yolo
Ask HN: What is the best advice you got on any aspect of life?
21–30 of 281 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the best advice you got on any aspect of life?
#22I think often about this one I read a while ago (paraphrased):
“one of the quickest path to unhappiness is to not follow your true self”.
I believe we often face situations where we would rather be someone else or present traits that are not natural to us (eg to appear more likable). However, any behavior that is not led by who we really are, will inevitably make us like ourselves less. Stay true to yourself, your believes, and what brings you joy.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best advice you got on any aspect of life?
#23Functional programming matters. You look at everything as input => output, as cause => effect,... You don't need to dive into the internal complexity of anything, because it doesn't make sense. Complexity eventually failed, so you should never take care of them.
Simplicity matters.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best advice you got on any aspect of life?
#24I’ll go esoteric. Existence precedes essence. I first encountered existentialism in HS within the book of “One Day in the life of Ivan D.” If a labor camp prisoner can find meaning and even beauty in those circumstances my HS self had quite a bit of opportunity around him. But it’s also a good entry point to stoicism, too. Edit-special mention to Long Chen Pa’s “since everything in the universe is perfect in being ex…
HS = Head'n'Shoulders, Holy Spirit, Higher Self, Hacker newS?
Re: Ask HN: What is the best advice you got on any aspect of life?
#25I’ll go esoteric. Existence precedes essence. I first encountered existentialism in HS within the book of “One Day in the life of Ivan D.” If a labor camp prisoner can find meaning and even beauty in those circumstances my HS self had quite a bit of opportunity around him. But it’s also a good entry point to stoicism, too. Edit-special mention to Long Chen Pa’s “since everything in the universe is perfect in being ex…
HS = Head'n'Shoulders, Holy Spirit, Higher Self, Hacker newS?
High school.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best advice you got on any aspect of life?
#26To get good at something, you have to be bad at it first, often for a very long time.
The master failed more often that the student ever tried.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best advice you got on any aspect of life?
#27You can’t control the actions of others, only your own.
Another person is like a mountain: you can’t change anything about the mountain. You can only decide whether you’ll go around it, over it, or turn back.
I learned long ago to stop wasting my energy worrying about what other people did, and to focus on what I could do. Sometimes your actions can influence others, but you can’t make then do anything, they make their own choices and choose their own actions.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best advice you got on any aspect of life?
#28Don't be a cynic.
Society is messed up. Tech is messed up. But it doesn't matter. You just have to make a positive contribution somehow, anyway.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best advice you got on any aspect of life?
#29One Day At A Time
Re: Ask HN: What is the best advice you got on any aspect of life?
#30Having tight positive feedback loops is great for motivation. For example when writing code, seeing immediately if it works. Either by hot reloading, automated testing or at least building it. I try to find the same in other mundane topics.
This resonates with me, and is what I always try to drum into less experienced engineers when we're pairing. You'd be surprised how often someone who doesn't know programming that well will sit down and code for a whole hour before checking if any of it works. I'm checking every line to see if it works before moving on!