Ask HN: What book(s) had a profound impact on your life and why? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What book(s) had a profound impact on your life and why?

1 pointavgDev7 comments

I have recently read "Dopamine Addiction" and I came to realize I have severe video gaming addiction, which sadly has been causing issues in my life for the last 15 years. I somehow was completely blind to the severity of the problem. I have lost friends, relationships, performed poorly in high school.

Programming in college and competitiveness of it kept me interested enough to do extremely well and graduate.

I somewhat knew it was a problem a year or two back when I started having feelings of being a complete failure after long gaming sessions. I felt worthless. Frankly, during this time I have been working, earning a good income and delivering good work.

This book really opened my eyes that addiction has many forms and explained why I find boring tasks difficult to complete. This year I'm attempting to stop gaming, minimize social media use to HN/Niche subreddits, and focus on reading more books, refreshing CS knowledge and working on side projects.

Is there anything you have read which had a profound impact on your life?

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When I found it in a second-hand bookstore in roughly 1990, "The Third Wave" by the Tofflers had a huge impact on me as it made the future seem foreseeable and not automatically gloomy. I don't think it would stand up today, but that's a different matter

Sounds weird but Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. By far it’s my favorite fantasy series, and have read it quite a few times since I was a kid. I find that it has tinted my view of how the world works. Looking back, it provided heroes I looked up to and modeled myself after.

Ha I only made it to volume 26 or so. Kind of lost its zest after 20 books I'd say.

See that’s your problem. If you give up after 26 or so 900 page volumes then you never get to the good part around book 47. /s :}

Edit: fixed numbers

I knew I shouldn't have quit so soon!

Human Action

The Sovereign Individual

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