Weird Habits That Will Change Your Life | Hacker News Reader

Weird Habits That Will Change Your Life

illuminatedmind.net

54 pointsv4us7 comments

As for the time travelling thing, I re-read this article once a year: http://patterico.com/2006/12/03/putting-things-in-perspectiv...

It explains a way of putting things into perspective that really had an impact on me.

Thanks for suggesting that. I enjoyed that article.

I remember doing the time-travel mental exercise when I was a kid. Now I can mentally replay the same conversation with my younger self from the other side as well as have a chat with my wiser older self. Writing in a journal has much the same effect.

That's a good article, and I can definitely see how it applies to spending time with young children. However, if you don't have children (like myself), I'm not sure if I like the idea it's promoting. It's kind of saying that my life is going to get progressively worse over time, so I need to cherish what I have now. I'd rather be grateful for what I have now, but also work hard to build an even better life in the future.

It's not so much that your life will get worse, but that at some point in the future everything you have now will be taken from you (ultimately by death). When these things are taken away, will you assign different value to them? Maybe you will wish you just be and experience them one more time. Well you can! Right now... right whereever you are.

It applies to everything; the people around you, the leaves on the trees, the sky, your computer, everything. If you are able to develop a strong attention on the present you can even develop "flow" around everyday things like washing the dishes or walking. Normally people require more intense experience like driving fast or listening to music to achieve this state, but it can be achieved anytime anywhere. That's what will tie it all together and hopefully leave you with no regrets as time passes.

Yea, I sometime use the time travel one and pretend that my older self is talking to me. Sometimes, I split myself up into years and have the different me talk from the past but for this I use a script and write down what the different years are saying. The past years talking helps to identify times when I think the ship is going to sink and it didn't[or when it did]. Also, it helps to identify the key players in a particular scenario.

Time travel? Is that an habit? Aren't you supposed to analyze things, understand reality as it is, then make calculated efforts to achieve your goal? Anyways, I'm happy the author didn't add "The Secret" to the list.

Actually they teach a technique like this in MSc and MBA courses. You start at where you want to be in the future and you work your way back to where you are now. He attached an esoteric name but still the concept is still the same.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_backward_from_the_goal) I am sure you use this technique alot when programming- start with what you want to achieve then break it down into its components.

In essence what they are trying to do is to capture the problem from a different perspective than the present.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com