71–80 of 393 posts
All of Low-Tech Magazine's articles are worth reading, but this one in particular inspired me to start a web design business focused on radical sustainability. I haven't really succeeded yet, but this article gave me a goal I've been pursuing off and on since I read it.
This one had some impact on me because it revived the importance of taking ownership not only on my personal data, but the infrastructure which generates it, processes and stores it; and that the same infrastructure should be well thought of by me through a tinkering process which adds value to itself and to data the more I invest time on it.
I felt very motivated to rethink my workflows, my opsec and the way I store any data, not only new data I create, but general content that find around the Internet and that I think could be of any use in the future.
An honorable mention would be this one: https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm... which helped me look at how the web has been evolving from a different angle and, of course, triggered me to change some of my behaviors regarding privacy and the use of big tech derived products.
https://blog.tjcx.me/p/consume-less-create-more This article inspired me on two things : 1) Lots of the things I do in everyday life is just to consume: buying, watching, following, etc. These things either consume my money, or my time. These things make me feel good, but it does not generate real value. In order to get rich, I need to create things. I also start to realize that great people are great because they st…
I like re-reading this once every few months, and taking stock of how little I've internalised it: https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-y...
Also, there are undeniably some hard truths hidden in there. However, my experience in almost 20 years in the tech/software/product industry often paints a different picture. Yes, our brains keep us from changing and evolving and yes, obviously you need skills to be successful in life and your career. But in my industry in particular, hard and soft skills are not the dominant factor that keeps individuals from succeeding or progressing. I'm lucky enough to work with an abundance of talent and skill, and yet, one of the major factors of dissatisfaction is lack of "progression". One of the main factors is self-confidence and in the more severe cases even mental health issues. Some of the most skilled and knowledgeable engineers I worked with struggled to realise their potential because of it. If the leaders in your organisation think they can just shout at them to "learn self-confidence as a skill" and get over it you're going to have a bad time. It will attract a certain type and employee that thrives in that environment and disengage everyone else. Wasting talent, wasting skills and ultimately a lot of money. Creating an environment and learning how to tease the potential out of skilled and talented individuals is not a "hippie/hipster" thing to do, it is good for business.
For me, personally, it was the third time I was smacked in the head with that qualitative productivity jump based on superior technology before I could articulate it in words. First was with Cincom’s Mantis, then Dataflex 2 (3 was crap), and then with Zope.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Link here: Basically he talks about how when you retire depends on one number, percentage of money you can save from your pay. If you save 50% of your pay and invest it, you can retire in 16 years. Pretty eye openning https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
> The most important thing to note is that cutting your spending rate is much more powerful than increasing your income. I believe that part isn't exactly right, because you can increase your income way more than you can reduce what it takes for you to live. If you're a software engineer making let's say 70k, you can find a job where you make 150k, 200k or even more. If you currently spend 50k every year, it's way mo…
I believe GP was more referring to the rough rule of thumb is to have 25x your annual expenses by the time you retire. +5k income versus -5k expenses, you're better off cutting your expenses. By cutting expenses, the target drops by 25xExpensesCut, and you're throwing an extra ExpensesCut towards savings, helping on both sides of the equation. Going from spending 95% of savings to 90% makes a huge difference on the timeline, but 50% to 45% is much more modest since the timeline for compounding growth is so much shorter.
Using 70k income, 50k expenses, and a 5% return, this would take about 30 years. [0]
75k income, 50k expenses goes to 25.2 years [1]
70k income, 45k expenses goes to 24 years [2]
150k income, 50k expenses goes to 10.6 years [3]
Another detail often forgotten about, salary is stated before taxes, spending is almost always after taxes. That further increases the power of decreasing expenses.
[0] https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=70...
[1] https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=75...
[2] https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=70...
[3] https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=15...*
Aphantasia: How it feels to be blind in your mind By Blake Ross https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A... Before reading this post I had no idea I had aphantasia and thought everyone else was the same as me, unable to see anything when they closed their eyes. This helped me understand myself and my relationships so much better than ever before. Thanks Blake!
I still can’t quite believe there are people who can see clear images in their minds. Maybe it’s more a matter of how you report your experience? I’m very conscious of how poor my mental images are, but maybe with a little less introspection I would also say I have great mental imagery.
I know that it is tempting to paste a link to your favorite blog post, but I would like to encourage you to post really life-changing posts. If you post "maybe not" or "not really" maybe refrain from posting? Otherwise it will be just another popularity contest of random blog posts, we have more of them than those from the title I believe. It's okay for the thread to be short. Not a GP. The opinion is my own.
On the other, nearly everything I've read has changed me and how I saw the world, even ever so slightly. Different perspectives, bits of knowledge, connections made that I'm not even aware of. So I guess I just have to assume that everyone's definition of "life changing" is going to be quite wide depending on their own life experience and attitudes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly I find the whole movement quite dreary if taken too seriously. Of course, don't spend on frivolous things. Do you really need the designer bag, instead of just a bag? Do you need that road-trip with your friends in your 20s? Do you really need to impress that boy/girl by taking them to a michelin restaurant for a date? OTOH what is the opportunity, and life cost of being frugal or too frugal? Perhaps the des…
> Honestly I find the whole movement quite dreary if taken too seriously. FIRE content is best consumed in tiny doses. You can get 95% of what you need to know from a few blog posts, the Bogleheads Wiki, and creating a simple spreadsheet of your financial planning. That’s it. The problem is that FIRE has become a magnet for people who are miserable and think retirement will solve all of their problems. This subset of…
Frankly I'm amazed that there are people who don't see their job as their primary source of misery. I mean, I can understand it on a logical level, I just can't empathize. When I take time off I get up every day and actually get to decide for myself what I want to do with it and that's amazing. Work doesn't permit me that. Instead I have to prioritize away most of the things I want to do and squeeze the rest in between the 8+ hour chunks of my time I'm forced to sell. I derive no meaning from my work, it simply exists to sustain me. I'd get a job with fewer hours, even with the significantly lower pay, but because I live in the US that's impossible if I also want to have decent healthcare.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Honestly I find the whole movement quite dreary if taken too seriously. FIRE content is best consumed in tiny doses. You can get 95% of what you need to know from a few blog posts, the Bogleheads Wiki, and creating a simple spreadsheet of your financial planning. That’s it. The problem is that FIRE has become a magnet for people who are miserable and think retirement will solve all of their problems. This subset of…
> The problem is that FIRE has become a magnet for people who are miserable. This subset of FIRE people see their job as the source of all of their misery and have glorified the idea of FIRE as the only escape hatch. Frankly I'm amazed that there are people who don't see their job as their primary source of misery. I mean, I can understand it on a logical level, I just can't empathize. When I take time off I get up e…
Wow, what a gloomy outlook. Have you really never, ever enjoyed your work or workplace? Your coworkers?
I certainly haven’t enjoyed every job or workplace, but I have a lot of fond memories of many workplaces and teams. I’ve had a lot of fun throughout my career and made some lasting friendships.
I suppose I’m in the opposite mindset: I’m amazed that there are people (in tech) who haven’t ever been able to find enjoyment in their work. We literally grew up to get paid to play on computers all day. There are plenty of opportunities out there to have a good time in this field, but they won’t necessarily fall into your lap.