Ask HN: What did you do that has changed your life the most? - pro_sine
======
helph67
When I was 20 years old I gave up adding sugar and salt to food and drink.
This was due to current news advising the overuse of these ingredients in
commercial products. That was more than 50 years ago and I consider my giving
up sugar to be the best decision of my life!

------
sethammons
That's a hard one. It could be the kid I had at 15 (still with the same woman,
now married, and a couple more kiddos). But maybe bigger than that was finally
getting a job that allowed for disposable income at age 27, or that that same
company went public years later and I got a windfall removing all debt. But
other keystone moments include the following. As a teenager, internalizing a
proverb I read: if you can't do something about a situation, don't worry; if
you can, then do so and don't worry. Earning a full academic scholarship to
university where I took my first programming course. Taking a sales type job
that requires talking to strangers (which I also failed at, but the people
skills have been a great reward). Starting CrossFit with a very knowledgeable
coach which led me to being stronger and eating healthy (mostly the removal of
sugar). I could go on.

~~~
highhedgehog
wow, a kid at 15 is not easty. Congrats

------
dsaavy
Meditation as regularly as possible, whether it’s 3 minutes or 30 minutes.

Has helped digest conscious and subconscious thoughts, occurrences throughout
my day, and emotions. My family and friends have mentioned a noticeable change
in my personality as being much more relaxed and insightful no matter the
circumstance. That’s without them knowing I’ve been meditating consistently
for the past year.

------
drakonka
Applied for jobs I felt entirely unqualified for.

------
boring_twenties
I gave up my more or less very highly paid software development career and
moved to Utah to eat ramen noodles every day and ski 120 days a year.

All things considered I now wish I'd done that immediately as soon as I was
old enough, and never got into programming as a career. I'd almost say I wish
I'd never learned to program, except being able to write your own programs for
your own use (or fix/improve existing free software that you use heavily) is
pretty nice.

The money I've made in those ~15 years sure is nice, but it doesn't really
come close to making up for wasting the best years of my life.

~~~
throw51319
How else would you have earned money to pay for the lifestyle?

~~~
boring_twenties
Like everyone else does it, by working evenings in the service industry.

~~~
throw51319
So you can bartend on the evenings and make enough to have a comfortable life?

------
paulorlando
Made a habit of writing regularly. This was something I wanted to do for a
while but I had only sporadic output until I gave a group of readers (almost
none I personally knew) the expectation that I would email them weekly
original posts related to understanding systems. I've been doing this for over
a year now here:
[https://unintendedconsequenc.es/blog/](https://unintendedconsequenc.es/blog/)

------
Japhy_Ryder
Intermittent fasting. Vegan diet. Cycling 100 miles/week.

And yes, meditation. Meditation is key. You've got to take hold of yourself
(your mind).

------
radiokicker
Having a bedtime routine that I stick to. At 9:00 I will drink my chamomile
tea and at 9:30 I will put away my electronics and read until I fall asleep. I
have found using a red headlamp to read also helps me relax as opposed to
having a lamp illuminate my room. Blackout curtains also do wonders.

------
diehunde
Continuous learning and studying outside of work. I know being a workaholic is
not good but if you really enjoy what you do and you have big goals, getting
the discipline to learn something new every day, pays huge dividends short and
long term.

~~~
neuroticfish
>learn something new every day

Do you apply everything you learn regularly or something? I like learning new
things (by watching nature docs or the like) but it feels like I am unable to
recall what I learned a few weeks to a month down the road.

~~~
boring_twenties
I have the same problem. A couple of days ago I was about 1/3 of the way
through an interesting technical article before some of the phrasing started
to sound eerily familiar. Turns out I read the same thing about 2 years ago.

I still agree that learning something new every day is ideal, but it seems
it'd make sense to carefully structure that to focus on things you might
reasonably make use of.

------
apotatopot
Assuming you mean for the better, got a good quality mattress, a house, and a
coffee pot I can schedule. Maybe reading/writing every day, but i don't think
that's really changed much.

------
WrksOnMyMachine
Got a divorce

~~~
partisan
How so?

~~~
probinso
from another person

------
patatino
I got a kid, which pretty much changes everything.

------
cpt1138
It sounds trivial but exercise and a moderate diet affects my well being more
than anything else.

------
patrickgordon
Stopped drinking alcohol

------
mrsareen
Learnt Mindfulness

