Ask HN: What would you tell your younger self 10 years ago?
Mindset, lifestyle, lessons you’ve learned the hard way
No ”lottery ticket numbers” or ”buy bitcoin” please.
No ”lottery ticket numbers” or ”buy bitcoin” please.
* Always keep yourself First i.e. try to garner an advantage in every situation. The "World" doesn't care about you one whit and thus you need to fight for what you want with everything that you have got. In "Human Societies" this takes many forms (eg. Power play, Negotiation, Politics etc.) and you need to be aware of them all. Learn to "Survive".
* Always make sure that you have some education/skill to earn you a steady income.
* Always save Money for a rainy day. Always live within your means.
* Try and become "Good" in something. This will give you a Goal/Meaning to your Life. Pursue "Knowledge for Knowledge's sake". Study "Philosophy".
* Our World is based on Consumerism and Unlimited Distractions; thus if you are not careful you can lose everything. Moderate your appetites and enjoyments. Simplify your Life.
2.Ready meals are better than no meals.
3.It is not your responsibility to rescure people from situations they put themselves in because they want to be rescued.
4.You don't have to pay your dues by working shit low wage dead end jobs for no reason - just apply for what you actually want to do.
5.Job stability is an illusion.
6.Be wary of people who encroach on your goals and achievements.
7.You are not a side character or an audience, and your life is not a stage for other people to trample across.
8.Wash your damn hands and don't hang out in enclosed spaces with people with contageous illnesses.
9.Buy non-synthetic clothes only.
I needed that to some degree ten years ago. I needed it a lot worse 20 years ago.
And it can also be the case that you're doing both at the same time - thinking about the community I am from, people treated other people like that because they were being treated like that themselves.
Synthetic clothes (ie manmade fibres like polyester) are mostly made of plastic which is really really bad for your skin and your hair, especially if you have eczema.
Non-synthetic clothes pack more bang for their buck when it comes to protecting you from the weather - a thin wool jumper does so much more than a bulky polyester one, a cotton top will let your sweat out which is so much better for both summer and winter, and so on.
Synthetic materials are often used because they are cheap so it serves as a good (but heavy handed) litmus test about the quality of garment, because if they've cheaped out on the material they have probably cheaped out elsewhere in the process.
Fire resistance - I wore a synthetic dress near a fire recently and as embers fell on me it literally just melted holes into it.
If you're interested do what I did - find all the cotton, linen and silk in your wardrobe and priortise wearing those clothes for a month. Then you will start noticing the synthetic clothes feel uncomfortable. Wool is also non-synthetic but a lot of people find it difficult to tolerate. Don't forget it's not just clothes, it's bedsheets too
Good quality silk can go in the washing machine at 40 degrees in wash bags (although where I live it is not normal to use tumble driers, we just hang clothes outside or on radiators. So I do not lose any time by hang drying silk because I do it with all my clothes anyway). Never had the shrinking issue with cotton interestingly, but do find cotton/elastic blends are not as durable as more synthetic options. Cotton is something that can have wildly varying qualities and be constructed in completely different ways. I hate wool to be honest. And most linen I have come across has been weirdly see-through? Although linen is good upholstery material in my opinion.
If you dislike wool and linen then what natural materials do you, respectively wear in winter and summer?
With regards to cotton, while it can have wildly varying qualities depending on structure and weave, there are plenty of properties that remain the same. Raw denim, a cotton twill fabric, shrinks drastically.
2) You may not realise it but you're going through depression. You will never go to a therapist, for sure, but you can at least read on cognitive behavioural therapy and try to get your shit together.
3) Read about philosophy, the same philosophy you bullshitted through in high school. Philosophy will give you tools to understand more and to function better. Read on stoicism and on nihilism.
4) Everything will be fine. And if it doesn't, it doesn't matter.
I spent too much time in the company and that lead to a stagnate and boring career. I trusted them about having a long career and ended up learning obscure tech only to have my position outsourced (which they also said they never do). That obscure tech experience greatly limits my options to leave.
On a personal side, stay single and don't have a kid. Be able to retire early and do the things you want to do instead of the things you have to do.
They missed it when you were a child and none of the specialists thought to diagnose it as an adult.
A good question to ask yourself is if some celebrity posted this on social media, would you respect him more or less? Vulnerability is also overrated.
Corollary: never put yourself in a situation where you can't afford to be patient. The greedy people will seem successful until they get screwed by The Pandemic.
2. The best investment is in yourself. Max out salary before thinking about stocks.
3. Read a company's Glassdoor before the interview.
4. Focus on one thing at a time until you have intuitive control over it (especially code).
5. Buy the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 as soon as you can afford it. You've been typing wrong your whole life.
6. Rule of thumb with cash investment is a 10x return. Rule of thumb with time investments is a 1x return within 2 years.
7. Don't work with/for anyone who you don't admire. Don't "settle". There are plenty of good people in the world and the best way to meet them is to become an upstanding person yourself. Following the bad ones will lead you into a pit of other bad people.
Over what time period?
It is a problem if you can't get 10x. Can this $200k house be worth $2m in 40 years? Will buying this $10 productivity book return $100 worth of productivity any time in my life? Do I really need such an expensive laptop to get work done?
This will cost you jobs, friends, and relationships before you figure it out.
If I learn from the past ten years and then go back and tell myself two outcomes are possible. My past self listens and changes my future self or my past self doesn't listen and then end up who I was anyway. If my future self changes then they no longer exist to tell my past self and a time paradox is set up where they can't tell my past self advice.
With all that has been gained by the present self would you really want to give that up?
If I had told myself that I can live a life free of afflictive emotions, emotions of attachment, free of ego ten years ago, I would never have learned how to do this or how it is possible.
It's not good to ignore those inner warnings about trusting particular people. That spidey sense is dead on correct every time.
Read Taleb's ideas about "Extremistan vs. Mediocristan" to understand "Risk".
If you think it's hard to find friends in your 20s and 30s, imagine being in your 50s or 60s so say yes to going out now, because in the future... they're not all going to be around.
This applies to fitness, investments, making an effort at work, family ties, relationships, sleep, <fill in the blanks>.
We often know what we need to do better but keep ignoring/procrastinating/letting inertia get the best of us. It's this stuff that you'll wish you had paid attention to 10 years later.
2. No...”buy bitcoin” please. <-- he would have said that too, when asking for advice, but he could have made a lot of money had he bought bitcoin. I'm not sure why you wrote it, but he would have written it because 1) he thought of himself as deadly serious, and didn't want to take things like bitcoin seriously and 2) he would undermine those attempting to give advice by using tools like: Attempting to predict what those people would say. He saw this as cutting through the bulls** but another answer was that he was subverting good answers for emotional reasons. An interesting emotional reason likely being that asking others for help felt at some level as if it meant that one's own approaches or ideas weren't good enough.
3. He should listen, try completely new things, evaluate them, and aim to make lots of fresh mistakes.
4. But his biggest mistake was that he was not listening. He was waiting for his own heroism, his own tools to become his proven answer to problems that could have more easily been solved using other tools. He was in his own way.
5. In the meantime he should take better care of himself, or expect surprising moments of self-centeredness to break out when least desired. He shouldn't wait for others to defer to his own ideas or opinions so much.
Hurts to write all this, but I appreciate the exercise.
2. Try as many start up ideas while at University.
3. Don't waste so much time on the opposite sex.
4. Stop TV shows and movies (read novels).
5. Stop watching porn.
(Your post has a similarly uplifting energy)