Ask HN: What is important in life but not urgent? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is important in life but not urgent?

20 pointshidden-spyder13 comments

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Exercise. You need to start now if you're in your 20s. Seriously do not make this mistake.

Saving for your 401k. Max that out in your 20s. Do not make this mistake, you can never catch up!

These comments make me glad I exercise every day.

Exercise.

I always took it for granted when I was younger because I was naturally in shape so I never took it seriously.

But then working on a computer and getting older made me gain a fair amount of weigt.

Fad diets and Fad exercise and Fad weight loss programs are all temporary and not that effective in the long term. Physiological health requires long-term maintenance not a temporary fix.

I think it's imported to get into a regular exercise habit as soon as possible and just make it a part of your daily life. You have time to figure this out in your 20s and it will pay off dramatically when you get older.

I highly recommend hiring a personal trainer for at least a few months to teach you proper form and theory and get you into a regular routine.

I started exercising with a trainer in Dec 2020.

It has changed my perspective on exercise.

Highly recommended and 100% agree with this post.

~T~

Work. As a recovering workaholic and nihilist I’ve come to accept that work never really made me happy if meant my life was out of balance. It wasn’t even like I had to work 80 hour weeks, I just did it because I was bored. If there’s one thing I learned this past year, it was I can and must give myself permission to just “stop”.

Telling people that you love them. Showing people that you love them.

Wonderful. We need to start telling those we love how much we cherish them, before it’s too late. We must stop waiting for something horrible to happen in order to hold those we love a little closer.

Kids.

Not "important" for everyone. In case of many people kids can actively reduce their quality of life due to having to worry about things like money for houses, school etc.

That kids are important of a person's life is a lie sold to the public. Sure if you want to have kids have them but not everyone should feel compelled. Kids costs hundreds of thousands of dollars not to mention the tangential background impact on your life of always having to worry about money and their well being.

If there are people reading this who don't want to have kids, don't feel bad. It is your choice to make!

You can also look at that from opposite point of view - kids can add immense meaning to your life. I can tell from first hand experience that I became more productive since I got a kid and started cherishing every single moment with my loved ones even more. Money can be earned and replaced in so many ways it's not worth discussing.

That's fair but there are vast number of people for whom having kids is an immense drain on their life. I am not just talking about the folks who fall into this category that visit HN (well off professionals who decide to forego kids for lifestyle reasons), I am also talking about those with financial issues whose life might objectively be better if they only had one kid as opposed to 3.

It's as if survival depends on a species being prevented from reaching a point of average intelligence where a single errant outlier with a malicious streak can destroy the whole. When everyone has the ability to build a doomsday device, someone will. Hence the vast, fecund universe for the taking scored by the inexplicable, seemingly eldritch, fermian silence.

Such choices sound lovely until those that choose not to realize too late that the 100% of their ancestors that made the opposite one might've been on to something. If it's a lie sold to the public, the entity doing the lying is the selective pressure of evolution. Dispositions that reduce to evolutionary dead ends don't get far.

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