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Advice that worked for me

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Re: Advice that worked for me

#41

Post by laserlight »

sarsway wrote: post #38
gloryjulio wrote: post #4

'The don't sleep too much and reduce to 7h' is such a horrible take. It really depends on the ppl. It's possible to do all the positive things (having great wlb, workout regularly, eat the healthiest food) and some ppl just need to sleep 8-9 hours. This is self help's guru level of advice

In my experience: Sleep as much as you can. Most probably don't have the luxury, but best is to not use alarm clocks. Your body knows exactly how much sleep it wants and needs, and your thinking brain has no business coming up with arbitrary hours of how long that should be.

Piotr Wozniak advocates a similar formula [0]:

> There is only one formula for healthy and refreshing sleep: Go to sleep only when you are very tired. Not earlier. Not later. Wake up naturally without an alarm clock.

[0] https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Formula_for_good_sleep:_free_run...

Re: Advice that worked for me

#42

Post by dools »

swyx wrote: post #33

> 5. Get in the habit of Fermi estimation, looking up key quantities, and using upper and lower bounds. i cannot agree with this enough. there are so many people in my life (work and nonwork) that make vague statements (whether about proportions, predictions, or population) that are more directional than precise. this leads you to commit to actions than you then later backrationalize. forcing yourself to make fermi e…

It’s funny I never knew there was a name for this but it is definitely something I got in the habit of when studying engineering and I use it all the time by creating little spreadsheet models. You don’t have to be that accurate, but you can create models with somewhat reasonable values and then fiddle with the outcomes and it just tells you if something is even remotely possible or not.

Like hey I might be able to increase my revenue by 10% next month but I definitely can’t increase it by 1000%. It’s surprisingly powerful.

Re: Advice that worked for me

#44

Post by grecy »

sometimeshuman wrote: post #6

"Tell the right stories about yourself." I wake up feeling stiff and every morning repeat the "story" that I'm starting to feel old. However, I often ask my 83 year old dad if he experiences the same and he always says no. Then last week my dad said, "you know I might, but I don't think about it". So this past week I just wake up and start moving and try not be aware of the minor pain from stiffness. It goes away qui…

Just like the people you meet who divorced or got fired 20 years ago and still bring it up at every opportunity

Re: Advice that worked for me

#45

Post by [deleted] »

sometimeshuman wrote: post #6

"Tell the right stories about yourself." I wake up feeling stiff and every morning repeat the "story" that I'm starting to feel old. However, I often ask my 83 year old dad if he experiences the same and he always says no. Then last week my dad said, "you know I might, but I don't think about it". So this past week I just wake up and start moving and try not be aware of the minor pain from stiffness. It goes away qui…

[deleted]

Re: Advice that worked for me

#46

Post by antihero »

gloryjulio wrote: post #4

'The don't sleep too much and reduce to 7h' is such a horrible take. It really depends on the ppl. It's possible to do all the positive things (having great wlb, workout regularly, eat the healthiest food) and some ppl just need to sleep 8-9 hours. This is self help's guru level of advice

Also from what I gather, scientifically incorrect/dangerous. Sleep is incredibly important, and sleeping the correct amount leads to a healthier and longer life.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-We-Sleep-Science-Dreams/dp/0141...

Re: Advice that worked for me

#47

Post by groby_b »

sometimeshuman wrote: post #6

"Tell the right stories about yourself." I wake up feeling stiff and every morning repeat the "story" that I'm starting to feel old. However, I often ask my 83 year old dad if he experiences the same and he always says no. Then last week my dad said, "you know I might, but I don't think about it". So this past week I just wake up and start moving and try not be aware of the minor pain from stiffness. It goes away qui…

> Why focus on something that doesn't serve you if you can tune it out.

Because you don't necessarily know if it serves you.

You could wake up stiff because you overdid your workout. That's a pretty valuable signal telling you to take it easy with those particular muscle groups.

You could wake up stiff because you have an injury. (E.g. a torn meniscus). That's a great signal to go see a doctor.

You could wake up stiff because you have a shitty mattress. That's a good signal to buy a better mattress.

You could wake up stiff because you spent yet another 12 hours sitting in front of the computer - that makes a great signal to both stretch and put a few more breaks into your workday.

Or you might indeed be stiff if it's low-grade systemic inflammation (a.k.a "being old"), and even then it might be a signal that maybe you can fix your nutrition.

Yes, you can just power through most of these, but... why would you? It does serve you. Just in an indirect way, signalling you what is not going well. The key point here is that in many cases, you can reframe the story from "I'm old" to "something is suboptimal, and I can improve it", moving from a passive to an active participant.

No, of course that's not always possible. There are many reasons why we could feel bad and we don't have agency at all - but I'd always suggest at least getting to the root of "why do I feel this way" before ignoring it.

Re: Advice that worked for me

#48

Post by mtrycz2 »

bruce511 wrote: post #7

I like that your title explicitly calls out "worked for me." Generally speaking, when it comes to advice, context is ever important. In one context advice may be spot on, but your context may not be my context and that can matter. For example I often hear good advice about useing SQL. A lot of it is contradictory, which can be confusing. But it turns out that the "right thing to do" is enormously affected by context…

> context

Which is ever absent from all and any Hacker News entry.

Re: Advice that worked for me

#49

Post by brewtide »

pythonbase wrote: post #8
sometimeshuman wrote: post #6

"Tell the right stories about yourself." I wake up feeling stiff and every morning repeat the "story" that I'm starting to feel old. However, I often ask my 83 year old dad if he experiences the same and he always says no. Then last week my dad said, "you know I might, but I don't think about it". So this past week I just wake up and start moving and try not be aware of the minor pain from stiffness. It goes away qui…

>> Why focus on something that doesn't serve you if you can tune it out. Great point. This would apply to all potentially negative stuff and the noise out there in general. For instance, I have recently try to tune out the political noise around me. Stop watching news, limiting news sites to couple of times a day etc. And it really helped a lot. Less stress due to factors that are beyond my reach.

Absolutely. I tell my kids all the time that one only has so much energy, and that I choose to spend my energy on things I can actually put effort into changing while the things I have basically little or no bearing on are paid some attention, but I don't let them worry me too much.

"It is what it is" applies to so many modern world 'stresses'. Certainly makes life far easier to deal with and when the energy one does have is spent wisely, individual growth also trends upwards. Win win.

Re: Advice that worked for me

#50

Post by Labo333 »

> then a billion users. If there’s, what, 100,000 seconds in a day, if each user does 10 clicks per day, on average, then I think that gets you a million transactions per second, ballpark

1e9 * 10 / 1e5 = 1e5 transactions per second

Maybe the author needs to apply their advice and start to "think in numbers" \o/

Jokes aside and apart from the really dangerous idea of sleeping less, I really liked the article!

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