
Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment? - throw94
I read a similar thread on reddit (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;AskReddit&#x2F;comments&#x2F;4v3ts4&#x2F;what_was_your_why_didnt_i_start_doing_this_sooner&#x2F;) and thought that it would be interesting to know such moments from the HN community!
======
chollida1
3 things for me:

1) Meditation, I used to think it was something hippies did. I now think its
worth 10 IQ points. I honestly can't recommend it enough.

2) Sleep, I'm getting close to 40 and the last 2 times I pulled all nighters I
ended up deleting pretty much all the code I wrote from 11pm onward.

3) Occasional Fasts. I normally fast from 6pm until noon the next day but I
now do one 3 day fast each month. I think this is going to become more and
more common as a way to head off cancer in the body.

I'm not a doctor but my doctor friends believe that eating less is the secret
to increasing life span and fasting is the secret to heading off cancer cells
before they can really start to grow.

Also after 3 days of fasting I find that the mind becomes sharper.

Your millage may vary....

~~~
andrepd
Not a hippie, but you do meditation and fasts...

Okay, that came out a bit incisive. Do you have any scientific backing to
support those claims? I'm especially interested in fasting. Not eating for 3
days a month does not seem especially healthy. Then I see the claim that it
cures cancer and forgive me if all my alarm bells go off.

~~~
patrickk
Anecdotal, I was like you, extremely skeptical of meditation.

Seriously, try it, it's free!

Immediate benefits:

* Clear, focused mind. I stop hopping from topic to topic in my mind "oh should I tidy the apartment, work on my website, etc etc" to a far more focused state. What you should do next is there with extreme clarity. You stop reading random junk on the internet too, and get down to it

* Much better sleep (this alone is worth it for me)

* Much calmer, steadier mood (less ups and downs in a normal day, I'm normally quite content but this effect was noticable)

All you need:

* 20 mins in a quiet room

* Perhaps white noise on headphones if you need it, timer on your laptop or phone

* Sit comfortably, back straight against a cushion, and focus on your breathing, try not to have _any_ thoughts

* You'll fail, over and over, and follow thoughts down the rabbit hole

* Let the thought drift away without getting annoyed, start fresh

* Repeat for 20 mins

* Do it once per day, everyday

It sounds ridiculous, but this is really powerful. You owe it to yourself to
try, there's no spiritual voodoo or 50/month courses needed.

~~~
keyboardhitter
For those who are not familiar, or new to, meditation - I want to offer an
alternative to "try not to have _any_ thoughts". The reason why I never
started meditating for a long time was because I felt it was too hard, and
nearly impossible. Well... because it is very difficult. After years and years
of meditating and practicing mindfulness, perhaps this is possible, but IMO
not a good starting goal.

I prefer to just become an observer of my thoughts; to acknowledge and let
them flow; I focus on accepting that they are only thoughts - little impulses.
The imagery I often have is that I'm sitting in a clear bubble, and my
thoughts are swirling around me: I can see them, and I know they're there, but
I do not let them in.

~~~
rrecuero
That's the same way I see it. I would sum it up as becoming aware of the
Proprioception of thought.

The same way we are aware of moving our arm when we are doing so, becoming
aware of your thoughts while we are thinking. We tend to take are thoughts for
granted, giving them automatic truth status

~~~
firebones
What an apt analogy...

------
ChuckMcM
How about stopped doing? There was a weekend where I had spent close to 20
hours playing World of Warcraft to farm materials and reagents for the epic
engineering mount. After I had finished it, and spent the requisite time
showing it off in-game, I looked around and realized that all of thrill of
lifelong learning and making things in the "real" world has been subsumed when
all my spare time was consumed in a virtual world making vanity things. And it
finally hit me how profoundly stupid that was. So I stopped playing WoW.

~~~
adam12
I'm trying to get myself to enjoy gaming again. I can't seem to just relax and
play a game without thinking I'm wasting my time. It's also hard to get the
same high in a game that I do when I solve a bug or add a feature to whatever
project I'm working on.

~~~
sputknick
I'm going through the same thing. Just bought my son his first console. I
tried getting back in to it. No interest. The whole time I just wanted to put
down the controller and go "actually" do something.

~~~
ptrincr
I can relate to this. I often feel like I should be doing "something", like
I'm just wasting my time if I'm not producing something.

However I think it's good to get the balance right. If you're working full
time then I think you deserve to give yourself a break when you get home from
work and indulge in some escapism. Be that watching a film or playing a game.
If not it often leads to burnout.

I think I'd often rather play a game as my mind is being kept partly active
and I'm not just blindly staring at the TV. I've recently been playing "The
long dark", it's a good way to chill, although it can be tense in parts....
;-)

~~~
oriel
I can also relate to this. Especially when I was pushing through a period of
unemployment (funemployment). I felt compelled to keep busy and regular hours
of simulated work. Felt great until, somewhere between practicing interview
problems and actually interviewing, I crashed and burned.

I remember it explicitly. Staring at a problem for almost an hour, not writing
anything. Then just kinda saying screw it. I gave myself permission to just
stop. Just started playing the first game I could find and sank a weekend into
it.

I'm back to where I was before, but that moment is something I won't forget.
Gotta give yourself permission, almost the way pomodoro gives you permission
to focus completely for x time.

------
carlesfe
Exercise, though others have said that.

Personally, I'd say that the thing that changed my life for the best has been
Not Giving Tech Support.

When I was a teenager I was kinda miserable because some people abused me for
tech support. You know, it's nice to give favors, but at some point you're fed
up of reinstalling every computer in your block every 6 months. People stop
you on the streets and the first thing they say is "you know I think my
computer has a virus...". Yeah, f* you.

I guess not many people in HN do this anymore, probably because we're kinda
old, however, if that's your case, learn to say no. It's fine. You can still
oblige for some people. However, never do it for free. With close family and
some friends, they probably have had more deferences towards you than you can
ever repay. For others, just say "I do this for a living, it'll be $XX, at
friend's price"

Once I started charging, only a few people took me up on it, and they've
always been happy with the result. Those who want tech support for free should
give something in return besides a beer "for your inconveniences".

I could expand but I'm afraid it would be an ugly rant. If anybody wants any
help on how to say NO, just ask :)

~~~
knocte
As for me, I stopped giving tech support by saying "I don't use Windows
anymore, probably I forgot how to do it; if you want to install Linux, I'm
happy to help".

~~~
gwbas1c
It doesn't work. I've been playing that game with Mac for the last eight
years, and now I get "and I use a Mac" in my tech support requests.

~~~
delinka
"It doesn't work."

Mac != Linux

------
rdegges
For me, it was 100% weight lifting and dieting (aka: exercise). Pretty much
everyone here has mentioned this, but I don't think anyone has really
explained just how incredibly life-changing it can really be.

I've been programming since I was a kid. Spending most of my time at a desk
eating Doritos and fast food wasn't really the best choice. I spent most of my
'good years' as a young guy being really overweight and hating myself. Being
overweight led me to really not like myself, be afraid of going out in public,
etc.

I spent a ton of time in my best years feeling lonely, hiding away in my room
hacking on code, and generally not enjoying my life 100%.

After years of this, when I turned 25, I realized that if I ever wanted to
look good and feel confident, I should probably just get started. I did some
research online:

* Read the fitness subreddit. * Read some books about weight lifting and nutrition.

And... I just got started. It took a while to learn how to actually do things
right, but over the course of the first year I lost almost exactly 100lbs not
knowing what I was doing. The amount of self confidence that gave me was the
single best gift I've ever had.

I didn't feel afraid to go out in public anymore, talk to people, give tech
talks, or just generally interact with people anymore.

After that, I realized that if I could lose weight, why not take it up a
notch? I've always liked the way professional bodbuilders looked -- they look
like real life superheros. So, I figured that if I can lose weight, why not
take it a bit further and try to get closer to what I'd really like to look
like?

So, I started reading about bodybuilding, etc. I realized that it isn't that
hard! So over the last 2 years, I've been doing a lot more weightlifting,
eating better, etc., and things have been awesome! I feel way more confident,
feel happier, have a better private life, etc.

Overall, getting in shape has been, without question, the best time investment
of my life.

Here's me a few years back when I got married:
[http://i.imgur.com/NQ5dskZ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/NQ5dskZ.jpg) Here's me
from a few weeks ago:
[http://i.imgur.com/k6OzJoS.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/k6OzJoS.jpg)

~~~
ardit33
Congrats, but there is no fricking way you are natty. At 235lb 15% body fat,
and perhaps 5'11" \- ish?

Whoever is readying this, don't think you can get that amount of muscle in a
natural way so fast. Only Testosterone, trenbolone and other stuff will make
you that large.

According to a simple calculator, if you cut down below 8% fat (which is pro
body builder territory), you'd still be at above 205lbs, which is no way
achievable with normal/simple workouts.

I don't want to chastise you, but to whoever is reading this, make sure to
have realistic expectations once you get into weightlifting. Getting below 15%
while body fat, while having some decent muscle definition is a goal
achievable by everyone. It might take a couple of years for some, but it is
realistic. Trying to looking like the models in the fitness magazines,
unfortunately is not, as 99% of them take hormones and other performance
enhancing drugs.

~~~
Xcelerate
That's easily possible all natural. I have a few friends who look like that,
and these people would never experiment with testosterone, etc. I'll add that
having good genetics does seem to be a strong component for how quickly one
can bulk up though.

~~~
lanius
>That's easily possible all natural.

I disagree. Research has shown that it is extremely rare for natural
bodybuilders to achieve an FFMI (fat-free mass index) of 28 or higher. Based
on OP's stats, his FFMI is 27.94. So either OP has godly genetics rivaling
those of Mr. America winners, or he is using PEDs. I have no problems with
PEDs, but it is disingenuous to claim that his results are purely from diet
and exercise.

So sure, OP's physique is _possible_ to achieve naturally, but it is by no
means _easy_ (requires winning the genetic lottery).

Source:
[http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/natural_bodybuilding.htm](http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/natural_bodybuilding.htm)

------
Sukotto
Declining to reveal my previous salary when negotiating a new job.

I ended up with a significantly better salary than they originally offered and
never even said a number. Just built a good rapport with the hiring HR rep and
agreed that the offered amount would be totally reasonable for [someone else
with good experience]. Then I pointed out that I also bring to the role
[additional, relevant, and desired experience] and gently asked what they
could do to make the number better?. (Then I _kept my mouth shut_ and let them
think out loud for a few minutes)

~~~
desdiv
I'm not a dishonest person in general, but I have zero problem with lying
about my previous salary in order to gain a negotiating advantage. I feel that
it's simply none of their business how much I used to make, and that if
they're presumptuous enough to ask then a made-up number is what they deserve.

~~~
imaginenore
Lying about your previous salary may open you up to a lawsuit. It's sort of a
grey area, but some consider it fraud.

[http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/is-it-illegal-
to-l...](http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/is-it-illegal-to-lie-about-
your-pay-in-a-job-interview/)

~~~
Sgt_Apone
I think that realistically it would only come up as an issue if you were
looking a c-suite position. For joe or jane programmer, I doubt they would go
through the effort of taking you to court in the unlikely event that they
found out about it.

------
baccredited
Saving for FI (Financial Independence)

If I save at my current rate I will achieve FI in 2022. If I had started
saving aggressively sooner I would already be FI (I'm in my mid forties). I
hate answering to other people and would rather work on my own stuff. FI will
get me there.

Read the book The Simple Path to Wealth to understand the process. Or this
blog post is a good start: [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-
rich-from-...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-
zero-to-hero-in-one-blog-post/)

Another great resource (read the sidebar and FAQ on the right)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/)

~~~
antisthenes
Step 1:

Have a job that allows this to be feasible.

~~~
beambot
You'd be amazed at how many people have achieved Step 1 already, yet who are
completely oblivious to the follow-on steps of achieving FI -- or even just
saving, living well below your means, etc.

Some people only realize 15 years later, after their industry tanks and
they're laid off. Then they think, "If only I'd been more aggressive about
saving early... I could 'soft retire' now instead of stressing like mad to
find gainful employment." The good news: if you're still in your working
prime, you might still have time.

The really shitty situation is folks who hit retirement age and only then
realize that their savings are insufficient. Govt welfare won't cover you, and
you may be past your prime working years (depending on industry or type of
job), and instead of having an enjoyable retirement around grandchildren,
you're stuck worrying about how you're going to pay for meds. Then you're just
fscked.

TL;DR: Even if you don't think you need it _now_ , your future self will thank
you!

------
japhyr
Writing programs that people actually use.

I was a hobbyist programmer for a long time. Then my father passed away, and I
went through his computer and saw all these projects that would never see the
light of day. That gave me the motivation to choose one project and see it
through until it was good enough to have actual users. Programming is much
more satisfying and meaningful now.

~~~
cookiecaper
After supporting a side project that had hundreds of users, I was actually
relieved to go back to projects that had at most only a handful of users.
Support requests and demands for bug fixes can get tiring if you don't have an
apparatus to help control and triage them.

~~~
neurostimulant
I can understand how you feel. I made a chrome extension for fun and one of
the user claims my extension has malicious tracking code and ads injector out
of the blue (perhaps he got the malware from other extension and blame it on
mine). Way to kill motivation :/

------
stordoff
Switching from Python2 to Python3. I never had a strong preference for either
(most of what I write are short, throwaway scripts), so just stuck with
Python2 out of habit. After implementing a basic static site generator, seeing
it explode when I put "naïve" in the database, and then discovering the
awkwardness of using Unicode in Python2, I decided to port it over to Python3.
Using Unicode by default was a huge advantage.

~~~
Lxr
Interesting, opposite experience here. My life became much easier when I
decided to start new projects in python2 rather than starting under 3 and
switching back in frustration after fighting with 2to3 for hours at a time.
Even now I think there's enough libraries that just don't support 3 to make a
case for using 2 as a rule (I do mostly machine learning/optimisation).

------
rayalez
1\. Good diet, exercise, and generally taking care of my health. Seriously,
this should be the top priority, if you know that you're being stupid about
how you treat your body - fix it as soon as possible.

2\. Writing regularly(fiction or nonfiction). I think it's one of the most
awesome skills you can develop, and the younger you are when you start
practicing - the easier it will be. Just create a blog, and try to regularly
post something valuable there. It's truly awesome, in so many ways, and the
longer you keep doing it - the more awesome it gets.

3\. Reading and information diet. Trying to minimize inane internet browsing,
news, social media, and maximize the healthy information that I consume.
Audiobooks are the best thing ever. Enjoyable and satisfying to listen to, and
incredibly valuable. Just get in a habit of reading/listening, and you will
soon learn a massive amount of great information.

~~~
econner
Regarding #3 do you have designated times that you read, etc? I find that I
end up spending a lot of little chunks on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and HN
when something is compiling or deploying or starting to run. I keep saying I'm
going to stop checking all of these inane things, but I always fall back into
it with these 5 min chunks where it would be hard to do something else.

~~~
rayalez
HN has a fantastic no-procrastination mode(enabled in settings), it locks you
out after 20 minutes of browsing, for the next 3 hours, it really helps. Since
I don't feel like fb/twitter are adding anything to my life, I just blocked
them in my router. I still end up there occassionally, but it's not an
addiction. I still do spend too much time on reddit, but I'm trying avoid it
as well. I'm getting better at it, but slowly. It's mostly a matter of my
brain gradually comprehending that it's a pretty joyless activity that adds
very little to my life.

I don't have a designated time for reading, I'm just trying to avoid the "bad"
kinds of information, and since my brain keeps craving it, audiobooks end up
being the best way to satisfy it.

~~~
econner
Thanks these are great ideas.

------
patio11
Every time I start seriously exercising this hits in about week ~4. Sadly, I
only generally keep it up for 6 months before falling back to old habits.

Professionally: email lists. If you have any reason to have a blog, you should
have an email list. It surfaces the identities of the people who are actually
interested in what you have to say, and ties people to you much, much tighter
than "Oh yeah, that thing you wrote in 2011 that I read, that was a cool
thing."

Businesswise: man, so many things could go here. How about "Put our sales
process in a flowchart and execute from the flowchart, _not_ from I'm-smart-
and-can-extemporize-in-real-time. Adjust flowchart as required." Relatedly:
answer common objections _once_ , offline. Cache the answers. Repeat back from
the cache, not from "best halfway decent thing you can remember to say in real
time."

~~~
bryanlarsen
I'm currently at that 6 month point in my exercise program for about the 5th
time. Anybody have any hints for pushing through it?

~~~
MatthewMcDonald
For me, seeing progress towards my goals is very helpful. This can be snapping
a photo once/week in a mirror, recording your lifting progress, etc.

Another big aspect is sustainability (just like with your work life). You can
make yourself train really hard for 2 hour workouts, 6 days a week and see
massive progress, but once the progress starts to plateau it will be very
difficult to stay motivated if your workouts aren't actually enjoyable. A good
workout partner will give a lot of encouragement and enjoyment out of
workouts.

Another option is to do activities that you find inherently fun - join a rec
sports league, take up cycling, play racquetball, etc. Rather than zone out
playing video games or watching TV, put on your headphones and go for a hike.
Variety is a good thing.

------
Fradow
1) using git (or source control, more generally). One day, I figured all the
devs (most better than me) around me were using source control. I asked a few
why, and why I should use it. Now I realize I was treading a dangerous path
before using git.

2) using the command line freely (ie : not being an expert, but being able to
use it a bit and automate some tasks). At some point, I maintained several
apps at once, and it became too much of a burden to do the builds myself and
install it one people devices several times a day, every day, so I decided to
use a CI tool (Jenkins). To do the builds, I had to learn how to do everything
in command line, and that's how I got started (now I am able to handle my own
server and do some simple sysadmin).

Since I have an IT degree, I blame my school for not teaching me both of them,
which I picked up after graduating: not mandating source control is to my eyes
a big failure, and while I had some Unix courses, they never taught me WHY I
should take the time to learn the command-line (and thus, I didn't).

~~~
pkamb
The `git` thing is huge for me, too. It kills me thinking back to all those CS
homework assignments where I _had_ a build working, but then broke it adding
the next feature. Spend the next 4 hours frantically Undo'ing and copy-and-
pasting from "copied folder" backups. That's no way to work. Source Control
should be taught on day 1 of any CS class.

------
louprado
Reducing my carbohydrate intake, limiting workouts to 20 high intensity
minutes, practicing better sleep hygiene, asking more questions and arguing
less, taking vitamin D supplements, setting limits on gifts and travel,
avoiding alcohol and limiting to 3 drinks maximum on any given night, cutting
my own hair, buying rental property, realizing that absent mindedness is a
symptom of poor planning, focusing on problems that matter, asking for help
when I am guessing for solutions instead of working towards them, practicing
empathy, abandoning black and white ideologies, setting clear limits with
family, time-boxing HN and internet activities.

~~~
hndude
Could you please expand on "realizing that absent mindedness is a symptom of
poor plannning"? Also limiting gifts and travel?

~~~
louprado
The problem with absent mindedness is that is it dismissed as just part of
one's personality. Being an absent minded professor is almost a badge of
honor. "It isn't my fault that I have such a brilliant mind that it is
exclusively focused on important matters". I missed work meetings (people
would just call me), I forgot final exams in college, I'd walk out of my house
leaving the door wide open. When I forgot things that were important to
others, it caused them pain and burden. But I dismissed it as "not my fault"
because "I have a bad memory" or "I am always thinking about more important
things and most people just can't relate".

Having a bad memory is easily remedied using notes, day planner (look at it
each morning), smart phone apps, habits, etc. Using these tools will declutter
your mind and inherently make you less absent minded. I have a fantastic
memory now. And when I find my old ways creeping up (usually because I am
short on-time or moving too fast) I immediately remedy it with planning.

Ultimately being absent minded implies "I don't care". I don't care enough to
write things down or plan, or who I burden. If you think of it that way then
you are more likely to improve. And if you are enabling someone who is absent
minded, please stop. Tell them it isn't a symptom of brilliance or a genetic
quirk. Every one has a smartphone. So it is a problem of not caring, lack of
empathy, and irresponsibility.

As for gifts and travel, these are the major reason people fail to save enough
money. If you are going to help someone in need, set a limit before you start
helping. I've seen people self-destruct their high-paying careers because they
felt too guilty to set limits. But without the high-paying job they can
finally say no, without guilt.

Finally, you should travel because it makes you happy. Every year people joke
that the holidays with the family involves getting the flu and intense family
fights. If you are having this problem, explain that next year you won't
travel if anyone in the house has a cold or until you personally establish
habits that reduce your susceptibility to colds. When a fight gets out of
control with your remote family explain that you might not visit next year
until we can learn to be more civil. Establish a boundaries but also lower
them once you as you build trust and respect.

Hope this helped.

------
swalsh
Learning Python! I've been a C#/Windows developer for years. I then switched
to Ruby, which for some reason inevitably means you switch to a shiny mac, and
then your work paradigm changes revolving around the command line.

One day a quick task came up, and I decided to hack it out. The only library I
could find was a python library, so that's what I used... and it was so quick
to get something. 10 lines later my boring task was done. Impressed, I started
looking for other things to put this new super power of mine to work, and it's
been spiraling out of control. I still use the other languages I know for the
majority of my work, but things I might have just never done because I
wouldn't have had time are now getting done. It's so great to get things done.

~~~
cableshaft
Python is so great for getting small tasks done in less than 30 lines of code
that would take 5-10 times as much code in most other languages. I wish I had
learned it earlier too. Still my favorite language to code without an IDE (C#
is pretty great as long as you're in Visual Studio).

~~~
kzisme
I wish visual studio wasn't a requirement sometimes for writing C# - although
it makes make it a decent experience.

~~~
raverbashing
Well, it isn't. But you need to have autocomplete for a better experience.

There's Xamarin and other IDEs as well (I'm sure there's an Eclipse plugin but
I wouldn't go there)

~~~
V-2
There's Project Rider in the making.

Xamarin Studio - based on my experience from about 4 months ago - is beyond
awful at the moment

------
nailer
Listening to other people more. I'm the youngest of six children, and it's
hard for me to get a word in edgewise when I'm at home.

Then one day I realised that women thought I was sexist and men thought I was
an asshole because I dominated the conversation. I'm a grown man and don't
need to take advantage of every opportunity to speak.

~~~
exolymph
Leaving aside the gender politics because that can be controversial on Hacker
News, I heartily agree that listening more is beneficial. It can be extended
as a philosophy. Reading more and publishing less — though not necessarily
writing less. Feeling more and judging less. (Please don't be pedantic about
this, anyone; you know what I mean.) Giving other people the space to teach
you can be a wonderful experience.

------
filoeleven
Walking alone in the woods. I only started doing this regularly a few years
ago, and although I do not regret how I spent my time previously, I instantly
realized that I had been missing out on something wonderful.

Whenever I take a walk, even if it is a place I have been to dozens of times,
I always find something interesting that I hadn't seen, heard, or noticed
before. I have literally never gone on a walk and later wished I hadn't. I
spend a lot of time alone anyway but there is a huge difference between being
surrounded by a static, simple rectilinear enclosure and being surrounded by a
living, breathing dynamic ecosystem. It is incredibly soothing. I do not
regularly meditate, but I will often find myself sitting quietly in one spot
outside and letting the sights and sounds wash over me along with the thoughts
and feelings they evoke.

------
spdustin
Seeing a psychiatrist to be diagnosed with AD/HD and, later due to life
circumstances, depression and anxiety.

Seeing a developmental pediatrician for my son when he was younger to be
diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

Seeing a rheumatologist to discuss ramifications of the HLA-B27 gene and the
family history of spondylarthropathies.

What's the common thread?

See a doctor when you have any health concerns, physical or mental, no matter
what others may tell you about it being a waste of time. And not Dr. Google,
M.D., but a doctor that you trust. Google their credentials, sure, but don't
google a diagnosis.

~~~
orblivion
How do you find a doctor who you trust?

------
mrspeaker
Mine was making sourdough bread. I had no idea you could catch wild yeast in
your house and use it to make amazing loaves of leavened bread with just
flour, water, salt and captured yeast.

I haven't had store-bought bread for 6 months, and each loaf I wonder why I
didn't know about this earlier! (Here's a good starter on making a starter!
[http://www.theclevercarrot.com/2014/01/sourdough-bread-a-
beg...](http://www.theclevercarrot.com/2014/01/sourdough-bread-a-beginners-
guide/))

------
elorant
Reading Hacker News. Seriously, this place from an intellectual point of view
is the most important aspect in my life. It has opened my mind to so many
viewpoints. It's one of the few healthy places on the Internet where you can
have a decent conversation without things getting out of hand, while in the
same time learn something new.

~~~
oriel
I'd clarify this as reading Hacker News comments, something I've only started
doing recently. Its turned an adventure in increasing my browser tab density
(shiny articles), to a deep discussion on the finer points of an important
knowledge item (Implications of Oracle buying NetSuite).

i.e. Depth of knowledge rather than breadth of shallow knowledge (reading the
headlines only).

~~~
WA
Nowadays, I almost never click the links in HN and only read the comments.
Most of the time, they give a good summary and additional insight. Only if I
find the comments interesting, I click on the original link.

But it helps to live in a different time zone (Germany) than most HN users.

------
WA
Stopped playing computer games. I played Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone a
lot. Like almost every evening when I had nothing else to do. I noticed over
time two things:

First, I can't play such games in a non-competitive way. While some seem to
play Hearthstone for fun, I play to win and I want to figure out how to do so.

This leads me to second: Ultimately, for an hour's worth of gaming time, I had
a few feel-good moments and the rest was emotionally stressful. I hated the
luck of Hearthstone, I hated random assholes in Heroes of the Storm who'd
destroy the game.

When I realized that my emotions were determined by a random number generator
I had no control over (matches and card draws), I finally decided to quit
playing games for 30 days. After this month, I didn't really miss anything,
used the free time to do other things and removed the Windows Bootcamp
partition of my Mac with all games and never looked back.

A few weeks back, I played Hotline Miami 2. A single player game. It was okay,
didn't waste endless hours of my time and had a definite end – not like
multiplayer games where there is no end. But single player games won't cut it
for me anyways and haven't for a long time already. I think they're mostly
boring.

~~~
Slackwise
Just a heads-up, but if you ever take interest in card games again, I'd
recommend giving Magic: The Gathering a try.

Why?

• There are no cards with the words "random" on them

• Of the cards you draw, you can mulligan several times to get a better hand

• Many cards let you search your deck and pull out what you need, or something
similar, further reducing "chance" being a factor

• You play a game of Best-of-3, and on your following turns you can choose any
cards from a "sideboard" to slot into your deck to adapt to the current match,
again, reducing chance, and reducing Rock/Paper/Scissors fights

• You don't simply play your cards, push "Done", then go grab a drink. You can
play cards DURING the other player's turn to manipulate and overcome their
strategy. (This is the REAL reason I can't play Hearthstone. It lacks an
entire other dimension of play.)

• Magic has more resources to draw from (cards, life, graveyard, mana, tokens,
creatures, artifacts, equipment, etc), and more resources to consider, making
the strategies much more varied

• The complexity of Magic cards is on the order of about 3-5x more than
Hearthstone. The cards used in Hearthstone compare only to beginner decks
designed for kids to learn MTG, whereas MTG cards can be incredibly complex in
the strategies they afford you:
[http://magiccards.info/scans/en/m13/220.jpg](http://magiccards.info/scans/en/m13/220.jpg)

The list goes on, but coming from MTG, Hearthstone felt like playing a very
limited, aggro-focused, RNG-dependent game designed for quick matches with
simple strategy and little thinking, versus Magic, which you can play on paper
with your buddies, at a table, and have fun drinking and joking around. (At
least that's how I play it.)

~~~
theknarf
Eeeh. Don't start with MTG. Its a big time and money consumer. It's super fun!
But soon your apartment is going to be flooded with half made decks, binders
you ment to sort and every few months you just have to buy the new set. It's a
brilliant game, and I still play it from time to time. But it can get a bit to
involving. Case in point; I recently bought 50packs of a 100 KFC perfect inner
sleeves so that I could start double sleeving all my cards..

~~~
Slackwise
Yea, I know what you mean. When I first played I got into it and burned out
fast. Now I just play pre-made Duel Decks with my buddies, or we go out and do
a draft at a store. Just $10 and half the time I break even from selling the
cards I drafted/won right after we finish.

I mostly posted my comment because I saw he had the same complaints about the
RNG in Hearthstone, which personally drives me crazy. I figured he'd enjoy MTG
more because it doesn't have such flaws.

------
bencollier49
Hmmm, hate to admit this: Use a Mac for work rather than Linux. The unixness
combined with availability of the likes of MS Office, together with the
genuinely beautiful interface has really increased my throughput.

Secondly: Doing 1.5 hrs exercise daily.

~~~
cookiecaper
I've used Linux full-time for 11 years; booted into Windows about once or
twice a year to try out a game, and had a Windows VM for photo editing (DxO
doesn't work in WINE, and afaik, there are no good replacements for it). Just
a couple of months ago I switched to Windows as the host OS and Linux in a VM
running in the background 24x7 (off the raw disks, so I am virtualizing the
same system that I ran as my host OS, which meant I didn't have to spend time
re-installing and re-configuring everything).

As a long-time Linux die-hard who passed so many applications by because they
didn't work well in WINE and/or virtualized Windows, it pained me to switch,
but Linux is much more cooperative as a VM than Windows is (and it also pains
me to "reward" Windows's bad behavior with the position of host OS). With
appropriate tweaking (Dexpot) and a good terminal (ConEmu+Cygwin for SSH to my
VM), Windows is basically just like a DE that can play new games (Overwatch,
woot!) and run my photo editing software 5x faster than it ran in VM.

~~~
rconti
Seems like OS X is the perfect solution to this. I used Linux on the desktop
exclusively from 1995 to 2002 but haven't run it on the desktop since. (I
still manage fleets of Linux servers of course).

I simply don't see any value in desktop Linux for my job, and using Windows
makes it too hard (like trying to build a ship in a bottle).

YMMV, of course, depending on your work.

~~~
cookiecaper
I've had occasion to use OS X here and there over this time period, and
unfortunately I don't think it's a great solution.

The first problem is that I'd be locked into Apple hardware, which is not
something I'm interested in. Nothing personal against Apple hardware, as there
are certainly pleasant things about it, but it's not what I want. For example,
one of the only reasons I _can_ do this is because I have a custom x86 build
that accommodates it with a lot of disk space and a lot of RAM.

The second problem is that I've found OS X kind of inhabits an uncanny valley,
where at first glance it looks great, but after using it for a while, you find
a lot of small tics that are offputting. It does provide some nice traditional
star-nix utilities and has some POSIX compatibility, but many things seem to
have a bunch of little problems and incompatibilities that one has to get in
there and address if the project doesn't already provide a Mac installer that
does this for you. This may not sound like a big deal, but sometimes these
"little incompatibilities" are showstoppers and sometimes they just take extra
hours to get working. And each year, OS X is getting worse; the compatibility
takes a hit, the system gets more and more locked down, and sometimes
management scripts have to be totally rewritten.

The end result of that is that many of my colleagues that use OS X end up with
a very similar setup to mine, where they have a Linux VM running in the
background 24x7 to provide those needs.

Thirdly, OS X is a neglected middle ground in terms of testing and application
compatibility. Devs prefer to work on Linux and users prefer to use Windows.
That means that user-oriented applications, like new games, always work on
Windows and that most dev-oriented applications work on Linux (and many depend
on Linux-specific functionality like the proc subsystem which make it more
difficult to port BSDs or OS X). Even if the code is compatible as-is on both
Linux and OS X without changes, OS X is often the least-tested platform for
relevant applications. I know there are a few vendors that release Mac
versions of their games, so there is frequently a bit more availability on OS
X than there is on Linux, but it's far less than there are on Windows.

I don't really see what I gain by using OS X instead of Windows. With Cygwin,
I have star-nix utilities in Windows too, and I get immediate compatibility
with practically every user-oriented application out there.

------
ZeroGravitas
Commuting by bicycle.

Fresh air and exercise, all packed into the same amount of time it would have
taken me to drive and park, even enjoyed the thrill and mental challenge of
forcing myself out in the rain and snow. Took some shortcuts and explored
areas I've never been to before.

~~~
yodsanklai
Same here. I was cycling a lot until I got my driving license. Then it was
only 10-15 later that I got into the habit of using my bike again. The less I
use my car, the happier I am. Now I really wonder what prevented me from doing
it sooner!!

~~~
rconti
I need to get back into it. I'll bike to work for a week or two, then fall off
the wagon. That said, I LOVE cycling, have always loved it, and am glad I
rediscovered it a decade or so after getting my driver's license.

I still love cars, a huge hobby of mine, but I actually enjoy them more when
I'm not driving every day.

------
geoffreyhale
TL;DR:

Stop working out. Blasphemy, I know.

Summary:

A decade long love-obsession with "health and fitness" has taught me that 99%
of what our health industry says is nearly-useless or unhealthy.

Half the battle of "health" is to stop self-destruction: drug-abuse (obvious),
working out "hard" (less obvious).

Replace gym and repetitive activity with natural exploratory movement. If you
are "supposed to stretch" after, the workout wasn't healthy.

The other half is basic. In gentle regular moderation: sleep, eat decently and
drink water, go for a walk outside, have some friends and some activities you
enjoy.

Everything else is minutia and can be left to bodybuilders, professional
athletes and fighters, and military personnel.

~~~
mrfusion
Can you share some examples of what to replace exercise with?

~~~
carlesfe
I guess he means "functional workouts". These workouts exercise your natural
movements: standing up, sitting, laying down and getting up quickly, push,
pull, etc. All done with your own body, no extra weights.

I've done them for some time and you quickly notice the difference. Instead of
inflated biceps which hurt when you stretch them to grab a jar on the top
shelf, you'll squat without hassle, jump, get up from bed, and have better
core strength.

This is the program I've followed and I'm happy with it:
[https://mhunters.com](https://mhunters.com). Check out their videos on
youtube and decide for yourself!

------
nlawalker
Seeking goals and life satisfaction outside of work.

I generally enjoy my development work at bigcorp, but I found my mood swinging
hard based on whether or not I was intellectually engaged at the office. If I
wasn't working on something interesting and making progress, I became very
sluggish and unmotivated outside of work as well.

I discovered indoor bouldering (rock climbing low to the ground over thick
pads; no ropes/harnesses/training required) a couple years ago and it's been a
revelation. I talked about it in an old HN thread about exercise [1]. It's a
great source of goals, steady improvement, and overall "doing something
besides work." I have since expanded to top-rope climbing (taller walls,
ropes, harness), which is also ton of fun.

Baking is fun too. I have never enjoyed cooking very much, but baking caters
to the engineering mindset: very focused and rewards preparation and attention
to detail. Baking, at least at the amateur "I want to make something tasty"
level, has fewer "patterns" than cooking and more subtle variations on those
patterns, which means you can bake lots of different things without having to
find some new piece of equipment or exotic ingredient every time you try
something. And baked treats are fun to give to friends.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9354393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9354393)

------
akcreek
About a year ago I started moving towards not selling my time. It has taken a
while to wind down all of those relationships, etc. but it has been the best
and most lucrative decision I've made in my professional life. I now have just
a single commitment where I sell my time and I've got it down to 2-3 hours per
week. It will soon be zero as well.

I definitely wish I would have started this sooner or actually never started
selling my time at all. I worked only for myself for the first 5 years out of
school then the last 5 mostly for others (as a contractor - never an
employee).

~~~
trcollinson
This is an excellent point. Can you give any more detail on what you are doing
instead of selling your time? I don't want specifics per say, just general
ideas about what you have switched to and how it has been lucrative. I find
the idea quite interesting.

~~~
akcreek
I bought a really small business in the translation industry late last year.
Since purchase our monthly revenue has grown ~ 190% and we have solid plans to
continue the growth. We have 4 people on our internal team, but everyone works
remote and part time (approx. 20 hours/week) including me. Our main workforce
is made up of freelance translators (about 45 of them at the moment). I handle
development, marketing, strategy, etc. and the other internal staff handles
operations and customer service.

Our translations are mostly used for immigration purposes so it is a really
gratifying business as many clients go out of their way to express their
happiness with our service. We are dead serious about our business though...
lots in our niche are not, but I won't bore you with the details.

~~~
chris11
How do you handle the separation between home and work? I've noticed that when
I am working for an hourly wage at a business I appreciate not having to think
about work after I leave.

~~~
akcreek
I've never really had separation between home and work. I started my first
business in college and have worked for myself ever since. I've had
offices/warehouse related to some of the ecommerce stuff I've done, but even
then I'd work from home a lot. My brother is a developer at an agency that I
sometimes consult for. They keep a desk open for me there too so if I want to
work around people I'll go in there.

So there isn't much physical separation of home and work and there is really
no mental separation either since I own my own business.

For the most part I'm able to turn it off when I need/want to. If I'm not
feeling productive or just want to do something else I can set the work down
and pick up a guitar, go work out, ride a motorcycle, go see a movie, etc. and
not think about the work until I get back to it. If I couldn't do that I'd
probably prefer more separation of home and work.

------
LizardLarry
Eating something similar to a keto diet (Mostly eggs, milk, coconut oil). Once
you get past the adaptation phase, it's almost impossible to overeat. Starches
(on their own) taste bland and the mix of fat and protein has such a saitation
value that it's impossible to overeat to any near extent that a modern diet
provokes.

Weightlifting but focusing on the work my muscles are actually doing as
opposed to seeing a high number go quick. Three warmup sets and a high
intensity failure set, with the warmup sets just training you to do the
exercise in the proper form before you do it. Because a lot of people cheat
the work their muscles are trying to do by crutching on momentum instead of
letting their muscles have control of the weight. That would be a thing I wish
I could indoctrinate into every every beginner. (DON'T COAST ON MOMENTUM)

Former smoker who has occassional cravings, liquid nicotine has been a life
saver. Properly distributed, a giveaway of a three month supply would probably
be the most cost-effective humanitarian mission for the homeless in the US.

Ignore most news. A radical acceptance that there's no point in paying
attention to the equivalent of amateur illusions. It's a lot of central
nervous system parasitics.

------
criddell
Learning the very basics about typography. Matthew Butterick created an online
book called "Practical Typography" [1] that's a pretty quick and easy read.
I've found that what he says about people being more likely to read attractive
documents is true. Duh.

It's even made me think about making my source code more attractive.

The added bonus is that he also talks about his publishing system Pollen and
that lead to me learning about Racket.

[1]: [http://practicaltypography.com/](http://practicaltypography.com/)

~~~
33W
Great book - sent the typography for lawyers book as gifts after reading it.

------
lopatin
Thinking about hard problems in terms of lambda calculus. I took a day to read
about all that stuff and at some point so many things fell into place. I
learned CS theory in school, learned ML, but it's not the same as being
confronted by a seemingly monstrous software project and then realizing ...
omg, everything is relational and I can just write an interpreter. No longer
asking "how do I write this in ruby/java/js ..." but how do all of these
things relate to each other and if which language would be best for encoding
my invariants. All kinds of ML and AI fields go from "data science, math stuff
... disregard" to a fascinating universe of answers to questions that you
already have in your head for how to solve your real world software problems.
The usefulness of macros became obvious and custom monads are rewarding
achievements. Closures, instead of being occasional conveniences, became a
swiss army knife for eliminating explicit data structures.

Not for all projects of course, but when building something enterprisey,
simulated, or creative where users can model their own domain I believe that
at least being familiar with the theory is not optional. I'm also somewhat
convinced now that most "10x programmers" are maybe ~2x programmers who have
simply encoded their expertise into a private DSL using JetBrains MPS or
something. Allowing themselves to spend more time snowballing their skills and
knowledgebase, and less time doing repetitive tasks and managing incidental
complexity.

Oh also, I started using linear constraint solvers for automatically solving
small to medium sized problems. You'll usually see them used for UI layout
constraints, but that's just the beginning! For example, say you're building a
small scheduling system, or a lightweight recommendation system that lies
somewhere in between an if-statement and a full blown classifier, or you're
writing some arbitrary last-minute business rule for a client where several
things depend on each other with varying levels of weights/importance. If you
know some things are linear, and the problem is unlikely outgrow the solver,
then save yourself hours or work and just solve it at runtime!

~~~
rocqua
Do you have any good sources for reading up on lambda calculus?

~~~
lopatin
I started here
[http://worrydream.com/AlligatorEggs/](http://worrydream.com/AlligatorEggs/).
Great intro article and my favorite visual explanation.

The alligator system helped me visualize the dynamics of the system. However,
about 3/4 of the way down, the pictures start being harder to follow than the
bottom section of the page where he notates Church numerals and the
Y-Combinator (without even defining what they are, which I find hilarious
given how "for-dummies" the article starts out as). So what are Church
numerals? And what's so important about the Y-Combinator that pg would name
his company after it? I didn't know either, and the journey begins!

But also, just download clojure to mess around with a Lisp. Once you feel
comfortable with the basics, check out core.logic.

------
ForrestN
Describing myself as gay. After so much self-torture it's one of my favorite
parts of my identity now.

------
IgorPartola
Here's my list:

\- Using Vim. Just do it. You'll be more productive than in most other
editors, and you can use it over ssh on pretty much any machine.

\- Using Python. Batteries included means less work for you to do.

\- Using Django. Ditto

\- Stopped chasing the latest and greatest JS framework and just use what I
know (jQuery and Angular lately). Not worth my time when I already feel very
productive.

\- Use puppet for every server configuration, from my home NAS to every
production server.

\- Learned 3D printing/joined a hackerspace. Working from home sucks for
social life and for developing business connections.

\- Learned some basic UI/UX ideas.

\- Started sleeping more. This is huge for productivity and my happiness.

\- Realized that buying off-lease/gently used cars is much more economical
than brand new. You can drive a 3 year old BMW for the same price as a 2 year
old Honda Accord.

\- Listened to Roll Play, especially Swan Song. Better entertainment than most
TV shows.

\- Stopped paying for cable and signed up for Prime, HBO Now, and Netflix.
This isn't even to save money, but to not have to watch commercials.

\- Discovered polyamory.

\- Realized that I can build electronics on the cheap.

\- Hired a personal trainer to get in shape, instead of trying to go it alone.

\- Bought a double walled steel water bottle.

Sorry if this is too long.

~~~
nojvek
I don't understand the hype behind vim. The biggest productivity boost I find
is having an editor which has great code completion and error squigglys as
soon as you cause an error.

~~~
SilasX
I'm trying to fix this part of my workflow myself. I'm a hardcore vimmer,
trying to branch out into Java with IDEs. Every time I do it, the IDE brings
in more headaches than it saves, by far. Plus, they almost seem to "break the
abstraction" and make it less clear what's going on.

I'm sure if I made a dedicated effort (ideally with a human present to answer
the hard-to-phrase questions) I could work out all the kinks but it's a big
hump to surpass.

For example, Eclipse requires you to re-setup your workspace every time you
start a new one, and doesn't even have defaults for switching code tabs from
the keyboard. The "find in project" feature is cryptic.

And IntelliJ doesn't seem to actually know how to run code; it always wants a
"build configuration" that it gives a cryptic interface for and which the
tutorial steps aren't very helpful for.

I google to get around the above problems but the answers don't seem to work.

~~~
crypto5
> For example, Eclipse requires you to re-setup your workspace every time you
> start a new one

I have "misc" workspace, where I keep all my small projects.

> and doesn't even have defaults for switching code tabs from the keyboard.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2332330/eclipse-hotkey-
ho...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2332330/eclipse-hotkey-how-to-
switch-between-tabs) ?

~~~
SilasX
Maybe I should be opening all projects in the same workspace.

In any case, you have to add the keyboard shortcut:

[http://stackoverflow.com/a/4079639](http://stackoverflow.com/a/4079639)

------
stevenkovar
Saying "No" and giving back.

Constantly remind yourself that "this is entirely optional," whether it's a
lunch meeting, a product feature, or your entire career. It helps you be more
present—in the moment. If it doesn't excite you enough to be in the moment,
say no next time. Eventually, your schedule will be more and more interesting
and engaging to you. We become a slave to "yes" without realizing it. Derek
Sivers has a good piece about this:
[https://sivers.org/hellyeah](https://sivers.org/hellyeah)

Give back; or even better, practice preemptive giving. Not to be manipulative
or trying to find some sort of karmic success; just because giving itself
feels good and it causes you to start thinking from a more empathetic,
gratitude-focused state of mind.

I think the world needs more of this, and hell... it's easier to handle stress
when you default to finding the positive in a situation than actively looking
for something to be critical of.

~~~
pjlegato
That all sounds great, if you're independently wealthy or at least have a
well-padded bank account. What if the "option" you have is turning your entire
family out onto the street if you decline?

The "give back" mantra is a bourgeois affectation.

~~~
zachsnow
There's a lot of things one can give that don't require buckets of cash,
perhaps they meant something along the lines of:

* time (contribute to a project, help a neighbor paint their living room, teach a friend to weave baskets or something)

* kindness (listen to a friend's troubles over a beer, or assume the best in someone else's efforts, as opposed to criticizing)

I agree that when I practice those things I am happier for it, anyway.

------
dotsamuelswan
After a single week of using a physical daily planner, I realized I'd
accomplished more in the previous week than I had in the past 6 months. No
looking back.

Every Sunday I write down a single thing to accomplish for each day of the
next week: Read a chapter of a book, Write a post about a specific topic, etc.

Procrastination is super dangerous when there isn't a deadline. Way too easy
for "tomorrow" to turn into never. Professional/Personal development stuff
seems to fall into that trap pretty frequently.

I tried tracking things with all sorts of different software, but nothing
clicked for me like pen and paper.

(Field Notes 56-Week planner pairs well with a uni-ball 307 Gel Pen.)

~~~
rconti
My biggest problem with planners and to-do lists is I don't consult them. I've
tried evernote, I've tried google notes, I used a Palm Pilot 20 years ago. I
think technology is better for me because it's always available, but simply
having a todo list doesn't cause me to remember to check it. I never think
"hey, I'm bored, I wonder what's on the list!"

Any advice?

~~~
argc
Same problem, I never check any notes I write on a computer or phone. A
physical planner for me is the way to go, I'm not sure why I tend to check it
more often but I do. I also enjoy writing in it quite a bit more, I can draw
diagrams or doodle if I feel like it. I bought a notebook with a dot grid for
this reason.

~~~
jaynos
Same here. Digital lists are never reviewed. I carry one or two scrap
envelopes in my back pocket (or a skinny notebook) at all times with a list of
things to do. In the morning, when I transfer my wallet, keys, and envelopes
to the pants that I'll be wearing, I check my list and see what needs doing.

------
microDude
Using a daily planner (on paper, not a app). I figured this out about 2 months
ago.

Being able to write down the tasks and scan back through my backlog has helped
me be more productive. For me, using a calendar service or task manager app
just does not work as well... BTW, I am a millennial.

edit: I am 10 years younger then everyone else at my company and get
questioned all the time about "why I use a day runner" when everyone else is
on a smartphone.

~~~
curiousgal
Silly question but what exact notebook are you using?

~~~
Jtsummers
I'm, personally, a fan of the Staples Arc notebooks (similar to the Levenger
Circa notebooks, but cheaper). Like a cross between a 3-ring binder and a
spiral notebook. Makes it easy for me to start writing on the front sheet of
the notebook, and move its proper section later.

------
Another223
Podcasts! I was considering jobs on the buy-side and a friend recommended a
couple of financial podcasts. Knowing that part of the interview would be
about my financial style and what industry leaders I followed / read I had a
strong incentive to give them a try. I quickly became hooked.

More convenient during my (on-transit) commute than a book and there's such a
vast range of topics available to keep you interested.

~~~
33W
I got started with podcasts about a year ago. Great while I'm working on
things I don't need to really focus on, walking the dog, driving, etc.

Listing my financial ones:

Marketplace

Marketplace weekend

Radical Personal Finance

Slate Money

Freakonomics

Planet Money

Non-financial ones:

Parent Savers

Intelligence Squared

Intelligence Squared US

HBR Ideacast

Happier

Serial

Common Sense with Dan Carlin

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History

NPR Politics

The Economist Radio

Stuff You should Know

99% Invisible

~~~
Another223
In addition to these,

Value Investing Podcast (John Mihaljevic) would be my top pick. The host can
be slow so I tend to listen on 1.5x speed but the interviews are often
fascinating.

InvestTalk I find more mixed but generally pretty solid round-up, usually
gives me ideas for follow-up reading

Similar with The Investors Podcast, good introduction to some interesting
people

LSE has some public lectures, also fairly broad range of topics
([http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/pub...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/Home.aspx))

~~~
33W
Cruised through a couple episodes of Value Investing - good stuff. Might be a
little in depth for some listeners, but I enjoy it.

------
moron4hire
When a local company saw a talk I did and offered to sponsor the continued
development of the open-source project I'm building. If I had started doing
talks a year earlier, I probably could have picked up such a deal a year
earlier. I missed out on a lot of great opportunities to get my name out just
because I erroneously thought not being anywhere near finished meant I wasn't
ready to show anything.

It's a really, really hard decision to make, to sink your time into something,
and I can't recommend for everyone by default. Most people start projects on
nothing more than a whim and will give up on those projects when they hit the
technical-debt weeds. I don't think of that time as a waste, I think it's
incredibly important to the learning process and I encourage people to start
as many projects as possible. You just need to be honest and understand about
yourself whether or not you're in it to win or just having fun, before you
jump into a project head-first. I've seen a lot of people do that, and I've
done it more than a few times.

This time is really different because this time I really have spent 2 years on
the project and forced myself through multiple come-to-Jesus moments on my
code. Everyone will have those sorts of moments as it's impossible to have
such design foresight to predict all the ways you will want to use your
software in the future, or that you won't change your mind on how you want to
use it. And I think I needed to go through it to prove to myself that this was
something I was going to be able to continue to work on. But I really wish I
had known sooner.

------
egypturnash
Starting to do burlesque dance. I had to go downtown for a doctor's
appointment, and on a whim, I scheduled it so that I could go check out a
school whose calendar I'd subscribed to a month or so earlier.

I had fun, I kept going back. Got myself in great shape, got incredible
amounts of confidence and charisma. These days I don't do it any more; the
school moved to a less convenient location, and I ended up doing pole dance
instead.

Getting in shape is great but it's boring; doing it with the context of
learning something on top of it works amazingly well for me. And as a bonus,
now i have no fear of looking stupid on a dance floor - I know a lot of
interesting things to do to a beat.

~~~
caconym_
> Getting in shape is great but it's boring; doing it with the context of
> learning something on top of it works amazingly well for me.

Bouldering worked the same way for me. I don't do it anymore for stupid
reasons and I should get back into it, but for a while I was in amazing shape
from doing something not only physically but also mentally stimulating (and
fun!).

~~~
egypturnash
Bouldering looks both awesome and scary to me. If I didn't mind the thought of
probably breaking all my nails I'd be tempted to try it. Get back on those
rocks!

------
chriswarbo
Automated testing.

There's loads of stuff written about dos/don'ts, TDD, etc. but doing _some_
testing is better than none. It's not a silver bullet, and it's possible to
get too caught up in tests to the detriment of the system; but you can cross
those bridges if/when you get to them.

~~~
adjwilli
I was looking for someone to write this answer. I admittedly don't write tests
and have been seriously questioning this lately. Maybe it's a desire for
confirmation bias, but I'm glad someone said this.

------
tehchromic
Beekeeping. I go to sleep thinking about the little bugs, and wake up with
them on my mind. When I'm bothered by work or life I think about the colony
doing it's thing and feel better. They're awesome.

------
andai
Vertical tabs for web browsing.

It lets me keep everything in one window, and reveals the true nature of
internet browsing (an ever expanding tree, rather than a randomly edited
list).

You can see which page spawned which ones, which is a blessing for keeping the
structure organized.

Plus the vertical list is much more readable than microscopic tabs or ones
hidden with horizontal scrolling. Also, horizontal screen space is cheaper!

I use the Tree Style Tab add-on with FireFox, it's the most solid one I've
tried.

~~~
nextos
I would add tiling window managers. My computer feels different. Tech literate
people even ask what OS am I using.

------
davelnewton
Why are people listing random things they've done instead of what the moment
was that led to whatever random thing is listed?

Ugh.

 _Edit_

I've asked a few people to describe their moments instead of just listing what
the change was. YMMV, but for me, these are _far_ far more interesting than
random lists of things.

I may have mis-interpreted the OP's intent, but it sure seems a lot more
compelling when you know the catalyst as well as the reaction.

~~~
antisthenes
My grandfather passed away. It inspired me to take more control of my life and
to start enjoying things I was afraid of.

I didn't realize I should have been using him as a a role model until he
passed away, but when it happened, it was very powerful.

It is also the first death of a relative I've had to deal with in my life.

~~~
davelnewton
_That_ is a moment. Thanks for sharing.

Death often has that effect, for sure--it's painful, but can be inspirational
at the same time.

------
flatroze
1\. Ditching people who were emotionally abusing me pretending they were my
friends to take advantage of me (financial and/or emotional)

2\. Switching away from Windows to GNU/Linux

3\. Investing in stock market

4\. Eating organic and vegan only

5\. Drinking only bottled water

6\. Working out and learning martial arts

7\. Working on my self-esteem

8\. Believing in myself

9\. Keeping small paper notes for everything I do and have to do

10\. Avoiding crazy girls/women like every other good boy/man should

11\. Being honest with myself

12\. Taking care of the future me (then thanking the past me)

13\. Fixing my teeth

14\. Attempting to leave my country of birth

15\. Realizing that being either depressed or happy are choices every human
has to make for themselves

~~~
banterfoil
Why the switch to exclusive bottled water? It might be worth looking into
getting a high quality aluminum water bottle. You could still purchase
purified water or water in larger containers. Personally after the sun touches
plastic water bottles, I think it tastes funky. Plus, reusable water bottles
can be better for the environment.

------
thecolorblue
Learning to use my brain while I ran.

I started out running for exercise. It would take a lot to convince myself to
run, and then keep myself from wanting to quit. I got really good at tricking
myself or rewarding myself after a run.

At some point, I think it was that I got in better shape, I didn't need that
much motivation. I could go for a run and not think about the physical work of
it. I could think about whatever, either letting my mind wander, or think
through an issue I had run into. It became much more enjoyable.

I wish I had gotten to that point faster.

------
geff82
For me, it was getting into IT when I was 30 (4 years ago) and for the first
time in my life, I loved my work. I did not do it when I was 20, when was
deeply into programming. Instead, I feared math in computer science studies,
which led me to work as a car salesman (one that read HN all the time). When I
was really broke and unhappy, I met a guy who introduced me into IT
contracting for big companies. I just did what he said and instantly landed a
long term gig that quadrupled my income. This, in return, made me read, read,
read to learn as much as possible. Besides work, I now do Computer Science
courses at university. Boy, had I known I could do all this, I would have
started a decade sooner...

~~~
asenna
> I met a guy who introduced me into IT contracting for big companies. I just
> did what he said and instantly landed a long term gig that quadrupled my
> income.

Would you mind sharing some of the tips the guy gave you? I'd be really
interested. I'm doing small-time IT contracting but looking to grow the
business.

~~~
geff82
He told me: for your first gig, fake or optimize your CV as much as needed(I
know this was not ethical but it was better than robbing a bank or being
broke). Then, go to Xing (the German Linkedin, which is a gold mine if you
know where the Freelancer group is). Then if someone picks you, learn and
study as if the devil was behind you. So I did, applied for a lot of Linux
administrator jobs, had interviews and it took me about 7 days to get hired by
the first company for a long term admin-contract (I already knew my way around
Linux, but had no enterprise experience). After a few months, this guy started
his own contracting company and instantly got me a job. Nowadays, I am best
friends with the guy who introduced me and even the poor guy who recruited me
for the first job (I told him my lies later, which did not change his opinion
that I had been a good pick for the customer). Nowadays, I keep it all real.
My experience and field of work is good enough to be able to tell I had been a
car salesman before. But to get good jobs in Germany or Switzerland, use Xing,
freelancermap or to a lesser extend, use Linkedin. And know exactly what you
want to offer.

------
HenryTheHorse
Many responses here about exercise. (Not surprising, because I suspect many of
us here were NOT the most physically active types in school or college :))

But yes, I too discovered running rather late and realized it took me only
about 3-4 weeks to overcome the initial discomfort, inertia and struggle. That
was one of my "why didn't I start running sooner" moments.

If any of you are waiting to start running, I'd say, start now. No reason to
fear it.

Same is true for having a regular meditation practice. It makes a world of
difference. Don't wait to start it in your thirties or forties. That's another
practice I wish I had started in my twenties.

~~~
asimuvPR
The couch to 5k program worked very well for me. Have kept running 5k and 10k
events ever since. Recommend it to everyone.

~~~
HenryTheHorse
Absolutely. I'm training for a half-marathon and the Hal Higdon program has
worked well. Same principle as C25K.

------
phillc73
Leave London.

I moved there when I was 26 and left when I was 40. I should have left at
least 5 years earlier. It took a marriage and imminent birth of a child to
finally push me into leaving.

I now live in a small city (250k-300k people) in a great environment with
plenty of outdoor space, mountains, rivers, lakes etc.

I am not paid nearly as much as I was in London, and it took me a good 12
months to establish myself. However, I don't need London rates of pay to live
here comfortably.

I feel my quality of life has drastically improved in the last two years since
leaving London.

~~~
jbb555
Move to London.

I moved there when I was 44 and wish I'd done so earlier.

much more to do, pay is better. I feel my quality of life has drastically
improved in the last two years since moving to London.

(But probably I'll want to move away some time too!)

~~~
sosborn
It is true that the grass is always greener on the other side.

------
BatFastard
Getting regular deep tissue massages. It does a reset on all the little aches
and pains I build up during long work sessions. I stopped for a few years and
I started again and it was a "Wow, I forgot how much I need these" moment.

Daily exercise, forgot about this for years. I think more clearly, feel better
during the day, sleep better at night.

Home cooking, so easy to lose this joy when busy.

Swimming in the water when ever you go on vacation, whether is a pool, or
stream, or ocean.

~~~
ovatsug25
Seconding this one. Focusing on stretching and mobility is the BIG one for me.

------
kevindeasis
Most of these haven't become second nature yet, but I'm getting there. The
hard part is having momentum and flow. But, generally, my day works out great
if I can do all of this in a day.

1) Meditation

2) IFTTT that syncs trello and google calendar

3) Eating Healthier

4) Running

5) ABC: Always be coding

6) Talking to people who are really good at their domain

7) Sleeping: Flux helps

8) App that tracks how much time I spend on websites and apps

9) Pomodoro

10) Reading fiction from a good writer

11) Reading good blog posts

12) Having a lunch with different people

13) Finding people who just started programming who I can help out

14) Not having decision fatigue

I have more, but these are the main one

~~~
oriel
Can you elaborate more on 14 (decision fatigue)? It sounds like something I've
encountered recently (as autonomy increases) but never pinned as a concept
that I can talk about.

~~~
kevindeasis
Most of us have to make multiple decisions in our day-to-day lives. Decisions
that varies from a range of very important decisions to less important
decisions. From what I can recall we have a limited energy pool to make and
execute decisions. Decisions that fall under different categories of
importance. I've recently had to set up my day wherein, I don't have to make
many non-important decisions and have them instead set-up for me
automatically. This way I'll have more energy in my decision-making energy
pool. This energy can then be used to do more important stuff that I care
about. I hope this helps.

~~~
oriel
That helps immensely. It also follows the implied definition I had conjured
when reading your initial term. Thanks :)

------
zzalpha
After 12 years of coding professionally, move from development into product
management/ownership.

It's like playing an instrument versus playing the orchestra. It ain't for
everyone, and I won't claim I'm particularly good at it, but it's a
fascinating new kind of creativity.

~~~
WA
Who's doing the coding now? How does it feel to you if you have to "outsource"
it and pay for every small bugfix?

I'm asking because on the one hand, I enjoy coding. On the other hand, it
might make sense to work ON the business, not IN the business in the future.

~~~
zzalpha
I'm a Product Manager inside a software company, which means I work with an
internal development group to actually execute my ideas (certainly some
POs/PMs work with outsourced staff, but that's not the case here, with the
exception of one product where the outsourced staff are largely treated as
direct team members, so the dynamic is largely the same as with our internal
staff).

That means my job turns into talking to customers, collecting requirements and
authoring user stories, prioritizing the backlog, and generally giving the
developers all the information and guidance they need to build (what I hope
is) the best product we can, with the right feature set, executed with the
right timing.

Of course, I still enjoy coding, but what I enjoy about coding isn't the
hammering of the nails, but rather building a finished product from which
users gain benefit. In that respect, what I'm doing now is leveraging an
entire staff of people to achieve a vision I couldn't possible deliver by
myself, which is pretty damn cool!

The role itself is multi-disciplinary. I have to understand the technology in
order to adequately gauge cost and complexity, technical tradeoffs, and so
forth. But I also have to understand the business impact of those decisions,
and the way those decisions affect the customer.

In my particular case, we're in a B2B environment where we do deep technical
integrations as part of product deployment. So my customers are individual
business owners and technical operations staff that I interact with directly
on a very regular basis (as opposed to, say, a consumer product where you're
dealing in aggregate customer behaviour).

------
pp19dd
Using screen in daemon mode.

    
    
        screen -dmS myservice /blah/start.sh
    

Fit that line somewhere in a properly constructed init.d file and you're good
to go. And if you need to execute a safe stop from that program through some
interactivity:

    
    
        screen -S myservice -X stuff "stop\n"
    

And voila. It sends a line of text over followed by an enter key. Elegant,
useful. You can reattach session to see what's happening at any time. Love me
some screen.

When the process exits in that screen session, screen session is closed so
that you can rely on screen -list.

~~~
zzalpha
Not to start a flamewar, but have you looked at tmux for this kind of thing?

"Daemon mode" is _the_ mode for tmux, and the whole stack is designed to be
extremely scriptable. "tmux send-keys" does what you're referring to, here,
but essentially anything you can do interactively, you can do via the command-
line.

Not to say you shouldn't just keep doing what works for you! But figured I'd
at least make mention of tmux as an alternative... I'm a fan. :)

~~~
atemerev
Ctrl-B is the _worst_ shortcut ever devised (which is why it is used rarely...
except on tmux). Just _thinking_ about it gives me the pain. My hand hurts.

And yet, this is a default shortcut for command mode in tmux. "But you can
configure it!" — one might say. No, I won't be doing it on every system I
manage, I have better things to do.

~~~
daveloyall
One of my "Why didn't I start doing this sooner?!" moments was copying my
config files to all my machines.

It all started with less(1)... Configuring it is a pain in the butt. One day,
I couldn't remember how to do it on a new machine, so I just performed the
following command...

    
    
        scp ~/.*less* ~/*less* newmachine:
    

It was wonderful! Now I do the same thing for my emacs config, and my
.xsession, and my hosts files, etc.

~~~
dpcx
[https://github.com/nugget/netskel](https://github.com/nugget/netskel) is
excellent for this; or you could always put everything in to a "dotfiles" repo
that the cool kids are doing now.

------
maxime066
Start waking up at 5am. To see the sunlight all the day give me a lot more
energy and time for my personal projects and physical training. I spend now
less time on useless relaxing activities after the job because I go to sleep
at 9pm. Sure, hanging out with friends during the week is barely impossible,
but I have now so much more energy that I'm more pleasant during the weekend.

------
leroy_masochist
Learning how to say no and not feel guilty about it.

I think there's a weird superstition that many of us have where we feel as if
we don't deserve and won't achieve success unless we do everything we possibly
can, across every vector of life, all the time. And this causes us to have
"yes" as our default response, sometimes to our own detriment. And it often
takes a big cold bowl of reality (death in family, getting fired, relationship
breakup, physical injury, etc) for us to realize that it's OK to say no
sometimes.

Will I write a glowing intro email for a passing acquaintance's friend who
wants to work at company where I used to work and still have strong
relationships? No, sorry.

Will I miss a scheduled workout so I can sit in on a conference call that got
scheduled at the last minute? No, sorry.

Can you borrow my phone charger? No, sorry.

Writing these out, I get the visceral feeling that it will come off as
selfish. It is selfish, I guess. But learning to say no to things I don't want
to do has been a big step for me.

------
freestockoption
Exercise often - keeps me sane, makes me look good

Cooking from scratch - keeps me healthy, is delicious, rewarding, impresses
others

Not letting job define me - keeps me from getting disappointed when companies
make decisions that doesn't align with what I want, removes emotion from
decision making, my life on my terms (I'm moving forward whether or not the
company is)

------
pavlov
Started wearing expensive perfume that I really like. (I'm a man.)

It's stupid how much of an effect that can have on my mood, and I never
thought about it before, since guys aren't supposed to.

------
maccard
I go through phases of no screens after 10pm. It mostly applies to
Code/playing games, but I've found it also applies to HN and reddit. My
quality and quantity of sleep improves drastically every time I do it, results
visible from day 1.

------
curiousgal
Good diet. I've been underweight for years! Thought it had to do with genes or
fast metabolism but turns out I was just a lazy person. Started cooking meals
and stopped skipping them, it was hard at first because it's easier to skip
dinner than to go out shop for groceries and make something. The effort has
been worth it!

I've been studying for the CCNA and I've been having that moment ever since I
started, there's so much to cover and so little time.

------
tatobug
Taking a sabbatical. I was burnt out from working, and I was getting that
"unfulfilled" feeling, feeling a little lost. I took a 2 month "trial"
sabbatical, then quit my job for good after coming back for a few months. That
was a few years ago and I'm now on my second sabbatical. I'm poorer
financially of course, but much richer personally, having a more positive
outlook on life, and most importantly much, much happier.

------
ewindisch
I wish I engaged in Silicon Valley and venture-backed startup culture sooner.
If I had, my first startup might've had a better chance of success. Instead, I
bootstrapped and ended up with a lifestyle business. I also started it at age
19, just as the '99/2k bubble burst, so I can't take it too hard...

I did finally begin integrating into the larger tech scene around '07 with the
introduction of Twitter. This and other factors led me to deciding to exit the
business and join startups (Cloudscaling, then Docker). I had, however, passed
up on offers to join early-stage at a couple companies that had mega-exits...
so there's certainly a bit of, "what-if?".

That said, perhaps if I had more early success, I wouldn't now be founding my
current company (IOpipe, Techstars'16: www.iopipe.com)

------
CaRDiaK
Learning how to learn. Could have saved myself years..

~~~
kentt
Agreed. This was a wonderful course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-
how-to-learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn)

~~~
shenanigoat
Thanks! Signed up now.

------
thegigaraptor
Testing code. I was completely against the idea of writing more code for my
code that "worked". But as releases came out validating everything was in
order became a pain.

------
Borkdude
1) quit smoking

2) quit drinking alcohol (as a daily habit, I still drink an occasional beer
with friends)

3) a whole foods plant based diet ([https://medium.com/@borkdude/tl-dr-of-my-
long-term-weight-lo...](https://medium.com/@borkdude/tl-dr-of-my-long-term-
weight-loss-and-maintenance-success-49cb43f62a1a))

4) meditation

5) regular exercise

------
franciscojgo
Joining a good Crossfit gym.

I was usually skeptic to crossfit. Have been doing weightlifting and overall
weight training for 2-3 years and was used to pushing myself at my own pace
and setting goals myself. Was afraid to turn my training into a cookie-cutter
group class and be forced to do movements that are outright dangerous.

All the injury stories, the "cult" thing, etc. is all bullshit from my
experience. No, you do not have to kip anything. At least on my "box" they
frown upon kipping. To me that was amazing.

If you have any sort of training experience or some moderate fitness level you
will be OK and will probably push yourself to do things that will make you see
really fast progress.

Hang snatches, overhead barbell lunges, Wall Ball Shots, etc will make you
stronger, bigger and more agile.

Just being on a floor where it is normal to drop a heavy barbell from a missed
snatch is worth it. You will push yourself more and try heavier weights. Can't
do it? Just hop over and take out some weights and try again. You don't have
to wait for the frigging squat rack to be empty. That hour on the gym is for
your group only. No waiting around for that dumbass tweeting while resting on
the rack.

You will also have a coach (read good coach) that will sermon you and make
sure you do things right. Last class I was doing some deadlifts and the coach
started pushing me around and manipulating my torso and thighs to make sure I
did it correctly. This went on about 3 different times in 2 minutes. It's
good, when you are lifting and fatigue sets in you start faulting form.

Only been 3 months now, but man, it's frigging good. And the girls are hot and
strong too. It's good motivation.

All in all, don't believe everything you read online. It's overdramatized.

Then again, if you haven't done ANY excerise at all in your life, it's
probably better to start slowly on a normal gym. But not because crossfit is
dangerous, but rather because you need to get used to your body and understand
how much you can push it. It's easy to get injured doing any type of physical
activity if you don't have experience and push too much, too fats.

~~~
varikin
I very much agree with this. I have been doing crossfit for about 2 years now.
I had never really lifted seriously or correctly before, but very on again,
off again with gyms doing machines, running, cycling. None of that every fit
me nor could I stay motivated. Having a group, all doing the same thing, all
cheering you on, with a coach always helping you get better is amazing. It
doesn't matter that I am slower or not as strong because at the end of the
class, all of use are just as tired.

As for beginners, I would recommend crossfit, but only if the gym has
experience with complete beginners. Ours is great with it and go out of their
way to scale everything and include everybody. If the coaches and other
athletes are not inclusive, find a different gym. A good coach will teach
proper form as best as someone can do it in their shape.

------
k__
Start working remote. But I think I couldn't have done it sooner. Times are
changing if it comes to remote work, but not as fast as I want :\

Doing polyamory. I always was in love with multiple people, but most of the
time I was bound to one. I never cheated, but I felt bad often. Should have
done this earlier, but only with the rise of the Internet I was able to find
enough people to share my thoughts with.

Started lifting weight. This I really could have done sooner, but I always was
kinda nerdy and weights were for buff cool dudes. It got me rid of back-pain
and I generally felt better.

------
smt88
Functional programming

Sleeping 8 hours a night, even when behind on work

~~~
kzisme
I've been struggling with the sleep as well.

~~~
smt88
Research sleep hygiene, for starters.

Set yourself a "no screens" curfew every night. After that time, don't touch
anything with a screen (or anything else that causes stress and mental
stimulation). I set mine about 2 hours before I go to sleep.

I use that time to clean, cook for the next day, read, and walk my dog. I
often think about increasing it to 3 hours, since it boosts my quality of life
so much.

------
overcast
1\. Getting more sleep.

2\. Spending more time with family.

3\. Finishing projects I start.

4\. Solo traveling. I'm done waiting for others to get off their ass.

~~~
deanstag
+1 for solo traveling. done waiting for others and done not being concerned
about making other people wait

~~~
rrecuero
+1. Great for self awareness and discovery.

------
tyc2021
Stopped watching TV. Can't even think how much time I spent on TV before.

I can see within a few years from now I would have similar moments for
stopping to use facebook and twitter

------
pbjorklund
I wonder how many of these answers are real and how many is something people
want/value but don't actually do in reality. But then again, a fake story from
one person that makes two people change in a good direction is better than
truth, no?

------
ovatsug25
Focusing on stretching and mobility instead of strength when working out.

My #1 priority right now is becoming a breakdancer. Flexibility is such a huge
component—you end up feeling lighter on your feet and incredibly alive.
Changing my workouts to flexibity first almost make them philosophical.

The easiest way to do it is with Yoga—but it might get old quickly because
there are many poor teachers.

Want to start doing it and feel like you always have so much to learn? Look up
Ido Portal. OMG. :)

~~~
jjzieve
I've been a bboy off and on for almost a decade, good to see more people
getting into it lately, dancing is the healthiest thing I do by far. Some
unsolicited advice, there is more to it than just the moves, you'll enjoy it
more/longer if you develop a deep appreciation of the music and culture as
well.

~~~
ovatsug25
Any literature / movies you would recommend for a deeper dive into that?

BTW, what do you mean by bboy?

~~~
noctuid
A b-boy is a term for a male breaker. Wikipedia does a pretty good job
explaining "breakdancing" and "b-boying":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-boying#Terminology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-boying#Terminology)

------
pbnjay
Freelancing. Had I started just 2 years earlier (when I started grad school) I
would have been able to knock out my debt much faster by the time I graduated.

~~~
eldavido
Where do you live?

In SF, it seems most freelancers are in it for the lifestyle benefits, rather
than the pay. When you factor in the lack of vacation time, no benefits, often
worse career development and networking vs. working at a proper tech company
(one that hires good people, pays well, encourages learning/skill development)
it seems a losing proposition. But then, this assumes you have the right kind
of companies around, which most people don't.

~~~
renaudg
In London it's the reverse. Anybody who's any good at their job and has a few
years of experience under their belt, would be crazy not to give contracting a
try. You make almost twice as much as an employee doing the same job if you're
full time, or you can choose to earn the same but take months-long breaks
regularly instead. If you like variety or get bored quickly, it also allows
you to justify switching jobs without anybody raising eyebrows on the short
stints in your resume, because hey you're a consultant.

The downside is worse career/skills development if you're not careful (you
need to keep up and go to lots of meetups), you tend to get hired for the same
jobs as an expert and not ever move up the management ladder, also some of the
best companies and top positions won't be available to you as an outsider (big
tech names, CTO roles, early stage startups offering equity over pay)

~~~
eldavido
I always find it instructive to look at how the economics of an
employer/client align with the economics of the contractor.

Example: at mass-market product development/distribution companies (Google,
Apple, etc.), the big money will be made on a great product launch. In that
kind of situation, you need to find a way to get some equity or some piece of
the big launch. This -- big companies launching scaled platforms to lots of
people -- is how the biggest fortunes are made in tech. I find these places
aren't great for high-$ contracting because the economic incentives are so
misaligned, all the way up to the CEO.

If, on the other hand, the business is some sort of intermediary, like a
realtor / ad agency / investment bank, or uses an agency model (lots of cash
comp, little equity value, big cash bonuses but nobody's building anything
with stock/ownership) that might be a better place for a contractor because
they have the cash to pay, _but_ , I have to question whether that's going to
make for a satisfying career.

Surprisingly, the older I get, the more I realize how much (1) the salary-
optimization game (vs. being part of a big company/product/launch) is a sucker
bet in tech and (2) so much of life is about relationships, network, and
reputation. I guess it's different from person to person, but, still, I've
done contracting and I'm not going back.

------
jugg1es
Running... outside... I didn't start until I was like 26. It feels great.

~~~
atemerev
Lucky people who felt the joy of running immediately. I tried to start running
many times. I got myself to 5k. But I hate it, it is boring, and just about
any other physical activity feels better than running for me.

~~~
RhodesianHunter
Have you tried bike riding, like with a good road bike? I find it a great deal
more fun and exhilarating than running ever was.

~~~
atemerev
Yes — hated every minute of riding uphill.

The greatest outdoor activity I ever had was skateboarding (I am 33, and
started two years ago) — I really really loved it, could do it for hours,
learning tricks and just moving through the city — right until I broke my
ankle. :(

------
hatsunearu
Learning new things that I didn't care about previously: machine learning,
game dev, web dev, and high level programming. Lots of fun!

------
elmarschraml
Listening to podcasts. Perfect for when both your eyes and hands are
occoupied, but your brain is bored.

To put in in less nerdy terms, cleaning, ironing and other housework, exercise
and walking will never be boring again.

------
Harelin
When I am working on something and need to break for the day, I try to stop at
a point where I am enthusiastic about continuing (i.e. not experiencing
writer's block or confused as to how to proceed). This means I will be able to
pick up the next day write where I left off, immediately get back into the
flow of things, and I will look forward to doing it.

~~~
chris11
I've also heard that it's a good idea to stop at a point where there are some
very easy things that you need to do, even if you might need to introduce some
errors to get to that point.

For instance if you were writing a paper, and hadn't ran spelling/grammar
check for awhile leaving that as the first thing you need to do the next time
you start work would be a good idea. That's an easy fix that doesn't require
much thought, but gives you the immediate feedback of getting something done.

------
throw94
For me, it has been reading books. Although my reading speed is very slow
right now (hopefully it will get better with time) but i still manage to read
a book every month. So much to learn from them :)

~~~
criddell
My reading speed is slow and my _to-read_ list is long. I used to force myself
to finish every book I started but now I'll happily give up on anything that
doesn't grab me fairly quickly.

I've also been working on only adding things to my list that I actually want
to read and avoiding books that I add only because I want to have read them.

Is there a title in particular that triggered your interest in reading?

~~~
throw94
I started by reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Reading it was
such a wonderful experience that I have read 2 more books since then. (Started
reading 3 months ago)

------
spacemanmatt
Yoga. I sit at a desk all day. I've been in a couple car wrecks. I had to do
something about my back. Now I have a regular practice and I regret not
picking it up MUCH earlier in my life.

------
maxaf
I've only recently started to check in my dotfiles.

------
Grue3
Using Bitbucket's issue tracker to track bugs/features in my personal
projects. Previously I just used a todo text file, but there are a lot of
advantages to have it online.

Riding a bike.

Learning how to draw (I was trying to start several times, but always give up
at some point).

------
jraines
Using source control, specifically git. Programmed for a couple years before I
got on board.

------
awt
Learning to read Ancient Greek. The insights into language and culture just
keep coming...

~~~
arcanus
What have you been reading? I loved Anabasis (not too tough for a beginner
like me), trying to read Ethics.

~~~
awt
I'm still mostly working through my textbook, but I've read part of an
interlinear translation of the Anabasis. I'm reading through parts of Plato's
Apology with a group. My goal is to be able to read at least one of
Aristotle's books, and perhaps Herodotus and Homer.

Regarding Anabasis, the scene in which the 10000 put on a show for the Queen
of Kilikia (who is rumored to be sleeping with Cyrus), ending it with a fake
charge scattering the onlookers struck me as profoundly humorous.

------
samblr
Cooking: a life skill which I regretfully learnt very late but its something
which I completely immerse-and-enjoy myself now.

------
ecliptik
Using GPG more. After all the recent email leaks and privacy breaches,
encryption and verification of plaintext communications is more vital than
ever. If only it didn't have such a steep learning curve.

~~~
cookiecaper
I spent about 2 years harping on everyone I know to use this, including
clients, bosses, friends, colleagues, and everyone else I would send more than
2 or 3 emails. I was only able to get a couple of people using it (and that
was probably mostly because they were worried I would be able to get them
fired if they didn't keep me happy). I eventually gave up.

Crypto is super important, but it's way too hard to get practically anyone,
even technical people, to use it. This area is ripe for disruption I think,
especially as more and more high-profile leaks get released. Someone could
sell some great, easyish-to-use crypto software and get a lot of money.

~~~
KhalilK
I have some spare Keybase invites. Drop me an email if you want. Maybe it'll
help.

------
TACIXAT
1\. Elimination diet to find out which foods make me feel horrible (quite a
few). I feel great now after a lifetime of sinus headaches and poor digestion.

2\. Programming. It's been 7 years now, but when I first started it felt like
an instant fit.

3\. Currently, Unity 3d. I've tried to write games before and always gotten
caught up doing graphics by hand. I'm doing a Udemy course on it and omg can't
believe how easy / powerful it is.

4\. Using my tax advantaged savings accounts. Why haven't I been maxing out my
401k every year? Not sure, but I am this year!

------
yodsanklai
Working/studying abroad. I had many options when I was a student and right
after graduation but for various reasons (esp. lack of confidence) I didn't
seize the opportunity.

------
personlurking
Two current answers:

\- Learning to say "no" easily

\- Leaving a bad/so-so situation sooner rather than later

_______

Two future answers:

\- planning for the future (I'm an "in the moment" type)

\- moving out of the city (and into the countryside)

------
corywright
Using an electric toothbrush. (It's the little things)

------
_RPM
Programming. Started at 19. Wish I would have started at 10.

~~~
imron
It quite possibly might have held you back.

~~~
corecoder
Why so?

~~~
imron
Language choices available at the time and/or locking in bad habits which made
sense as a 10 year old, but not so much as a 19 year old.

~~~
adjwilli
Totally agree. I started "programming" at an early age which just made me feel
like I didn't need to pay attention when I took actual CS classes. The results
were that I missed out on learning a lot of lessons the easy way (in school)
and had to learn them the hard way.

------
baccheion
I've never had one of these moments. It's just been shit my entire life, then
when it seemed as though things were about to get better, the sea of idiots
descended again and shit even more, leaving me here 6+ years later constantly
getting harassed, as I'm living with my mother, while being unemployed and low
functioning, because the harassment and torture makes it impossible for me to
think, progress, or move on.

------
cmod
Taking writing more seriously and approaching it with more rigor.

Everything and everyone interesting in my life from the past six years can be
traced directly back to writing. Jobs I've gotten, deeper relationships with
people whose work I love and respect — all tied together by words.

In my life, I can't think of a single thing that has a better return on time
in to value out. (Outside of family / children.)

------
wilburlikesmith
Mmm, charging more for my intelectual, creative and logical skills in graphic
and web design...

Now I'm losing all the way by just doing anything for any price :/

------
willempienaar
Actually learning how JavaScript works.

~~~
SparkyMcUnicorn
Do you have any recommended resources? I "know" javascript, but I feel like
there's so much more to learn.

~~~
willempienaar
"You Don't Know JS" is a great resource to start off with.

------
webkike
I wish I played street fighter earlier than college. Programming I've been
doing since fifth grade. I think that's early enough

------
drinchev
Switching from employee to freelancing had the biggest impact in my
professional life. It's not for everyone but definitely for me.

~~~
hm8
I have been thinking about doing this for a while now but don't quite know how
and where to start. Do you have some pointers? I have seen this posted a bunch
of time by various people but never really got up to asking them.

Things I am uncertain about: * Organization/Admin set-up required to get going
with me being the only person * Finding programming projects, clients * A good
hourly rate to be charged

A little about me: I have been working as a Software Engineer for a few years
now with a very good understanding of python, java, C/C++, javascript
(learning React these days), databases, bash scripts. Have some experience
with elasticsearch, big data (hadooop/hive), scala.

~~~
drinchev
My steps were :

1\. Save enough money for 3 months before I quit

2\. Start looking for freelancing projects locally by asking companies that
are looking for employees in my area to hire me as a freelancer instead of an
employee

3\. When you have 3 "yes, we can work with you on a freelance basis", I quit
the company and approach the three of them until my first working day in that
company.

I'm pretty sure these depend on your location ( I'm living in Berlin ), so you
can ask around in some freelancing meet-up how can you start.

------
ryanj20021
Getting past Excel and learning SQL and then Rails

------
calanya
The moment my girl was born. I now regret waiting so long to be a parent.

~~~
kylemuir
If you dont mind me asking: how old were you when she was born?

~~~
calanya
33.

------
chrisdbaldwin
Leaving negative people and environments behind and moving on with life.

------
byandyphillips
Getting all the junk out of my apartment.

Simplifying.

Getting a housekeeper to save time and do all the things I didn't want to.

Although it failed, letskudos.com was born.

------
mouzogu
1) Stopped reading and watching the news.

I found myself growing angrier, frustrated and confused by world events and
world events as they are portrayed by the media.

I realised so much of it simply did not concern me or was just outside my
sphere of influence. So I tuned out completely. I have no idea what is
happening around the world.

I know that wilful ignorance has it's drawbacks but I have never had as much
peace of mind.

2) Setting several alarms every night.

I usually have 3-4 alarms that go off between 1h 30m - 2h intervals every
night.

By breaking up my awareness of sleep into segments I find it so much easier to
get up in the morning feeling that I've slept for a long time.

I hated that feeling of waking up after 7hrs sleep feeling as if I've been
sleeping for no more than 10 minutes.

3) Brush my teeth whilst taking a 5 minute power walk in my bedroom.

Nice burst of exercise before going to bed and my teeth have never been whiter
:)

This falls under a host of other habit stacking things I do to combine tedious
everyday activities.

------
sebastianconcpt
1) Programming in Smalltalk in 1998 2) Having beard 3) Freelancing with
multiple tech 4) Understanding Conspicuous Signalling Theory (read Spent from
Geoffrey Miller) 5) Since I've got meditation early I'd add trying to master
lucid OBEs younger, they are uber cool. Neo mastering The Matrix kind of cool.

------
jacobkranz
For me it was psychotherapy / dealing with both my physical & mental health.

I now meditate 2x a day, run, and lift weights.

~~~
ninkendo
Any advice on how to seek it out? I'm at the point where I want to try it but
I don't know exactly what to seek out. Should I talk to a general practitioner
and get a referral? Just google some stuff and pick somebody close to me? Any
kind of "yelp for therapists"?

~~~
RandomOpinion
Your insurance may or may not require a referral and may or may not restrict
the available mental health professionals you can see, so check with them for
their policies first. No need to be shy about it; they'll see the bill after
your clinic visit anyway.

Finding a mental health professional is kind of subjective, so recommendations
are not necessarily helpful. (Do pay attention to negative ratings though.)
Even the most qualified ones can't help you if you don't "click" with them, so
you may have to shop around a little. Don't be shy about switching if a
psychiatrist or therapist isn't working for you; they're used to it.

Lastly, and this is my opinion only, if you have a teaching hospital nearby
(e.g. at your nearest major university) with mental health services, you
probably have a better chance of not getting a psychiatrist/therapist that's
incompetent. No guarantees but a better chance. (Depending on your confidence
in this thesis, it may even be worth paying out of pocket if they're not in
your insurance network. After all, what is your sanity worth?)

Good luck.

------
LukeB_UK
Switched jobs.

I was living and working in a town that's somewhat boring and not the most
inspiring. I came to the decision I needed to leave when there was a
restructure going on and I realised that I wasn't learning anything and didn't
really have anyone to learn from as well as the fact that the company wasn't
really investing in learning and progression.

I've been at my new job for just over a month now and have been learning
loads. The company actively invests in learning and personal development, with
one of the benefits being a fund to spend on that as well as them providing
training needed for my role. We've also recently been allocated some time to
spend on personal learning/development.

I now work in a city so it also got me to move out of that town and closer to
the city which has been good for my social life.

------
callesgg
Thinking about and trying to fix my posture. Sitting in a chair to much causes
something called "anterior pelvic tilt", almost everyone in the modern world
suffers from it more or less.

Writing a diary with the stuff that i have on my mind, it is easy to forget
who you where before, and why you changed.

~~~
gobengo
I noticed this in myself but never knew the name for it! Thanks

------
Dowwie
I buy refurb/secondhand high quality items. None of them have failed me. When
you don't buy retail you can often negotiate, especially when you're not
dealing with commercial/institutional sellers. Frugal living without
compromising quality is art and science. I love it!

------
LilyV219
Lost my job in technical recruiting.... I've always wanted to travel and live
and work round the world... Seemed a pipe dream with costs, family
obligations, financial obligations holding me home.... My daughter said to me,
"Mom, you can look for a job and network from anywhere in the world... Where
do youngest to be? Just go there and work from there!"

Holy cow, could I actually do that?!

I began to change my limiting thinking, and tweaked the way and with whom I
was networking with.... I began telling people what I desired in the way of
working and living abroad... Low and behold I am recruited for a position
abroad!

The company sponsors my visa and I leave in 2 weeks!!

My aha moment came with the encouragement from a lived in line to follow my
dream, my desire, with the thought that it all was actually possible... And it
is!!

------
chrisabrams
Leave Texas and go to a real tech hub.

~~~
ScaryRacoon
Where did you end up going?

------
viggity
Platform as a Service. (specifically I use Azure App Services, but AWS Lambda
has got to be similar). Not having to worry about managing a VM is such a
delight. I had that nitty gritty bullshit. Now I just deploy my code and I can
focus on features.

------
rocqua
Stop working at home (where my PC / funbox is a massive abstraction).

Start reading slashdot and later hackernews. I am still a CS student, these
news sites allow me insight into the world after college, allowing me to plan
and visualize my future better.

------
olegp
Tracking the amount of time I spend on various tasks at work. Here's a blog
post I helped edit which explains the benefits in detail:
[https://blog.toughbyte.com/how-to-boost-productivity-with-
ti...](https://blog.toughbyte.com/how-to-boost-productivity-with-time-
tracking-eea346df29db)

Another one is tracking personal expenses. I was looking for a solution for a
while and even built something of my own, but in the end ended up using YNAB
([https://www.youneedabudget.com/](https://www.youneedabudget.com/)) which I
found out about in an HN comment.

------
Axsuul
1) Fixing my worsening health symptoms which started almost 3 years ago. It
had gotten to a point where I could no longer think or be productive for the
past 6 months. After spending every waking moment researching every ailment
that matched my symptoms, I eventually discovered I had Hashimoto's and had
been hypothyroid for a really long time. This was after making the rounds with
several specialists who had no idea what was wrong with me. My recommendation
is to take charge of your health and be the best expert of your body. Being
healthy is extremely important not just for the obvious reasons, but because
everything stems from it. Don't take your health for granted, ever.

2) Learning German which taught me important memorization techniques to carry
over to other areas of my life.

3) Stretching & flexibility exercises. I've been a heavy weightlifter ever
since college but only began to realize recently that lifting weights can have
detrimental effects on your body if that's the only thing you do. You'll
become less flexible and more rigid which makes you more prone to injury.
Especially with our profession where we're propped on a chair for most of the
day, it's important to make sure our bodies can achieve a full range of motion
to prevent any skeletal or joint issues down the road.

4) Cooking and eating a ketogenic diet. I'm much more satiated and rarely go
hungry throughout the day. Cooking was extremely daunting at first but not so
much when you really start doing it. It's an essential skill to have, ensures
you're eating whole foods and putting nothing processed in your body, and gets
you invites to more potlucks.

5) Writing everything down. My Evernote has exploded within the last year. I
keep everything there and it's saved my ass countless times. You'll thank
yourself later when you get into the habit of writing everything down.

That's all I can think of right now. What's exciting to me after having wrote
this is that all these things were realized only within the last year or so.
It's fascinating how much we can improve in such a short amount of time as
long as we are consistent with always trying to grow and learn.

------
Rannath
1) TDD, I get SOO much more done, & with a greater level of confidence. 2)
Exercise, I'm not tired all the time anymore. I'm losing weight. I'm happier.
I no longer have an all comsuming need to feast on human flesh.

~~~
andai
Do you mean that exercising led to you becoming vegetarian or cutting down
meat?

Edit: lol looks like I should get some sleep

------
acron0
Clojure (LISPs, more generally)

~~~
dr_win
me too

------
cperciva
Becoming a cyborg. (Yes, seriously. But not relevant to 99% of the people
here.)

~~~
jbpetersen
Cochlear implant or something more exotic?

~~~
cperciva
Insulin pump.

------
rdtsc
Switch jobs. Was in the same company for 8 years. Learned everything they had
there, liked everyone. But decided try to interview a few places, due to my
buddy nagging me, so gets some credit. But once I started, got some good
offers, a good raise and now like the new position. Thinking back, I should
have done in maybe 3 or so years back.

It is just that there is so much stuff happening in technology that it is
almost a disservice to yourself (if your goal is to explore and learn new
things) to always just stay in one place. It also happens to be one of the
best way to get a good salary bump.

------
tammer
Becoming "paleo" (I prefer the term 'evidence-based diet'). Transformed my
body composition, energy levels, and overall health. Introduced to it through
the wonderful nomnompaleo app.

------
palakz
UI/UX Design.

I started designing as a hobby. Just started making designs focused on
superheroes, comics, etc. A year later, one of cousin's said he is starting a
new project, for which he needs some designs. I randomly started designing it.
The UI/UX of that app ended up so well that he's still using the same design
concept for the app, and since then I have been learning more and more about
UI/UX and I have completed more than 7-8 UI/UX design projects till now. :)

------
patatino
Reading a book about willpower and how it works in the brain.

Two years ago I started running once a week, I hated it! But I knew it's a
good form of exercise. Now I'm running 3 times a week and I love it! I'd like
to run 5 times a week. I could just push myself to do it for a time period but
I know right now this would eat away to much of my willpower and I'm ok with
that. I know I'm gonna run 5 times a week in a year or two.

I learned how I can increase my willpower but it takes time.

------
isuckatcoding
Be faithful or at least try to have an intellectual discourse on religion
without devolving into bigotry. Even just learning about another religion can
be so enlightening.

------
tdicola
Exercise, even simple stuff that doesn't require going to a gym or expensive
equipment like pushups and squats. I started doing those every day since the
start of this year and I can't believe how much it has improved my fitness and
health. Squats in particular gave me a lot more stamina with running, climbing
stairs, etc. It takes less than 10 minutes a day to do a few of each (I worked
up to doing 50 of each) too.

------
YZF
Learn to play the Guitar or I guess any musical instrument. I've been playing
for the last 1.5 years and it's a great way to relax, clear you mind, prove to
yourself that you're capable of taking on new things. It's a lot of fun too!

EDIT: The actual "why didn't I do this sooner" moment comes after a month or
so where you get fast enough with chord changes that you can actually play
something :)

------
ScaryRacoon
OP asks for moments, gets things people started doing with no description of
the moment.

For me it is taking extensive notes. Over the past year I started pay
attention to the mannerisms, behavior, and personalities of the people whose
position I wanted to take in the near future. One commonality among almost all
of them: they take notes during almost every conversation and write notes
throughout the day as they think of things.

------
dorfsmay
Using vim, and learning it in depth.

I'm an old AIX/HP-UX hand, and stuck to vi and clones because I was afraid I'd
start using a vim-only command that wouldn't work on vi.

Then Unicode became more and more prevalent and vi and it's clones didn't
support it well + I started doing mainly Linux, so I switched to vim. Then
finally I started learning all the vim-specific extras... Yeah totally wish I
started earlier!

------
dylanz
Squat, Deadlift, Press and Bench a lot of heavy weight. OLY lifts as well.
It's the only thing that's helped deal with stress.

------
iaci
Observing the world: Before I just wanted to apply models to the world and
morale. Now, I just want to observe, if l like something, I continue else I
try to stop If possible.

Journaling/writing: Writing is really usefull. It helps: remembering (the
brain just distord) taking things out of your head to take some distance.

Don't believing in truth: There is no such thing as that.

And posting on HM! :)

------
danm07
Having a much needed conversation with my cofounder. There wasn't a fit, and
this was in the back of my mind very early on, but didn't bring it up. When
circumstance brought pressure on the company, I had to ask his resignation and
take over his job when I wasn't ready.

He was a very good friend of mine, but my negligence definitely took its toll.

------
ThrustVectoring
Blues dancing. It's a partnered social dance that focuses on musicality,
improvisation, connection, and quality of movement. It's done wonders for my
confidence and my sense of being "embodied". Like, I know I used to walk
around without ever noticing where my hips are, and that just seems really
really weird now.

------
eager_noob
About six months back I started at my first job after being unemployed for the
last six years and weirdly enough did not experience any “why didn't I start
doing this sooner” feeling. Guess a really supportive family and the knowledge
that i would be inevitably starting at a job some day made the transition
almost a non event.

------
jondubois
I don't think I've ever had such a moment. I've never had anything in my life
work out so unexpectedly well that this thought would have entered my mind.

I am rarely surprised by the consequences of my decisions... When I am
surprised it's usually not in a good way. I guess that makes me an optimist?
I'm a cynical optimist.

------
squozzer
1) Playing guitar. 2) Moving to a nicer part of town, closer to my work. 3)
Re-connecting with old school chums thru FB.

------
kylestlb
1) Yoga (or just breathing better). If you're a shallow breather your entire
life this will change so much. 2) Stronger-typed javascript. I can't imagine
not using Typescript at this point. I would lose so much productivity without
the proper intellisense, among other things.

------
aldanor
Taking musicianship seriously. I started playing piano and taking classes when
I was 15 but didn't pay enough attention to it. 15 years later, I'm angry at
my past self at being so lazy and wasting time on things that are now utterly
irrelevant.

------
Anand_S
1\. Reading Good Books (One of the best habits that keeps on adding value )

2\. Meditation

3\. Exercise & Good Nutrition (Health is your greatest wealth)

4\. Sleep (Turning Off Blue light 3-4 hours before has had a very positive
impact on sleep quality and general wellness / productivity during day )

------
stuffedBelly
reading The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu.

The book was published in 2008 and I just finished reading the book a couple
of months ago. It was a wild journey into the land of science fiction. Highly
recommend if you are a fan of Asimov or Phillip K Dick.

------
atilaneves
Unit testing

------
aphextron
Definitely learning to program. I now separate my life into before and after
learning to program. It really is like becoming literate in a world of people
that can't read. It's the most powerful knowledge in existence.

------
inbetween
Getting out of a relationship with an abusive (and stunningly good looking)
woman...

------
bitwize
When I started lifting weights.

------
pvaldes
Each time I plant a fruit tree.

------
nkantar
Shameless plug:

I feel like I have those pretty often, with the most recent being yesterday:
[https://github.com/nkantar/GHT.vim](https://github.com/nkantar/GHT.vim)

------
rockwotj
Using Vim, it's really allowed me to be more efficient as a coder.

------
knocte
Earn my salary in bitcoin.

~~~
andai
How has this benefited you?

~~~
knocte
I hate dealing with banks. Plus, my holdings grow in the long-term.

------
DougN7
Charging for (optional) yearly support for my B2B software, and giving away
the first year for free to everyone. Given a decent retention rate, this makes
a huge difference down the road.

------
endlessvoid94
\- Exercise regularly

\- Introduce more technical leadership roles to my engineering team

------
jonbarker
Managing energy instead of time produces huge gains when done right.

~~~
tra3
Can you expand on this?

------
Raphmedia
Eating in the morning. Started at 25 years old. Never did before.

~~~
CroCroCro
Same here. I was never hungry. Now, for some reason, I really like breakfast
:O

------
apricot13
a fade up daylight alarm clock best £130 I've ever spent

------
teddyc
Listening to podcasts while I work. I used to be a music only person, but I
have enjoyed mixing it up lately and listening to topics/people that interest
me.

~~~
RealityVoid
Can you really listen while working? i'm having difficulty listening to
anything with words and working, I can't focus on both and I find I don't want
to miss anything.

------
lem93
Learning vim commands

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rachkovsky
Listening to non fiction audio books. Since I've started half a year ago I
have "read" over 16 books while commuting or exercising.

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ankit_m
Taking a 10 min break from everything and being quiet.

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kovek
Cold showers! My inspiration to start was Wim Hof

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hartator
Are they bad side effects to meditation? I've read a study that found out that
can trigger depression in 7% of the people.

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projektir
I'm a little bummed by how much everyone here was helped by exercise, while
for me it does little more than nothing.

~~~
tra3
What kind of regiment are you following? There's technically no "wrong" way to
exercise (if you're not getting injured) but certainly some approaches are
better at making you "fitter".

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Nicholas_C
Golf. It's a great way to be outside and get to know people. It can also be
played well into old age.

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gadders
Lifting heavy weights on 5/3/1 or Starting Strength or similar. I'd be a BEAST
by now.

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verdverm
Conquest of Mind (book), squatty potty, body bar (blue S), vim, Vimium, code
generation, quit smoking

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bemmu
Learning the Sublime Text keyboard shortcut for commenting out the current
line and other timesavers.

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zos
Reading "Moby Dick".

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prokilogram
reading hacker news.

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iLemming
\- Clojure/Clojurescript and other Lisps

\- Emacs and org-mode

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aayala
emacs org mode

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cozuya
control/command k, 1 in sublime (code folding level 1) instead of doing it
manually. duh.

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busterc
Saving money by using Ebates, Cardpool and Raise.

Not using Ebates for 15 years has certainly cost me several thousands of
dollars.

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walrus01
Running all of my own authoritative and recursive DNS on my own hardware I
own/control.

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pizza
ADHD medication, 1000%!!

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edmack
Starting a company

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cjbprime
GNU screen.

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songzme
switching from emacs to vim.

~~~
andai
could you post a bit about your experience?

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brightball
Elixir.

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maverick_iceman
Reading Atlas Shrugged. I never felt any pleasure in helping others or making
a personal sacrifice for someone else. Traditional morality of course taught
me that this is bad and so I did it anyway even though it hurt me. Worst,
other people would shame me using this to their advantage. After I read Atlas
Shrugged I realized that there is nothing wrong in how I feel and it's
perfectly okay to be selfish. Not being a doormat does wonders for one's self-
esteem.

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onecooldev24
I wish I bought a ton loads of bitcoin just a few years ago.

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simbalion
Starting my own business in I.T. I spent years struggling with unemployment
and job hunting after a decade and a half of solid real-world experience.
Starting my own company was the best thing I've ever done and I wish I'd done
it sooner.

