
A systematic study of the advice people would give to their younger selves - EndXA
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/06/06/first-systematic-study-of-the-advice-people-would-give-to-their-younger-selves/
======
easymodex
This is a funny one. Just imagine if you do go back in time, tell your younger
self to "not marry her" and you actually don't marry her, then you may end up
in a different position like being alone or wasting your life chasing other
feel good things. Then that new you may grow up with even more regrets and
dream of being able to go back in time to tell themselves to DO marry her.

~~~
_sword
I find this comic sums up that feeling quite well:
[https://existentialcomics.com/comic/33](https://existentialcomics.com/comic/33)

~~~
nabla9
“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or
don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness,
you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the
world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman,
you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself,
you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang
yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang
yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is
the essence of all philosophy.”

­­­­– Søren Kierkegaard

~~~
Bakary
Whenever this is posted to HN commenters usually ask how you can regret
something after having hanged yourself. Or maybe it's in the split second
before the rope snaps and you lose consciousness?

~~~
cyberbanjo
He was a Christian and I think he could believe in death and regret.

------
iandanforth
I've wanted to build this as a service (for fun). Basically a sight to give
advice to yourself from two years in the past. Why two years? It's long enough
to have some perspective while retaining enough detail to be useful. The fun
bit would be that you would have to contribute your advice before you got
advice from people similar to yourself.

It would be a lot of fun to try to get basic demographics out of people giving
the advice and try to find out the best way to pair advice given with advice
seekers. Age? Some life choice your contemplating? Gender/Orientation/Race who
knows what would make advice actually useful!

Probably a terrible idea but it's fun to think about.

~~~
llamathrowaway
[https://heyfromthefuture.com/age/](https://heyfromthefuture.com/age/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18902561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18902561)

~~~
iandanforth
That's great! I'm so glad it exists!

------
axiom92
Note sure if it's taken out of context, but I always use this quote to tell
myself that I cannot make a decision that's 100% right or wrong:

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7511-i-saw-my-life-
branchin...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7511-i-saw-my-life-branching-
out-before-me-like-the)

------
EndXA
Key quote from the article:

> Participants mostly gave themselves advice around relationships (“Don’t
> marry her. Do. Not. Marry. Her.”), education (“Go to college”), selfhood
> (“Be yourself”), direction and goals (“Keep moving, keep taking chances, and
> keep bettering yourself”), and money (“Save more, spend less”). These topics
> closely match the most common topics mentioned in research on people’s
> regrets.

> Most participants said that the advice they offered was tied to a pivotal
> event in their past, such as a time they were bullied, a relationship
> breakup, or an incident involving drink or drugs, and about half the time
> they had regret for what had happened. The timing of these pivotal events
> was most commonly between age 10 and 30 (consistent with research into the
> reminiscence bump – the way that we tend to recall more autobiographical
> memories from our teens and early adulthood).

~~~
novia
> The majority of participants also said that following the advice would have
> brought their younger self closer to the kind of person they aspired to be,
> rather than making them more like their “ought self” (that is, the kind of
> person that other people or society said they should be).

This was the most important sentence for me.

~~~
GreeniFi
Me too. But it also made me wonder how you draw a line between the 2. We’re
social creatures, and to a degree our aspirations are created by social
expectations; the boundaries of who we are are fuzzy.

------
durandal1
Now I need the study that tells me whether following that advice leads to the
expected outcomes.

------
sebringj
Context is the crux of it all IMO. We try this with our kids. It doesn't work
all that well. They have to have some context or experience to understand what
the advice means as for myself, I would have a difficult time blindly acting
on advice without understanding and unfortunately, hitting a wall with your
head is a very good lesson.

~~~
xhrpost
This is the struggle is it not? While it seems like some lessons are best
learned the hard way, it also feels like a waste of time to not learn from
someone else's mistakes.

~~~
sebringj
I think so too. My father was a teacher and then a school principle. He is a
very likable fellow and had an ease with most all of his students in relating
with them and getting them to listen to what he had to say, particularly the
difficult ones others didn't like, probably his high likability factor helped
tremendously and very happy disposition. It is having that bridge or way over
to relate to others or hook them in that really allows advice or words to have
a deeper meaning in terms of sinking in knowledge or advice. Years later I've
seen fairly often students of his past recognizing him and thanking him for
things he told them. Pretty cool.

------
BurningFrog
"Spend more time on discussion forums, young Frog"!

~~~
canada_dry
Future Frog here...

You first learned about the VR startup that has replaced Facebook and LinkedIn
from an article on HN in 2020, so keep on surfing baby (p.s. go-all-in)!

------
mettamage
Advice I'd give:

\- Discipline yourself to train your musical skill between 14 and 20. It is
fine to also try to win over girls with it (I thought it was disingenuous at
the time, I was wrong).

\- If you can stick to programming, do it. Just be sure to find fun in it
while sticking to it, if not it's okay to drop it.

\- Rush through university in 3 years (bachelor and master) in business
informatics and call it a day. Do keep an active social life though and do the
honours program as well. If you can't help yourself, do an academic gap year
with very varied courses after your master.

\- For your master, you may want to consider going to another country. If you
want to work in the USA, then try to see if you can get a cheapish US master
that will allow you to quality for the H1B visa.

\- During this time, learn coding on your own, enough resources available by
now.

\- If you have issues with being social, I wrote a guide. It's attached.
You'll be fine.

\- If you feel addicted to video games, understand it's social contact that
you're after. So simply get more of a social life.

\- By doing this: your life will be nothing like mine. You'll encounter your
own set of issues which shows how gritty life really is. You'll simply have to
deal with it. Also, life could be far grittier so count your blessings!

~~~
PureParadigm
Thanks for sharing. I'd like to read your guide about being social. Did you
mean to add a link?

~~~
HNLurker2
Is there really a guide? It's all "social skills". Or whatever who am I talk?

~~~
mettamage
Let's show some things, I did not mean to add a link. It'd become a book. This
is by no means comprehensive:

1\. Giving someone a compliment almost always warrants a neutral or better
reaction back.

2\. Giving someone a compliment about their personality almost always
guarantees the person will believe that said quality is part of them.

3\. Being negative, even what you say is true, is quite likely to invite
neutral to negative feedback. I've experienced this one on HN sometimes (this
particular sentence is an example of the principle FYI).

4\. Making a joke most of the times has to do with: show A, but then you show
how you meant B and B is logically consistent. Unfortunately, it didn't help
me directly in generating jokes but it did help me in analyzing them. That
allows me to see whether my own jokes are any good.

5\. What someone finds funny says something about their personality, and most
likely also about the level of development they are at (I got this from a
child psychology book but I believe it to be true for adults as well). If
someone makes a lot of jokes about rockets, then that person probably likes to
think about rockets. If a person jokes about how prime numbers aren't actually
prime, because the only prime number is zero (just made that one up, ha!) then
such person likes to think about math and language. If someone makes racist
jokes, I immediately try to distance myself from them.

6\. BODY LANGUAGE EXISTS!!! When I learned about this (age of 16) my mind was
blown. It took a while to understand what was meant by "language" and it was
very hard to find a good perspective on interpreting it, but I did eventually.
I think my own intuition was the best perspective, because body language is
all about context and books -- in most cases -- are way too literal about the
"language" part. Some books, however, gave some good examples of how context
can change (e.g. you also need to take into account what someone says and my
meditation experience taught me you also need to take into account to what
extent people are conscious about their body language, attention to it changes
its meaning).

7\. People like more good looking people. However, there is an interaction
effect, because people also like their favorite archetypes. So my suggestion
is: become the best good looking archetype that you want to be. I'm currently
not following this advice, but my candidate list is: the intellectual, the
hipster, the musician and the consultant. These archetypes are all part of my
personality.

8\. People who exercise well, sleep well and eat well have better social
skills than people who don't. Except that there is an interesting thing that
happens when people are slightly sleep deprived (this has been studied, don't
have a source), which is also my experience. In certain conditions/situations
people have better social skills when slightly sleep deprived, their
inhibition is also lower but they're sharper than someone with alcohol.

9\. Alcohol sucks, don't use it for social skills. I've experimented a lot
with this actually. Yes, you lose inhibition but in my particular case my
common sense drops more rapidly than my lack of inhibition and anxiety is
making up for it.

10\. With some people rationality doesn't help. If it doesn't, then it is my
believe they are open to an emotional perspective. For these people, you need
to sway them by emotions and feelings. Being ultra positive always works here,
even what you say isn't true. Since these people don't care about rationality
when they have this perspective, they are turning a blind eye towards truth in
that moment. Don't fight it, level with them and just tell them that they are
amazing people and if they aren't doing anything crazy, it's all fine. If they
are, just give them a small hint of where to go, nothing too big since the
emotional perspective cares about feelings and if you overload with
information, that always feels bad.

11\. I have another guide on how to get intimate relationships :P

I could go on. All these things weren't apparent for my 16 year old self. Most
of these weren't apparent to my 20 year old self either. Some skills I only
learned after the age of 28.

~~~
HNLurker2
>11\. I have another guide on how to get intimate relationships :P

Hey man I need the part 2 for this. Just got out of a rejection (I always
thought she was into me but it was all in my head).

------
distant_hat
People can try giving similar advise to their younger nephews, nieces, etc and
see the effect. The effect would be about the same of any advise given to
their younger selves. Younger selves are excellent at ignoring advise from
older ones.

~~~
ekianjo
Yup, and advices are rarely intemporal. Some things work better in certain
contexts than others.

------
protomyth
I find it odd that they didn't have more folks in the same category as myself.
I would want to warn myself about the circumstances of the deaths of some
people I knew. A phrase such as "Make sure he doesn't get on that bus" seems a
little more important in my eyes. I suppose the warning about horrible events
would have more effect, but if limited to personal experiences it would seem
saving folks in your orbit would be more popular. Maybe its a sign of how much
safer the world has become.

~~~
kbenson
It might have to do primarily with how the question is asked. If you say "what
information about the future would you impart to your past self if given the
chance", then that opens it up to broadly changing future events. But "what
advice would you give yourself" presents it more as what would you say to
benefit yourself the most.

It's also possible that those that have had people close to them die in easily
preventable ways may think of it differently. Having someone important to you
die in a car crash is different than having them die of old age or of cancer
or some genetic disorder, which are broadly either unchangeable, unknowable of
what causes it for sure, or both.

------
WalterBright
Buy more MSFT, a lot more.

~~~
scarface74
And hold onto after it crashed around 1999 until Balmer left.

------
Syzygies
The one piece of advice a professor might have been able to give their class
in the 60's or 70's, but I could never say now: Have more sex.

~~~
hypeibole
Why couldn't you say it now?

I had the idea young people are having less sex than the generations before.

------
JohnJamesRambo
I’d mostly want to tell my younger self to invest everything I had in bitcoin.

~~~
achenatx
and dont keep it in mount gox...

------
kstenerud
If I had followed the advice I'd have to give my past self to avoid
unnecessary pain and hardship, I wouldn't be where I am today, and I wouldn't
have met my wife.

I'll take all the pain and suffering it took to get to where I am. It made me
who I am, and affected who I met, and who I kept, and how strong my
relationships are.

I wouldn't trade that for anything.

~~~
aitchnyu
That's why I would tell myself to umm... lean in. I believed my love should be
constantly high and less of a fight. I never believed relationships can
survive lows. I thought study and programming should be effortless, so I was
hard on myself when I was not smooth like an olympic gymnast. I could have
excercised harder through some aches, hangovers, insomnia etc.

------
lisper
"Buy Microsoft at the IPO." :-)

Seriously: be nicer to people. Everyone around you just as insecure and unsure
of themselves as your are. You don't need to show you're better or cleverer
than everyone else. Just smile, be friendly, and chill. And offer to help out
with the grunt work more often.

------
hyperion2010
"However scary it may seem, switch to emacs, evil mode is good enough."

"There's this thing called lisp, you should check it out."

Amusingly my younger self did actually get this advice (thanks Randall [0]),
but I did not know what to do with it at the time, other than to file it away
for exploration in the future. Only over a decade later when I finally had
enough context could I actually take action on that advice.

This is one of the reasons why I find general advice to be useless in many
cases. "You should do X" or "You should not do X" are practically useless, and
often the person already knows that they should or should not do something,
but they have no idea how to get from where they are to that imagined future.
If all you can give is advice, the best you can do is try to give advice about
the very next step so that someone can actually act on it. "Check out lisp"
should be, "go install this package, and read this book," or "here's a
professor you should take a course from." When I have gotten advice in the
form of "take a course from this person," it has always proved to be
invaluable because the first step was stupidly simple, and the rest of the
journey had a guide who had walk that way before.

0\. [https://xkcd.com/224/](https://xkcd.com/224/)

------
rdiddly
Raise your hand if you thought the first paragraph was going to end in this
somewhat more humorous way:

 _The question is an old favourite – if you could travel back in time, what
advice would you give to your younger self? Yet despite the popularity of this
thought experiment, no one has actually done it._

------
newsgremlin
My advice would be to try new things, engage and embrace them. I've found im
not the type of person that can do the same thing over and over for years,
even if it's something im supposedly good at. Finding the courage to make that
change has been the pivotal point.

------
ollifi
Tricky, I would say it's not worth it to gamble with winner takes it all type
of things. You'll never notice that you made it and actually will probably
fail.

On the other hand I would not have much respect for young person who would
actually follow this advice.

------
ianai
Here’s my contribution after listening to “how to change your mind” by Pollen.

Keep your mind open, but live in the moment. Embrace those around you who
embrace you-and go after Pamela.

------
badrabbit
It would be interesting to see how these advices change or remain the same
across cultures.

------
a0-prw
The advice I'd give to my 18 year old self is funnily enough something I knew
at the time: Kill yourself now, it's all downhill from here. 52 yrs old now
and the slope is getting steeper lol

~~~
lstamour
I know a number of folks who remarried and found happiness, and even had kids
(!) after 50-55. Life isn’t over until you decide. Engage with the world, try
new things for a time and see what sticks.

~~~
a0-prw
I have kids who are successful and seem happy. I sincerely regret ever single
sacrifice I made to get them there. I wish I could have my life again so I
could fuck it up even better :|

~~~
tuesdayrain
I hope you don't tell them that. Hearing my parents say that would change me
forever.

~~~
Bakary
"I'll tell you an anecdote that played a role in my life. I was about twenty-
two and one day I was in a terrible state. We were living in Sibiu, a city in
the provinces where I spent my whole youth, and where my father was the priest
of the city. That day only my mother and I were home.... All of a sudden I had
a fantastic fit of despair, I threw myself on the sofa and said "I can't take
it anymore." And my mother said this: "If I had known, I would have had an
abortion." That made an extraordinary impression on me. It didn't hurt me, not
at all. But later I said, "That was very important. I'm simply an accident.
Why take it all so seriously?" Because, in effect, it's all without
substance."

\- Emil Cioran, Writing at Risk: Interviews in Paris With Uncommon Writers

------
keithnz
gotta love paywalled academic papers.

~~~
K2L8M11N2
[https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/00224545.2019.1609401](https://sci-
hub.se/10.1080/00224545.2019.1609401)

