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Comment by cgearhart | Hacker News Reader

20ish years ago I complained to my college roommate that my math book was too big. He asked if I was gonna sell it back, and I said I couldn’t—they had a new edition out, so mine was worthless. Cut it, he said.

It was something I had never considered. Not for a moment. Books were sacred to me. Cut one? Blasphemy.

But he was right. And so I cut it. And it fixed all of my complaints.

What I learned is that some folks have a different mindset; they see the world as something to be shaped around themselves, rather than seeing themselves as something that should be shaped to fit the world. That’s been a useful lesson sometimes.

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"What I learned is that some folks have a different mindset; they see the world as something to be shaped around themselves, rather than seeing themselves as something that should be shaped to fit the world. That’s been a useful lesson sometimes."

It indeed is. Thanks for putting it in words. I think I will try to adopt this mindset about certain things in life.

cue https://youtu.be/kYfNvmF0Bqw?t=12 :)

Note that voluntarism can equally help or hurt.

When it fits, it may bring high achievement and self realization.

When misplaced, it may bring suffering and disillusionment.

One has to develop a grasp at when to use it.

I hadn’t seen this before, but he’s near the top of my list as an example of this. One the common characteristics I see of people with this mindset is that they have high risk tolerance. Things are replaceable, and they feel safe exploring that trade space.

I agree this dichotomy exists and find it useful to ponder for balancing your life.

But there is another more specific one in your context: objects are to be respected vs objects are to be useful.

My mother takes a lot of care of her objects. Her stuff lasts for very long.

Mine don't, but my life is much easier than hers because I don't think twice about making something dirty or worn. It's not alive; it's meant to make my life easier, we built it for it.

Again there is a balance: go too far and you get bad ROI out of your object.

But books fall very much into that category for me. I write on them, cut pages, turn them into a mess. They get a wild life, and then I discard them.

They are not trophies or decoration. They are not sacred.

And yet I may buy the same one 5 times for many friends, or just because I messed one up.

That’s mostly where I’ve wound up as an adult. I think a lot of it comes down to financial stability. I spent a lot of my own money on books when I was younger. They embodied that cost in perceived value. But I learned that they might have more value than their cost if you’re willing to make them more useful.

Do you mean you cut the excess margins, or cut out specific sections, etc?

Probably he meant the same thing as the parent post, chop it up into volumes?

We studied the book in order starting from chapter 1 in the first calc class up to the last chapters in calc 4. I was in the last class when he gave me the idea to cut it, so I cut out the last few chapters and carried a very thin volume of what I needed for the last class.

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