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Comment by kaffekaka | Hacker News Reader

Not a trick of the programming trade, but: life will not be clean, smooth and according to plan. Learn how to deal with things getting messy and derailed, and to accept that you "lost your streak" or whatever. Tomorrow is a new day, it is always ok to start over.

Do optimize for the long term, but also realize you could be dead by next morning.

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One life trick I learned way too late is that you're allowed to have fun, on your trade or on the side. One should enjoy a few light-hearted or relaxed moments every week. For some reason I was convinced that one should seek productivity at every moment, which is the fastest way to burn out.

I completely agree.

Enjoying life here and now is such an important aspect. For me, bouldering is such an activity. It demands maximum focus on tiny details in order to climb a piece of rock, which is completely pointless to do. Pure fun.

I do bowling now and read your post as if you did as well :) Completely pointless and quite fun too.

If you're looking for a game with a point, try darts!

Or Kubb! It has a high silliness factor

I enjoy the solitude of bouldering by myself out in the forest. Solo Kubb is possible but wouldn't feel the same.

Another life trick I've learned is that you are also allowed to:

1. Say no and disagree with people

2. Walk away from any relationship (personal or professional)

3. Do what you like, believe what you like (as long as you are not harming yourself or others).

4. Move

5. Hire experts to work for you (if you can afford it)

6. Spend your money as you please

7. Engage in conversation with strangers

8. Drastically change your life (new career, new field of study, etc) 9. Talk to strangers.

It took me a long time to realize that being an adult means taking control of my life, make decisions and being okay with their consequences because _I_ made them.

#9 isn't on its own line, and it's wrecking my need for consistency

Yet you are not bothered with the fact that it’s the same as #7

For most people 8 is difficult because it took them ages to build up to a salary that pays as well as they do now, and they simply can't afford to do that again.

Some might object to this analogy, but I view life like investing in an index fund. It’s a diversified bet across many aspects of life and many projects (akin to how an index fund is a diversified bet across companies, sectors, geographies). Many of the bets will fail (much like many companies in the market will crash or delist), but some will deliver so much return they carry the rest, but you don’t know which ones and when ahead of time. It will be volatile, but if you persist and survive in the long run the expected outcome tends upwards.

Not trying to be rude towards you, but I am always a bit shocked and a bit sad hearing people take their life as an investment strategy. I understand your point of view, but life also needs to be lived, not experienced as a constant chart moving up and right. My brother was/is like that, who is calculating profits and opportunities when hanging out with his friends, and will stay friend with someone as long as he will get something out of that himself. I find it a bit weird.

However, I understand if you are coming from a poor background, most of your life resolves around how to improve it, so me not knowing anything about you, I am not judging you for this, just find it different.

That seems like a very different take on life than GP describes, that just happens to use the same analogy on the surface.

frontfor described "life as an investment account" and recommended a long-term strategy investing in index funds. zigman1 described "life as an investment account" and gave anecdotal evidence that a short-term "day-trading" strategy could be a bad idea.

They're both saying the same thing... although zigman1 didn't seem to realize it. (Perhaps through being unfamiliar with jargon like "index funds" and how that differs from day trading.)

"Variety is the spice of life" translated into neoliberalism.

> you could be dead by next morning

I feel like this is often overlooked in financial planning. Everything is aimed at planning for (early) retirement. Meanwhile, the '$1 today is more valuable than $1 tomorrow' trope isn't just true for monetary value, but also for the value $1 might bring.

$1 today can buy memories for the rest of your life. It can bring experiences with family members and friends. Having $1 million in the bank in 40 years will never buy back time you may have wasted working to save that money.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't save or invest money for the long term, but I do think more people should take into account what they lose today by only focusing on the long term... Especially when that long term might never come.

I agree, we hear too much about how to save and not enough about how to spend properly.

The “Die with Zero” book may go a bit overboard but I think the general message is a good one - do not OVER sacrifice today (and your youth) for a wealthy future you can’t enjoy.

The Bogleheads forum is full of “I scrimped and saved and now have millions but I can’t even bring myself to buy a used Toyota.”

It’s such an old problem it’s mentioned in Ecclesiastes 2:21-23!

Another way to look at it is you have time, effort, and savings; you need to balance them all because time will run out. A local college kid can do things that Buffett will never be able to do, because he has youth and years, and no billions can buy those.

But Buffett can do things a poor old person cannot.

But can he go for a run?

Funny how when I read this, it reminded me of something I make an effort to remind myself of as much as I can; Hording is easily leads to waste - the feeling of having a lot and control or lack of, of drawing the line.

I pivoted from a career in security operations to go full time into tech and I find myself gathering too much information to solve a problem that actually doing the thing. In a wise and brotherly Nigerian tone Too much of anything no good

My dad says basically "what you have seen and what you have eaten cannot be taken away from you".

He burnt a lot of money taking us around: car trips, ski trips, windsurfing, camping, cycling. He never regretted it and now I try to follow suit and spend good time with my kids before they grow up. I could have saved the money but the money physically won't be able to buy the same thing 10 years from now. It's a race against time in a sense.

In Mexico we say "Lo bailado, ¿quién te lo quita?" which roughly translates to "Who can take away what you've danced?"

Agree. In the end there is no simple answer. One should save for the future, think about the long run (in Shaggy's words). But one should also enjoy the present - but that damn tent so your family can go camping.

What should the balance be? Nobody knows. Making predictions is really hard, especially about the future.

Like my plumber said: the best time to change the old drains and pipes in your house is the day before they break.

Whenever I start thinking along these lines I end up imagining how damn difficult life must be for many others on planet Earth, and how easy we've got it.

Yes indeed. I am truly grateful having been born in a peaceful, rich country. No bombs dropping, no famine, no crazy dictator.

Sad reality is some peaceful countries are peaceful but invest so much to destabilize other nations and thus ruin it for many millions of people.

While we don't know what the purpose of life is, it is definitely not to beat death at the individual level.

Do things because you enjoy and care about them. This way if you have to start over it's yet another gift, because it's always your choice.

> Tomorrow is a new day

Today is a new day.

As immortal words of the master Oogway, "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present."

Or, as Yoyodyne Propulsion has it, “the future begins tomorrow!”

Just like all things, even when viewing the outcome of the long run, will see noise/errors along the way that just didnt have any real impact in the end.

An insanely nerdy analogy lost to most... A car may run rough at idle but strong at high RPM, because any ground loop noise is lost in the high frequency output.

damn

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