Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

> It's naive of you to believe you can learn from our past naivety.

Firmly disagree. You absolutely can learn from others' past mistakes - that doesn't mean you'll make no mistakes, but you absolutely can make less mistakes and recognize and correct them faster.

> You will have to do your own mistakes and learn from them.

True. But the more you can listen to and apply good guidance from people who've been there, the better chance you get there faster, more easily, and with less pain.

I wish someone had taught me to lift weights with lower weight and perfect form instead of trying to be superman - from that, I tore some cartilage in my knee doing squats with too much weight and bad form. I've showed a couple people how to lift since then, given them a stern admonition not to try to look powerful, but to focus on steady, safe gains. As far as I know, everyone getting this stern admonition with relevant stories about physical therapy and assorted misery listens to them and lifts weights in a safer, more healthy way. You can learn from others' mistakes, often refrain or minimize the mistake-making in your life, and be much better off for doing so.

Don't believe everything they tell you. If you listen to too many people too often, you will be average at best.

Have the conviction to be better. If you can't convince people of your ideas, it doesn't mean the ideas are bad, it just means they didn't think of them first.

Man, forgive me for being blunt, but there's a lot of loser talk in this thread. "Oh you can't learn from others mistakes, you'll make them, blah blah blah..." - no, this is how people feel better about themselves for having not listened to advice and getting wrecked in their own life because of it. Sure, you'll make mistakes, but you shouldn't just accept wandering blindly through life dealing with stuff. This is what most people do, mind you - wander blindly through life. Like, there's tons of literature on good parenting. How many people read it? Like, none. So then they justify their bad parenting by saying "well, we all have to make our mistakes" - bullshit. Bullshit lazy talk. This is like the "you've got to earn your stripes the hard way" thing - sometimes you do, but sometimes you don't. But people who got their stripes the hard way often hate people who get them an easier way. Ignore those people.

Okay, that said, this thread was really good:

"Ask HN: What streetsmarts have you learnt?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1366217

I'll paste my comment from that thread, it's absolutely true and I learned it the hard way. Also, I admire you for being proactive and looking for advice to build a smarter, better life with.

--

Track record, track record, track record, track record. Look at the track record. Track records don't lie. Track record, track record, track record.

Someone fired from all their jobs is probably going to be a menace later in some form or fashion.

Someone who ended all their relationships on bad terms is going to end on bad terms with you.

Strong starters/non-finishers are going to start strong but likely won't be able to close it out without extra help later... which you might be oblivious to, because they'd started so strongly.

Track records don't lie. Unless you're really good at spotting diamonds in the rough, don't grab someone with a bad track record for an important role in your business and life. I've learned this one the hard way too many times. I still get tempted with, "Wow, this guy/girl is so amazing, the problem must've been the other people..."

I'm trying to not do that any more. Once? Quite possibly a fluke. Twice? Maybe... Three times? That's a track record. Also, people will always say they've changed. It's probably a bad idea to be the first person to test out whether it's real or not.

I think that he just wasn't very literal. In this case he's right: you have to learn everything yourself, you can't really be taught; "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink".

One of my favorite quotes is from Oscar Wilde, "Life is too important to be taken seriously".

Does this imply staying in your comfort zone? Is this not counter-productive?