Advice that worked for me | Hacker News Reader

Advice that worked for me

nabeelqu.co

205 pointsajsharp66 comments

I like that your title explicitly calls out "worked for me."

Generally speaking, when it comes to advice, context is ever important. In one context advice may be spot on, but your context may not be my context and that can matter.

For example I often hear good advice about useing SQL. A lot of it is contradictory, which can be confusing. But it turns out that the "right thing to do" is enormously affected by context - are you deploying one DB for one customer, or one each for 1000 customers? Is there a full-time DBA or is your program its own DBA?

It's the same with personal/life advice. How old are you? What kind of job do you have? Are you cash-rich or time-rich? Are there outside stress factors?

For example I don't use an alarm clock on a day to day basis. I let myself sleep till I wake up. That works because I have no morning commitments or responsibilities and flexible work hours. It only works because of my context. Clearly it's useless advice to most people.

When giving advice try and bring context into play. If your context is too different to mine, my advice may be harmful.

When receiving advice dig into the context. If it's too different to yours that advice may be moot, or even harmful.

What works for a bootstrap company does not apply to a VC startup. And very much vice versa.

(question is, is this comment useful if you don't know _my_ context though? :)

> For example I don't use an alarm clock on a day to day basis. I let myself sleep till I wake up. That works because I have no morning commitments or responsibilities and flexible work hours. It only works because of my context. Clearly it's useless advice to most people.

As someone who's 3 year old wakes up and dives into bed next to us somewhere around 6-7am. About 3 hours after the 2 month old has woken for a feed I'm very jealous!

> context

Which is ever absent from all and any Hacker News entry.

This is what I think about a lot of the "agile development" advice I see on the web.

Projects are different, clients are different, teams are different. What works for you may not work for me. Heck, what worked in my last project may not work in this one!

"Tell the right stories about yourself."

I wake up feeling stiff and every morning repeat the "story" that I'm starting to feel old. However, I often ask my 83 year old dad if he experiences the same and he always says no.

Then last week my dad said, "you know I might, but I don't think about it". So this past week I just wake up and start moving and try not be aware of the minor pain from stiffness. It goes away quickly and I avoid telling myself "I am feeling old".

Why focus on something that doesn't serve you if you can tune it out.

>> Why focus on something that doesn't serve you if you can tune it out.

Great point. This would apply to all potentially negative stuff and the noise out there in general. For instance, I have recently try to tune out the political noise around me. Stop watching news, limiting news sites to couple of times a day etc. And it really helped a lot. Less stress due to factors that are beyond my reach.

Absolutely. I tell my kids all the time that one only has so much energy, and that I choose to spend my energy on things I can actually put effort into changing while the things I have basically little or no bearing on are paid some attention, but I don't let them worry me too much.

"It is what it is" applies to so many modern world 'stresses'. Certainly makes life far easier to deal with and when the energy one does have is spent wisely, individual growth also trends upwards. Win win.

This also works with depression but try telling the internet that.

Depends on the severity, much like with that stiffness.

Mere stiffness you can walk away. Severe arthritis is a different story.

Bad mood can be dispelled. Severe depression of the kind where people actually commit suicide to escape the torment is a different story.

It is possible that depression is overrated on the Internet as of today. But I won't forget a 16th century "black book" entry from rural Czechia, which concerned investigation of a random peasant boy who hanged himself in a barn. The way that the witnesses described his behavior prior to the deed was textbook depression as we know it today, even though the very word didn't exist yet and the incident was considered work of the Devil.

"I wake up feeling stiff"

Yoga/Tai-Chi may help with that. I used to feel stiff until I started exercising regularly. Muscles and sinews need some stretching and contraction to stay healthy.

Just like the people you meet who divorced or got fired 20 years ago and still bring it up at every opportunity

> Why focus on something that doesn't serve you if you can tune it out.

Because you don't necessarily know if it serves you.

You could wake up stiff because you overdid your workout. That's a pretty valuable signal telling you to take it easy with those particular muscle groups.

You could wake up stiff because you have an injury. (E.g. a torn meniscus). That's a great signal to go see a doctor.

You could wake up stiff because you have a shitty mattress. That's a good signal to buy a better mattress.

You could wake up stiff because you spent yet another 12 hours sitting in front of the computer - that makes a great signal to both stretch and put a few more breaks into your workday.

Or you might indeed be stiff if it's low-grade systemic inflammation (a.k.a "being old"), and even then it might be a signal that maybe you can fix your nutrition.

Yes, you can just power through most of these, but... why would you? It does serve you. Just in an indirect way, signalling you what is not going well. The key point here is that in many cases, you can reframe the story from "I'm old" to "something is suboptimal, and I can improve it", moving from a passive to an active participant.

No, of course that's not always possible. There are many reasons why we could feel bad and we don't have agency at all - but I'd always suggest at least getting to the root of "why do I feel this way" before ignoring it.

I don't think OP meant in general not thinking about a stiff back. OP was talking about telling yourself the story that you have a stiff back because you're getting older.

I hope so. I posted for the sake of people who (like past me) took the "don't tell yourself a story" advice too far. Turns out if possible, you want to root cause your issues before dismissing. :)

When I was 8 or 9, I would never simply step on or off a curb. That was less fun than hopping or jumping or sliding. I would watch how the people of my neighborhood moved and wondered why so few people over the age of 14 tried to never step on a crack or only step on cracks. Why are there so few 30 year olds doing wheelies on their bike? I couldn't imagine that I would ever want to stop moving through my day in a maximally fun way.

Today I'm 52 and I still watch and think about how people move around. I understand that a 70 year old falling is different than a 10 year old, but I find myself seeing if I can go up or down the stairs four at a time. I have noticed that my flexibility and balance isn't what it used to be and I'm trying to work on that. I know I can only slow my physical decline, but it's worth doing.

44 here, started doing wheelies again, and was able to do one for a few meters, and my 10 year old gasped " Dad that was awesome". Felt, so proud :->)

'The don't sleep too much and reduce to 7h' is such a horrible take. It really depends on the ppl. It's possible to do all the positive things (having great wlb, workout regularly, eat the healthiest food) and some ppl just need to sleep 8-9 hours. This is self help's guru level of advice

tbf OP did mentioned it varies from genetics to genetics. 7-7.5 hrs is actually good spot. Mostly 8 hrs is recommended. For me 6 hrs is enough, but it also depends upon the work you are doing in your day to day life.

The goal is just plain wrong. You don't optimize to shorten ur sleep, u optimize to improve ur sleep and rest pattern which might happen to shorten ur sleep.

> 7-7.5 hrs is actually good spot. Mostly 8 hrs is recommended.

That is correct. The goal is to find ur best. Not defining a number and going backwards to justify it.

Glorifying sleeplessness is extremely bad. The author might be in sleep debt himself. Also we need to consider the throughput as the performance varies. When I was tired I would not be able to code as efficient.

> The goal is just plain wrong. You don't optimize to shorten ur sleep, u optimize to improve ur sleep and rest pattern which might happen to shorten ur sleep.

Totally agree with this. I'm surprised how even health professionals prescribe an average value as something to work towards. Heck, they even give the same 8 cups of water a day advice to 50 kg females and 90 kg males. What an absurdity. Anyways, people should find the optimal amount for them by observing the outcome.

My sleep sweet spot is also around 7-7:30 hours. I am typically a good sleeper as in don't wake up etc. On days where I sleep more or lay I I often feel less energetic. Then there are also the cases when I go to bed early and wake up early by myself 'ready to go'.

I also like the suggestion to do the important thing first in the morning. So far I have not found a way to get around the morning chores, lunch prep, kids, dog etc. I know the theory (pre prepare, do it fast, be organised) but doing it is something I need to work on.

The title is “worked for me”, that should be self explanatory.

I mean it's wrong in principle. You don't optimize to shorten ur sleep. U optimize ur sleep in various aspects(or rest in a broad term) which might happen to shorten ur sleep in the process. This in turn optimizes ur throughput. The goal is just wrong. Sleep debt is real

>You don't optimize to shorten ur sleep.

Hmm. Don’t you think that anyone can do what they want?

It's a figure of speech. U can do whatever u want

It might be possible to train yourself differently. Since having kids my sleep is much more like a control knob - I can go more days without it before needing a recharge.

There is also a giant fallacy in this advice that you "gain an extra 2 hours". no, you start working 2 hours earlier, but you will be just as beat in the evenings, and still unable to do more than slouch on the couch and watch Netflix. If you don't use that time for working already, than why would you ruin your sleep patterns? especially since 2 hours less sleep is a massive reduction for most people.

I have checked myself with 23andme, apparently, I am in the 99th percentile of night persons, and I need at least 8.5 hours of sleep to feel healthy.

Well, that explains things!

I actually don't think it's a bad take. Everyone theoretically falls somewhere on a spectrum of "optimum sleep requirements". That's a given. What I take from the advice is that you may be well above your optimum. In my experience, it's easy to get in a habit of sleeping beyond what's needed. I, for one, feel terrible all day if I let myself sleep too long. Waking up earlier is harder, but my body consistently feels better for it. YMMV.

In my experience: Sleep as much as you can. Most probably don't have the luxury, but best is to not use alarm clocks. Your body knows exactly how much sleep it wants and needs, and your thinking brain has no business coming up with arbitrary hours of how long that should be.

Piotr Wozniak advocates a similar formula [0]:

> There is only one formula for healthy and refreshing sleep: Go to sleep only when you are very tired. Not earlier. Not later. Wake up naturally without an alarm clock.

[0] https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Formula_for_good_sleep:_free_run...

Also from what I gather, scientifically incorrect/dangerous. Sleep is incredibly important, and sleeping the correct amount leads to a healthier and longer life.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-We-Sleep-Science-Dreams/dp/0141...

>> The don't sleep too much and reduce to 7h' is such a horrible take

I agree. You have to sleep late when you can. Then all your bad days will end.

> 5. Get in the habit of Fermi estimation, looking up key quantities, and using upper and lower bounds.

i cannot agree with this enough. there are so many people in my life (work and nonwork) that make vague statements (whether about proportions, predictions, or population) that are more directional than precise. this leads you to commit to actions than you then later backrationalize.

forcing yourself to make fermi estimates and upper/lower bounds helps you understand when your assumptions are wrong and change on a dime, avoiding sunk cost/commitment fallacy. but people are very uncomfortable when you make them put confidence intervals around their predictions.

It’s funny I never knew there was a name for this but it is definitely something I got in the habit of when studying engineering and I use it all the time by creating little spreadsheet models. You don’t have to be that accurate, but you can create models with somewhat reasonable values and then fiddle with the outcomes and it just tells you if something is even remotely possible or not.

Like hey I might be able to increase my revenue by 10% next month but I definitely can’t increase it by 1000%. It’s surprisingly powerful.

it's hard for me to get past the sleep advice, it sounds misguided at best. Sure there are studies if you google oversleeping, they define it as sleeping over 9 hours a night and it sounds it usually is associated with low quality sleep. The core issue is what is causing low quality sleep, oversleeping is a symptom to compensate, and it doesn't sound like 7 to 7 and a half hours is the sweet spot, it's 7 to 9 according to the National Sleep Foundation Guidelines[1].

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29073412/

I concur. The vast majority of people have the exact opposite problem and sleep too little, therefore the general advice would be to get at least 8h of quality sleep per night.

It threw me off the whole article as well, it's hard to take it seriously when it hits me with "don't sleep too much" in the beginning, especially since I've always been somewhat of an insomniac and I'm intimately familiar with the impact of sleep deprivation across all aspects of one's life.

They do mention that sleeping too little is also a problem. Sleep varies so much from person to person that it is often controversial. It might be better to think of that point as advising you to try to optimize the amount of sleep you get. That's more of an experimental process where you find out how much sleep you need and how to get it i.e. what do you need to change in your life in order to sleep better.

“Worked for me” in the title is important here. For me this is great advice. I have exceptionally low cortisol levels and have accidentally slept for over 24 hours many times in my life. Without an alarm I generally sleep for 16-18 hours, those days suck because they’re too short to get much done.

Sleep is like diet, it’s different for everyone. I’ve trained myself to lucid dream to try to make the most of the days when I oversleep but it still sucks. The point seems more like maximise for time when you’re actually accomplishing things. What’s healthy for each person is different.

Last advice, have no morality.

Because author of this blog works at Palantir, lol.

Advice that worked for me:

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

Extremes fuck up a lot of shit, to the point of causing irreversible damage. Drinking is fine, but 10 beers a day? Yeah nah and so the list goes on.

"Most people’s mental models of energy are flawed: they think there’s a ‘tank’ of energy that gets depleted as you spend it. This may be roughly true for physical energy, but mental energy is different: spending mental energy on things that you consider productive or important gives you more mental energy for other things: a positive feedback loop."

^^ I had myself believing this "flawed" belief. I like this excerpt.

Great article. If I may presume to add something, I think point 6 (strongest possible counterargument) is a special case of a more general idea: thinking strategically. I also learned that from chess BTW. Whether you're talking about arguments or fixing a bug or planning a career, there's often a huge branching tree of possibilities - things you might do, things others might do, things that might happen because that's how the environment works. Learning to look ahead, apply pruning, etc. to find the best "move" at each point in time can be very valuable. So can prioritization, responding to a setback, and so on - which you can also learn from chess or other games. Not everything is a game, of course, but the strategic thinking that they encourage is very broadly applicable.

Things that work for me:

- see my friends more

- go on walks instead of working

- go on vacation more often

- take care of my 2 kids

- play more music

- strop trying to be more productive

Well written article on here for once. Appropriate title, appropriate disclaimers, well formatted text (bolded points with top-down writing style). Most importantly, well written and interesting content. I found the "think in writing" tip particularly insightful.

I wish more journalism was like this.

"Tell the right stories about yourself."

There is more power to this than meets the eye. Also, don't tell stories to yourself that you would not be telling a friend. We are usually too hard with ourselves, hence a lot of "should bes" and "should have nots".

The thing about advice is that we already know it, but too lazy to follow or just plain forgetful. This was a good read for reminding. Thank you for sharing.

Have not read a good piece such as this in a good while. During the pandemic, my mindset was a giant clusterfuck. I was all over the place. I took a year break from everything. Traveled. Did absolutely fuckin nothing. I started few micro services that I never finished, which I am thinking of going back to them eventually. I started playing games and started to make a game. But the angles kept changing. I started to interview for jobs, but I am just not in the right mindset. I am constantly thinking about the future. I read too much shit on the internet (tech related). It felt good reading your article. Thanks for sharing.

I used to be a night person. One day I realized there are only 24 hrs in a day. There is no "getting more hours" at night. Then I became a morning person gradually where I get most of my coding done before anyone wake up.

This comment makes no sense unless you're trying to say you wasted hours in the morning and couldn't shift your schedule to wake up later in a fancy way.

Naw, many night people are night people because you can always stay up another hour but you can't have woken up an hour earlier in response to things happening during a day. I think that's what gp is getting at.

Thanks for clarifying :)

Those aren't really night people as much as they are slackers, which loops around to the point it isn't about morning/night at all as much as personal attitude towards not wasting your finite amount of time.

false, there's a real compounding advantage to the threads you gather over the course of a day, letting go of them can set you back

not to mention the night hours are the ones where nobody interrupts you

Nifty article. My advice on reading advice articles: don’t think of the content as recommendations. Think of the content as considerations and decide for yourself if applicable to your life/circumstance.

And ideally write advice articles with this understanding, as well, which this author seemed to do.

> then a billion users. If there’s, what, 100,000 seconds in a day, if each user does 10 clicks per day, on average, then I think that gets you a million transactions per second, ballpark

1e9 * 10 / 1e5 = 1e5 transactions per second

Maybe the author needs to apply their advice and start to "think in numbers" \o/

Jokes aside and apart from the really dangerous idea of sleeping less, I really liked the article!

Nice article, I also liked that it specified "worked for me", rather than trying to sell some ultimate rules for life:)

The one that I would disagree with is the sleeping one. I think sleep is SO important, and people don't do enough to optimise for it. For example eating/looking at screens before bed. Sleep is extremely important, there's so many studies to back this up, and I don't think that it's ever wasted time.

Before finishing the article, I just want to mention: I'm liking the minimal and neat layout. I don't often comment on look and feel like this.

This advice might be awful for some people, esp. around sleep and exercise. Ironically he says you should fact check… so do that, and take into account your health, fitness etc. before changing sleep and exercise patterns.

Getting stuff done is a boost. It can compound but not infinitely. A 10 hour day of programming will take a toll on most people and is jot sustainable. 10h of various stuff including programming maybe!

Interesting point about Fermi estimations. I used to roughly estimate things in my head without knowing that it has a name.

The first point on mental energy seems like its only true for an initial period. Or put differently if you've been doing tricky mental work all day it is definitely exhausting & takes on tank like properties. Still good advice overall though

That's correct and it's most likely due to the chemical nature of those processes. Dopamine is not just a neurotransmitter but it is also the chemical precursor of adrenaline which gives you the feeling of being energetic or excited about something. So the OPs advice of accomplishing a task first thing will actually increase your mental and physical energy if it provides you with a reward. What you say is also correct because we can exhaust our capacity to perform mental work just like we can with physical work. I think the point in the article still stands though, it's almost always the case that you can trigger a burst of mental energy before you have started working on something even if you feel tired. If you've already been working on something for quite some time then your chances of triggering that burst of new energy are much lower and it might be wiser to take a break and come back to it fresh.

Solid advice, commenting here so o can go back and find this info later

FYI: Instead you can favorite the post on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=Flatcircle

Points 1 to 5 were the best ones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com