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Ask HN: What is the best piece of advice someone has told you?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the best piece of advice someone has told you?

#24
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the opposite of advice I’d give to someone. If you’re the smartest in the room, then you’re in the wrong room.

Depends on what you want. If you are designing the next James Webb telescope, you are in the right place if you are the smartest in the room regarding one subject, like aligning mirrors, or testing the folding mechanism. It gives enormous responsibility, which you can and should share with others, but I don't see the downside here. If you're starting with a new career, learning on the job, it's not good if you're the…

I think the target audience of this type of advice should be young people beginning their careers. True domain experts likely don’t need advice like this. There does come a time when you reach your limit in terms of what you can learn. But young people hopefully haven’t reached that at the start of their careers.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best piece of advice someone has told you?

#25
post #18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t wanna be harsh but sounds like a shallow line of thinking. Can you expand?

If you’re the smartest person in the room, then you’ve likely surrounded yourself with people “worse” than you in some way. How can you grow in such an environment? You want to surround yourself with people smarter than you so that you can learn from them and grow. So if you’re the smartest person in the room, then you should go find a new room with smarter people. Unless you’re the smartest person on earth of course…

Because those people are probably much much better than you in other ways and maybe you want to improve yourself in those ways.

It's not as black/white as you're making it out to be. Reality is far more nuanced.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best piece of advice someone has told you?

#26
"It's not what you know, it's who you know"

Probably not a popular tip for many on HN who enjoy tinkering, but its truth has served me well in my entrepreneurial endeavors, where as my nerdiness less so.

One cannot know everything and we all are bound by finite time, but if you learn the skills and build the network to bring many talents together, you can accomplish greater things than doing it all on your own.

Similarly: "No man is an island"

Re: Ask HN: What is the best piece of advice someone has told you?

#28

From this Ted talk on making tough decisions. https://www.ted.com/talks/ruth_chang_how_to_make_hard_choice... If your making a tough decision, you have already determined that both options are equally attractive and equally good decisions. If this wasn't the case, it would be an easy choice. So if you are choosing between two seemingly equally good decisions, your choice doesn't matter. They are both equally good opt…

What we usually think of as "tough decision" is that there is an easy and attractive choice vs. a choice that requires sacrifice without immediate benefits. Or it puts conflicting choices in opposition with each other. Typically in that one, the decider has a conflict of interest. E.g. mask mandates in a covid-stricken region probably save a lot of lives and are probably supported by a majority, but get the politician thrown out of office by an angry minority of anti-maskers. So the politician has to weigh staying in office against public health.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best piece of advice someone has told you?

#29

“Try to never be the person who cares the most” was an offhand remark my dad made to me when I was stressed over a group project in school. It helped me what in hindsight would’ve been very stressful situation many, many times.

I don’t understand what problem this solves
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