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Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

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Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#481

Post by tbugrara »

Stop listening to advice so much and learn to cultivate a life of curiosity, failure, and iteration. Advice from others suffers from the inevitable ambiguity of language. Too much advice is given by people who themselves do not fully understand their situation and how they got where they are.

Take everything with a grain of salt and prioritize the building of your own inner understanding of your situation. It's just like the scientific method: make a hypothesis, control vars, test, analyze and repeat. It takes time but you will arrive where you want to go.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#482

Post by layer8 »

crankin wrote: post #480
layer8 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Discern between Type 1 & Type 2 decisions. High vs low consequence. If high consequence apply scientific method. Everything else delegate to smart people. What is meant by “everything else” here? All low-consequence decisions? That doesn’t seem to make sense (e.g. what to eat for lunch today).

@layer8 one thing to keep in mind is your future and past self are people you can delegate to. If today I prepare a tuna sandwich in a brown paper sac for tomorrow's lunch. Then I have delegated that decision to "someone else"... past me. Keeping my current self focused in the now. Yesterday me's focus was on making the sandwich. But here's another piece of advice. Don't think in absolutes! Sometimes you'll have to u…

I was mostly referring to “delegate to smart people”. My today’s self preparing a tuna sandwich for tomorrow probably isn’t smarter than my tomorrow’s self eating the sandwich ;). So, the “low priority” = “delegate to smart people” doesn’t make sense to me, and I suspect is not what you meant. If anything, I would want to delegate the “scientific method” stuff to people smarter than me.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#483

Post by GoldenMonkey »

jwally wrote: post #60
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a universally good advice. Sometimes, it's really hard to put projects and work aside and devote time to excercise and health. It's not that amusing when you do it alone and really hard to make it a habit in the beginning.

I started with 100 situps and push-ups over an hour while watching tv and cutting dessert. One month later I looked in the mirror and was inspired to do more. Little things add up. Try something small, daily for 2 weeks.

great work!

but, please no more sit ups. Even the marines figured out it is bad for the spine.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#484

Post by GoldenMonkey »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #178

I'm happy to see some of the examples here are of bad advice. The worst, specific piece of advice I received was when I was choosing a major in my senior year of HS, which informed where I went to college. For some paths like engineering you need to know before you matriculate at some schools. The bad advice which was handed out in 2001, was that CS as a career had peaked and all those jobs created during the dotcom…

Definitely was solid advice at the time. It was scary times.

I knew fellow software developers working at sears, driving buses. It was unreal. It looked like software was dead. Silicon Valley. And offshoring was happening big time.

I went to law school, and I was already a software developer. Hard to see the forest when one is in the middle of it.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#485

Post by crankin »

layer8 wrote: post #482
crankin wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@layer8 one thing to keep in mind is your future and past self are people you can delegate to. If today I prepare a tuna sandwich in a brown paper sac for tomorrow's lunch. Then I have delegated that decision to "someone else"... past me. Keeping my current self focused in the now. Yesterday me's focus was on making the sandwich. But here's another piece of advice. Don't think in absolutes! Sometimes you'll have to u…

I was mostly referring to “delegate to smart people”. My today’s self preparing a tuna sandwich for tomorrow probably isn’t smarter than my tomorrow’s self eating the sandwich ;). So, the “low priority” = “delegate to smart people” doesn’t make sense to me, and I suspect is not what you meant. If anything, I would want to delegate the “scientific method” stuff to people smarter than me.

These terms are relative. Low priority doesn't mean not important or even not difficult. As an executive I delegate parts of the scientific method to my team when analyzing Type 1 decisions however the final go/no-go decision is squarely on me and I have to answer to my share holders and my employees if I get it wrong. You should never ever delegate blame.

Type 2 simply means low consequence, again relative. Because everyones appetite for consequence is different. For example a Type 2 decision for me is Health Care. I delegate to my spouse to pick the plan. If a bad decision is made worse case is my out of pocket is higher than I would like but it can be remedied in 12 months. It's an important decision and difficult one but for me personally it's a Type 2. For someone else that might be a Type 1 and they must really pick the right plan.

So apply the advise to your life in the way that makes the most sense. And for me personally what I eat for lunch is always a Type 1 ;)

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#486

Post by autoexec »

jazzyk wrote: post #410
solveit wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you're fourteen, those randos are your peer group, and you're stuck with them all day. Also, you're fourteen so you haven't quite figured out whose opinions should be important to you, and also you're wildly insecure about your position in your world.

Life is not fair and not a bed of roses, never will be. These experiences make you tougher - in adult life, you will run into toxic bosses, colleagues, brutal job interviewers... It is important to have a loving family and/or supportive friends who can provide a different point of reference.

Abuse doesn't actually make people stronger. What helps people become stronger is overcoming adversity. You want people to challenge you and to run into obstacles to overcome, but people who are routinely abused just end up far more likely to have mental disorders later. Nobody is better off or "stronger" for having PTSD.

Toxic bosses, colleagues, brutal job interviewers are no where near as violent or persistent or inescapable as childhood bullies and if those toxic people did half the things kids do to each other they'd be quickly arrested and thrown behind bars.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#487

Post by blaser-waffle »

bombcar wrote: post #301
popotamonga wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t get married depends on country. Some countries won't even let you do hospital visits if you are not family.

And some states marry you even if you don’t get married. It’s called common law marriage and you can end up with all the divorce stuff without even having had the wedding.

3 years of cohabitation and joint finances where I live

only difference from marriage is that to get out of a marriage you MUST have a divorce; ending common law relationships leaves a 2-year window where a proceeding can be filed, and will behave like a divorce if filed. but it doesn't have to happen.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#488

Post by blaser-waffle »

NaN1352 wrote: post #328

From GTD methodology if I could remember only one simple thing it was "if ypu can do xyz in less than 5 mins do it now". You’d be amazed how many things you can do in even ONE minute. It helped me when depressed to come out of immobility and stop postponing even the simplest tasks : take out the garbage literally doable in under 60 seconds including going up and down the stairs, reply to some small emails, do some si…

I remember a study from ages ago about the people who were able to stay focused on tasks though of the stuff they had to do, and committed to doing it in 15 seconds or less after thinking about it. Especially if it was simple, quick, or easy stuff, like a 3-liner email.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#489

Post by nkrisc »

borroka wrote: post #467
nkrisc wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"I don't care what others think" always sounds like a coping mechanism, a last resort, an out-of-balance response to past insecurities and people-pleasing, as evidenced in this comment by dated references to designer clothes and fancy cars. If I have a boss, shouldn't I worry about what they think of me? If I have a spouse, a partner, a child, shouldn't I worry about what they think of me? Now, I know, the usual clar…

> as evidenced in this comment by dated references to designer clothes and fancy cars.

I think you ought to reevaluate your ability to read people from such limited comments and remarks. It’s not as honed as you might think, as evidenced by this comment.

I do not care what other people think about me. I can not control what others think, nor can I ever know it. Instead, I care about the things I can control: how I behave with others, what my relationship is with them, what I think of them, what I do.

I don’t waste my time imagining what others might be thinking about me, because I can’t know. All I can do is listen to what they say, watch what they do, and choose my response accordingly.

Caring about what others think is a fool’s errand because you can never know what they think. And you can’t know if what they say is what they think.

> "I don't care what others think" always sounds like a coping mechanism, a last resort, an out-of-balance response to past insecurities and people-pleasing, as evidenced in this comment by dated references to designer clothes and fancy cars.

You are so far off the mark. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I think. Don’t try to guess.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#490

Post by blaser-waffle »

kevin_vanilla wrote: post #363

Meta-advice: When reading advice collection posts such as this one, find the first one that really resonates with you, then stop reading. The brain can't absorb several life-changing concepts within a few minutes of another. After stopping and thinking deeply about one bit of advice and ideally doing something else for a while, you can come back if you want.

alternative: copy-paste the ones that speak to you into a document or something, and the review it every few years.

i've got an internal, personal 'wikiquote' doc of stuff that I like, and i make a point to review it, add to it, and meditate on its contents periodically.

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