
Ask HN: What is the single most important decision you took in your life - howandwhy
The best decision in your life that changed your life&#x27;s trajectory, i.e that made your life more secure or financially independent or brought lots of happiness etc etc.
======
jasonkester
I hit my singularity when I realized that you can take as much time off as you
want if you are prepared to take it unpaid.

    
    
      1996: 3 weeks
      1998: 10 weeks
      1999: 4 weeks
      2000/1: 20 weeks
      2002: 6 weeks
      2003: 36 weeks
      2004: 32 weeks 
      2005-2010: ~36 weeks (9 months)/year
      2011-2015: 12 weeks
    

The work equation changed to: (how much do I need to travel for another 9
months) / (hourly rate) = (hours I need to work on this next contract).

I recently went heads down for a few years, when kid #1 was born, working as
close to a full-time gig as I can bear to sock away college savings, pay off
houses, and get my product businesses to the point where they support the
family full time. But now you can stick a little Infinity symbol at the end of
that chart.

Software is one of the few professions where you can effortlessly switch back
and forth between High Paid Professional and Dirtbag On The Beach. For months
at a time, for years on end, without harming your career or affecting your
retirement savings.

~~~
kzisme
How do you get to the point where you can easily switch between "High Paid
Professional and Dirtbag On The Beach"?

As someone just starting his career this concept is slightly foreign to me.

Any general tips?

~~~
jasonkester
Contracting was how I did it initially. That's just about getting provably
good at something so that you know you can always pick up an onsite gig with
an email or two before flying back to the 'states.

Recently, a lot more shops have opened up to remote work, so it's much easier.
You can plant yourself on that beach while still working mostly full time. And
you don't need to have built up the leverage and reputation to quickly find
work when you need it. All you need do is impress the folks you're working for
enough for them to put up with your occasional timezone switches.

I've worked with guys doing that as part of their first job out of school.

------
siquick
Building up the energy to go to a party when I had one of the worst hangovers
I've ever had in my life. Met a girl at the party and 4 months later, decided
to leave my life in England to travel for 10 months, and then moved to
Australia to be with her.

Nearly 6 years later, and I am 2 months away from having an Australia passport
and pretty much every facet of my life is better.

------
schappim
Volunteering to be the VP of the computer society.

Met an awesome guy called Christian Kent who I build a Tsunami warning widget
with.

This widget got picked up by the media which enabled me to get a Masters of
Design Science degree (a degree for which I didn't have the marks to get into
the undergrad version).

In that degree, I had excellent lecturers and we did things like strapping
accelerometers (a big box at he time, think 4 iPhone 7+ stacked on top of each
other) to mobile phones (this was all pre-iPhone). I thought my lecturers were
nuts when they said that soon this big box strapped to this chunky cell phone
would be built into the phone.

This was also where I first met the Arduino. At the time Arduino didn't have
any international distributors and it was really hard for my lecturers to buy
them.

As I always worked during university, mine of my lecturers said: "Marcus,
you're entrepreneurial, you should sell them in Australia." So to keep him
happy I did. We were Arduino's first reseller and this one product, snowballed
into nearly 18,000+ products and a multimillion dollar ecommerce company
([http://littlebirdelectronics.com](http://littlebirdelectronics.com))

------
mattbillenstein
College -- I recently did the math and figured the tuition alone for my in-
state education in Ohio was something like $22k. Doing software engineering
consulting in the valley, it's not hard to bill that in a _month_ -- granted
I've been out of college for 15 years and I have a ton of relevant experience,
but overall, for me, an education has had huge financial upside that continues
to pay off.

~~~
eb0la
22k month. Considering my tuition fees were less than $2k (that was before te
Euro) in comparison my Roi would skyrocket.

------
J_adjip
Leaving college and joining the US. Navy. I was able to travel the world,get
paid,& learned how to be a functioning adult. Im now a lead for a Alphabet X
project with decent pay.

~~~
devanshdesai
'decent pay'

------
kalid
Not going to grad school.

I've always wanted to teach, so thought I should go to grad school to be a
professor. I applied, didn't get in, decided to join the working world but
teach on my newly formed blog (betterexplained.com). It's been one of the most
satisfying and enriching parts of my life, with complete freedom about how I
want to present things, along with some measure of financial independence
(another life goal).

You never know if an event (not getting into a school) was "good" or "bad"
until years later
([http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibet/zen.html](http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibet/zen.html)).
It helped give me a sense of equanimity about events.

------
codegeek
Quitting my high paying consulting job and starting my own business. Income is
still not quite the same as I used to have but happiness level has
skyrocketed.

------
seekingcharlie
I started meditating daily.

I do it for twenty minutes every morning. It seems small because it is, but
the impact has been huge.

I genuinely feel that it's recalibrated my mind, which has resulted in me
becoming more and more focused on my health overall. I've started intermittent
fasting, keto, and I'm about to start lifting. I was never a "gym-type" so
this is quite a transition for me, but I literally imagine my body as a temple
now and I can't bear the thought of polluting it.

I attribute it all to meditation as being the catalyst. Something just clicked
and everything fell in to place. I'm more aware of my communication with
others, which has already proven very helpful at work, and I find that I can
now look at emotions as something that are just passing through me at any
given time - financially, this is helpful because I can be a bit of an impulse
spender, particularly when bored/sad/whatever.

~~~
fuqted
How do you meditate?

I took a stab at it when I was 18 (24 now) and I'd do it by essentially trying
to make myself feel pleasure. You're working out now, so a workout high is an
easy start point. Try to expand the feeling and you'll notice it in your gut
(un-incidentally, this is where your adrenals, a majority of your serotonin
and a good percentage of your dopamine is located).

If you're interested, injecting that into your routine can be a fun
experience.

------
personlurking
Getting away from everything that I know.

I was born and raised in the States so it was all I knew about the world. Now
that I've lived abroad for several years, in different countries, I don't know
when or if I'll ever return. It's too interesting to be confronted with
new/different experiences, on a regular basis, to want to go back to something
I know so well.

There's a world map on my wall currently, with all the flags and countries
listed underneath it. The other day I counted how many of those countries I
know now (13) vs how many more there are to get to know (183), I feel like
I've barely seen anything. Now if I could only earn more, that world map would
look a lot smaller.

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andrei_says_
To stop believing the thoughts that go through my mind and to stop calling
them "mine." Which is correlated with the choice to spend time focusing on
non-thinking activities.

~~~
schappim
tell me more

------
AlexOrtiz201
Reading Psycho-cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.

------
NetStrikeForce
Moving country.

------
malux85
Stop trying to please everyone

