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Follow boring advice

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Re: Follow boring advice

#31

Post by screye »

smoyer wrote: post #22

Nope ... there are a ton of 30-somethings writing "easy" advice like this and bemoaning the ignorance of their twenties. I'm a few decades older yet and can tell you that I'm still learning and integrating new ideas into my framework of how business (and the world in general) work. Creating a simple idea is easy but think about how many counter-examples there are to just this one rule (and you can find 100k more simp…

> My simple rule ... it never hurts you to help another human. Sometimes it also benefits you but at a minimum your reputation in your sphere of influence is positive

I love my life by this and it has already paid off with dividends.

The crabs in a bucket formula points out an important fallacy. Even incredibly generous help in every send line a zero sum hand can end up being bringing huge ventures to both parties.

It's one of the main lessons that people from high scarcity societies need to internalize when moving to a post scarcity society.

Re: Follow boring advice

#32

Post by clambordan »

tomhoward wrote: post #27

I've seen PG [1] say/write versions of this: "The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn't, didn't." The advice is so simple, it's hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it's worth anything. "Make something people want." "Talk to your users." "Do things that don't scale." "Keep typing and avoid dying." People hear about this and ask "You gave away 7% of your company for that?" No,…

Am I supposed to know who PG is? PolterGeist?

Re: Follow boring advice

#33

Post by smitty1e »

RealityVoid wrote: post #13
smitty1e wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who owns the definition of 'successful'? A low stress, high joy life is preferable to these Really Famous Names we could drop. Sure, they may go on rocket rides, but do they know any peace? Maybe.

Maybe peace is overrated? There is certainly a price to pay for greatness, and some are willing to give it a shot. It seems so condescending to look down on poor them, not knowing peace when perhaps that is not the thing they are searching for.

My question was "Do they know any peace?"

Possibly they do.

It's not known to me either way.

Clearly I'm skeptical of whether materialism can deliver peace, and clearly I'm saying peace is worthy of pursuit, but falling just short of judging others' level of peace achieved is prudent.

Re: Follow boring advice

#34

Post by bordercases »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #24
darkerside wrote: post #23

My favorite example of this is how to get stronger and healthier. There's no secret, and you actually don't have to do anything too extreme. Exercise regularly, drink water, don't eat too much, mostly plants, get lots of asleep, avoid drugs and alcohol. Now that I do so well with all that advice, I can't quite remember why that all sounded so hard or "boring" before.

1. Because you actually need protein to gain muscle mass, so there goes your "mostly plants" without a caveat about "vegetarian protein", which has its own set of problems. 2. Exercise regularly - what is regularly? What kind of exercise? You never had over-work injuries? Injuries from muscle / postural imbalances? Etc. I concede that most of this advice is available for free, but unless you have a GOOD coach, you wi…

None of these are terminal criticisms, and in fact can be rectified with just a bit more information or expert advisement.

You might argue that it means the advice isn't simple. I would counter that in the average case, it's simple enough. We are surrounded with material, examples and non-examples of the advice being followed to the point of it being tiresome.

For cases like injury and plant protein sources the information and talent is so readily available for someone of sufficient means to take action with, that the "complexity" won't matter after six months.

Re: Follow boring advice

#35

Post by hexis »

clambordan wrote: post #32
tomhoward wrote: post #27

I've seen PG [1] say/write versions of this: "The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn't, didn't." The advice is so simple, it's hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it's worth anything. "Make something people want." "Talk to your users." "Do things that don't scale." "Keep typing and avoid dying." People hear about this and ask "You gave away 7% of your company for that?" No,…

Am I supposed to know who PG is? PolterGeist?

Paul Graham, the creator of this website.

Re: Follow boring advice

#36

Post by cecilpl2 »

clambordan wrote: post #32
tomhoward wrote: post #27

I've seen PG [1] say/write versions of this: "The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn't, didn't." The advice is so simple, it's hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it's worth anything. "Make something people want." "Talk to your users." "Do things that don't scale." "Keep typing and avoid dying." People hear about this and ask "You gave away 7% of your company for that?" No,…

Am I supposed to know who PG is? PolterGeist?

Paul Graham, the cofounder of YC, whose website you are on.

Re: Follow boring advice

#37

Post by betaby »

clambordan wrote: post #32
tomhoward wrote: post #27

I've seen PG [1] say/write versions of this: "The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn't, didn't." The advice is so simple, it's hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it's worth anything. "Make something people want." "Talk to your users." "Do things that don't scale." "Keep typing and avoid dying." People hear about this and ask "You gave away 7% of your company for that?" No,…

Am I supposed to know who PG is? PolterGeist?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(programmer)

Re: Follow boring advice

#38

Post by gus_massa »

clambordan wrote: post #32
tomhoward wrote: post #27

I've seen PG [1] say/write versions of this: "The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn't, didn't." The advice is so simple, it's hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it's worth anything. "Make something people want." "Talk to your users." "Do things that don't scale." "Keep typing and avoid dying." People hear about this and ask "You gave away 7% of your company for that?" No,…

Am I supposed to know who PG is? PolterGeist?

He is one of the founders of Y Combinator and the founder of Hacker News. pg was the moderator here for a long time.

For example: "Challenge HN: build pg-bot" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2598026 (148 points | May 30, 2011 | 39 comments)

I never meet him, but apparently he repeat this kind of advice a lot, and someone of the first batches of YC made an image of a fake action figure of pg that repeats the advice when you press a button. I can't find the link :( .

Re: Follow boring advice

#39

Post by throw1234651234 »

darkerside wrote: post #26
throw1234651234 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Because you actually need protein to gain muscle mass, so there goes your "mostly plants" without a caveat about "vegetarian protein", which has its own set of problems. 2. Exercise regularly - what is regularly? What kind of exercise? You never had over-work injuries? Injuries from muscle / postural imbalances? Etc. I concede that most of this advice is available for free, but unless you have a GOOD coach, you wi…

There's a universe between being obese and being even an impressive weightlifter. If I can play with my kids (as in, actually run around on the playground), play sports at a casually competitive level, hike for several hours, and help my friends move heavy furniture, that enables a pretty full life. I don't think you'd disagree it's pretty simple to get there. Besides, you can probably still gain a ton of functional…

I do agree.

Re: Follow boring advice

#40

Post by borroka »

kiba wrote: post #16
ceilingcorner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eat less calories than you burn. Spend less money than you make. Boring advice, yet the majority of people are overweight and in debt.

They're not really advice, so much as goals? Also, CICO seems to be actually incorrect from what I read on it. Body's more like a thermostat than a steam engine and will work against you such as burning calories slower as you eat less. If you really want to save money, then you need to think in terms of emotions and how to combat that rather than attempting to brute force it with willpower.

In fact one of the very common risks is to mix up goals and boring advice. Say, you wanna score in a soccer match: just receive the ball, get rid of defenders in case, and kick the ball in the net——which is both true and useless.

Eating fewer calories is not happening in a vacuum. It means giving up food, which is, broadly speaking, the joy of life for many people. Exercising means committing to spend time in an environment and doing an activity that many do not like at all——it thus means going against their desires for months, years etc.

And I am writing from the position of someone who is in shape, fit, does boring things that work, but had, like many, very limited success in persuading others to follow boring advice.

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