
Ask HN: What have been your best decisions in life? - arikr
What have been the best life [and career] decisions that you&#x27;ve made?
======
ardit33
1\. Working out regularly (3 times a week lifting weights), eating healthy,
and playing team sports (co-ed soccer and volleyball). In my 30s, and still in
the best shape I have ever been.

There was a time when I didn't work out regularly, and I have to say that a
'weak' body affects you in many way down the road. Trying to 'save time' by
skipping working out, or not doing physical activities is counter productive.
Similar to skipping sleep because you don't have time. It destroys your health
in many ways.

2\. Moving to the US as an exchange student (in high school), and living for a
year with an american family that I had never met before.

3\. Studying Computer Science

~~~
justonepost
I agree with number one. There aren’t many decisions anyone can make which are
%100 guaranteed to improve your life. That is one of them.

------
corporateslaver
Being ruthless about removing people from my life who are bringing me down, or
who have a view of me that may be accurate, but is pessimistic.

~~~
justonepost
One of mine was not worrying about what other people thought of me.

~~~
aaron-lebo
_“You 'll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how
seldom they do.” _

------
toomuchtodo
Picking the right spouse.

Edit: Picking the wrong partner can be catastrophic financially and
emotionally. Pick someone you can trust, rely on, and who compliments your
strengths and weaknesses. Be prepared to go to great lengths for them when
necessary.

~~~
thecheops
Yes, yes, and yes. I never heard this until way after I picked the wrong
partner.

------
akkartik
1\. Choosing Computer Science in a less-reputed (but still decent) college
over a different major in a better college. All credit to my dad.

2\. Coming to the US for an MS rather than doing an MBA in India (my original
plan when entering college). All credit to the cultural milieu of my undergrad
college.

3\. Paying a lawyer myself to apply for a Green Card in a more ambitious
category. All credit to my first co-founders in SV for connecting me to a good
lawyer. With hindsight I got in through a 'loophole' that was plugged soon
after.

What's common in all three: zero rational decision-making, huge influence from
others, lots of luck in happening to be congruent with broad trends in
society.

------
xander2011
Like most decisions that turned out to be good financially, it was purely by
luck.

* Buying real estate... a lot of it

* Staying out of the stock market until after 2009... then leveraging and buying a lot of stocks

* Playing inverse volatility until 2017... missed out on the VIX termination event in Feb 2018

Some things that didn’t turn out well:

* Crappy career. Had to quit after many years of training to get there due to external pressures. Fortunately the above compensated many times over.

Life isn’t perfect, but I’m lucky to be relatively healthy and living in a
safe part of the world.

~~~
Movo
Can you elaborate on the career?

~~~
xander2011
It wasn’t tech related. Highly regulated and unfortunately quite unnecessarily
politicized.

------
envoked
* My parents leaving Romania for the US (on the Greencard lottery) when I was 10. * Leaving a large company to work on a product I believed in (Airbnb 2012). * Not paying too much attention to my peers and doing what felt right: not getting a service job as a teenager and freelance coding(even when my effective hourly rate ended up being lower than working at Subway), becoming a farmhand after working as an engineer; taking a job at an art hedge fund in NYC while living in rural Washington. * Viewing money as a side product rather than a goal.

~~~
xander2011
That’s a really interesting history. I took a very traditional route. How did
you end up positioning yourself for jobs like the art hedge fund? In my
experience that would have required some amount of real life social
connections or hustling. Just curious... for my kid’s sake.

------
artmageddon
1). Marrying my wife

2). Sticking it out in CS undergrad when I was having a hard time with the
material instead of dropping out

3). Leaving shitty jobs(though I could've left sooner at each instance) for
greener pastures

4). Instead of resorting to drugs or alcohol to deal with bad times and
loneliness in my life, turning to running instead and running the Marathon des
Sables(and unrelatedly but subsequently finishing my pilot's license) which
made me believe in myself

------
kaikai
This question is far less interesting than _how_ you made those best
decisions. We make decisions constantly, and any of those have a chance to be
good or bad depending on circumstances. Just because "moving to a different
country" was great for randomPoster35 doesn't mean that moving is generally a
good idea.

My best decisions were made with a feeling of rightness. Even when it was
hard, either involving sacrifice or letting other people down, I was able to
think about them and _know_ that they were the right decisions to make. Years
later, it's obvious to me that I did the right thing in that scenario. Now
that I've learned to trust that sense, it's easier for me to make good choices
without endless hand-wringing.

------
ogoroddude
My best decision was probably (however banal that would sound) accepting
myself. After I realised (the realization is still work in progress) that I am
just who I am and nothing else, I started working on eliminating ties and
traits I didn't personally want myself but which I have developed earlier due
to some societal accepted "norm". It turned out to be rewarding - I love
living, I am becoming more and more calm with time. I am becoming more calm
with time also due to that with self-acceptance came slow and on-going
realization of that I am nothing. It may seem dreading but it is opposite.

As to why I came to this realization (someone else in the comment section said
this question is of no lesser interest) - I've been through some deaths (four
of them to date) of my relatives, which were dreadful for me, I've seen more
deaths than that too, which was dreadful for me too, I was looking how to stop
deaths from coming, in 2010 I was seeking a refuge in Abrahamic religions and
soon abandoned them because it turned out I didn't believe in any of that, in
2010 I abandoned almost all tries to explain deaths in any otherworldly or
supernatural manner, and with time, slowly, this realization came, of that it
is just how it is in this world, it is what it is. Deaths are deaths. With
that realization came some inner calm and gradual self-acceptance. Prior to
that, as a boy, I used to imagine myself this and that and since self-
acceptance came the pretending of being something practically disappeared.
Buddhism also helped in 2014, as I was close acquaitance with a guy, who
turned out to be a Buddhist so to outwit him I was reading some books on it. I
didn't accept it at all, but instead of learning how to outwit that guy I took
some clues from it, since it heavily resonated with my conclusions about that
world is just what it is. And it brought even more calm.

------
toasterlovin
1\. Marrying my wife.

2\. Not leaving her when things got hard.

3\. Having children.

4\. Learning how to program.

------
dave1619
(in no order and i might have left out some)

1\. Traveling and living overseas for over half of my twenties. Gave me a
world and multi-cultural perspective.

2\. Getting emotional healing from an abusive childhood. Gave me confidence to
pursue life from a place of healing and peace.

3\. Getting married to my wife who I share everything with, including being
work partners.

4\. Having children which has opened up a whole new aspect of wonder,
curiosity and adventure.

~~~
throw_this_one
How did you get to travel and live overseas in your twenties?

------
rabidrat
Taking a sabbatical and going to the Recurse Center
([http://recurse.com](http://recurse.com))

------
christoph
1\. Working hard through university.

2\. Picking my first job out of university based on interest rather than
money.

3\. Brushing my teeth twice a day and having a good oral hygiene routine.

4\. Travelling as much as possible.

5\. Telling awful clients to go whistle.

6\. Reducing alcohol consumption.

7\. Exercising daily.

8\. Spending more time with family.

9\. Paying mortgage off as quickly as possible.

10\. Reading HN.

------
yodsanklai
It's difficult to answer because we don't know what we the roads not taken
would have been.

For me, the best decision was to move to a foreign country. My life has been
much more exciting in so many ways. One of my regrets is that I could have
done it sooner.

------
throw62831
After missing out on Bitcoin from inertia and putting a little too much weight
on efficient markets, I resolved that next time I saw a good bet, I'd actually
buy it. That turned out to be the Ethereum presale.

------
dep_b
Moving to a different country

------
Arubis
Joining the Peace Corps; deliberately and stubbornly (though often
gracelessly) tackling the ways my upbringing had left me with lenses and
reactions that harmed me and those around me; marrying well. There’s no way to
disentangle these decisions from each other, as they’re interlinked and
support and demand each other. What they all have in common is an unceasing
demand that I be willing to reevaluate, surrender, and ultimately change my
perspective.

------
PeOe
Working out improves my life very much and is a good balance between life and
career. I go to the gym and do cross fit once a week in the park. Another good
decision was to join Zenkit (a project management tool) as COO. This tool is
amazing and I´m so proud what it became in about 1,5 years and I´m curious
what it will become in the future. It´s a lot of work but I love what I do.

------
allenrb
Ditching my smartphone.

~~~
dave1619
Do you use any phone?

~~~
allenrb
I've got an LG B470 flip phone. It's really quite a piece of crap but it does
the minimum. I've got a family and a side business, so it's not really
practical to go without (despite the temptation.)

My fondest hope is that enough people will step back from smartphones to
create a market for slightly-more-capable flip phones. At a minimum, having a
decent camera would be nice.

------
bunchesofdonald
Taking a remote job and moving to Oregon. I grew up in the mid-west and worked
for a family-run real-estate business, it took a lot to leave that
environment, but the housing crash of 2008 made it easier as it was a very
real possibility that the company would go bankrupt.

I got a remote-job and since I could live anywhere I took the opportunity to
also get away from Indiana and I haven't looked back since.

------
troydavis
Acting on the few things that I knew I’d regret if I didn’t try at some point.
For me, those were starting a company and living in different countries than I
was born in.

Getting thousands of hours of experience in something useful - vocation,
hobby, whatever - before I got out of school. I was fortunate that I still
loved it and it became a career, but even if it hadn’t, I learned what it
takes and feels like to get really good at something.

------
RickJWagner
In unspecified order:

\- Maxing out the 401k early

\- Marrying the right girl, also not marrying the wrong one

\- Ensuring (in my own religious views) my eternal salvation. This one brings
great peace of mind.

\- Doing volunteer book reviews for programming books. This has opened a great
many doors.

\- Giving up alcohol after my kids appeared

All these have brought great payoffs. I can't say I made any of these
decisions out of wisdom (most were just luck), but I am very happy with the
way they've all turned out.

~~~
vorpalhex
How did you get started doing volunteer book reviews?

------
simonsarris
Eating low carb, high fat.

Trading options and taking risks generally. Not "diversifying."

Not watching TV or owning one. I seem to have much more time than my friends
to start all kinds of projects.

Reading literature and learning to think in a literary way instead of a
rationalist way. Coming to terms generally with humans as non-rational beings
and treating them as such.

------
mehrdada
Moving to the US.

~~~
vowelless
Same here.

------
rectang
Quitting tuba.

~~~
zerostar07
sounds like there could be an interesting story behind it

------
brandonmenc
Learning to program.

Lifting, learning to count calories, healthy habits in general.

Staying out of the sun.

Moving out of the rust belt.

In preparation for moving, moving back in with my parents and getting close
with them after a period of about a half decade of taking my family for
granted.

~~~
kikowi
> Staying out of the sun

Can you elaborate? I am doing the opposite, because I am almost all the time
in the office or gym. I force myself to get as much sun as possible for the
Vitamin D and articles associated with it here on Hacker News[1].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16556732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16556732)

~~~
brandonmenc
It ages your skin. Take a vitamin D pill instead.

You can go outside without being in direct sunlight.

------
rayalez
\- Quitting my great job as a digital artist to learn web development and
build a startup.

\- Adopting a healthy lifestyle - healthy diet, daily jogging.

\- Developing a habit of listening to audiobooks every day.

------
sutee
Traveling slowly for almost two years. I tried staying at least a week in each
place and at least a month in each country. Stayed in some places like Peru
for longer (9 months total).

------
cypher543
1\. Seeing a doctor about my anxiety issues.

2\. Deciding not to pursue a career in software development. I enjoy
programming way more as a hobby that I can take a break from whenever I want.

------
Brian_K_White
Never financing or leasing a car. Never using any credit or loyalty cards.
Befriending odd people. Staying with a small/niche software company.

------
olavgg
Taking the huge step of quitting a well paid normal job as a software
developer to become a freelancer. It has been much more rewarding than I
expected.

------
realmike33
Life \- Dropping out of a for-profit college and moving from Atlanta, GA to
San Diego, CA

\- Focus on my own goals

Career \- Javascript! Javascript! Javascript! \- Starting my own company

------
Jare
Deciding as a 13yo that I would be a games developer.

~~~
f3r3nc
would you share any games you made?

~~~
Jare
Sure, you can find me here:
[http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,36...](http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,36254/)

It should also include this: [http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/nba-
inside-drive-2000/...](http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/nba-inside-
drive-2000/credits) but crediting practices in the games industry sometimes
leave a lot to be desired.

I've also done a number of social and mobile games but they are all dead now,
and were not much worth digging up anyway.

------
epberry
Sticking with a project in college out of interest, despite pressures from
family and friends to ditch it or not work as much on it.

------
benjohnson
Having more than one kid - one kid is a pain. Two kids are still a pain but
it's twice as fun. Repeat.

------
owly
Traveling all over the world... while young.

~~~
throw_this_one
Where'd you go and how?

------
kushti
If the question about business life, leaving an SV-based company. Otherwise,
marrying and having children.

------
nadezhda18
1\. Moving out of Russia (to Canada)

2\. Picking up jogging - really helped me to fight anxiety and started
thinking straight

------
himom
1\. Maintain relationships with positive winners exclusively.

2\. Pass on cushy full-time employment for something riskier

3\. Antidepressant

4\. NoFap

5\. Ovo-lacto-pesci-vegetarianism

6\. Start conversations with strangers every day, anyone and everyone. No
anxiety, no fear and no fucks given.

7\. MGTOW. j/k. Cultivating abundance so there’s little attachment and plenty
of options.

8\. Not jumping into any commitment milestone too quickly. Also, filtering
carefully and firing soon.

------
clamprecht
Living below my means, both when I was "poor" and now that I have more money.

------
tarwater11
Quitting alcohol. Going vegan. Learning a trade (programming).

------
anoncoward1234
drugs

~~~
dragosmocrii
whatever works ))

------
bec123
Moving away from a city into a quiet clean area

Travelling

------
oblib
Leaving Los Angeles.

------
minikomi
Moved to Tokyo

Bought a bike

Started bike camping

------
tytytytytytytyt
Staying sober, leaving bad relationships and jobs, helping other
people/volunteering, educating myself and getting a job that pays reasonably
well.

