered analog synthesizers.
I chose to actively manage my happiness years ago, so these are just the new things from this year. What I have found is that personal freedom and satisfaction with work expands with the number of different clients you have.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, it will be the new norm. it's just that this insight hasn't arrived yet in many places (and Europe is generally lagging behind in doing things differently compared to how it was done the past hundreds of years). suppose it won't matter really since majority of companies won't survive the coming years anyway (for other reasons) so their short sightedness wrt WFH doesn't really matter :D
Yeah totally agree. The UK is much more enlightened and progressive than a lot of Europe on many things (unfashionable opinion, particularly for a "remainer" like me)
I'm from mainland Europe and have been living in the UK for more than a decade: bundling up all European countries under one 'Europe' umbrella isn't helping. There's insane variety between countries, cultures, and attitudes towards work. The UK in some aspects is ahead,while in others decades behind and the comparisons are often very difficult.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#295Getting a nice car. I’m prone to depression if I stay in the house too long. Having a nice car means when I roll out of bed in the morning, I’m able to head straight to a nice, comfortable, private, warm space and start listening to meaningful podcasts, audiobooks, get breakfast, head to the gym, and get a consistent good start on the day. I’m not sure if I can go back to city living at this point if it means giving…
What do you mean by nice: new/clean or expensive?
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not everywhere. Most companies here in India aren't looking to stay remote long term if they weren't remote friendly before.
Considering a lot of their work is sourced from abroad, this is very ironic (in the Morrissette sense).
While it's ironic, I think I understand why it's the case: there's a plethora of managers who can't really manage remotely the way they were used to in the office: by applying lots of pressure to those underneath them. It's much harder to show how big boss you are on zoom compared to an open space office,where 50 poor souls are scared to say anything back.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#297My wife and kids. I'm 50 and re-evaluating friendships outside the home. I have realised that most of my friendships are not mutual. I stopped contacting most of my friends over 9 months ago and have not heard back from most for 6 months to never. My own family experience wasn't great. I now realise to have a wife who actively cares for you, looks out for you, is probably the most meaningful thing that can happen to…
I have friends that I consider to be good friends who I don't talk to often. If you moved around a lot as a kid, especially pre Facebook and cell phones, you tend to lose contact with people.
It's sort of like that scene from That 70's Show where the mom says that that the dad doesn't have friend's or talk to them. He replies by saying the one guy is his best friend and saved his life, but that they said all they needed to on the boat home from Korea. Some friendships withstand time even in the absence of interaction.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#298Getting COVID. I've just turned 30 and I used to do a lot of cardio exercise. Over the past few years as other things have taken priority, I cut back. I'd try to do something every day but would often miss days and the workouts would be short and poor quality. After getting (fortunately mild) COVID I was worried about cardiac issues when I resumed exercise. I decided to buy an Apple Watch to monitor my heart rate and…
Sounds more like buying the Apple Watch was the contributor to you happiness. Had someone gifted it to you, might you have had the same outcome?
I’ve had my watch for over 2 years now and I’m in the same boat as OP. Gamified cardio with Streaks and 2 miles a day goal and have been going for 75 days. I’ve been insanely productive the last few weeks and there’s no other way for me the explain it other than the fact that running makes me feel good.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#2991. the birth of my kid 2. taking care of her 2.5. moving to Tenerife 3. taking a side project to 30k MRR in less than 6 months. a lot of motivation to stay up in the evenings came from my kid for sure 4. starting a project purely for fun this month - https://cassandraai.reddit.com 5. Starting a little garden in my backyard
How do you like Tenerife?
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#300WFH. I take my dog on a walk during standup. I hang out with my kids when I can step out of the office. I recently started exercising over lunch (this habit was never easy for me- it took getting Ring Fit Adventure on Nintendo Switch to start that). I saved 15000 miles on my car’s odometer. —— Reconnecting with old friends from HS/college. We normally do a march camping trip every year. Not in 2020. Instead, We set u…
I have dogs. I do stand-ups. I never thought of combining these. It makes so much sense because I can think better when walking. This is so simple yet brilliant!! Thanks for this.
Sure thing. I also like walking during meetings where I don’t need to reference information on a computer. 1-on-1s, certain design discussions, etc.