Ask HN: Of your hard learned lessons, which do you wish could’ve been easier?
Of all the hard learned lessons, which do you most wish you could’ve learned an easier way?
I wish I had learned not to have a fear of other people at a younger age. It's easy to say that I was "shy". I think it went much further than that. I'm in a place where I don't speak the common language, and let me tell you how hard it is to learn a language when you are "shy".
I wish I learned to recognize abusive behaviors and asshole-ism much earlier than I did. I occasionally shock people by telling a story where awful stuff happened and at the time I didn't think anything was wrong.
I wish I learned whatever it is that makes people want to hire you in interviews. I've been through thousands of interviews, and the only jobs I've ever gotten are ones where I wasn't interviewed. Even when recommended for jobs, where I'm perfect for the position and the job is perfect for me, I've never gotten hired that way. Most jobs don't easily let you in the back door; usually you still have to go through an interview process. I still don't have this one sorted out, even if the previous two I have down much better.
Since this is probably connected to the "shyness" issue you mentioned, maybe try getting a good psychotherapist? It's probably one of the issues that could be greatly improved with external help and coaching/guidance.
I would say, anything you're irrationally afraid of (that isn't literally dangerous), you should consciously seek out and force yourself into situations.
I remember when I was younger I was conscious of the fact that I was socially awkward, and the awareness of that just fed into my social interactions.
If you find that you can't break this wall yourself, don't be afraid to ask for help.
It's just when you are not social, you may be reluctant to ask for help when it's actually needed the most.
But having said that I would like to help my younger family members to understand these things, but they act exactly as I did. Not sure how can I communicate it to them.
To generalise this, to eliminate bullshit as soon as your instinct tells you it is BS (which is years before you may be willing to admit it!)
Since this is HN, I'll talk about having a technical role/job. It's really easy to feel that something fantastic (e.g. a great business problem, the latest tech stack, a great work environment) is present at another job feel miserable because your current job doesn't have that one thing. Many times this is just your own projection (and you may not project the negatives around that one thing) You can then jump to another job based on this projection and feel even more miserable than you did before you took the job because now you realize you were only projecting that this missing thing existed at your new job.
Going along this with, you project how great that one missing thing will be, but not realize that one missing thing is going to have negatives as well.
You can also minimize the negatives - My work environment/boss/tech stack is terrible, but most jobs are like this so I'll stay. Again, you project the negatives to another place out of fear that leaving your current job will be a mistake.
It's a long and hard series of lessons to get to the point where you can be somewhat objective what's missing, what's okay to be missing, what needs to be there for you to be content, and the ways resolve this. That way you can be more balanced about what you need from a job what you need to from outside your job.
2. Being right is overrated.
3. Don't get too attached to any "thing" or person.
4. Letting go of people and things won't kill you though it hurts at first.
5. Care less about what other people think.
So true. Something I took a long time to learn. Everyone's perspective is different so be more empathetic to it and maybe you'll find you're not right after all.
- Read & learn more. No-one can take that from you.
- Health is important. Look after yourself, no-one else will.
- Moderation, moderation, moderation :)
- Do not worry about what people you don't know think
- Worry about what people you care about think
I get very attached to computers and monitors.
So true, Thank you.
Life is Boxing Arena, not a Dance-Party - Marcus Aurelius
Man must never be attached to anything that can be lost in a ship-wreck. - Upanishads
We are stronger than what we think we are - Swaminomics
Never make small plans. - Atanu Dey
If Government is made in-charge of Sahara Desert, within 5 years, there will be shortage of sand - Milton Friedman
It is better to rust out than rest-out.
Specialisation is for Insects. Man must be able to do many things - Bob Heinlen
Then, if everyone had to do it, the technology to make computers and HN possible would not exist.
Our society is what it is because of specialized roles.
Then, whenever everyone competes against each other, a group of people takes advantage and ends up prevailing against them all.
Finally, planning is not everything. "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" - Mike Tyson
Don’t be so sure about this one — there are a fair number of people who do grow much or all of their own food, and often at least some of the other necessities as well. Those who are good at it seem to end up with some leisure time as well (although whether they read HN, I don’t know). There are always arguments around the corner cases — nobody gets to be 100% self sufficient, there are usually bought in tools or something — but it seems to be possible to get quite close.
Rejecting specialisation completely is perhaps a bit extreme for me, but I can certainly see a lot of advantages to not allowing oneself to be defined by ones speciality.
Can you find a blacksmith who would trade tools for food? I’ve never had cause to find out but it wouldn’t shock me if you could...
Philosophically I like the idea of being a generalist. It's good to know. at least rudimentarily how to build simple things and look after yourself. But lets not kid ourselves, if we all did this we'd be back to the stone/iron age.
Even a "generalist" is [from a high-level perspective] a specialist.
It’s also somewhat accessible to hobbyists. My sister has done some pretty neat stuff.
Those sort of universal arguments can mislead. What if everybody worked as a programmer, then we would all starve. That doesn't make programming a morally bad career choice.
0. Focus less on work and more on living a good life. Focusing on work too much is a surefire path to burnout and hating yourself. Therefore, define “success” mostly in terms of what you do outside of work.
1. Take care of your health, above all else. I wish I could meet my 20 year old self and convince him to seriously take up cardio and weightlifting while natural HGH still makes things easy.
2. It’s ok to not have kids.
3. It’s ok to not buy shit you don’t need.
- You don't need that neat kitchen gadget when a knife will do just fine.
- A small number of close friends > a lot of acquaintances. As you get older and priorities change, maintaining those friendships becomes harder, closer friends will understand and help maintain that connection.
- Eat less
- Starting fewer projects at once helps get more projects done.
- Less distractions. Give yourself more time to think to formulate your thoughts w/o influence or corruption.
An exception is more travel. You'll look back and never regret a travel experience.
One can travel far for adventures, or ride a bike to them - do both!
2. Being nicer. I've been an angry, forceful person. It's unnatural for me, and I thought it would get more things done. It didn't help at all and made things a lot worse. I find that, statistically, being nice has far better returns. You'll probably remember the few times people take advantage of it, but in most modern, high wealth areas, it pays off very well.
I had my first loss of a loved one last year and I learned the hard way that money is trivial in the large scheme of things when you have enough. That it is okay to not want to make huge sums of money and to focus on other things in your life that are more meaningful to you like your relationships. But more importantly to be aware of who you surround yourself with.
Luckily I'm 25 so maybe it's good I learned this now but I would give anything to spend more time with the person I lost instead of stressing so hard about making more money. That and in the larger scheme of things, most of the things you find stressful are trivial when it comes to the big picture, death. I watched a wonderful talk by Alexis Ohanian about "Zero Lives Remaining" and it's true. Compared to that, a lot of the things that you thought were the end of the world, really aren't, so take it easy and enjoy life.
If I had learned that earlier it could of saved me years of hard work over something that turned out to be a dud.
Taking a lot more care of money.
Although wishing it was easier is all well and good, but these types of incidents in life are hard to give us a better perspective on what is important.