Comment by dmos62 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmos62 | Hacker News Reader

- Writing as form of (or tool for) thinking; Leslie Lamport said (maybe quoting someone) that if you're thinking, but not writing, you only think that you're thinking;

- High tolerance for feeling ignorant, confused, silly, inadequate, a novice: none of these states should phase you: you should not have a comfort zone: let your mind feel at ease in not understanding something: go to the eye of the storm and weather it: you'll come out being more capable;

- Formal specification (maybe TLA+) when doing something unintuitive, like non-trivial concurrency; or, simpler put, think before you do;

- Functional programming, immutability, state machines, reactive programming: whatever you can do to make your systems more declarative and their state easier to reason about;

- I'm a geek for tools, and I know that not everyone is like me, but for me choosing the right stack for the job is a big deal, and when saying stack, I mean every tool I'll be using, from the programming languages, to deployment tech, to testing setup; a good tool can effortlessly solve a host of problems.

> High tolerance for feeling ignorant, confused, silly, inadequate, a novice: none of these states should phase you: you should not have a comfort zone: let your mind feel at ease in not understanding something: go to the eye of the storm and weather it: you'll come out being more capable;

I’d love to be more at ease on uncomfortable situations. Any tips?

For me, it's closing my eyes, taking a few deep breaths, and then continuing. It's okay to be nervous and feel ones heart pounding and just notice all those physiological reactions, but keep going despite that. My old tendency was to switch task to something more comfortable, but just take a silent minute without switching tasks and then keep going.

This isn't really an answer, but I'd say that everyone's different. What works for you might be wildly different than what works for me.

For what it's worth, I'd say that it's about being at ease with being uneasy. I find it unproductive to try to get rid of uneasiness.

I will give you a fairly specific answer that comes from my history of going to therapy for anxiety and depression.

Whenever I find myself in an anxious or uncomfortable situation, the thing that I need to remind myself is that things are going to turn out okay for me, whatever happens. I do this by working my way up a version of Mazlowe's hierarchy:

1. Am I physically safe? Can I breathe? Can I move my body?

2. Do I have access to shelter? Do I know where my next meal will come from?

3. Are my loved ones safe? Do I have friends and people who care about me?

4. Do I have skills that I care about? Can I do work that I'm proud of?

5. Do I have a job that gives me money? That I like to do?

In pretty much any uncomfortable situation you're in (at least in the context of career improvement), almost all of these things are totally unaffected. The sun will rise tomorrow, even if I bomb this programming interview. My friends will still be my friends, even if I do a bad job networking at this event.

And the fact that so many of the good things in my life will still be good, even if an uncomfortable situation goes as badly as it can, gives me a lot more confidence.

And then, like anything else in the world: practice, practice, practice. The more uncomfortable situations you put yourself in, the more you practice reminding your brain that "everything is okay, actually," the less uncomfortable you'll feel in any given situation.

During stressful times, I’d have agoraphobic attacks in the car. They were pretty terrifying. I’d open all the car windows and blast the radio. But you know what worked much better? Solving math problems in my head.

I like this one too!

A big part of learning to deal with anxiety is understanding that an anxiety attack is rooted in a chemical, physiological response that you can't control; sometimes what you need to do is just ride it out, and let your body get back to normal.

Math problems, loud music, singing songs -- great ways to "get out of your brain's way" as my therapist used to put it.

My go-to is trying to visualise and rotate various 3D shapes, like a cube, trihedron, dodecahedron…

This is great, and it made me realize I had started doing something similar recently: when I become anxious about something, say money, I ask myself: are my kids healthy and safe? The answer, so far, has always been yes, and that calms me down immediately.

That's awesome! Glad to help you put a concrete framing to it. The more intentional you make it, the more effective it is, I think.

There's a reason people keep pictures of their family at their desks; it's not just for decoration :D

Thanks for an EXCELLENT answer.

I am totally with you on this. Catastrophizing when things get difficult makes it so much harder.

I make it a point to count my many blessings (most of which you enumerate there) every day.

For me it's practicing art.

Mainly playing music with a group, sometimes writing and occasionally drawing or painting. It focuses me on the emotional experience and response to entering the unknown and finding flow there

There's a book called Art and Fear that nails the tao of it.

Seconding this recommendation heartily!

"Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking"

It's surprisingly relevant to what folks like us go through, and how we relate to our creations, intangible though they might be (at least if you're purely in software).

Learn a new language! Be fearless when speaking it even when you know you're wrong. The results are humbling often hilarious and get you accustomed to frequent failure. This is also a good approach for people who are socially awkward or want practice just speaking to people. There are literally millions of people interested in doing "language exchange" sessions, where you do x minutes in your native tongue in exchange for x minutes in their native tongue. Not only will you learn a new language, but asking questions about idiom you do not understand is amazing practice for "anything" you don't understand.

I'm going to go a different advice route then other commenters here.

If you went to the gym and did a really easy workout that was comfortable.. that would be a bad gym session. The goal is to push yourself. Not to injure yourself but to go until failure.

We don't learn in the comfort zone. We learn and grow by pushing ourselves where we feel like we might fail and then pushing until we fail.

Success isn't a game of avoiding failure. Success requires learning and growing from repeated failure. Failure isn't the opposite of success, it's part of it.

Feeling dumb, not knowing where to go, having difficulty even reading and comprehending material is when we know we are engaged in building ourselves.

There comes a point in your life where this may not still be true. At 70 I doubt I'll be pushing "to failure" in training sessions. In fact, I'll probably consciously reduce the intensity of my training sessions and use them to maintain muscle mass for as long as possible into old(er) age.

The same goes for work. I'm a hard worker, but I'm not gonna bust my balls at some startup so the CEO and his buddies can make a billion. Not unless I'm one of the founders.

Some people have already done a shit ton of learning and growing, and maybe they're at a different stage in their lives. Like the stage where their 30+ years of experience are extremely valuable without grinding 50 hours a week.

In hindsight, what we don't know is if the people who grinded 50 hours a week would have ended up in a stable situation later in life where they felt confident enough and had the means to take things at their own pace.

Regardless, everything has a cost. If you are in a place where you can spend time at your leisure then that is something to be admired. You likely paid the cost for that (by grinding 50 hours a week) up front.

For the younger crowd here, perhaps they should grind 50 hours a week so they too can build their "fortress of solitude".

But if they can do it at half the cost, that would be ideal wouldnt it?

You've confused personal growth and "the hustle".

You should, as a person, work to grow and be stronger no matter your age, whether that's squatting 400lbs or doing your water aerobics. Work the correct weight for you.

You should not bust your balls at some startup so someone else can get rich. That isn't helpful. Don't do that, regardless your age.

Busting your balls for someone else's start-up is a rite of passage unfortunately, but as long as you don't burn 10 years of your life before realising that your stock is worthless, you're ok. That mistake shouldn't cost 10 years.

> that would be a bad gym session. The goal is to push yourself. Not to injure yourself but to go until failure.

Umm. Actually, as far as I know, that's completely false. What you're describing is a bad way to train your body. If you're failing reps, you're training your body to fail. I.e. "one more rep" culture is misguided. You don't want stress or exhaustion hormones in your system. If your goal is enhancing your body, that is. Looking at my notes, my source is Pavel Tsatsouline #1399 episode on Joe Rogan's podcast. If you can get a hold of that podcast, it's very informative.

I won't comment on what you said about the mental aspect of failure.

I don't love the marketing "feel" of this source but it is a good and comprehensive guide on what failure means in a lifting context: https://athleanx.com/articles/should-you-train-to-failure

You don't "train your body to fail". You may be training bad form - and form failure is failure.

That's great if you're in a body building competition, but you're training to have a heart attack at 65.

You sound like me 10 years ago. Be careful in pushing Yourself in the gym until total failure. It might be directly correlated to injury. Especially for Your shoulder, knee joints and lower back. It's tricky to have good joints and be very big and buff all Your life. Muscles grow, joints do not. Doing lower than 8 reps will help You grow, but it will kill Your joints.

Read Richard Feynman. The man was a genius and would ask as many simple questions early on. If he can check his ego, all of us should be able.

I have a friend who took anti-anxiety meds and was immediately extremely productive.

Agreed, I was on anti-depressants for years.

Their most noticeable effect on me was a dramatic decrease in anxiety, and an accompanying increase in comfort in social contexts and far less catastrophizing about challenging life situations.

> High tolerance for feeling ignorant, confused, silly, inadequate, a novice

What are some tools to do this? When I feel I don’t know something, I feel very anxious, stupid and unhappy. How did you develop the skill to be okay when ignorant?

This is pretty much about learning to deal with your feelings. Different things work for different people. Mindfulness and acceptance have been interesting concepts to explore for me. Though there too exist a variety of approaches. Explore related literature.

Wow, I've never thought of "functional programming, immutability, state machines, reactive programming" as time savers, just better ways of coding stuff, I'm a self-taught engineer and literally all of these just seem like correct way to code stuff beacuse it's much smoother and less faff.

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