Advice that changed your life?

My mother told me to not care what other people thought. She also told me that words can't really hurt people ("sticks and stones..."). She also believed its "mean" to have any preference about people, calling it a version of "keeping score". In fact, "keeping score" was one of the worst things you could be accused of in my household.

Her advice fails to accept the reality of social and emotional needs. It also fails to address the (sometimes severe) downside of non-conformance. This advice made me an Outsider whether or not I wanted to be. I now believe that these were tools she formed to get her through her own family and social trauma, which she falsely assumed would be generally useful, and did her best to arm her children with her best tools. I also believe there are upsides to the approach, but the trade-offs are real and cannot and shouldn't be swept under the rug. I imagine others had similar experiences with religious parents.

Advice is dangerous. It has built in moral hazard. Advice is too often given in well-meaning ignorance and pride - but ultimately advice gets someone else to test your hypothesis for you. So if you've not gotten any life-changing advice, be glad!

Mentor advice:

   1. An estimate is better than a guess. An measurement is better than an estimate.
   2. It's never the money. (They will always say it is, but it's not.)
   3. Never let anyone eat your lunch.
   4. The best time to turn it on is before it's ready. You'll get plenty of data to finish it faster.
   5. The only good Powerpoint slide is evergreen. If it's not, it's already obsolete.
   6. Your positive mental attitude makes up for most of your shortcomings.
   7. Learning the difference between an issue and a detail is half the battle.
   8. Avoid introducing new jargon. It's already hard enough to understand.
   9. Isolate. Isolate. Isolate.
  10. If it's not written down, it's not.
  11. The reason everyone we work for sucks is because those who don't suck never call us.
  12. If you set aside something urgent to go to Happy Hour, how will our annual report differ? (Hint: It won't.)
  13. What's the good news? (No matter how bad things are, never hesitate to answer.)
  14. A degree in business is a degree in nothing.
  15. The answer to any question is "Who wants to know?" (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1084127)
  16. No project ever dies but many are abandoned.
  17. Self praise stinks.
  18. If someone can do something once, they can do it again.
  19. Almost anyone can do almost anything.
  And my favorite: 20. Ultimately, go with your gut.

After you've been lying or sitting and you get up and go for a wee, once done press up just behind your balls. Oftentimes that pushes out a big drip that was otherwise going to come out later once you had your pants done up.

The best abstract advice I've been given is to say "I don't know" when I don't know. No waffle, no bullshit, no trying to save face. Saves a lot of time.

I have found that all the best advice I've received centers on how to focus your attention. As humans when we can give something our full attention it's almost impossible that what we are doing won't bear fruit. Here are some axioms around that idea that if you implement you will progress.

  - Time is not your most valuable resource. Your attention is.
  - Focus your attention only on things that have disproportionate returns.
  - Multitasking is a myth. Pick one thing and do it with all your strength.
  - Discern between Type 1 & Type 2 decisions. High vs low consequence. If high consequence apply scientific method. Everything else delegate to smart people.
  - Prioritize everything systematically. See Eisenhower Matrix or T.R.A.F apply it to everything vying for your attention.
  - Keep a distraction list. Write down every idea, review monthly but know 95% of this is going into the trash. You simply don't have enough lifespan to do them all. 
  - Discard all unnecessary things from your life. Half done projects, old clothes, shoes, ideas, cups, bowls, hackysack, cars. All that crap that's piling up in your basement, garage, closets, cupboards wherever. You don't use it, you don't need it and they rob you of your attention.

Not really an advice, but just a phrase: “Can you show me something you have done?”. My brother was introducing me as a developer for a project he was responsible and the supervisor wanted to meet me first. I was prattling about all the stuff I know about and I was real proud about it. He interrupt me with this. That’s when I realise all the things you know don’t really matter to people if you can’t actually solve their problems and they aren’t confident that you can. I switched my methods after that. And instead of pursuing knowledge for its own sake, I make sure, I actually practice and build thibgs instead of just be satisfied with “I know this”. 2 years later, I started making money on gigs and contracts as a programmer.

Always take sides. By not taking a side you are automatically wrong. This doesn’t mean you should engage in identity politics, etc. but when faced with a choice take the time to make an informed decision.

If you say something “should be a thing” you are automatically now in charge of creating it or convincing someone to create it. Do not tell people who are working on things that they should realize your idea if you are not willing to put down what you are doing and work on it yourself. This advice prevents you from being the annoying ideas person.

Don’t get married. Tax benefits are minor, divorce headache is major. Separate public declaration of love and commitment from your government and financial affairs. You can still have a commitment ceremony and a big party.

Learn how to properly ask for consent. You are likely very bad at this.

The most important thing about a job is not what you work on but who you work with. Pick people, not projects.

Plumbing is easier than you think. Learn to do it yourself.

Related to the above, read Heinlein’s quote on specialization. It is for insects. Learn to do everything.

Stress kills. Get sleep.

Don’t take advice from strangers on the internet :)

I was one of the people who implemented Google's top-level domain system. One day in the microkitchen I met Vint Cerf and told him what I worked on. He very curtly told me that he hates generic top-level domains, they confuse consumers, and ICANN should have been focusing on making .com / .org / .net better instead. It surprised me when I learned that I'd spent the last four years of my life working on a project where Google had bet big on gTLDs without the support of the father of the Internet. So I got a job on the TensorFlow team instead.

At some point I came across this quote which has been credited to Mark Twain:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

I recall taking it to heart and trying to imagine the kind of regrets I would have as a 40 year old me. Shortly after this I sold everything I owned and traveled the world for years. That experience gave me even more confidence to follow my gut and make the most out of my life. I've tried to keep this mentality still as I am about to turn 37. It keeps me moving forward and trying to achieve my goals.

Before spending the last money I had on a coding book, the cashier could see my hesitation and said "don't worry, investing in yourself is never a waste of money".

It had a profound impact on me.

Time is the greatest resource, but energy management is your greatest goal. You will always run out of energy before you run out of time.

If you have a life where you pursue autonomy, the development of your capacities, and a sense of meaningfulness in what you do, you'll be able to withstand and enjoy much more than you think. If you don't pursue these things, everything will be harder.

Simply spending your time with more intentionality and being conscious of each moment changes so much.

It's easier to find satisfaction in goals outside of your own self, because they introduce a finite boundary whereas the self is infinite in its desires

Try to picture what a confident and well-adjusted person would do in the same situation, to determine if you are currently acting out because of trauma or fear.

If you have a habit, ask yourself what it will look like if it continues uninterrupted for decades. Conversely, try to picture what a habit you don't currently have could do for you over the same timespan.

My most significant piece of advice came from my uncle. It was simply this "how would you feel if your grandmother died tomorrow?". It had an immediate effect. From that moment on I began to respect and honour my grandmother.

Up until then I was not exactly the nicest grandchild, a lot of anger, a lot of confusion reigned in my childhood and my grandmother was the last in the chain. She ended up getting most of my frustration. But that piece of advice had a lasting impact, it has been with me for about forty years now.

I try to always remember that when dealing with other people not because I think I want to improve their lives, I simply don't wish to have a guilty conscience if they do die tomorrow. Of course the effect is the same as if I were to be motivated by altruist ideals.

For most people reading this it might be a nice ideal but not a good piece of advice. The reason this was a very good piece of advice for me was that a few years before my uncle said this to me, my father had died. He died without me being able to say goodbye, to be able to talk to him, nothing. I was left with a mighty large hole.

And that is the second piece of advice: some advice only works if you have had the experience. And some advice makes sense later after you have had the experience. Be open and listen to others, especially those older than you. Be polite, be reflective and be thankful for being the survivor of a long line of ancestors, not everyone gets to survive.

The value of advice comes from arriving at the right moment to the right person, not some platonic, universal “goodness“.

For example, I wanted to drop out of college to work on climate change, and an adult in that community who I respected immensely told me “calm down, it won’t be too late by the time you graduate“.

Not too many people needed the advice to worry less about climate change (especially 15 years ago), but it was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment so that I could focus on actually learning the fundamentals of engineering before throwing myself in

With respect to comparing oneself with other people, "Better at, not better than" -- can't remember when this was given, want to say 8th grade from some counselor interviewing me for something or another (career guidance? I remember him asking me about a phrase I liked back then, "Through knowledge, power"). I don't really agree , but I mulled over it then and still remember it, and it's not terrible as far as generic advice goes, especially if it can help someone avoid a superiority complex, which I'm sure back then I looked like I might develop.

A HS teacher had "Pay yourself first", which I still like, and is especially useful for people who might otherwise help others too much at their own expense (and ability to help a lot more in the future).

I think the real lasting advice that I still think about and would like to more perfectly follow is ch 9 of the tao te ching. One translation goes:

    Fill your bowl to the brim
    and it will spill.
    Keep sharpening your knife
    and it will blunt.
    Chase after money and security
    and your heart will never unclench.
    Care about people's approval
    and you will be their prisoner.
    Do your work, then step back.
    The only path to serenity.

Another translation:

    Brim-fill the bowl,
    it’ll spill over.
    Keep sharpening the blade,
    you’ll soon blunt it.
    Nobody can protect
    a house full of gold and jade.
    Wealth, status, pride,
    are their own ruin.
    To do good, work well, and lie low
    is the way of the blessing.

There’s a chapter on the mind in the book Discourses and Sayings by Abba Dorotheus.

I suppose it can be summarised as “stop lying to yourself”.

There’s some subtlety to what this means. For me a big part of that is not living in my imagination. I used to have lots of imaginary conversations with people, predicting what they would say in those situations. This is dangerous since you end up building mental models based on (unfounded) mental models, instead of on reality. Your emotional responses also get coloured by these imaginary exchanges.

From GTD methodology if I could remember only one simple thing it was "if ypu can do xyz in less than 5 mins do it now".

You’d be amazed how many things you can do in even ONE minute.

It helped me when depressed to come out of immobility and stop postponing even the simplest tasks : take out the garbage literally doable in under 60 seconds including going up and down the stairs, reply to some small emails, do some simple housekeeping tasks.

First class I got when I got to university, freshly arrived to the capital for my studies, still a kid. The calculus professor walks in and proceeds to do the "1/3 times 3 isn't 1, but it is" shtick, blowing everyone's minds. Continues doing this for 40 minutes and at the end he says:

"You're not competing with the people in your town anymore, you're not even competing with the people here, from now on think of yourselves competing with every engineer across the world. Aim high."

For a kid from Portugal that came from a smaller town, it changed my whole perspective. I loved that guy. Was an excellent professor for the rest of the semester as well. Can't say I met any other student of his that didn't walk away thinking fondly of him. Manuel Oliveira Ricou, you the man.

I've got a few that definitely had an impact on how I act, or perceive a situation.

"Why did you do that?"

"I don't know"

"Then if you don't know why you're doing something, don't do it."

I've heard this convo when I was a teenager, and I believe that it nudged me into having a bit more self-reflection and thoughtfulness than I would have otherwise.

"When people say something to you, most of the time it means either 'I need help' or 'I love you'"

And, closely related: "Don't forget that the person in front of you might just have a bad day".

Those have been immensely useful when dealing with common annoyance from family and strangers alike. It doesn't mean that you have to accept everything, but it certainly help in avoiding getting angry as the default reaction.

Your ego and your conscious mind are the source of most of your problems. Meditate to delve deeper and find out who you truly are. (Or more accurately, who you are not.) If you can tap into and sync up with this inner self, your problems will melt away and you will find happiness without needing much.

This isn’t to say that you must get rid of your conscious mind or ego. Simply understand why they’re useful.

Your conscious mind is a focusing tool, like a coach, and your subconscious mind is like the players in charge of the doing. The conscious mind shouldn’t be the one trying to solve everything. The ego cares too much about things that don’t matter like pride, greed, and ruling the universe. It is just trying to protect you from harm and death.

Let go of these feelings and thoughts, and stop trying to be the supreme ruler of the universe. You cannot control nearly as much as you think you can, including yourself. You can only influence.

Be still, let life happen and flow with it like water. Translation: Be perceptive of what’s happening around you and within, then act appropriately by gently guiding everything toward the desired outcome without using force and striving. Patience is key here. Striving makes you use up your energy too quickly and potentially burn out.

When you achieve this state of mind, it feels like you can solve any problem using your mind and ingenuity, and nothing really bothers you anymore. You’ll only spend time on what truly matters to you and your life will become one that’s truly worth living.

When I was a new developer just a couple months out of school, and was very eager to be a part of my company and fit in, an older developer told me “remember that your interests and your path are your own.”

Over the years, I’ve suffered from “company man” syndrome and look back to his guidance as a reminder that I should own my skills and interests, and bring them to an employer if and for as long as the job suits them. I shouldn’t go with the job wherever it takes me simply because that’s my employer’s wish.

Not always easy advice to take, but extremely important advice to me.

In art school I had a professor tell us something like,” when you’re sick you say you’re going to appreciate all these small things, like smelling the flowers after you had no sense of smell, and make all these changes but by the time you’re better you never do “, it’s something I think about pretty regularly two decades later. I think that telling a bunch of young people they would never do something made it a really great thing to “Rebel against”. Like, at some of my lowest points it’s been the thing that always replays first. How am I going to learn from this crap and find more enjoyment and humility from it.

Shut the fuck up.

An easy way to increase the value and enjoyment of a conversation is to say a lot less and listen a lot more. This applies obviously in cases where the subject is something you're not an expert on, but can also be extremely valuable in those exact circumstances. Obviously there are limits to this advice, but they are probably much further away than you'd dare believe.

Also, people tend to assume that you share more of their opinions so you can make friends quicker too. You can't put your foot in a closed mouth.

My operating systems professor liked to engage his audience during lectures, so it was commonly more of a dialogue than a lecture. At one point he gave us some problem to consider, we didn't know what to make of it, so we started asking how to approach this. His reply:

"You're asking me? Soon enough you'll be engineers. You're the experts people will come to for solutions."

More of a reminder than advice, but it affected my approach.

Other, unrelated, but also life-changing, even though I don't remember who gave it:

"Never explain yourself unless explicitly asked to."

EDIT: This one is from my Argentinian AirBnB host in Switzerland:

"If you didn't make time for it, it wasn't actually important enough for you."

"Only boring people get bored."

This has been a life-long challenge - in a good way. Whenever I feel boredom approaching, I try to change the situation or come up with a more creative way of viewing the moment. Not always successful, but it's a good practice.

"Don't beat yourself up about your failures and failings. There are loads of people out there who will do that for you."

"Get over yourself."

"Don't choose to make enemies"

My big one for anyone reading is that life can be short and difficult. You must balance enjoying your time now with investing in yourself and your future. I have had several friends who died young without living their lives while they could. All of them would have had a better death if they had swapped some of the self sacrifice required to have material and professional success later in life for some enjoyment earlier on. Remember, what we see of life stories is full of survivor bias - many of the dead will tell you that you need to take a break and see the world while you can.

“Leave someone better than you found them.”

It led to me staying faaaaar too long in an unhealthy relationship, trying to cure problems that I imagined myself responsible for causing. Sometimes you need to forgive yourself and move on. The Pottery Barn Rule and the Boy Scout Rule apply to things, not people.

Most people will not remember what you said or did but they will remember how you made them feel

...that most people don't really spend their time thinking about you so don't worry too much thinking negatively about this, do your best and that's about it. It's such a simple advice but it was life changing, both personally and also professionally.

Meta-advice: When reading advice collection posts such as this one, find the first one that really resonates with you, then stop reading. The brain can't absorb several life-changing concepts within a few minutes of another. After stopping and thinking deeply about one bit of advice and ideally doing something else for a while, you can come back if you want.

I’m in my 30s and I could fill up hundreds of pages with all the crappy advice I’ve been given over my life by well-meaning people. Yes, some advice is helpful, and it is helpful to know when you’re stuck and need some new ideas, but I think in most cases advice is overrated. Try things out yourself, make your own mistakes, figure out what works for you, and what doesn’t. You will learn more from the struggle, and the lessons will be cemented much deeper. Don’t be afraid to fail.

In my startup we had a customer who said they weren't going to pay us. I was upset and pissed as I had given them another chance after a previous payment issue to help them out of their hole. It felt personal.

My lead salesperson asked "do you know what a sunk cost is?" "no" "it's an accounting term for money that can not be retrieved, and going after it will probably only cost you more money, so you just have to write it off" "your being upset is compounding the loss. Let's spend that time and energy creating new sales instead of being sad about old ones. You need to write this off"

Felt 10x better, we then brainstormed and invented.

"Take care of your body in your 20s"

It's easier to build muscle mass before the age of 30 and the muscle you gain during that time will never go away (with a minimum of training).

The earlier you start exercising, the less difficult it will be to maintain your body as you get older. Someone who has never exercised but wants to lose weight by their 40s will have a much harder time than someone who started exercising early.

More than that, working out has a significant impact on my productivity, mood and psychological health. It changed my life.

After doing an internship at Daimler in autonomous vehicles, I planned to achieve my long-term plan to go work for the US auto industry in 1993.

A Ford engineer who had interviewed me implored me to go do anything else (at a Ford reception for college applicants). “Look, you’re going to get an offer from all 3 of us (US automakers) and you should go do something else for 5 years and if you still want to work in SVT or Motorsport (the two divisions I wanted), apply directly to them.”

If I had that guy’s name and address, I’d send him a Christmas card every year as tech was way better than working on glovebox handles and seat belt buckles.

When I was at university, one professor of electrical engineering would refuse to answer any student who asked whether their answer to a circuit theory problem was correct.

When asked why he would refuse to answer, he would say: "If you aren't confident that your answer is correct, then I would like to mark you as wrong even though you may be right. You are the expert. You should be telling me that your answer is right, not asking me whether it is right."

He would also say that another acceptable answer occasionally might be "Your question is wrong" (along with an explanation as to why it is wrong).

This professor's attitude bothered me at first when I was on the receiving end of this advice, but I have come to regard it as some of the best advice I have received.

Especially in a professional context, I have found that it pays to convince myself that my recommended solution is a good solution, perhaps by confirming it using a few independent methods, and also by anticipating the responses of detractors, and coming prepared with answers to likely objections that others might offer.

“Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don’t match how they really are.”

I started reading Hardcore Zen out of interest after seeing it recommended in a twitter thread. Still deciding about the book but this one stuck with me, that (physical causes aside) unhappiness can be a choice that you make moment to moment and that you can decide to change your mind

“When do you expect you’ll finally be happy?”

“I don’t know, I hope I’ll get a teaching job, hopefully I’ll get a girlfriend. I want to have a wife, kids.”

“You’ll be happy then?”

“I think so.”

“Great. How would you like to be there and then look back only to see that you were sad the whole time up until then? Try to enjoy the journey too.”

The things that annoy you the most about your partner will be the same things that you will miss the most when they are gone.

I try and reflect on this advice when I am struggling to communicate with my wife. Having been divorced once I feel that a positive living relationship is always (well, usually maybe) within our own control.

Does advice I didn't take count, I was in my first year of college and living with a family that took in students. I went for a pint with the Dad who would have been in his early 40s and he told me start your pension now, even if it's only €10 a week. Really wish I took his advice. That was in the mis 90s.

"People aren't against you, they're for themselves."

A classic of unknown origin.

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."

Captain Jean-Luc Picard

one was "if you want someone to like you, become a person they would want to like." turns out there's lots of reasons why someone might like someone else. I just assumed they only liked people for the same reasons I did (like vanity).

another was "women don't owe you just because you're a nice guy." took a while to accept that I had been telling myself a lie, that I would naturally attract women just from being nice, and was getting subconsciously angry at women when my presumption didn't pan out.

and another was "is this what they want, or what you want?" works in a lot of situations. I think it helped me have more compassion/empathy, but also avoid situations where one of us would have been unhappy.

1) Cause And Effect Is A Force Of Nature

If you put effort into something, you’ll get better at doing it, and it will result in something good, or at least in something tangible. If you do nothing, you get nothing in return.

From: A Summary Of The Best Life Lessons From Movies: Or, Everything I Know So Far

Your job isn't your identity.

Your job is there to subsidize what you want to do with your life.

"Don't be afraid to become the Editor of a document" is along the lines my ex-boss told me. It changed the way I think about contributing to just about anything. When you become the editor you take responsibility and you're in a much better operating position, even if you don't know everything about the subject matter of the document.

I was working in a small firm. Just killing it. My billable hours were twice what my colleagues were doing. I asked my boss (who I didn’t have a great relationship with) “Where do I go from here? What’s my promotion path?” He said “the top of the company is full, if you want to go up, you’re going to have to go out” I was astounded. He’s telling his most lucrative employee to quit. But, boy was it the right thing for me. I’ve never looked back and I’ve acted on that advice twice since then to achieve more upward trajectory. Thanks Ben, I know you didn’t mean it in a positive way but it was just the advice I needed.

- Compare yourself with your previous version and not with others. (Taught in school to us to not compare grades with other students but with yourself. This stuck with me for life.)

- Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is potential of power. (Brought me out of the false sense of comfort that reading book or completing course/training will automatically benefit me or is progress towards actual work. You need to apply the knowledge else it is useless.)

- You don't have to complete the book you are currently reading. (First heard from Naval)

- Arrange documents alphabetically and cross reference if required. Any other system will fall apart.(From GTD)

I was due to be in a meeting and was super anxious about it due to having to report out on some stuff I'd been working on. That morning, before the meeting, my dad texted me with the line "there is fear in all of them". Had a profound impact on me and reminded me that we are all human and are all prone to worrying about stuff.

I'm happy to see some of the examples here are of bad advice.

The worst, specific piece of advice I received was when I was choosing a major in my senior year of HS, which informed where I went to college. For some paths like engineering you need to know before you matriculate at some schools.

The bad advice which was handed out in 2001, was that CS as a career had peaked and all those jobs created during the dotcom boom would be outsourced, so there was no point in majoring in it anymore.

I unfortunately took that advice for a few years, before realizing it was bunk and having to spend extra time in school to enter a career in software.

Context: I was leaving a startup (so as to avoid getting asked to leave), and I had a final lunch with a member of the C-suite. He had not exactly been my friend at work but at that point we were in the same boat. I expressed concern about how the whole thing was going to look to future employers, and he said:

“This is tech. Nobody cares how many times you’ve been fired.”

He was dead right. Nobody even really asks. I just say we had a good run and then the company changed significantly after a difficult funding round and afterwards I wasn’t as good a fit.

I should let him know that his remark was prophetic.

A long time ago I was in a fairly desperate technical situation, that to my and my lead’s minds required a stop the world, must fix or all’s lost approach.

Product wasn’t having it, and I couldn’t negotiate my way through. In the end we ignored them for the ~4 months needed to get back to systems health. We produced a retro of our findings, before and after states, etc. and consensus, from clients and even from product leadership, was that we did the right thing.

My PM ended up quitting and I permanently broke that relationship.

The best advice I ever received was: you were right. Was it worth it?

‘The fate of the fool will overtake me also.

    What then do I gain by being wise?”

I said to myself,

    “This too is meaningless.”

For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered;

    the days have already come when both have been forgotten

Like the fool, the wise too must die’

I have two mantras that I heard at some point early in life and they have immensely helped me over the years:

1.) "Just remember that it's a grand illusion." - Dennis DeYoung.

Human society is a made up thing job titles and heirarchies or castes, companies, governments, money, opinions, labels ("gay", "straight", "married", "healthy", "insane", "impossible")... the whole lot of it - all made up by humans. There is no difference between you, your boss, your CEO, the leader of your country. The truth is, we are all humans living on this earth, eating-feeling-surviving. The rest is something humans just made up.

2.) "...all it takes, really [is] pressure and time." - Red (character in movie Shawshank Redemption).

This montra has never steered me wrong. Something I truly want to achieve may take months or many years, but if I stick to it, it eventually tends to come to fruition. Interestingly, the opposite is true, when I've given up on some opportunity or idea I thought was particularly worthwhile, but I ultimately gave up on and succumbed to the pressure of naysayers and my own weariness, I have seen others succeed on these same ideas/opportunities. It's not a garuntee, but a very strong trend I've observed over my 40+ years on earth.

As a child, I wanted to be a scientist (I've always been an inventor and explorer at heart) but was guided towards enlisting the military due to lack of money and honestly, I did not do well in grade school. After maturing, I've pressed on to course-correct and after 20 years I am finally a well respected research scientist in the field I'm passiknate about. It just took pressure and time (years of pushing through grad school rejections, arduously learning concepts that didn't come naturally to me, ignoring naysayers, etc.).

Sometimes, you won't break through, but I contend that the journey is still worthwhile. I have a HARD math problem that I've been picking a way at for over 10 years and I've made peace with the fact that I may never solve the riddle by the time I'm dead. However, with persistance I've made incremental progress - and I can see that I'm on a road that is being revealed in front of me inch by inch as I apply continuous pressure. Even if I don't know how long that road actually is - if I could live long enough, eventually I know I would solve the puzzle. This montra has helped me keep pushing ahead, despite not truly knowing when a break through will happen, and simply walking the path has led me to observe what feel is great natural beauty. The journey itself can be very rewarding.

One thing I read on HN a couple of month back and really clicked with me is:

"If you really struggle to decide between two options and you begin to waste time by postponing the decision, this often indicates, that both options are very similar in expectable outcome"

At least in situations, where you can't access more info about path A or B, indecisiveness may indicate "go flip a coin"

Sounds simple, but made me aware and helped in a few situations not wasting time already.

What you have been told by mainstream media and society about the topics of romantic relationships, sexual attraction and the like between male and female humans is mostly a lie.

Advice is: swallow the appropriately coloured pill and wake up in the real world.

Righty tighty, lefty loosey

Comfort is a drug. Once you get used to it becomes addicting. Give a weak person consistent stimulation, good food, cheap entertainment and they will throw their ambitions right out the window. Comfort is a graveyard of dreams.

For a shit ton of my teens all I did was chase comfort until this hit me earlier last year. Now I wait for pain to make sure what Im doing goes against the current to bend the resistance to my will.

Goggins sums it up: if you like running what you learning? If you like boxing well what are you learning? People say double down on your strengths. Fuck that triple down on your weaknesses.

Jordan Peterson in one of his lectures: if you expose people to what they fear they get stronger and we don’t know the upper limits to that.

In short: fk comfort, chase pain. That is the 21st century’s killer instinct.

"Everyone wipes their butt the same way"

I couldn't talk properly in certain situations. I was too self-conscious. That meant my communication was poor at workplace. I was too nervous presenting in front of execs and senior leaders.

On the other hand, my friend was fluent and smooth. We both had same roles. After another poor presentation, my friend gently told me "Everyone wipes their butt the same way."

"If a person’s behavior doesn’t make sense to you, it is because you are missing a part of their context. It's that simple." I have no idea where I saw that quote for the first time but it had a huge impact on my ability to comprehend people around me. Both in the private and work setting. Be kind to those around you even if their behavior does not make any sense to you.

1. learn to firmly say "NO", no matter how difficult it sounds. 2. If YOU think "what will world think", then what will world think? (it sounds way better in my mother tongue, but basically don't care about what will people think about you) 3. You don't work for the company, the company works because of you.

1) "You should develop a thick skin." - advice provided by Jeff Bezos. I think it's one of the least obvious, and most important, things especially if you have a bit of ambition in life, and you need to swim with the sharks. I mention the advice here [0].

2) "Is this what you want to be remembered for?", not sure where I've read it, but it's a powerful question.

3) "It's sunny in Venezia today, stop reading HN and go for a walk". Me, just now. Half kidding... But walking is one of the most powerful things you can do to help yourself. In fact, I'm closing my computer now, and I'm going for a walk. Can't wait to see other comments when I come back later tonight.

[0]: https://simon.medium.com/jack-dorsey-meditation-and-a-tip-fr...

I had an awesome math instructor while in college named Gamal. I was in a linear algebra class with literally three other students, and at first it was a traditional lecture style class. Soon though Gamal tired of this and said "Look guys, you're going to take turns teaching these lessons". One day it was my turn to teach the lesson. I opened the textbook, started reading out of it and working an example problem on the board.

Gamal raised his hand and started asking questions about the example. I, not understanding the concepts very well, answered by reading out of the book. Gamal said "Daniel, to hell with that book. Don't tell me what the book says. Tell me what YOU know. How can we explain this with only the things we understand?"

Use what you know to figure out what you don't know. Use your own understanding instead of trying to borrow someone else's.

It isn’t advice, but my Dad told me that when you love a woman you see her as that age when you fell in love with her for the rest of your life. And I have found that to be true.

It'll be a success or a good story.

"'If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well' is bunkum."

Doing good enough ... can be enough.

"Don't just do something; stand there."

Almost always can you afford taking the time to observe and think through a proper solution, instead of rushing in and doing the first thing that comes to mind. Especially if it seems urgent.

Sometimes when you just observe, the problem will go away by itself!

1). Its none of your business what other people think.

2). Everyone is just winging it.

3). Life is subject to change without notice.

Some thoughts about taking responsibility.

From an old boss: “Excuses are like assholes. Everyone got one and they all stink.”

From a friend’s dad who was an excellent trial attorney: “If you’re explaining you’re losing.”

From my kids 4th grade teacher: “While that may explain, it does not excuse.”

“All endings are also beginnings, you just don’t know it at the time”

Helped me with the anxiety I always had about loosing people, opportunities and such

"Act like a dumb-ass and they'll treat you like an equal."

(However, that's not universally applicable.)

- - - -

My dad said, over and over again until I got it:

    A fool never learns.
    A man learns from his mistakes.
    The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

(I retained the gendered pronouns to keep the flow of the English, no offense intended folks.)

You can't avoid making mistakes, not completely, but you can avoid a lot. Stand on the shoulders of giants, eh?

- - - -

Last but first, Love

Love is our obligation, our responsibility, our duty; it is our right, our riches, our panacea and cornucopia; love answers all things. Even time itself falls before love.

Remember love, remember to love.

Don't sit on creative ideas waiting for the skills to apply them. The ideas you come up with developing those skills will be so much better, and you'll have a lot of noob stuff to look on fondly. Applying the noob ideas is how you get there. I see too many writers, musicians, etc holding on to some idea they've always wanted to work on until they somehow develop the skills with ideas they don't, so they never do anything.

And then they finally get to it, work through it, look back years later, and realize the idea they sat on was far below what they were capable of once they finally worked through it.

A therapist once told me: Let your actions dictate your emotions. Don’t let your emotions dictate your actions.

Advice we should all follow more

When I was a young teenager I was very interested in model rockets. One summer day I had completed a model rocket and my father took me to the highschool football field to set it off. I got concerned because there were no trespassing signs. My father said the following:

"Josh, what's the worst that could happen? Someone will tell us to leave and we will."

This thinking, "what's the worst that could happen" has had a long profound impact on my approach to life and to risks in general. Always ask yourself in a situation of fear: what's the worst that could happen?

Well not really changed my life, but somethings I frequently think and try to follow.

Try to be nice and helpful to others.

Nothing that you do or say will matter after a couple of hundred years.

It’s better to regret something you’ve done, than something you haven’t.

"Be kind to yourself" - My grandfather.

Levin's quote from the end of Anna Karenina:

""" “This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith—or not faith—I don’t know what it is—but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.

“I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.” """

There have been many times in my life where I have reflected on past behavior and things I've done and have been disappointed in myself. Yet no matter how much I try to change certain things, there are certain aspects that are just fundamental to who I am a person and I can't change. The best I can do is keep pushing forward and trying to be the best person I can be.

"Don't waste your time on beaming people up or down. Instead, consider gravity waves as advanced physics of the universe that could be used to travel interstellar distances."

Worry only about the things that are under your control . Epictetus.

If someone asks you how to do something or your opinion, give them a thoughtful answer. Many times I would say, “I don’t have a strong opinion” or “whatever you think is best”. It took a friend to tell me people value my advice and they are truly interested in what I have to say. When someone asks, they want to know what I think. Answer them thoughtfully. Ever since that moment I always give a thoughtful answer when someone asks for my advice.

Not a single advice, but David Goggins "Can't hurt me" was a game changer for me.

This landing page roast I found years ago completely changed how I think about marketing:

Don't believe for one moment that 5 hours on Product Hunt or anywhere else for that matter represents a serious marketing effort.

If you want to run a business rather just create stuff, your work has only just begun. In the light of Facebook and other social media revelations, the idea of a truly disposable email address which means your entire life is not analysed and spammed to death has to be worth something.

You haven't told anyone about it though. And I mean you shout from the rooftops every day and everywhere you can think of. You market. People are not going to come looking for you. You have to start approaching influencers, be seen and be heard everywhere you think your potenial users might lurk.

And, by the way, everyone sees a million new ideas a day so you have to be consistent, appear to be permanent and appear to be solid. No-one is going to entrust communications with you if they think you are a small, one-man band with an idea and little else.

Time to start reading marketing articles and strategies and applying them.

And expect it to take time.

Added bit : I've just watched your video. No, I won't be using your service and nor will anyone else. I have no idea how good it is and I am not going to find out. And nor is anyone else.

Why not? Because you uploaded a silent, technical video. You have made the classic mistake of trying to show me how something works before I even know if I care. This is a technical video, not a selling one.

You need a voice.

You need to tell me what my problem is and make it resonate with me.

You need to tell me how to solve it.

You need to tell me it is simple.

You need to tell me what it costs.

You need to tell me to link right now to the place I can sign up.

You might need some other things but these are the basics.

You need to sell your idea to me, not explain how the software works. I do not give a damn about the bloody software until I give a damn about the bloody problem!

Tell me where I'm hurting, sympathise and then magic-kiss it better. You know - just like Mummy did when I was small!

Happiness is a choice. « Have you choose to be happy ? » That’s was the question a mentor asked me. Since then I have made it a priority in my life, and I am much more happy 7 years after. It so basic but since I meet so many people who don’t know what they want in life; have no purpose, never asked them selves what do they want and fell like shit. I think having the honest goal to be Happy, it is a good starting point.

Every person has a choice in their life: Comfort or growth. If you are comfortable you are not growing. If you are growing it won't be comfortable.

The corollary is that you must choose to feel pain (pain of studying, pain of exercise, pain of rejection, pain of focus, pain of chance of failure, pain of being unsure) to get what is good in life.

So the Advice: Choose pain so that you can experience growth.

The fact that I am a "scanner" personality type and that I should accept that about myself rather than try to change myself to fit more conventional lifestyles. A scanner is someone who finds interest in a wide variety of topics but often becomes bored with it once you understand it sufficiently.

Rather than taking the advice that I need to focus on one thing or else I'm going to fail at life, I've come to realize that I can keep progressing on my "main thing" (in my case, tech), and continue to dive into whatever topics tickle my fancy without guilt. Right now it is energy and power, maybe next it'll be astronomy, and then accounting after that.

In the end it means my mind will be able to make more connections and I'm more "well read", and more importantly it means my enjoyment of life goes way up.

It seems this personality type isn't super common, though I imagine many of you here are the same way. So if you, like me, always felt guilty about these "phases" of interests, don't! Embrace it and you'll live a happier and more interesting life.

If I can define advice as lessens that I've learned over time and would give others, it would be to always say hello or acknowledge an acquaintance's presence when you get the chance, even if you don't have the time or necessarily want to chat. You never know when they won't be there anymore.

Another one would be to try and measure your success at something if what you want is measurable improvement, but try not to measurably improve everything, because you become hollow. Don't let "passion" for something overcome the needs that should be met by it, whether it be a lover or a company.

Likewise, don't do for an employer (and maybe any other entity) what they wouldn't do for you, don't think of your employer as anything more than that, and don't make sacrifices for them if you have no clear pathway and control over how you can be rewarded for it. Promises are bullshit.

Also, one that might just be for me, but I would share with someone else if they were interested, is to not bother trying to learn something unless you can close the feedback loop of practicing it. That means being able to deliberately allocate ongoing time to it and treat it like a hobby rather than just reading or just listening. I used to think that I could just read article after article and technical book after technical book, or listening to podcasts during every piece of downtime, but it more or less ended up being worthless and now I think of it as basically stupid. There has to be an output to match the input, and for you to allocate the time to that, it probably needs to be sufficiently fun or rewarding rather than arbitrary.

Lastly, building on that previous one, taking vacations away from the computer and work. Take the downtime, otherwise you'll be forced to, and you might as well enjoy it before burning out.

My dad told me, when I was 7, that school (as institution) will do everything to force me to fit into the same frames as everyone else and that I should not let that happen, that I should always think out of the box and not what teachers expect me to think. This stayed with me for my whole life.

The world doesn't need fewer people, it needs smart people.

This piece of advice started me on the path to deciding to have children. I was fairly adamant about being childless. This advice was given to me by a friend and it made me slightly less sure. It didn't convince me straight away but it was a start and I've never forgotten it.

Completely changed my life in the end and much for the better.

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the U.S

Happiness is a state of mind. You don't find happiness hiding under a rock one day, you have to make it for yourself.

Also, don't get all of your validation from other people, because it can be very inconsistent; instead, get your validation through things you are good at (like hobbies, skills, etc.)

"Much of what you do today (or don’t do) was decided by the person you were years ago, a person with less life experience and less insight into your values." -- David Cain

Re-evaluate your opinions constantly. You won't come to the same conclusions you did 10 years ago.

Most people will use time to save money. However, your time on earth is limited unless the Silicon Valley weirdos happen to be right.

Money is infinite in that you can earn more or get a second job or get a better paying job or whatever. (Obviously only to a point but stay with me).

Also: your time does have value or it should since it is limited.

What would you pay for an hour of your life "back"? Or an hour to do whatever you wanted?

The truly smart play is trading money for time.

I've been a freelancer for a while but there was a point when I got laid off from my full time job so I ramped up to make ends meet. And I was fortunate enough that I was basically able to work for myself full time...

But when you are doing that, especially in the early stage...like I know that if I burn a couple hours at my billing rate of $50 an hour trying to save a few dollarydoos on a TV by standing in line for a big sale, am I really saving that much money when I effectively paid $100 to stand in line for two hours, something I don't like doing anyway, instead of just paying a bit more and getting a TV right away and not having to do that?

Another example. Changing the oil on my car. Could I? I'm pretty sure I could. I know the process. I'd probably want to watch some YouTube videos and there's tools I'd need to pick up, but I could be a real manly man and change my own oil and not get screwed by the shop.

But...

Let's say it costs me $40 at Autozone for oil and filter.

Let's say it costs $80 at the shop. A real shop not a jiffy lube. PFFT THOSE GUYS ARE SCREWING YA JUST DO IT YOURSELF.

I'd save $40 doing it DIY.

Most people would be on their way to Autozone...but on the other hand, I am not a mechanic that does 20 of these a day. Between watching videos and trying to figure out where everything is and inevitably covering myself in oil and whatnot.

Let's say it takes me 2 hours and the shop 1 hour. Doesn't matter, I saved 40 bucks! Whadda ripoff!

Would you pay 40 bucks for an hour of your life back? Maybe you like tinkering on cars and thats legit. Satisfaction is another benefit.

But for me, I am effectively paying some other person $40 to get dirty and bang his knuckles and whatnot while I sit in the AC and watch cable and dick around on my phone (which I enjoy much more) AND a lot of places will check and top up your other fluids and top off your tires and do an inspection to see if anything else will need work, which I don't know how to do and obviously they know what they are looking for.

AND because the guy knows what he's doing, it's done faster.

So effectively, yes, I will absolutely pay 40 bucks to hang out and watch basic cable in the air conditioning and make sure my car is good to go and all my fluids are topped off and also I get a whole hour of my life for doing whatever I want.

Don't trade time for money. Trade money for time.

I went to a Vipassana retreat [1] for the 4th time in my life (over a 10 year period). It has been a while, last time since 2016. It's hard to keep up a practice, but I'm in a position to do so now that's must better suited than before. I can't go into that, since I want to keep this comment short ;-)

I've noticed a few things:

- I experience pleasant, neutral and unpleasant feelings more intensely.

- I am better capable of not reacting to my feelings (I have more choice in it). This is both needed with pleasant and unpleasant feelings as both types of feelings can come from (un)wholesome places. E.g. pleasant/unwholesome: alcohol or watching YouTube for way too long. E.g. unpleasant/wholesome: you're noticing work is boring you at the moment. You realize that you're a bit tired and could use a nap in order to feel more sharp.

- I react more intuitively to people their body language, without realizing it much myself

In short: it makes me feel more alive (quality of life has gone up) and it makes me feel more at ease around people.

There's a reason I nicknamed myself mettamage. This is the reason. Meditation (metta meditation being one of them) has changed my life so much that it has become my pseudonym on HN.

[1] https://www.dhamma.org/

Note: the practice is awesome. I'm not a fan of that they dive into Buddhist scripture that much. Fortunately, whenever they have their videos on, you can just meditate through it. More fortunately, they do mention at one of their last videos that the practice is what is important: understanding the theory that is unrelated to the practice is not important.

Examples of what I don't / do believe: I don't believe in water, fire, earth and air being the core elements of the world. I don't believe the Buddha was able to notice subatomic vibrations. However, I do think that the craving/aversion framework is a useful one. I do believe that meditation can teach you a thing or two about addiction and how to overcome it.

"The answer is always no unless you ask."

I was complaining to a friend about someone who "didn't know shit about what I was working on" and they told me "You can learn from everyone you if you listen to them".

My first reaction to that was thinking "No, some people are just annoying and clueless" but after a few days of pondering that I realized that me being dismissive would get in the way of proving him wrong.

Just a few days later the person I was complaining about did suggest a different way of doing something that I had been doing for years and that advice saved me a lot of time, which made me a lot more money, and was a big improvement over how I'd been doing it.

Two things:

Once, when facing a great personal crisis, I found some wisdom that helped me reframe my worries and fears: "Why do you spend all your time worrying about the blizzard on top of the mountain? Go around the mountain."

Secondly, in grad school I was upset that other students appeared to be cheating during exams, to the point that I could hear messages pinging in the classroom. A friend told me, paraphrased: "You can't control what other people do. You'll just have to do well enough that it doesn't matter." I didn't want to hear it, but once it sunk in, he was right and accepting his advice was the best path forward.

I am not sure where I read this or who told this to me, but my favorite piece of advice (prior to having kids) was "don't waste your time with people that don't give you positive energy". It's really easy to get brought down by other people's negativity, be at work or in your personal life. Staying away from people that bring you down is key to being happy and successful.

The most important piece of advice I can give to any new parent is "You have between 6 to 10 years where your kid(s) actually wants to hang out with you - take advantage of it, you'll never get another chance"

Stop listening to advice so much and learn to cultivate a life of curiosity, failure, and iteration. Advice from others suffers from the inevitable ambiguity of language. Too much advice is given by people who themselves do not fully understand their situation and how they got where they are.

Take everything with a grain of salt and prioritize the building of your own inner understanding of your situation. It's just like the scientific method: make a hypothesis, control vars, test, analyze and repeat. It takes time but you will arrive where you want to go.

My first boss told me that if I can figure out an answer without asking somebody for help but I should try to figure it out first.

I took him at his word and sort of made it a contest with myself if I could figure something out without asking somebody first even when asking somebody was clearly way easier.

It has served me very well in my career. It has caused me to learn things that nobody else knew. To figure out something without someone telling you, you kind of have to become an expert in whatever you're looking into. This is only served to boost my credibility in the eyes of my peers.

Start at the beginning. Master the basics. If you get off course, get back on.

Time is the only thing you can't buy.

About 15 years ago, Christopher Celeste gave me a life-changing piece of advice. I wanted his advice because I had been coordinating all these different projects and I was struggling to figure out which to focus on. He told me “you seem to be good at doing lots of different things. Why choose? Why not just do all that you want?”

Wow. I’m not saying it was good advice for everyone but it changed my life. But, I run 2 different successful businesses, have an academic career and 3 kids. And I still have tons of side projects (which I love).

Don’t be afraid of seeming vulnerable by asking questions if you’re stuck or unsure. This is easily one of the biggest life skills and soooo many people hurt their own progress by avoiding it.

An interesting question. A bunch of seemingly important advices on my mind right now, but none of them actually changed my life. This is probably one the of things that you never notice because most of them are in the form of “never”. Did “never stick a fork into a socket” change my life? Probably so.

One that I could call ~practical is “there is no eternal friendship, only common interests”. And a related one is “never do business with friends and relatives”. I’ve seen enough lifes “changed” by not following these.

As a male, sitting down to pee at home keeps the toilet and floor significantly cleaner. Even with perfect aim, you don’t see the micro droplets until they build up.

Cuts cleaning time and frequency

It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent. -- Charlie Munger

"One must cultivate one's own garden."

"Waste not, want not."

"What good shall I do this day?" - From Benjamin Franklin's daily schedule: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Benjamin...

- if it has a deadline, it’s not your most important work.

- if you’re at your desk, it’s not your most important work.

- if you’re a contractor or consultant you’re delivering recommendations. Doesn’t matter what form it takes, it’s still just a recommendation. (And it likely matters little to the ongoing business relationship if they’re fully accepted/implemented or not)

- You are, and will always be, your biggest problem

If you work for nothing you'll always be busy.

It's easier to get forgiveness than permission

A few years ago, I received a series of "class rules" through an instant messaging group. The list describes how everyday things are interpreted, depending on your social class.

At that time, I was part of an executive master program at a very prestigious university, it cost me a third of my yearly income and had a huge impact on my personal life and finances.

Reading that list made me realize in just a few seconds that I had been studying there for four years for a completely different reason than those around me. I felt heavily depressed first, then I realized it was actually possible to switch my expectations. I focused the last few months on building and strengthening connections, it completely changed my relationship with this university and the people there.

Money:

  - You're poor? spend.
  - You're middle class? manage.
  - You're wealthy? invest.

Food:

  - You're poor? quantity.
  - You're middle class? quality.
  - You're wealthy? presentation.

Time:

  - You're poor? present.
  - You're middle class? future.
  - You're wealthy? tradition.

Education:

  - You're poor? abstract.
  - You're middle class? success and money.
  - You're wealthy? connect.

Family structure:

  - You're poor? matriarchal.
  - You're middle class? patriarchal.
  - You're wealthy? whoever owns the money.

Driving forces:

  - You're poor? relationships.
  - You're middle class? achievements.
  - You're wealthy? finances, social life.

Language:

  - You're poor? casual.
  - You're middle class? formal, to negotiate.
  - You're wealthy? formal, to network.

Social drive:

  - You're poor? inclusion.
  - You're middle class? self-sufficiency.
  - You're wealthy? exclusion.

Personality:

  - You're poor? be fun.
  - You're middle class? be an achiever.
  - You're wealthy? connect.

Destiny:

  - You're poor? it's fate. You can't change it.
  - You're middle class? your choices.
  - You're wealthy? your expectations.

Hope it inspires someone :)

Ask and it shall be given.

Dated movie stars and had total strangers lend me their car because of it. Opened up a world which I didn’t think existed.

Robert Frost, not sure if it was meant as advice:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Use a TODO list. Life changing advice? You betcha.

Never internalize advice based on folklore. That means you must critically review, and mostly reject, all common-wisdom advice given to you.

People who appear to be founts of knowledge and wisdom are often fools spreading harmful folk advice just to feed their self importance.

Not all things can be known, even with our flooded-by-evidence culture. But that doesn’t validate folklore.

I read about a very capable young woman who was advised,"You should never work for a boss." She then decided to become a lawyer and eventually became a highly regarded judge. Young people should at least be aware that they might not be suited for "normal jobs" in organizations even if they are academically successful.

"Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer. From this moment on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the mob. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do – now."

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐓𝐔𝐒

The best advice I ever received was never compare yourself to anybody else. As a person who came from a humble family, in Africa, that advice got me going. I would see children from privileged families having better opportunities but I worked hard and was happy every time I looked back on where I have come from.

"It's easier to move from IC track to management than vice versa."

This advice came from a coworker who encouraged me to continue down a technical track, rather than switch to management too early.

I am now a manager and love it, but that advice led me to accumulate additional hands-on experience that has been tremendously valuable.

Just one note: very likely that all the advice here is heavily biased and resonating only with the like-minded people browsing HN.

My advice: There is not a single correct way to live life. Everyone finds their own meaning in life and you shouldn't judge someone that found a different meaning than yourself.

The best advice I’ve got was an advice from myself to me

— don’t trust anyone’s advice, nobody has ever been in your shoes, nobody really knows anything, and nobody really cares about you as deeply as you should care about yourself

So be brave to think for yourself, trust and learn from your own unique judgements

Thinking critically is a finite process, and creativity arises from the vast space of permuting those elements of knowledge, processes, and information.

Breaking things down qualitatively into concepts is a good first step to speculating and hypothesizing about the details and full taxonomy when there are unknowns.

To achieve what you’ve never had, you must be prepared to do what you have never done.

“Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be” - she always called me Elwood - “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.“

Most of them are bullocks, made when i went crazy:

https://github.com/gizmore/anonymous-zen-book

1) If you don't know a world you can't talk about it

"The opinions of others are none of my business."

Don't let others who talk rubbish about you affect your life. Not everyone will like you and that's fine. They are not even "extras" in the movie that is your life.

Shinzen Young, in The Science of Enlightenment, posits a strong time dilation effect from regularly meditating. After experimenting, I found this to be true, and have at least doubled my subjective life span.

Here is a life changing advice:

Could Our Idea of Reality Be Totally Upside Down? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0_720pPXOg

“Say Yes more. The people without passion are the ones who always say no. But the happiest people are the ones who understand that good things occur when one allows them to.”

From the brilliant book “Yes Man”, by Danny Wallace.

"Never let being bad at a hobby preclude you from enjoying it."

Work hard. Don't listen to HN and the current worker's zeitgeist.

Two things that I’ve come to see as truths about the world are:

Most people are wrong about most things and most of their advice is awful.

Most people aren’t that great at their jobs. They’re doing enough to get by but not much more.

Floss. A hygienist told me all my teeth were going to fall out if I didn't start flossing. I started that day and have been religious about it every since. Haven't lost a tooth yet :)

If it's important, you'll hear about it.

Life lesson from 4 hour work week, news just isn't an important thing to keep track of, if something is really important, you'll hear about it eventually.

At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.

"Poor Dad, Rich Dad" was eye opening to me growing in a developing eastern european country. It is probably this book more than anything else that made me want to be an entrepreneur.

This is some advice I wish I received as a teen/young adult: good sleep is more important than you think, for your quality of life, longevity and achievements.

Sleep is also a very good canary.

Each app on your phone serves a useful purpose but also as a distraction. Make an intention each time you pick up your phone, execute it and put it away immediately afterwards.

A business owner neighbour told me that marketing is the first chapter in all business books. No marketing, no business. Applied to my career, that advice changed my life.

Take as much responsibility as you possibly can. Continually increase the amount of responsibility you take. - mediocre paraphrase of mine taken from Jordan B Peterson.

"Build deep personal and professional relationships."

“Isolation is the gift” - Bukowski. This quote has given me the reassurance to continue down my own unique path “less traveled” (a quote from another great poet).

What happens externally is not in your control.

What happens internally is entirely in your control.

Your experience of life is entirely internal.

Therefore, your experience of life is entirely in your control.

Disagreements between rational people stem from the differences in assumptions.

Try and look at things from other person's perspective to understand their motivation.

Before making any decision look at the risk/reward ratio and then make the decision based on how much risk and bad consequences you can handle.

It is not who you know, it is who knows you! Seems like a small nuance but realizing this changes how you think about building relationships.

My friend’s mother told me advice that made her successful and has been a North Star for my career: “Your ONLY job is finding your next job.”

When I was very little someone told me "To succeed you have to try, not every attempt leads to success so keep trying."

That you can be honest in your responses while still remembering that you don't have to be honest right now. That you can be honest

When you play to win don't complain about shuffling the deck.

Same as don't complain about breaking eggs when you're making an omelette.

You will die and no one will remember you again.

Eat less and restrict when you eat.

As a teenager and twenty-something I just ate everything, all the time, and often far too much. I was thin so there was no issue. But one day I started to put the weight on, not much but it was there. Then I need some medication for something unrelated and the weight really went on.

Changing my eating habits was hard. I was so used to eating all the time that not eating for just two hours and I felt hungry when clearly I wasn't I was just used to it.

I spoke to my doctor who referred me to a specialist who instructed me to do time restricted eating for two months. It changed my relationship with food totally. I've never been one to sit and enjoy some fancy meal at a posh restaurant. I am a very basic person when it comes to food. But I ate too much and often very shitty food.

Restricting when I could eat was very hard for the first two-ish weeks but after that it was like flipping a switch. I didn't feel hungry anymore and when I sat to eat I ate normal amounts, not going back for a third or forth helping.

I am now down to a healthy weight, I almost never feel hungry (even after not eating for 20 hours I don't feel hungry I just know I should eat something) and I have more mental and physical energy than I have had for at least a decade. I am in my late 30s now and honestly wish I had started doing this years ago.

I don't know nor really care about the science behind it, sometimes ignorance is bliss and I actively avoid reading about "intermittent fasting" and such because there is a little industry popped up around it in recent years wanting to make money of it selling "exceptions" and such. As my doctor put it "you just don't eat between this time and this time, it isn't rocket science".

If you do try it I suggest you ignore all of the "science" online when you research it. You can have water, tea, and coffee (without milk) during your restricted eating window. You don't even need a fancy app just have a fixed start and end time and you're good to go, although you may find one helpful for the first month or so. After a while it became automatic for me so I don't bother with timers anymore.

It works for some and not for others like many things in life. If you need to lose weight I suggest you try it after having some blood work done to ensure you can do it safely. If it works awesome, if not then seek further guidance.

Don't start trying to find exceptions like diet soda (honestly that shit ain't good for you, cut it out of your life anyway with the exception of a glass of coke/pepsi when you go out for some fast food) or "bullet coffee". Just give it two weeks of water/tea/coffee and see how you get on.

But don't feel bad if it isn't for you.

Do not believe in universal advices that magically change your life. Including this one.

My father a long time ago: Don’t forget what it means to be a child. Don’t ever let the world take that from you.

If you can learn to differentiate between what you want and what you need, you'll be a lot happier.

I like the epitaph author David McCullough chose to sum up his life. “He always did his best”.

Never be humble. Business does not care about you, it’s not the world to be humble in.

Check if you are vitamin D deficient. Take magnesium, calcium and zinc supplements.

"You don't have to get upset about anything unless you want to."

Buddha's explanation of why life is not satisfactory and his solution to it.

Moving to the new, better place to live makes all the difference in the world.

don't play the victim mentality. you can always change things for better.

"Move to America."

Identity is not the self

Be kind. You will rarely regret it and people will remember it.

Dwight Shrute. "Don't be an idiot". /S

Never whittle towards yourself or piss into the wind.

The way you do anything is the way you do everything.

Don't work 40 years without taking a vacation.

Don’t listen to other people’s advice

Washing my butt instead of wiping it

Don't wait for permission.

"Connect the dots".

Focus on making money or pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. Everything else is a waste of time.

Not just advice, but a series of events, some books I read and a change in situation:

1: In my early 20s, I worked as a junior sysadmin during the mid 90s. My manager sent me to a interpersonal skills course after telling me that people thought I was basically a jerk. That shocked me because of course who thinks that about themselves? But I reacted by resolving to be nicer to people, and the course I took introduced me to thinking about how others perceive me and how their inner worlds are vastly different to my own. As an introverted and neglected child, I hadn't been taught many lessons that I needed to learn. I grew up long before social media, so I escaped its toxic influence.

You need people who will call you out and tell you to improve, and more importantly teach you how to improve.

2: I moved out and escaped my mother and her stifling negativity. By striking out on my own, however uncomfortable I was, made me grow. This one isn't very easy these days, I was privileged to live in a time where it was pretty easy compared to today. Even if they love you, your parents/guardians/friends/hometown/job may be subconsciously holding you back.

You have to grow beyond your childhood.

3: After being told I lacked interpersonal skills, I got interested in just what those skills were. I read a lot of books on the subject, but these stood out to me: Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, How to Practice by The Dalai Lama, and Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. You have to find your own lessons from these books, but what I took away from them was that you can choose your reaction to situations, that you're often controlled by your amygdala's fight/flight/fuck/food reactions and you have to be able to recognize that and act accordingly.

You have to be aware of why you think and feel things, and that you can control your reactions to those things.

4: I spent time at parties, going out to the pub, having fun with people in real life. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, so it takes a party to raise an adult.

Learning to be an adult is best taught by being physically around other adults.

5: Knowing that I wanted to be a good person, to try to treat other people with respect. Helping people without the expectation of anything in return is a wonderful feeling that I deeply enjoy. This leads into all sorts of things, like leadership is serving others, not controlling them. That being cut off on a road is just something that happens.

Treat others with kindness.

6: Learning that everyone else in the world has their own complex set of wants and needs, that most people are just trying to live their lives with a minimum of fuss. That you yourself are just one of billions doing just the same as everyone else.

You are not the main character.

Those situations, books, changes all set me on a path that I'm still working at today 25 years later. I was recently described by some coworkers as Ihsan, previously I've been referred to as a Mensch. Those moments make life precious to me :)

Try harder with everything

"just do it"

Do different things.

Wash your buttload.

Learning to say NO.

Wear sunscreen.

"No one should be the boss of anybody" - elon musk

yolo

Plastics