68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice • Hacker News Board

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#101

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

jonasvp wrote: post #13

> Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it. Absolutely - I've learned this the hard way and it's giving me new appreciation for phone calls. It's amazing how many people do _not_ remember that an email chain of several hundred pages _will_ contain something incriminating or embassaring if forwarded to someone outside the origi…

Sometimes even that isn't enough. You have to read it twice. I was having a text exchange with a manager on the road. Hard to come to a consensus that way. So I wanted to talk when he got back to the shop.

I texted "We can talk some more when you get it."

One letter. The issues it caused lasted for years.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#102

Post by beckingz » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

newswasboring wrote: post #92

saagarjha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only doing the same at work was this easy…

I worked for about 3 years in taiwan and there its a norm. Everyone uses half of their lunch hour for lunch and other half for a nap. By the time I left I had it down to a science. I even drank a couple gulps of coffee because it felt like it kicked in in exactly 20 mins and I felt extra recharged

The coffee-nap is excellent.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#103

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

hyperpallium wrote: post #38

> When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it. Yup, look closely in the place you expected it to be. Something may be on top of it, or it may have fallen off.

And pull an image of it into your mind. Then glance around. Your brain's mighty correlation/association engine may find it for you! It will seem to pop out of the clutter.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#104

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

> The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it.

Pure gold.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#105

Post by Aeolun » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

glangdale wrote: post #55

Shakespeare knew what to do with people who proffer great quantities of unsolicited advice; look what happened to Polonius. A bunch of these are good, a bunch are just... OK, and some are questionable or just a matter of simple opinion. A lot just reek of "truthiness"; a sort of middle-brow confidence about art/business/doing stuff that's manages to frequently just pass off made-up bullshit as authoritative. The "rul…

They make a lot of sense, they’re just not necessarily literally true.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#106

Post by __s » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

newswasboring wrote: post #96

Just a question, and I know it is completely dependent on culture, do people really believe > Trust me: There is no “them”. I feel like there is constantly a them. The way I interpret it is that you should not modify your behavior based on other people's opinion. Or is it about people who don't matter? How do you know people who don't matter? I have never known from the beginning of a relationship that this person wi…

This one's ambiguous. It may be referring to "they say" "who's they?", or "them" as the invisible enemy. Maybe "them" is illuminati/reptillians/etc. Or maybe he's rejecting non binary gender, who knows

Might as well try & say you have a definitive interpretation of the lyrics to "It's Them" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyw_IdBlbKs

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#107

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 1:17 PM UTC

Here's one I heard elsewhere, and isn't in the list.

If you're searching for something important, search until you find one that satisfies all your requirements. Then, don't stop, keep searching until you find a better one. Then stop.

This raises you maybe a whole standard deviation in quality, without taking exponential time. Works for all sorts of things. A new pair of shoes; a favorite dish in a restaurant; a spouse.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#108

Post by Aeolun » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 1:19 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #70

gspr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with. > That's just not true. I will never be an Alan Turing or a John von Neumann, and I dare say neither will you, dear reader. The author doesn't claim this either. I believe he means that you shouldn't discount how much you can improve yourself.

Which would be solid advice, but he put there is no limit . That's the part I'm questioning. You'll never get anywhere without self-improvement, of course, but there's no sense pretending we can all be a prodigy like von Neumann - whose natural intelligence was shocking even to the top professors of his day - if we just work hard enough. There very much is a limit, but one need not be deluded to be motivated or succe…

There is no limit on your ability to improve yourself, but the effect can be described as a log function.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#109

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

ValentineC wrote: post #77

Would anyone mind sharing their take on this? > • Trust me: There is no “them”.

> In sociology and social psychology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group with which an individual does not identify

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_and_out-group

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#110

Post by mnsc » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #14

icelancer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only doing the same at work was this easy… Never understood employers who had a problem with this. I have people scheduling a small conference room we have to take 30 minute naps, or going to their car, or sleeping under their desk. Why should anyone care about that as long as they are generally productive and get the work done? (probably should note I don't overwork my employees, make them keep 80 hour schedule…

Well, there’s one part where it’s kind of awkward to ask to take a nap or have a coworker find you sleeping (“should I wake them up or wait to get my PR reviewed?“) but another part of it is that it’s not really comfortable to sleep at work unless there are ample soft couches or something. At home I can just jump into bed…

In sweden we have a law mandated "vilorum", that's basically a room where you should be able to take a nap. However this is only applicable when an office is larger than x people (x ~50 ?) and is frustratingly often just implemented as minimum effort to abide with the law, like a large sofa that in theory could be used to take an uncomfortable nap. Meaning it's only used in rare cases when you are too tired to even go home (or late at night when an office party has gone off the hooks)