
Evidence-based advice we've found on how to be successful in a job - robertwiblin
https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-be-successful/
======
cJ0th
Berthold Brecht once said:"The opposite of good is not evil, it's good
intention". Unfortunately, this article is filled to the brim with good
intentions.

If I could talk to my 20 year old self I would recommend this: Stay away from
the Internet as much as possible and don't look for general advice.

Most information is of little use no matter whether it's right, wrong, deep,
entertaining, scientific, religious, whatever... Many may realize that but
they continue to consume. The common trap is that most of us think there is no
downside to consuming information and this, in my humble opinion is a huge
mistake! It seems to me that the more stuff we shovel into our heads, the less
able we are to get active. There is constantly such a long queue of inputs our
brain wants to process that we have little energy left to actually develop
intentions. When intention crystallize, motivation follows and so does action.
I'd argue that people of average intelligence are not lacking success because
they miss precious advice. It's because they don't actually have intentions!
They can't allow themselves (mainly for financial oder societal reason, I
assume) to relax and wait for curiosity to kick in. Instead they have it
backwards: They hear about people who are having a career, they hear about
others forming families, they hear the news telling them how the IOT is the
future, they read up on cool stuff on wikipedia, read the biographies of
celebreties, random stuff on reddit, they read career advice .... And then,
from all that garbage, they try to deduce what to do. In most cases, that
doesn't truly work because the result is not in line with their natural
appetites and abilities.

~~~
taneq
My 16-year-old self had to catch a bus and a train to get to a reference
library in order to answer any but the most trivial questions.

My 20-year-old self got 90%+ of the information I needed to succeed from the
internet. I taught myself coding, 3D graphics, game development, rendering,
and a whole bunch of other stuff.

My present-day self still relies on the internet for a huge percentage of my
information, and you know what? Having done it both ways, it's far more
efficient and far more effective than catching a bus to the library.

Maybe you meant 'stay off Facebook'?

~~~
terminalcommand
IMHO it is not the Internet that's the problem. The constant connectivity is
killing productivity.

Every morning I used to start my day with reading HN, on the bus to school I
surfed the web. At uni, on every break I used to take out my phone and browse
some more. After school I binge-watched TV shows and surfed more. My attention
span got so divided that I couldn't concentrate watching a single episode, I
constantly switched to a browser to surf more.

I learned a lot about programming, but my personal life suffered.

I couldn't meet deadlines, couldn't study for uni (studying law).

In the end I concluded that I had developed something like an internet
addiction.

Furthermore, it wasn't just limited to internet. I stopped changing clothes,
stopped keeping my already cluttered room in a somewhat liveable standard,
stopped caring for my health, ate a lot of junk food, got hooked to TV-Shows.

Now, instead of constant short bursts of divided internet surfing, I am trying
to set out a time for surfing. And outside those hours, I go offline.

It has been a though switch, but I slowly feel that I'm getting my impulse
control back.

I recently started reading Deep Work by Cal Newport, I can recommend it to
anyone trying to get off the vicious cycle.

~~~
Robotbeat
Wow, good post!

I've also started to disconnect. I also find my productivity far higher
without the Internet. Sometimes just a notebook and a pen are more than
sufficient, and I can get some serious work done, manipulating equations,
drawing diagrams, documenting ideas, even coding!

Although here I find myself, on Hacker News....

EDIT: This might be what I find troubling about Elon Musk's Neuralink
project... I already find it very useful to disconnect from my "digital
neocortex" (i.e. social media, Google, Youtube, Wikipedia, etc) to get work
done... With a higher bandwidth connection that goes even directly to my
limbic system and produces a more compelling experience than reality itself
can... Would I just be stuck in a high tech opium den with no will to leave?

------
adamredwoods
"Much other advice is just one person’s opinion, or useless clichés."

This article is similar to just that: useless clichés. I clicked to read more
about the evidence backing up each item, but it's only in the footnotes? In
other words, the footnotes are MUCH more interesting than the article.

~~~
BenjaminTodd
If the evidence is in the footnotes (and further reading) then doesn't that
mean it's _not_ useless cliches?

~~~
ckastner
You concede yourself that some of the evidence is weak. To me, this does
reduce at least _some_ of the advice to useless clichés, and waters down the
overall claim to being "evidence-based" as a whole.

~~~
TeMPOraL
When the only evidence that's available is weak, it's still better to have
that than no evidence at all.

~~~
kolinko
As much as I like science, weak evidence can point only to further research
avenues.

Also, it's good to understand the limitations of the scientific process.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I have a feeling people think that evidence is a binary thing. It's not.
Evidence is a floating point value.

That is, you can formulate some hypothesis, and the job of evidence is to move
probability mass around. I.e. when you have hypotheses A, B and C, each piece
of evidence towards A makes you more sure of A, and less sure of B and C.

Weak evidence towards A makes you _weakly_ more sure of A, and _weakly_ less
sure of B and C. But it's still better than choosing based on a coin flip.

------
lucb1e
> The world’s ten largest urban economic regions hold only 6.5% of the world’s
> population, but account for 57% of patented innovations, 53% of the most
> cited scientists and 43% of economic output. That means the people in these
> regions are about eight times more productive than the average person.

Wow, they probably have no idea where their bananas come from. More productive
than the average person if you look at scientific output only, but science is
what improves our lives in the long run. The rest of the population does the
work that needs doing to stay alive.

~~~
apexalpha
Agree, and I'd like to add that I know at least two companies in the
Netherlands where the 'actual work' in innovation is done at big chemical
plants in the south-east of the country, but patenting and other
administrative stuff however is done at the company HQ in Amsterdam, the
capital.

This will probably be counted in their "Amsterdam-Brussels-Antwerp" statistic,
but no real-life innovation has taken place there.

The other side to this story is that non-Europeans would probably still
consider this place part of the "Amsterdam-Brussels-Antwerp" axis since it is
only 100km outside of it, while for Dutch people this is 'the other side of
the country' and thus, considered far away.

~~~
baksobulat
The "patent capital" area in NL is centered around the area where ASML and NXP
is located too. These two giants bring around the whole semiconductor market
up and make them famous for the innovation/patents

------
hedgew
The amount of low-quality, negative comments here is surprising. I read the
whole article carefully and it seems quite reasonable.

~~~
thenomad
I agree. It's remarkable - and rather depressing - that a well-meaning article
aiming to help people improve their lives, and mostly offering decent advice,
is attracting such intense dislike.

~~~
ckastner
I believe that any work that describes itself as being "evidence-based" has to
open itself, and the evidence it bases on, up to rigorous criticism.

~~~
thenomad
Oh, absolutely - I'm not talking about the comments debating the level of
evidence in the article. Those seem like absolutely fair comments, and the
author of the article is responding to them well.

------
Gustomaximus
How is this voted to second place on front page? Feels like Reddit where
people obviously vote on the headline before reading the article.

A side point form this, it would be interesting if HN/Reddit or other
platforms brought in a quality score to peoples upvotes to negate people who
do tend to upvote catchy headlines.

That or 287 people other than me found this article interesting and useful...

~~~
jtraffic
It _does_ seem a little weird how many negative comments there are. It's as if
most who read the article didn't like it, but somehow it has been upvoted like
crazy. Is a voting ring of this magnitude possible though? Maybe I just need
to believe that tons of people really like it and nothing fishy is going on.

If you loved this article and upvoted it, please tell us why.

~~~
johnfn
That would be me. I liked it because it gave easy to understand and evidence-
backed steps to improve your life.

I see a bunch of posts and comments on HN where the poster postulates (without
any research or backing) some hypothesis about how to improve your life. These
inevitably get hundreds of upvotes and never get questioned, even though n=1
is practically meaningless.

This is the complete opposite. Every step on here is discrete, concrete and
backed by study. What more do you want, exactly? And how come no one ever
calls out the n=1 case, but everyone is calling out this? What exactly is the
difference?

~~~
askafriend
> And how come no one ever calls out the n=1 case, but everyone is calling out
> this? What exactly is the difference?

The difference is in making a claim and recounting a personal experience. The
two have entirely different bars for acceptance.

~~~
johnfn
I would argue that in the amount of credence people place on each account,
there is very little difference.

------
BenjaminTodd
Hey, I'm the author of the post. Happy to take questions, and keen to hear
ideas about what else we might add.

~~~
hannob
Given that the title contains "evidence-based" I was surprised how little
evidence you offer. In many chapters only self-help books and alike are quoted
and no scientific studies.

Also... given the current state of psychology research even the points where
you refer to research are probably quite weak. E.g. the whole field of
positive psychology is... not exactly a prime example of robust evidence-based
practice.

~~~
BenjaminTodd
Hi hannob, we agree lots of the evidence is weak, and try to point that out
during the post.

We're trying to give an all-considered view of what makes sense to try, taking
into account (i) strength of evidence (ii) upside (iii) cost of trying (iv)
whether it makes sense to us, and so on.

Note that most of the self-help books we recommend are written by academic
experts in that area. We think it's usually more reasonable to go with their
overall judgment calls rather than delving into individual studies ourselves,
which are usually flawed (replication crisis etc.)

~~~
BenjaminTodd
I added a paragraph to the introduction to clarify.

------
tryitnow
This is a pretty disappointing list.

First, the items do not tend to be mutually exclusive - there's a lot of
overlap with each other. I interpret that as a sign of poor organization. It
makes the whole thing hard to follow.

Second, most of this stuff isn't remotely evidence based! Plus, there's no way
to understand the effect size even when some technique does have evidence
supporting it.

Overall, this is too much of a data dump to be helpful. The author should have
ranked ordered these items based on the cumulative evidence supporting each
one - that would have been extremely useful.

~~~
BenjaminTodd
Hey, I clarified the situation in the intro:

> In many cases, the evidence isn’t as strong as we’d like. Rather, it’s the
> best we’re aware of. We’ve tried to come to an all-considered view of what
> makes sense to try, given (i) the strength of the empirical evidence, (ii)
> whether it seems reasonable to us, (iii) the size of the potential upside,
> (iv) how widely applicable the advice is, and (v) the costs of trying. The
> details are given in the further reading we link to and the footnotes.

> We’ve put the advice roughly in order. The first items are easier and more
> widely applicable, so start with them, then move on to the more difficult
> areas later. The order is also partly based on an upcoming analysis of which
> skills are most valuable.

I agree some of the advice overlaps, but it's a little hard to avoid. Most of
the areas _are_ inter-related. I'd be interested in ideas on how to reorg.

------
theprop
One of the most important determiners of whether you're happy and satisfied in
your job is your commute time. Happiness, job satisfaction and longevity at
your job decrease significantly as your commute time extends more than 20
minutes.

~~~
atemerev
We software engineers do not need to operate heavy machinery, perform surgery,
or do anything physical at all, and we even have this fine invention called
"Skype". Why anybody in the profession has commute time greater than zero -- I
can't understand.

~~~
milkytron
Not all software engineering positions, or software engineers for that matter,
would achieve their highest productivity working from home. Some might, but
certainly not all. I think of it as more of a spectrum where the more you know
what you need to get done and how to do it on your own, the better you are
spending the day at home. And this can vary from day to day.

There are many benefits to working from home, as well as working in an office
environment, but my point is that commutes will still exist for many software
engineers for a long time.

~~~
scythe
If you're at all extroverted you're probably happier in an office. I'm not
even that extroverted but I imagine I would have left my job (my last day is
Friday) much earlier if it were entirely work-from-home: those days tend to be
more productive, and I get to smoke inside, but otherwise it's just lonely.

~~~
atemerev
I enjoy being lonely and being able to initiate communication when I want it
(and sparsely) without being interrupted.

------
rawland
BenjaminTood, thank you for this guide. It definitively paints a picture where
society is heading.

    
    
        Naturally comes the question: Where does the guide
        guide you to? To what person does it guide you?
    

Everything about this reminded me of the movie The Ticket, where the
previously truly blind main character becomes _blinded by the superficial in
his pursuit of "The Successful Life"_.

What world is this, in which every human interaction happens in background of
some kind of utility function?

In the end we all want to be happy, right? Numerous studies find, that 'the
most salient characteristics shared by students who were very happy and showed
the fewest signs of depression were "their strong ties to friends and family
and commitment to spending time with them." ("The New Science of Happiness,"
Claudia Wallis, Time Magazine, Jan. 09, 2005).' [1]

I'm very sorry to say this: sadly enough, it's not how good you perform, but
where you are born, what has the biggest impact on your career. [2]

From the About page of 80000hours:

    
    
        Our aim is to help as many people as possible lead
        high-impact careers.
    
        We do this by providing career advice for talented
        young people who want to have a social impact.
    
        Over a third of young graduates want to make a
        difference with their careers,1 but they have
        little idea what to do
    

Maybe that's the main problem here? "[Having] little idea what to do". Being
raised as sheep doesn't really teach you, how to stand for your own ideals.

And that's why I'm proud of HN. Because we are!

Sources:

[1]: [http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/science-of-
happiness/com...](http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/science-of-
happiness/communicating/)

[2]: In Germany 85% of all chairmen are emerging from the upper 3.5% (income-
wise) families [3]. This is especially remarkable as it's only a very thin
slice, which makes up basically everybody in these positions. These upper 3.5%
want you to become as high-performing as possible. Guess, why?

[3]: [https://www.amazon.de/Gestatten-Elite-
Spuren-M%C3%A4chtigen-...](https://www.amazon.de/Gestatten-Elite-
Spuren-M%C3%A4chtigen-morgen/dp/345550051X)

~~~
jonathanstrange
You nailed it. The article contains a lot of good advice but unfortunately
seems to be based on the incorrect assumption that you are either successful
in your job or unsuccessful in your job (a false dichotomy), or that you
always need to strife to be more and more successful.

Maybe they should read Heinrich Böll's _Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral_
\- _Anecdote Concerning the Lowering of Productivity_.

~~~
TeMPOraL
This criticism misses the context of the article - 80000hours doesn't publish
"how to be happy" guides, but "how to have most positive social impact on the
world with your career" guides.

The fisherman from the story may be living a happy life, but he's not exactly
helping anyone either. Which is fine as a life choice, but this guide is aimed
at people who make a different choice.

~~~
rawland

        The fisherman [is] not exactly helping anyone either.

In fact, he does: By leading through example.

And now, let's get back to work. I'm procrastinating on HN already long
enough. :-)

Thanks for your comments!

------
orasis
"Your location is important in many other ways. One survey of 20,000 people in
the US found that satisfaction with location was a major component of life
satisfaction.10

This is because where you live determines many important aspects of your life.
It determines the types of people you’ll spend time with. It determines your
day-to-day environment and commute."

So much this. I moved to a town with much higher quality people and my
happiness has taken a big positive bump.

------
henryaj
I like this a lot - a nice balance of strongly evidence-based ways of being
happier and more productive, and a summary of more anecdotal (but likely still
useful) self-help techniques. To those kvetching about the latter, I think
they're still valuable - particularly as it saves me wading through hundreds
of self-help books for the occasional gem.

------
Asdfbla
While probably not wrong, such lists about how to optimize my lifestyle make
me anxious if anything. It kinda suggests if I don't start my fitness diary,
self-improvement plan and life goal milestone list right now, I'm wasting my
time.

------
mvpu
Bah. Another listicle... although, #5 (social skills) and #6 (great people)
are good enough for me. If you surround yourself with great people, your
motivation to do great work is high. If you develop good social skills, you're
more effective working in teams. Great people + great collaboration = great
career in the long run.

------
cypher303
Honestly, if psychology studies were presented as opinion pieces I would take
them much more seriously.

------
sAbakumoff
The article does not answer the ultimate question : Why should one ever care
to be successful in a job?

~~~
profalseidol
So mega capitalists can maximize their profits.

~~~
sAbakumoff
Yeah, sounds like one of those user-stories : As a gig economy individual I
want to be successful in my job so that "mega capitalists can maximize their
profits."

------
lorenzosnap
Good article. I am unsure about point 7 "Consider changing where you live" I
accept that for some careers this might be inevitable but in a truly connected
world it's also nice to follow the opposite advise and spot opportunities
where you are

~~~
ghaff
The article actually seems pretty balanced in that respect. It acknowledges
that there are centers of gravity for some industries but, in some cases, you
can work from almost anywhere.

What I think people here sometimes don't recognize is that there are costs and
tradeoffs to location choices. Those tradeoffs aren't constant for people over
time. And there isn't a single right answer however much one needs to justify
their own decision.

------
logfromblammo
6\. Build your social network.

7\. Abandon your current social network and move to a city where you can make
better friends.

Both of those things may help generate career success individually, but
probably not both of them together, _in that order_.

~~~
coldtea
Obviously items are not ordered in the way you perform them.

And there's not much conflicting about these two pieces of advices (whether
they're good or bad).

To build the right social network for your career you might have to abandon
your current social network and go to a city where you'll meet more like
minded people, VCs, etc. This is about going where the action is, and meeting
and expanding your network of players there. Not about whether you'll keep
contact with your high school pals.

------
graycat
For the objective of the OP, my single most important piece of advice is: And
may I have the envelope please? And the nominees are, work harder, improve
your knowledge and skills relevant to the job, get noticed by the C-level
people, come in early and leave late, and play politics. And the winner is
[drum roll, please] by a wide margin

    
    
         Play politics.
    

For more, usually assume that your direct supervisor does not want you to do
more or better because that might get you promoted over him. Instead, he wants
you to do not very well. Then he can have an excuse to fire you. Then he can
argue that he has to pay your better replacement more, and then, since the
supervisor gets paid at least 15% more than his highest paid subordinate, the
supervisor gets paid more. And he is sure to hire someone, really, less good
than the one he fired. Really, what the supervisor wants as subordinates is a
lot of people who can't challenge him and, from their large number and
relatively high salaries, get him paid more.

For more, there may be some cliques; join them and appear to be loyal to them.

A lot of the advice in the OP will scare your supervisor and cause him to try
to get rid of you.

Net, play politics.

For one step more, the _politics_ you are playing is well known in the
literature of public administration, organizational behavior, and sociology
and is called _goal subordination_ where the workers _subordinate_ the goals
of the organization to their own goals.

Goal subordination is common in middle management in an organization big
enough to have several levels of management. There commonly a middle manager
wants to arrange that his position is relatively well paid and stable. To this
end he wants to build an empire of subordinates who will not challenge him.
The middle manager gets paid more because of his relatively large number of
subordinates.

In a lot of medium to large organizations, an employee who is a _star_ gets
attacked. E.g., an employee A who sells more makes the other employees look
bad, and they can retaliate by sabotaging employee A.

E.g., in a research university, never tell the others how your research is
going. Instead, say nothing until the corresponding papers are PUBLISHED --
then it is too late for the others to sabotage the research, e.g., cause you
to waste time by constantly dropping by your office to talk, putting you on
silly committees, assigning you new courses to teach where you have to do new
preparations, etc.

Net, instead of working to make the organization more successful, it is super
common to replace reality with easier to do/defend processes and to fight with
others in the company, especially just down the hall.

~~~
scryder
The problem is, this advice isn't actionable.

You're not able to control if your direct supervisor secretly wants to limit
your career advancement by doing anything except quitting.

If you're in a sales environment with public figures, if you're a star, you
can't hide that you are; it will be common knowledge and in your example, this
will mean sabotage.

While you can control for working hard, arriving early, and knowing more, you
can't really control things like your manager's goal subordination: no amount
of clique loyalty would get you past that.

In short, how does one play politics, if every example of playing politics
secretly is just "Quit your job?"

~~~
graycat
Sure it's "actionable": Don't play politics, try to do your job the best you
can, likely piss off your supervisor, and get fired. Otherwise, play along and
don't get fired.

Want to advance based on the commercial value of your own work? Sure: Be a
founder of a startup.

~~~
scryder
But saying playing politics is a good idea so that you "don't get fired" seems
to directly contradict why you said politics playing was a good idea in the
first place:

>"...[Y]our direct supervisor does not want you to do more or better because
that might get you promoted over him. Instead, he wants you to do not very
well. Then he can have an excuse to fire you..."

Which means that it's not really play along and don't get fired, it's play
along and get fired at an indeterminate time that under such a manager
probably is much sooner than later.

It seems that if your boss really fears you being promoted over him, that
implies it must be a serious possibility. Since in either case, focusing or
not focusing on politics gets you get fired (i.e, it's not actionable, or at
best futilely so), why sit and wait on the feedlot to get slaughtered and
instead focus on what you do control, getting a promotion and building the
skills/doing the things that get you closer to that?

~~~
graycat
Do well, really piss off your manager, and get fired right away. Of course, if
what you do is so good you get a lot of visibility from higher ups, then your
manager may slow your work for a year or so and then fire you. Without the
visibility, really good work can get you fired right away.

But if you play along, you have a good chance of lasting for some years before
the manager fires you to hire someone else he wants so he can have an excuse
to pay more so that he can get paid more.

So, right, can get fired either way.

Maybe a big lesson is, do things that are good AND very visible to the higher
ups. That also is _politics_.

And then the other lesson, start your own business.

In a lot of organizations, the worker bees are encouraged to believe that
their job is secure, secure enough they can get their kids through school, pay
off the house mortgage, etc. For this, the worker bees are willing to accept
less pay. But in such a company, firing people starts to convince people that
their their job is not secure and want to leave to get just the extra money,
what they are really worth.

Generally, a job in a large business organization is one heck of a poor source
of family financial security; a lot of people get lucky, but many get badly
hurt.

Generally young people should aim at owning their own business.

------
kelukelugames
I don't think the Charisma Myth is worth reading, but the first 3 tips she
gives are great.

1) Don't end your sentences on a rising inflection. Makes you sound unsure. 2)
Don't nod you heard more than once during a sentence when someone else is
speaking. Makes you look to eager. 3) Take a breath before you speak. Doing so
makes you come across as confident, prepared, thoughtful, and composed.

------
raleighm
I dislike the popular phrase "evidence-based" to describe practices/advice.
All reasoning should be evidence-based. Experience can be a source of
evidence. The results of double-blind studies require interpretation, about
which reasonable people will disagree. Many "evidence-based" findings could
correctly be viewed as "one person's opinion".

------
taurath
You know what blows in the US? If you are unemployed, its damn expensive to
get treatment for any mental health issues. If you can even get medicare, you
can get covered for basically a community counselor - the time that most
people could most benefit from the help of a psychologist or licensed
therapist is the time they can least afford it.

------
landmark3
my rule number one to be successful in a job is not to be obsessed about it

------
sqeaky
> To avoid colds and flus it’s important to vacuum yourself daily. We
> recommend Dyson.

That dog looks so happy. If only human happiness were so easy.

------
suneilp
I like this article, yet, there is this obsession with evidence that I can't
quite pinpoint and it bugs me.

------
shmerl
_> Go to Silicon Valley for technology, LA for entertainment, New York for
advertising / fashion / finance, Boston or Cambridge (UK) for science, London
for finance, and so on._

That kind of remains a cliché, but it's less relevant today.

------
jtraffic
This article is ostensibly about "how to be successful in a job". One of the
pieces of advice is "Figure out how to perform better in your job." Nice.

I have some advice about how to succeed in life: "Figure out how to perform
better in your life."

~~~
parennoob
I agree, I think that a lot of the points seem to serve only to pad the
article length and are not actionable for most people.

\- Surround yourself with great people

\- Consider changing where you live

\- Save money

\- Look for ways to become more productive

\- Figure out how to perform better in your job

\- Think better

The authors could consider cutting out points that sound like platitudes that
can be found in a standard self-help guide or magazine.

~~~
logfromblammo
And maybe also avoid putting down the endemic "think positive" advice before
proceeding to point 4, "apply positive psychology".

That tripped my hypocrisy alarm, hard.

~~~
BenjaminTodd
Yeah, the difference is that "positive psychology" is scientific field, and
they haven't discovered that "thinking positive" helps with being more
successful. I changed the title of the sub-section.

~~~
parennoob
This is a good point, and why I didn't include the positive psychology point
in my list – because it is a genuinely different thing.

------
jonathankoren
"To avoid colds and flus it’s important to vacuum yourself daily. We recommend
Dyson."

This is a joke right?

------
profalseidol
I believe understanding how the world really works is a must.

------
SteveParker60
Stopped reading after seven seconds - giant animated pop-up.

Dear websites: please please stop doing this.

~~~
BenjaminTodd
We use optinmonster, which we wanted to turn off, but their service just went
down. Really need to migrate off these guys...

~~~
wohlergehen
Also: If you're asking me to subscribe in the middle of me reading the
article, I still happily will enter my e-mail address and click subscribe, but
please, please, please do not send me to a new page then to enter more
details. I'll instantly navigate back since I actually want to read the text.

~~~
milkytron
I sincerely hope your feedback as well as the other feedback in this thread
makes it to the people that are in charge of these decisions. It's in their
best interest.

------
atemerev
Right. Take care of yourself, deal with your mental issues, start every
morning with cheap motivational yadda-yadda, improve your social skills -- and
you can live long and stay healthy, while generating more profit for your
employers and being less of a nuisance to your insurance company.

What a time to be alive!

~~~
chocolatebunny
How does one go about improving one's social skills.

~~~
eightysixfour
Unless you suffer from social anxiety, you improve your social skills just
like anything else - with intentional practice.

If you want to be better at small talk, make small talk any opportunity you
can (or become an Uber/Lyft driver, tour guide, or some other job that
requires you to use these skills). If you want to be better at flirting,
flirt. Make note of when you're practicing, try and look for social/body
language cues and make adjustments. Replay the conversation later in your head
and figure out places you can do better next time. Then try again.

~~~
zardo
>Unless you suffer from social anxiety

You do it the same way if you suffer from social anxiety. You are just forced
to practice coping with anxiety at the same time.

~~~
eightysixfour
I don't have any experience with social anxiety or treatment personally, so I
wanted to escape that portion of the discussion with what is essentially a
disclaimer. I assumed the advice would apply but wasn't sure, so thanks for
confirming that.

------
deft
Upvotes on an anti-capitalist comment on HN?!? Why I never....

To all the 'gracious employers': we are sick of working for pennies while you
peddle psychobabble to get us to work harder. The problem is our exploitation.
The end.

~~~
friedman23
I really don't understand how anyone that is sound of mind can be anti-
capitalist. Maybe critical of capitalism I can understand but being "anti-
capitalist" after looking at history probably indicates that you have some
developmental issues.

~~~
rexpop
No one is wholly anything. To express an anti-capitalist sentiment does not
make one _an_ anti-capitalist, merely critical of capitalism.

To jump from parts to wholes exclusively in the case of capitalism/history —
from "critical of capitalism" to "developmental issues" — probably indicates
that you have some developmental issues.

Nah, no it doesn't. It implies that you're circumspect of introspection into
the very reasonable path from being "critical of capitalism" to more being
concerned about the negative externalities in free markets than, for example,
armchair rocket-science or whatever hobby you engage with in the ample free
time afforded to you as a member of the coddled petit bourgeois while still
managing to ride a high horse around the subject of anti-capitalism.

You do not, of course, see why anyone would be critical of a system that has
given YOU so much, but of course to dismiss the active cynic of capitalism is
to exclude yourself from your own liberation.

Had YOU been there, you would not have been redeemed.

~~~
friedman23
I'm not going to lie to you, I didn't read your comment because it became
apparent it was mostly rambling 4 sentences in. I'm also not interested in
arguing semantics.

~~~
rexpop
If you do not grok my text, the fault lies with me. Thank you for trying.

------
yuwotm8
Piece of crap article. There's a difference between "thinking positively" and
fantasising about how good your future life is going to be.

------
thinbeige
Well written post and a smart idea to generate affiliate revs. With that
amount of Amazon links you in that article you should have a click-through of
more than 70% and a conversion on Amazon around 10%.

~~~
robertwiblin
I don't think we actually have affiliate links! :) Maybe we should...

