Never be humble. Business does not care about you, it’s not the world to be humble in.
Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
261–270 of 567 posts
Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
#262After you've been lying or sitting and you get up and go for a wee, once done press up just behind your balls. Oftentimes that pushes out a big drip that was otherwise going to come out later once you had your pants done up. The best abstract advice I've been given is to say "I don't know" when I don't know. No waffle, no bullshit, no trying to save face. Saves a lot of time.
I was in a fraternity in college. Part of the pledging process was learning all kinds of information about the fraternity, its history and philosophy, etc. One of our "rituals" for pledges involved being put into a situation where you would be asked questions you didn't know the answers to. It was a high pressure thing, and since you'd been memorizing all this stuff and being tested on it, you _really_ wanted to be able to answer these questions.
The lesson, in short, was "if you don't know, say you don't know." Admitting you didn't know the answers was required to "pass" the ritual. (It wasn't actually possible to fail per se)
Many of the things we did with initiates were stupid or pointless, mostly just designed to put them through the ringer. But this one has really stuck with me as a valuable lesson. If you're missing some knowledge, just say you don't know.
It's a good quality!
Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
#263Not just advice, but a series of events, some books I read and a change in situation:
1: In my early 20s, I worked as a junior sysadmin during the mid 90s. My manager sent me to a interpersonal skills course after telling me that people thought I was basically a jerk. That shocked me because of course who thinks that about themselves? But I reacted by resolving to be nicer to people, and the course I took introduced me to thinking about how others perceive me and how their inner worlds are vastly different to my own. As an introverted and neglected child, I hadn't been taught many lessons that I needed to learn. I grew up long before social media, so I escaped its toxic influence.
You need people who will call you out and tell you to improve, and more importantly teach you how to improve.
2: I moved out and escaped my mother and her stifling negativity. By striking out on my own, however uncomfortable I was, made me grow. This one isn't very easy these days, I was privileged to live in a time where it was pretty easy compared to today. Even if they love you, your parents/guardians/friends/hometown/job may be subconsciously holding you back.
You have to grow beyond your childhood.
3: After being told I lacked interpersonal skills, I got interested in just what those skills were. I read a lot of books on the subject, but these stood out to me: Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, How to Practice by The Dalai Lama, and Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. You have to find your own lessons from these books, but what I took away from them was that you can choose your reaction to situations, that you're often controlled by your amygdala's fight/flight/fuck/food reactions and you have to be able to recognize that and act accordingly.
You have to be aware of why you think and feel things, and that you can control your reactions to those things.
4: I spent time at parties, going out to the pub, having fun with people in real life. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, so it takes a party to raise an adult.
Learning to be an adult is best taught by being physically around other adults.
5: Knowing that I wanted to be a good person, to try to treat other people with respect. Helping people without the expectation of anything in return is a wonderful feeling that I deeply enjoy. This leads into all sorts of things, like leadership is serving others, not controlling them. That being cut off on a road is just something that happens.
Treat others with kindness.
6: Learning that everyone else in the world has their own complex set of wants and needs, that most people are just trying to live their lives with a minimum of fuss. That you yourself are just one of billions doing just the same as everyone else.
You are not the main character.
Those situations, books, changes all set me on a path that I'm still working at today 25 years later. I was recently described by some coworkers as Ihsan, previously I've been referred to as a Mensch. Those moments make life precious to me :)
Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
#264First class I got when I got to university, freshly arrived to the capital for my studies, still a kid. The calculus professor walks in and proceeds to do the "1/3 times 3 isn't 1, but it is" shtick, blowing everyone's minds. Continues doing this for 40 minutes and at the end he says: "You're not competing with the people in your town anymore, you're not even competing with the people here, from now on think of yours…
Why competing? what about cooperation? nothing you do today is done in a vacuum, everything you use to build in your corner, was built by others.
The point went past you. The core of the message is that you should not limit yourself to those you see around you in your small country, and keep a small country mentality. It's telling young people they are as good as anyone else, and that they should aim as high as someone that grew up say in the US and went to Stanford, because they are no better than you. I thought it was a great message.
Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
#265What you have been told by mainstream media and society about the topics of romantic relationships, sexual attraction and the like between male and female humans is mostly a lie.
Advice is: swallow the appropriately coloured pill and wake up in the real world.
Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
#266My mother told me to not care what other people thought. She also told me that words can't really hurt people ("sticks and stones..."). She also believed its "mean" to have any preference about people, calling it a version of "keeping score". In fact, "keeping score" was one of the worst things you could be accused of in my household. Her advice fails to accept the reality of social and emotional needs. It also fails…
Not caring what others think doesn’t mean you can’t “fit in.” Of course it sure doesn’t sound like that’s what she meant, but it’s still solid advice, I think. I do lots of things that basically boil down to “social lubricant.” I really don’t care what most other people think, but I still “play nice” when it’s low-cost and easy because makes everything easier. I won’t go out of my way or expend too much effort to ple…
It was also advice to Feynman from his wife, “What do you care what other people think?” :-)
Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
#267Never be humble. Business does not care about you, it’s not the world to be humble in.
I'm learning it in the academic world: not Science is rewarded but grandiosity.
Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
#268My mother told me to not care what other people thought. She also told me that words can't really hurt people ("sticks and stones..."). She also believed its "mean" to have any preference about people, calling it a version of "keeping score". In fact, "keeping score" was one of the worst things you could be accused of in my household. Her advice fails to accept the reality of social and emotional needs. It also fails…
> Advice is dangerous. It has built in moral hazard. Advice is too often given in well-meaning ignorance and pride - but ultimately advice gets someone else to test your hypothesis for you.
I've become somewhat convinced of "it takes a village to raise a child" thinking on the back of similar observations. It seems to me that it's a horrible thing to do to a child to force them to learn and absorb from only one to two people. Variations between people, even between parents and their children, and between social and economic needs, even over single generational spans, are too great, especially in the modern age. Which is to say nothing of when a child's parents just happen to be broken people. It feels like a travesty that children, such as yourself in your story, aren't given the opportunity to get different perspectives on how to live and be and to benefit from multiple guiding hands.
Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
#269Don’t be afraid of seeming vulnerable by asking questions if you’re stuck or unsure. This is easily one of the biggest life skills and soooo many people hurt their own progress by avoiding it.
Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?
#270After you've been lying or sitting and you get up and go for a wee, once done press up just behind your balls. Oftentimes that pushes out a big drip that was otherwise going to come out later once you had your pants done up. The best abstract advice I've been given is to say "I don't know" when I don't know. No waffle, no bullshit, no trying to save face. Saves a lot of time.
The "I don't know" advice is great, and has done the most to enhance my technical credibility of anything. If you admit freely what you know and don't know, it helps people believe that you do know. By contrast, people who are afraid of admitting that they don't know something are always treated with skepticism.
For some reason, a lot of people seem to have been told to never show weakness by admitting that they don't know something.
I had a professor who gave 20% credit for answering "I don't know" for a question on your homework (plus a little extra if you explain what you do know and why you don't know), and I stole that rule for my own class. One of my students became the VP of a chip company, and told me that the "I don't know" homework rule helped him gain a lot of confidence and save the BS.