Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

news.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 567 posts

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#25

Most people will use time to save money. However, your time on earth is limited unless the Silicon Valley weirdos happen to be right. Money is infinite in that you can earn more or get a second job or get a better paying job or whatever. (Obviously only to a point but stay with me). Also: your time does have value or it should since it is limited. What would you pay for an hour of your life "back"? Or an hour to do w…

While I broadly agree with this, you have to be careful you don't slide too far into this mindset. Vacations become hard to justify if you view them as both the price of the vacation+lost income opportunity. It's easy to find yourself in a place where it's hard to justify doing anything but working.

Well I looked at it like this. A good two week vacation in Paris costs at least $10,000. I could instead bill out approximately $12,000 during that time. Therefore, the best thing to do is for me to pay a Parisian $2,000 to have my vacation for me. I stayed at home, and earned a lot more money. I can then spend that on another vacation. You can thank me later for this gem.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#26
The value of advice comes from arriving at the right moment to the right person, not some platonic, universal “goodness“.

For example, I wanted to drop out of college to work on climate change, and an adult in that community who I respected immensely told me “calm down, it won’t be too late by the time you graduate“.

Not too many people needed the advice to worry less about climate change (especially 15 years ago), but it was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment so that I could focus on actually learning the fundamentals of engineering before throwing myself in

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#27
post #14

Well not really changed my life, but somethings I frequently think and try to follow. Try to be nice and helpful to others. Nothing that you do or say will matter after a couple of hundred years. It’s better to regret something you’ve done, than something you haven’t.

> Nothing that you do or say will matter after a couple of hundred years. I don't think this is true at all.

Our names will be unremembered but that's a different thing. To the future we are as gods.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#28
1) Cause And Effect Is A Force Of Nature

If you put effort into something, you’ll get better at doing it, and it will result in something good, or at least in something tangible. If you do nothing, you get nothing in return.

From: A Summary Of The Best Life Lessons From Movies: Or, Everything I Know So Far

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#29
There’s a chapter on the mind in the book Discourses and Sayings by Abba Dorotheus.

I suppose it can be summarised as “stop lying to yourself”.

There’s some subtlety to what this means. For me a big part of that is not living in my imagination. I used to have lots of imaginary conversations with people, predicting what they would say in those situations. This is dangerous since you end up building mental models based on (unfounded) mental models, instead of on reality. Your emotional responses also get coloured by these imaginary exchanges.

Post reply on HN