
Ask HN:  What advice messed up your life? - amichail
This could be advice from anyone including your parents, teachers/professors, friends, etc.
======
jdietrich
Never, never, not in a million years, listen to a single word of advice
uttered by someone who isn't happy with their life. _They have absolutely
nothing to teach you._ This is strong stuff, granted, but I think it is
tremendously important.

Every single piece of bad advice I have ever received was from someone who
didn't like their life. If you're unhappy, you have two basic options. You can
do something to make yourself happier, or you can rationalise a reason why
happiness isn't possible. The former is generally a steady upward slog. The
latter is like quicksand - the longer you're there, the more solidly you
become stuck.

All the bad career advice I got was from people who didn't like their job.
Some believed that jobs were just inherently unpleasant, so you might as well
go for the unpleasantness that pays the most and gives the best pension. Some
believed that good jobs were just inaccessible for 'the likes of us', so
there's no point getting you hopes up. Some were so uncertain of their
employability that they took the first job offered to them and never dared do
anything to jeopardise it. I heard rationalisations dressed up as philosophy,
as ethics, as macroeconomics, but they were rationalisations all the same.

Learning from the mistakes of others is useful and productive, but an unhappy
person can never provide any insight into how to be happy. Either they don't
know what would make them happy, or worse, they do know but won't do it. Never
underestimate how hard someone will work to rationalise why they just can't go
back to college or start their own business or visit Europe or leave their
awful wife.

When seeking advice, ignore status, intelligence and experience. Seek out the
happy people, they're the only people who can help you.

~~~
joelmichael
I completely and profoundly disagree. Why do you think many great
philosophers, intellectuals, and achievers have struggled with depression?
Because they made bad decisions? There are plenty of idiots dispensing awful
advice while wearing a smile on their face, as well. If you want to feel good,
talk to a happy person that will tell you what you want to hear. If you want
the truth, talk to a thinker.

~~~
elptacek
There's a difference between being "unhappy with life" and being "unhappy with
your life." Maybe folks who style themselves as philosophers and intellectuals
are incapable of making this delineation -- or that we, reading their
writings, do not see them as having done so. Time, cultural shifts, language..
these things are all dense filters.

You will gain something by listening to anyone. "It is the mark of an educated
mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." And even though
THAT advice is thousands of years old, we are nothing to each other if we
cannot learn vicariously from shared experience.

------
Wilduck
"You're smart." It took me five years of coasting on that presumption before I
realized that being "smart" isn't nearly enough. I'm still working (after a
few more years) to develop the habits that would have come from hearing
"you're a hard worker."

~~~
Vivtek
Man, I have to second that one. Growing up smart in a small town is great
until you leave - which is inevitable.

~~~
pjscott
The internet really helps with that, by expanding your world to include some
people who are just dazzlingly brilliant, and remind you how far you have to
go. This guy, for example:

<http://blog.sigfpe.com/>

The nice thing about this kind of ego-shrinking is that it's combined with
inspiration to do something about it, rather than just feeling deflated.
There's so much interesting stuff out there.

------
kadavy
_"You should buy a house - it's the best investment you can make!"_ This was
the advice I was given _countless_ times when I lived in Nebraska in the early
00's, at my first job out of college. Thank God I didn't listen.

It just didn't make any sense: I was 23 years old, had plenty of talent, and
could't wait to get out of Nebraska, but I was supposed to buy a house? I
couldn't think of a worse way to spend my money, time, and freedom.

Instead of spending my evenings fixing up my "house," I was blogging and
learning to code. Instead of spending my money on a mortgage and property
taxes, I bought GOOG & AAPL.

After a few years, a startup in Silicon Valley found me, liked my blog, and
moved me out to California. Once I was done working for other people, I had
enough of a stock portfolio to fund starting my own business.

If I had followed that advice, I would still be in Nebraska, would owe more
than my house would be worth, and would hate my job/life.

"The best investment you can make" is always in yourself.

~~~
evgeny0
+1 I think many people like houses as investments because they FEEL so "real"
and tangible - you can touch them! Feelings are not a good way to decide what
to invest in, however.

~~~
syllogism
People also like houses because they've seen them go up all their life. In
their anecdotal experience, it was the best investment. But the fact that
house prices rocketed up in their lifetime is exactly the problem! People
think it's a good investment for precisely the reason it's a terrible
investment!

The property bubble in Australia hasn't burst yet, so I'm still listening to
this. It's painful. Sometimes I find it hard not to advise people to sell
their houses now...

------
Jach
I'm not exactly sure how to word it, and I'm not aware of a single source who
advised me on it, but it seems like there's a pervasive feeling in society
that "If I want to learn something, I need a teacher." I outgrew this mental
model around 14, and now in college I feel so much further ahead of many of my
peers who are lucky to have taken a HS programming course once before choosing
a programming degree. I wish I had outgrown it much earlier, I feel like there
was a lot of lost potential in my earlier years that I wasted because I had no
interest in teaching myself things. Who knows how devastating this "cultural
advice(?)" is to people who still haven't outgrown it.

~~~
rudd
The truth isn't that you don't need a teacher. You may be able to learn
everything from a book or solitary practice, like yourself. But others
probably can do that sometimes, may sometimes need a teacher, may sometimes
need to discuss with peers, etc. And I don't mean that some people are visual
learners, or readers, etc. I mean that people learn different topics in
different ways, on different days, with different contexts, etc.

I think the cultural norm _should_ be that if one way of learning isn't
working for you, try another way. Practice, read it yourself, ask a friend for
help, get a tutor, whatever you need.

~~~
Jach
Absolutely, I'm not saying teachers are never useful or needed. I'd much
rather have a conversation with someone familiar with a large codebase to get
a feel for it than diving in and creating assumptions. But the bad advice is
that a teacher of some form is essential, and that's wrong-headed, and it
paralyzes people when asked instead to not just solve a well-rehearsed
problem, but actually to discover the problem that needs solving.

------
hackerdude
In 1987 or 88, when I was a teenager, my parents, noting my emerging passion
for coding, tried to sign me up for a Explorer Scout "post" whose focus was
programming.

This should have been good, but I came back from the first meeting not wanting
to go back. I just didn't click with the group, and the language/environment
they were using (Fortran on an IBM System/3x0 variant, I think) were of no
interest to me.

This upset my father, in particular, because he was convinced that the
programming I was doing in my bedroom (C, on a Commodore Amiga) was of no
value. Programming a personal computer was fine for a kid, but making a career
in software meant doing "serious" work, which to my (very non-tech) parents,
meant programming IBM mainframes.

In retrospect, their career advice was about as bad as it could have been. I
was learning exactly what I should have been learning. I was completely right
to ignore them and continue doing what I was doing.

Except I could never shake the idea of "serious" vs. "not serious" software
development. So while I continued to learn C, then learned C++, when I
finished college in the mid-90s I went into a "serious" industry . Despite
living within walking distance of Netscape's old headquarters, I completely
missed out on the dot-com era, justifying it by telling myself that I was
doing "serious" work. And while I've never been unemployed, until this year, I
can't say I ever did anything remotely notable, or fun, either.

And worse of all: it became obvious within the last 3-4 years that my industry
was a career dead-end. If I stuck with it, I'd eventually be one of those
stereotypical unemployed, and unemployable, 40-something developers.

But there is a silver lining: over the last couple of years I started playing
around with some new technologies and ended up reinventing myself. Earlier
this year, I quit my old job and am now working for a startup that's doing
stuff that's nowhere near my Dad's old idea of "serious". But I've treated my
new job seriously, working harder than at any time in my career. And I'm
happier now than I've been in nearly a decade.

------
chegra
"Quit your job and start a company" - Yep, that totally didn't work out as I
had hoped. Stuff that are easy to do when there is no pressure suddenly become
impossible. Thinking about it as walking on a board one foot wide on the
ground, easy right. Now, put that board one thousand foot up in the air now
try walking on it, not so easy now that your life depends on it. For some
bootstrapping after your normal work hours is a better path to startup.

"Change the system from the inside" - If you are apart of a system that
encourages physical and mental abuse of its members, don't try to change it,
leave. Systems include: Fraternity, Brotherhoods, Cults, Gangs, Churches,
Country, Jobs and the like. In general don't try to change systems, just move
to a better one.

~~~
spirulina
Amen to that.

------
geoffc
In the early 80's at Rice University my academic advisor steered me from
computer science which I enjoyed (APL rocked!) to chemical engineering because
"computers will be programming themselves in 20 years and comp sci isn't real
engineering anyways". I hated chem eng but after a decade of detours final
came back to coding. I didn't mind the detours but it was spectacularly bad
advice and I was dumb enough to take it.

------
Almaviva
Variations of "you'll just meet someone" and "dating will get easier in your
30s" and "the important thing is you do well in school, and everything else
will follow". Fuck that. Someone should have shaken the shit out of me when I
was 18, forced me to go to a school with a normal gender ratio, and gotten me
to strike while the iron was still hot while I still had some sexual
attraction to women, and never take for granted any time a woman is vaguely
interested.

~~~
orangecat
Right there with you. My life would probably be much better had I spent more
(well, any) time drinking and partying in high school and college. The
traditional advice to be responsible and avoid peer pressure is correct for
the majority of the population, but geeky introverts need to develop social
skills much more than we need to incrementally improve our GPAs.

 _"dating will get easier in your 30s"_

Supposedly this really is true for men. Not for me yet.

~~~
Almaviva
> Supposedly this really is true for men.

This is not just untrue for me, but dramatic and stark in a way that has
surprised me a lot. I have some really awkward hair loss and I get mistaken
for a college student at age 34, and that doesn't help. To a couple orders of
approximation, women now have absolutely and universally no sexual interest in
me, and this just wasn't true in my 20s. (This is despite me having more money
now and being lot more sure of myself, more comfortable with people, less shy,
and in better physical shape.)

------
kabdib
Close call: My dad (a college prof) saying to me (when I was 17) that
computers were a dead end and that I should do something else.

I ignored his advice. I've had a fantastic career and shipped a bunch of
different products.

30 years later, he apologized to me.

~~~
po
When people ask me about "computers" I often remind them that it's the only
skill that will allow you to work in just about any industry. Art, hard
science, medicine, whatever...

If I were a blacksmith in a mediaeval village I would make sure my kids knew
that they were tool makers, not blacksmiths. People will always need tools
weather they are made in a forge or a factory.

------
johnrob
It didn't mess up my life, but when I was in high school the conventional
wisdom was that being well rounded helped you get into good colleges. I spent
a lot of time playing team sports and the saxophone; neither of those are
hobbies of mine today. I wish I had spent some of that time doing something
that would still be relevant to me today, like programming (there are a LOT of
successful founders that started programming in their early teens; I didn't
start until college).

~~~
delano
Starting early is not a requisite for success. I started programming when I
was 19 or 20 (not that I'm necessarily a successful founder but I have found
some measure of success during my IT career).

Your knowledge in various domains likely helps you in ways that aren't
immediately apparent. (Team sports, for example, are great for health but also
for social skills.)

~~~
johnrob
Starting early certainly isn't a requisite, but it can be a pretty big
advantage in most fields.

~~~
nostrademons
The big advantage is that you can get to your mid-20s with 10 years of
experience and lots of practice, and then be mentally ready without having the
commitments of a house, wife, kids, mortgage, etc. tying you down. You can get
those same advantages by delaying dating & childbirth until later in life,
although then you sacrifice in that your kids may never know their
grandparents.

~~~
timr
When it comes to software, I don't think starting age matters that much,
except perhaps on the margins. The field changes too quickly for amateur
technical experience from 10+ years ago to have much of an impact on quality.
The kind of experience that ages well is the kind that you can't easily get as
a teenager with a Linux install.

Also, every time I interview someone, I ask them how they got into
programming. So far, there's been no strong correlation between quality and
years of experience. The people who started programming in elementary school
are just as likely to be crappy as those who didn't start until college.

The strongest predictor I've seen for engineer quality is college GPA. People
who work hard and get things done also tend to get good grades.

------
iamwil
"It'll just happen when you least expect it."

It's just something people say to console, not actually anything that's
remotely useful or true. Magic never happens on its own. You have to go out
there and make it happen.

~~~
j_baker
I'm honestly not sure I'm understanding you properly, but if I am, this is
true _up to a point_. We like to believe in a world where everyone's results
are directly correlated with how much work they've done, but that's just as
much a fantasy as it is to believe that all you have to do is sit around and
wait for the right opportunity to magically appear.

I hate to break it to you, but the most successful people in society usually
got there not only from hard work but from being in the right place at the
right time.

~~~
Xurinos
_I hate to break it to you, but the most successful people in society usually
got there not only from hard work but from being in the right place at the
right time._

According to studies on "luck", one key is to be in a LOT of places. It
increases your chance of being in some right place at some right time. Another
key is a positive attitude, of seeing opportunities and taking advantage of
them.

So it is difficult to tell when someone's behavior (work) causes a success
versus when it truly is a lucky break.

~~~
syllogism
The best way I've heard this described is, you've got to maximise your luck
surface area.

------
petercooper
I wouldn't go _quite_ as far as "messed up" but between 2003-2007 I was
frequently hassled by people to "buy a house" because it "never goes down
(much) in value."

I argued that that was a nonsensical claim, although over the previous 30
years it was pretty much true (the UK dip in the early 1990s was quite short
and localized). In mid 2007 I noticed prices continuing to go up and up and
bit the bullet. Naturally, I exchanged contracts the very month before prices
started to go down. Out of principle, I'm stuck with this house until it's
worth more than I paid for it ;-)

~~~
sagarm
Your obligations are spelled out in the contract, and defaulting is (normally)
a legitimate course of action.

The bank and you made a mutually beneficial contract: the bank loans you
money, and in return you promise to give them back their money plus interest
or your collateral. If you've elected to assign a moral value to one of your
options, it can only hurt you.

I've never done this myself, so definitely make sure you know what you're
getting into.

~~~
petercooper
That is not true in the UK (or much of the world). Indeed, people here are
typically shocked to learn how flimsy US mortgages are, though I'm aware of
abandonment as an option there (and I think it's totally crazy that they allow
it - it's not at all beneficial for them to make a loss due to falling house
prices).

You can, of course, default but if they sell your property for less than the
outstanding amount, you're still on the line for the difference and can be
bankrupted over it. Hardly a moral choice when so much of your life can be
disturbed over it.

The "principle" I was referring to was not "not defaulting", btw, but not
making a loss. I could sell, move, and take the loss, but I refuse,
considering it'd put me in the tiny percentage of home owners who've ever made
a loss. Sunk cost fallacy, sure, but I don't _need_ to move yet, luckily.

------
mduvall
Everybody in college pretends to be not working hard as they like to admit,
thus the advice that comes from colleagues along the lines of "don't do the
homework, it's really a waste of time" when everybody is actually doing it,
could screw you over. It didn't mess up my life per se, but definitely had an
impact on my grades when I was a naive freshman.

~~~
nostrademons
It's funny, all the advice I had from upperclassmen when I started college was
"do your homework and go to class", and I did neither, and I don't regret it
at all. Yes, it hurt my grades. However, I've found that my grades haven't
mattered at all.

~~~
hackerblues
Given grades are correlated with having understood the material, I assume the
implication is that the material you might have learned but didn't hasn't been
at all relevant.

~~~
nostrademons
It's more that understanding the material is a necessary but not sufficient
condition for getting good grades. It's quite possible to understand all the
material and still get bad grades.

------
rfrey
Worst advice for me was "don't let any doors close", "keep your options open",
and variations on that theme. Did a lot of damage because it sounds so
_reasonable_ , yet the net effect is to prevent or forestall commitment.

------
tiffani
"Watch your mouth." and "Wait your turn." Perhaps, it's something girls are
harassed about more than guys, but until I stopped following that "advice"
(early college), things were quite mediocre for me.

~~~
cubicle67
Perhaps it's time for some Harry Enfield
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjxY9rZwNGU&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjxY9rZwNGU&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

------
ora600
"You should be a DBA, its a good career for a woman".

Even though DBAs have more flexible hours, I wouldn't recommend a job with a
pager to my worse enemies.

10 years later and I'm still trying to come up with a good way to get rid of
it.

~~~
tomjen3
Loose it in a cup of tea.

It kills electronics very well, and the tea taste a little better for it.

------
groaner
I learned to resist peer pressure and defer gratification early on. Sound
advice, except I followed it to an extreme. Now I dress like a slob and have
no motivation in life, and I don't even care.

------
starpilot
"Happiness comes from achieving goals"

I achieved plenty, but realized late in college that constantly studying was a
defense mechanism for depression and loneliness. It's my biggest college
regret. I even think that if I _had_ studied less and spent more time getting
to know housemates and classmates, I would have been happier and more relaxed,
leading to higher grades. Sharing life with others is a reward in itself
though, which took me a while to understand.

------
etherael
That investing time and effort into the skills necessary to build things with
technology is a waste because within a couple of years it will all be
outsourced to third world countries and there will be no jobs left in this
area for people in first world countries. I should develop my interpersonal
skills, design and creative arts ability with a view to becoming a translator
between large corporate insensibility and those that will have to actually get
things done for them in the future in aforementioned third world countries.

This was not _100%_ terrible advice, because it did make me actually look
outside the sphere of science and technology into areas I was before utterly
uninterested in and considered to be faintly grimy. However in retrospect the
premise is utterly flawed and there would have been much, much better ways to
expand my interpersonal skills without feeling guilty about being passionate
about technology and actually getting things done with it myself.

I got this advice in 2002. As long as I actually considered it useful, my life
has been worse, as soon as I gave up on it, my life immediately got
_immensely_ better.

~~~
aikinai
I don't remember if anyone in particular gave me this advice, but it was
definitely a prevailing notion around 2002 and it's probably the biggest
reason I didn't study computer science in university.

I didn't give up on technology entirely, but studied nanotech instead because
I thought that was the next big thing and couldn't be outsourced so easily.
Now that's only useful in a few huge companies or universities and I wish I
had been programming all this time so I could do my own cool projects without
millions of dollars.

------
cookiecaper
I've found most "conventional wisdom" to be bad advice. "Wait for marriage",
"wait for kids" are both bad advice. "Go to college" is not necessarily bad
advice, but the universal expectation that one will do so is bad, and it is
bad advice for a lot of people. There's a lot of other bad advice out there.

~~~
nostromo
Why are "wait for marriage" and "wait for kids" bad advice?

~~~
Tichy
Because suddenly you are too old.

~~~
Jach
Not buying it, old people get married all the time and some even adopt kids.
But I'm in the camp that thinks one should wait for marriage and kids, not
horribly long, but wait, so don't listen to me. :) I know a lot of people in
Utah who got married way too soon and suffered for it.

~~~
Tichy
I wouldn't advise to marry and have children age 18. But I just had my first
child and I am 38, wish I was younger. If my son had children at the same age
I do, I would be 76. Will I still be a fit and healthy grandfather by then?
Also, how fit will I be age 50, to play soccer with my boy?

Better late than never, though - I am certainly happy.

~~~
Evgeny
_Also, how fit will I be age 50, to play soccer with my boy?_

Please try to use this as a source of motivation for staying fit, rather than
as a reason for sorrow.

~~~
Tichy
I do, but there is probably a limit as to what is achievable (or at least some
random luck is required).

------
arithmetic
Well, this advice didn't mess me up but pushed me in the opposite direction.

When I was a kid, my parents told me that little girls like me should study in
a local college, get good grades, find a comfortable job (preferably an
accountant), settle down in the same city (as my parents) and get married by
21 (years).

My college was in a different city as compared to where I grew up. This really
helped in teaching me how to live on my own. I took to computers, interned at
a couple of companies and got hired by another software company, moved to the
United States, and dated and married a fellow computer nerd a little over a
month ago (let's just say I'm way over 21 now).

I think I did well.

------
mindcrime
Pretty much everything I was ever told about love, dating, sex and romance,
prior to discovering the "seduction community" a couple of years ago. Then
again, it's not that a lot of the advice I got about women was _bad_ , it just
wasn't _useful._ Take the stock "be confident" tidbit for example... well,
that's not bad advice (in that being confident is not harmful) but it's not
_actionable_ advice, because telling someone who isn't confident to "be
confident" is useless. I also bought into the generic "there's somebody for
everybody, don't look for a girl, you'll just stumble into somebody one day
and it'll happen if it's mean to" crap. Uuuuggggghhh...

Outside of that, not much. But I tend to be pretty selective about the advice
I take anyway... I'm the kind of person who tends to "keep my own council"
more often than not (or, as my dad would say, I'm hard-headed). So I tend to
ignore a lot of the well-meaning advice I've been given.. so I miss out by
ignoring some good advice here and there, but I also avoid most of the bad
advice.

For the most part, I'd look back and say that approach has worked out well for
me.

------
YuriNiyazov
"You should buy a house in the ghettos of Philadelphia, property values are
skyrocketing".

------
radioactive21
Knock on wood, nothing that has ruined my life, but little things that I have
caused me opportunities.

-"Should I tell a recruiter or HR person about my current salary?"

Friend of mine said always tell, reveal everything and be truthful. The
reality, I got fucking low balled on salary, pretty much they would not go
above $5K of what I currently made. It wasn't till I spoke to someone else
that told me NEVER tell your salary, either say you rather not say or give a
large range. So far giving a range has worked out for me every time. I give a
large range and they tend to lean towards the high end.

\- Never talk about sex, politics and religion on a date.

I found out it is the BEST way to quickly find out if you are compatible or
not with someone. I am referring to if you're dating for a serious long term
or possibly marriage relationship. Of course the way you talk about it does
matter.

I have done this to everyone of my dates and I can tell right away if it's
wort the effort or not. Usually it's the politics that is the deal breaker.

------
CWIZO
"You must go to college" by everyone. What a waste of perfectly good 3 years
(I finally dropped out then).

~~~
watty
Everyone says you "must" go to college? I don't think so...

------
stelfer
Pretty much everyone who I looked up to who was an X and said: "You should be
an X".

------
a5seo
Advisor suggested I should go ahead and to start my next venture concurrent
with my 3 yr earnout on the company I'd just sold. Long story short, my idea +
my money + 25% of my time + nontechnical cofounder getting salary and 40%
sweat equity = 9 mos of dev turned into 24, launching after several
competitors, all seed money burned on dev, no money for marketing, slow sales
ramp, running out of cash, selling my stake to another investor for 50% of
what I paid. Company still exists, cash flow breakeven, but my equity is all
but washed out. Had I focused 100% I would have 100% of a very nice micro ISV.

------
frankus
Don't have sex until you're older.

------
zaidf
Its hard for me to find any piece of advice that 'messed' up my life per say.
From the sounds of it, it seems like I'm blaming some advice when I should be
accepting majority of the blame myself.

------
dedward
None. I messed it up all by msyelf.

------
tommusic
It's interesting: when I look back on my life so far, I don't feel like my
path has been messed up significantly because of any particular piece of
advice.

There were times in my life where acting on a particular bit of advice kept me
from getting what I wanted. Those were frustrating times. But those times
caused me to learn to deal with being frustrated; to stop and reflect on why I
was reacting with such emotion.

There were times when the advice that I received was unclear, which made it
easy for my motivation-to-follow to falter. I would waste time and not get
homework done. Familiarity with a topic would grow more faint and my class
performance would show it. And then I started to learn how to best use my time
to learn the material. (In small groups, using multiple forms of engagement;
reading/writing/speaking/listening)

The advice that, on-balance, seemed least helpful at the time:

* "such-and-such will happen when you least expect it"

* "don't ever give up"

* "don't run with scissors"

But in later reflection these lead me to different conclusions about these
same items:

* The advisor understands that you're in pain, but really likes who you are when you're not moping. They're trying to help you get there, but they're not sure how.

* Admitting defeat is OK, and you can change focus (pivot) without stopping (giving up) entirely. This is a loophole. Use it.

* This has always been a good idea. Still is.

The advice I would offer would be to use advice wisely. Don't follow it
blindly; reflect often, and be adaptable.

------
lisper
"Honesty is the best policy." This is quite possibly the single biggest lie we
tell our kids. There are times when dissembling or even outright lying is the
right thing to do. It's important to learn to recognize when telling the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is not the right thing to do.
It's not easy.

~~~
nradov
It's still good advice for young children since they lack the judgment to know
when a lie is appropriate. Gaining that judgment and learning when and how to
lie is a natural part of growing up.

------
drpancake
My parents: "Economics is where the money is; don't switch to Computer
Science"

Glad I ignored that one. At universities in the UK, you choose a degree at the
beginning then that's it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That's not true of all institutions in the UK - you can transfer credits
between Unis and you can change courses with in them too. Some courses are
harder to switch between for sure. After 2 years of Uni (4year course) I had
option still to graduate in 3 different faculties.

------
bstar
Without a doubt, I would say all advice on my college education. The first bad
advice I got was that I absolutely needed to go to a small school that would
give me more personal time in the classroom. This ended up stressing me
greatly in school... I wouldn't find out until long after I graduated that I
excel greatly in environments that require me to investigate and learn on my
own with some guidance.

The other poor advice was that county college is only for loosers. My advisors
and teachers impressed this on me bigtime. In retrospect, county college would
have been awesome to buy me a year or so until I was able to maturely handle a
challenging curriculum. I needed some time to learn how to learn and gain some
confidence in my ability to learn.

------
ohyes
Bad advice can't mess up your life. Taking action on bad advice can mess up
your life, but the advice itself can't do anything. I can't think of any
examples of situations where I took particularly bad advice, but if I did, it
is totally on me.

From that perspective; that I am in control and making the decisions in my
life... I can't really say that any of the decisions that I have made have
'messed up' my life.

Whatever I've done, it clearly seemed like a good idea at the time. I probably
couldn't have made the decision any differently.

(I find this kind of an interesting paradox, as my agency with regard to one
thing, bad advice, implies my lack of agency with regard to my own bad
decisions).

------
Tycho
Stuff they tell you in Sunday school which is impossible/undesirable in
practical terms yet leaves a lingering sense of unworthiness about one's own
character and a lack of healthy ambition:

\- love thy neighbour

\- don't be selfish

\- don't care about money/possessions

\- don't judge

Oh, and also: install OpenOffice.org

~~~
larrywright
What about those things is undesirable? Leaving religion aside, it seems like
all those (OpenOffice aside :) lead to a much happier state of mind than the
alternative.

~~~
Tycho
1\. Automatically loving thy neighbour (ie. everyone) is a ridiculous notion.
You love the people that are most important to you, that deserve your utmost
respect and kindness, so of course this will mean you love _a select few._
Furthermore, trying to think up reasons why you should love any random
neighbour would be an exhausting exercise in self-deception. Plus if you don't
love people for their _qualities,_ but instead for the mere fact of their
existence, then your love doesn't mean anything. So not only does this advice
set a near impossible task, but it devalues real love.

2\. Obviously being an inconsiderate jerk is a bad life strategy, but it's
easy to embrace 'unselfishness' as the reason for not pursuing your talents
until you reach brilliance, or not maximizing your earning potential. Most
people don't have the energy to live their lives in the service of others
(becoming aid workers or whatever), but many dabble in a sort of self-
congratulatory mediocrity. Also breeds an unhealthy resentment for the
entrepreneurs and geniuses that propel our civilization.

3\. Not caring about money/possessions, all the while enjoying the material
comfort brought by your parents' or society's wealth, is a sure fire way to
end up in a situation when you don't _have_ that comfort anymore. At which
point you'll realize that you really do care about money/possessions, because
you can't pretend anymore, reality has caught up with you.

4\. 'Judge not and ye shall not be judged' is another ridiculous notion.
Obviously it should be 'judge, and expect to be judged' - which leads to
principles and integrity. Of course Christians want you to have
principles/morality etc., but simultaneously to refrain from pronouncing
judgement on those that fail to meet these standards. This means the bad
people get away with a lot of stuff, and also makes you timid and unsure about
what's right. Nothing's anchored, everything's a case of 'who knows what I
would have done in their shoes.' Undermines your own will/agency (just _say_
what you would do in their shoes, or what they should have done), and self-
esteem (your only a noble person because you have an easy life blablabla)

In short these sorts of teachings make you constantly unsure of your place in
the world and encourage poor career decisions.

~~~
larrywright
I think you're putting an unnecessarily negative spin on these things, and
perhaps taking them more literally than they're intended. Here's my take:

1\. "love thy neighbor" - Don't waste time hating people. Forgive and forget.

2\. "don't be selfish" - Put others before yourself. Anyone who has been in a
relationship will tell you this is a good idea, but it applies elsewhere as
well. If you manage people at your job, put their needs above yours. It
doesn't mean give up any ambitions of your own, but living a life focused
solely on yourself doesn't yield happiness either.

3\. "don't care about money/possessions" - The basic necessities, like a roof
over your head and food on your plate, are fine. Spending your life in pursuit
of material possessions isn't going to be satisfying. Having things is fine.
Letting your life center around acquiring money and possessions isn't.

4\. "don't judge" - You're not perfect, neither is anybody else. It's not
about letting people get away with things, but not condemning them when they
make mistakes.

~~~
Tycho
I don't think I'm taking things too literally, although obviously I'm focusing
on the negative impact, as per the original question.

1\. Sorry, but the verse isn't 'try to get along with thy neighbour' or
'tolerate thy neighbour' it's _love_ thy neighbour. I'm all for amicable and
polite relations with people/strangers, but as far as i can tell the teaching
really aspires to a sort of 'what would Jesus do?' level of care towards
people wherever you find them.

2\. I don't think putting others before yourself is a good idea, except in the
case of close family or partners. Have faith in yourself, take opportunities
where you find them, better yourself, don't feel bad about it - if you put
others first you can't necessarily do those things, and whats more the others
wont necessarily appreciate your action and/or see that it wasn't done in
vain. Of course, you should still be honourable towards others.

3\. Interior dialogue goes something like this - 'Well, what career should I
choose? Medicine perhaps? Well, that makes lots of money, but I don't feel a
natural calling for it. And since money isn't important, I ought to choose
something else. I'll study English literature, which wont land me a high-
paying job, but that's not what I care about.' Ten years later: 'Well writing
isn't going to get me a job at all, so I'm not much different from an
unskilled/uneducated member of the workforce. I feel I could achieve a lot and
offer a lot to society, but now I'll just take a low paying office job. If I
was a doctor, I could be having kids right now, buying a house, saving for
their education, have long-term financial security and the ability to help
other family members, going around the world on holiday having enriching
experiences. Oh well.' Money gives you security and freedom, the idea of
settling for the basic necessities is very dangerous IMO and not likely to
lead to happiness.

4\. Christianity at its core is about forgiveness, and in the end it leads to
sacrificing justice for mercy, which leads to dysfunctional relationships or
communities. Yeah 'nobody's perfect' is a good lesson but these teachings go
further than that

~~~
bg4
1\. Start with empathy and compassion and go from there.

2\. The rising tide lifts all boats.

3\. "Rosebud"

4\. Mercy leads to dysfunctional relationships and communities? I'd hate to
forget to return a library book in your town... ;)

~~~
Tycho
1\. My point is there needs to be a cap, otherwise it would take over your
life and/or leave you with feelings of guilt

2\. Historically, the tide of people demanding sacrifice for others' sake
tends to be a bloody one.

3\. It's not a binary choice. The advice should be something like 'pursue
wealth until it gives you the freedom and comfort you need for happiness, but
be careful about pursuing more wealth than you know what to do with whilst
neglecting your spiritual wellbeing.' But instead the advice is that beyond
basic necessities, you shouldn't care about worldly possessions. This is
really bad advice, it says nothing about what money can _do_ for you.

4\. Not mercy in itself, but the neglect of justice, which comes about readily
when people can't make confident judgments. Mercy is desirable, but at what
price?

------
ryan-allen
I wouldn't stay it stuffed up my life, but I wish I hadn't listened to it:

"Music is a hobby."

I'm catching up though.

~~~
jberryman
Maybe that's just what you needed to hear! you probably have a greater
understanding of what music means in your life than someone who went to a
conservatory straight out of highschool or made it big in a band without
trying.

------
bromley
"Just do it, you've got nothing to lose."

In my experience, the people that make this statement rarely understand
opportunity cost. It took me years to figure out that it's OK to let new
opportunities pass you by if pursuing them would take your time away from the
opportunities you're already committed to.

The more successful you get, the more opportunities come your way, so I think
this is something successful people have to figure out eventually. If you make
a success of one opportunity, it's always at the expense of another. It's good
to be selective.

------
Aron
Skipped a grade in elementary. The relative physical immaturity circa puberty
made socialization tougher, and the virtues of the move are dubious. I think
I'd rather have done the reverse.

------
iopuy
Study Project Management instead of Computer Science, then you can manage
teams of Computer Scientists!

------
hugh3
Y'know, I've racked my brain and I can't recall ever following any bad advice.

I can remember a lot of good advice that I didn't follow, though.

Conclusion: maybe I'm just not very good at following advice.

------
amichail
The pressure to do well in school/university had a really negative impact on
my life.

Better advice would have been to find a way to make money that I enjoy.

------
wyclif
"You should know what you want to do with your life by the time you start
college." (Age 17 for me, US citizen.)

------
Goosey
I believe I understand the intention of this entire thread: in order to flush
out good advice try to first highlight 'bad advice'. However I hope that all
those who read it and all those who posted in it remember something very
important.

Regret is suffering. It is being attached to a different reality that you
"should" be experiencing that is somehow better than the reality you are in.
Everything that happened in your life, every single stupid thing, was
required/essential/instrumental in your life being exactly as it is right now.

I hope we can make use of this thread as a means to help us guide future
decisions without it functioning as a way to make us feel regret. Do not
expend energy suffering over that which is not only out of your control, but
an illusion. Your past is not reality: you are, right here, right now.

------
jraines
"Houses always go up in value" -- paraphrase of David Allen's "Automatic
Millionaire Homeowner" which convinced me to buy a place in Atlanta in 2005.
Could've been a lot worse, but taking on a mortgage & furnishing a place at 23
was not the best idea.

~~~
TGJ
They do go up. Wait 20 years and it will be worth more.

------
ible
"Go with the flow" - it's ok for being friendly, but crap for making the life
you want to live "Run away from a fight" - A knife fight sure, but in grade
school and in metaphor it's pretty bad advice. "Smart is sufficient" - it's
not even necessary

------
delinquentme
Attractive females are scarce... turns out females actually out number males
...

------
jiganti
You're special.

~~~
delano
That was advice?

~~~
seltzered
Not quite advice, but was a running theme of what many millenial-generation
kids were told in the US (think "Mr. Rogers" era).

Many argue it's made use seem overly demanding to others, particularly bosses.

~~~
benreyes
Though I think some of the thinking given to millenial-generation kids in
making them think that they can be what ever they want to be for example an
astronaut, is still useful. It's just most people forget about it or give up
on that thinking.

The naivety in thinking that you could become an astronaut or something
special will probably mean you are more likely to reach your goal or at least
go further than other people. I guess if you believe you have the ability to
change the world, you probably will.

~~~
seltzered
yeah, I agree. I thought about this today and realized some of the worst
advice we got was from our middle school principal telling us to be well-
rounded and develop real-world skills. It's the opposite of forcing yourself
to focus on things that make you be "special".

And it made me more concerned about fitting into little social groups than
focusing on what I want to do.

------
aelaguiz
My best friend told me re: having to pee at night "you just gotta go man
otherwise you will just lay there and suffer" since that day I've not had a
full nights sleep. I'll never forgive him.

~~~
iopuy
I don't know if this allegory for chasing your dreams or not but I like it.

------
grandalf
"Just do your best". This advice is intended to allow focused effort without
harping on competitive aspects, but it has the effect of detaching the doer
from any sense of responsibility for the outcome, and also leads to self-
deception if you lie to yourself and claim that you did your best.

Sometimes it's OK to do less than your best, other times your best isn't good
enough. Results are what matter, so figure out what result you want and
accomplish it.

------
dmoney
I don't think anything messed up my life, but if I had it to do over again, I
might choose music as a career and programming as a hobby, instead of vice
versa.

------
ajude
Going to University.

Even though I had a great time, got two great degrees and actually found a
really good job in the City I cannot help but feel why I couldn't have gone
straight to work skipped all this debt and invested even more money/time in
other endeavours like getting solid operational experience in a company. For
instance, my head of opts at my firm built the biggest mutual fund in the UK
around the age of 20.

------
codeglomeration
Nothing that messed up my life, but the pieces of bad advice I'm glad I
dropped are "you should try to please everyone" and "a bird in the hand is
worth two in the bush" which are a rough translation of two Romanian proverbs
encouraging obedience and complacency. As soon as I ignored those I started
accomplishing meaningful things.

------
goldroger
You only take as you've given, and now your hope is all but gone - though you
lost your way (Now is not forever). But I know your pain. We all fall
sometimes you're not the first ! But I know it hurts. In the end you'll find
what you deserve, still I know it hurts.

------
laxj11
"don't try too hard" I used to be a star student/great work ethic. then i
figured that i was working too hard thanks to this advise and my work ethic
became horrible and i am struggling to keep my grades. always work at full
capacity. itll get you places in life

------
ashleyreddy
Growing up I though engineer meant making cool shit. But going to engineering
school meant learning things from first pricipals and not making cool shit. I
should have gone in to arts and gotten laid more while making stuff on my free
time.

------
groaner
"Good news should travel fast, bad news should travel even faster."

Sure, but not in an environment where "shoot the messenger" is the m.o. I
learned to keep my head down pretty quickly, and now I'm looking for an exit
strategy.

------
ronnier
I was never told this, but I know it is said, and said often that "you can be
whatever you want". I don't believe that, nor do I think it's healthy for
children to be told it because it's flat out not true.

~~~
rradu
Why is it not true? As a child, future possibilities are endless. There's no
need to set limits so early.

I hold firm to the belief that I can do anything I set my mind to--even if it
means failing a few times.

~~~
Jach
_Insert story about a kid born to a family with a long history of shortness,
say all under 5'6", it is very, very doubtful he will get to be in the NBA on
that factor alone._

Though in general I agree, we often overestimate the limits, that doesn't mean
there are none, and I'd rather let the children explore than have a path set
out for them before they're even teenagers.

------
thingie
Anything coming from people significantly older than me, who are still talking
about how they wanted to live their lives 20 or 30 (even 40) years ago, in a
world completely different from the current one.

------
SRSimko
Go to school, get a good education, go get a good job and live happily ever
after. Guess what the world changes and that doesn't cut it anymore. Now I
believe in making my own future.

~~~
watty
There's a lot of hard work required as well but that advice has worked for
many people including myself.

------
mattm
Listening to any advice that wasn't what I truly believed.

I believe the only valuable advice you can give to someone is along the lines
of "Do what you feel is the right thing for you to do."

------
tomotomo
Worst advice: Go back to school and get your bachelors in the middle of an
economic bubble.

Wait til it bursts, you can go back then when it's harder to find lucrative
work.

------
motxilo
"There is nothing unfixable but death". Bullshit, mom.

------
j_baker
"Go to college, get a degree, and get a good GPA."

It isn't that this is necessarily _bad_ advice. It's just that it was bad
advice _for me_.

------
amorphid
I listened to too many people who told me what to do instead taking in
information and making up my own mind.

------
hellrich
Complete your degree - if you don't believe in it, it isn't worth the time!

------
tomotomo
Oh, don't get greedy when taking supposed insider tips about a stock :)

------
loginitin
that "You should fear GOD"....its like a new born baby should fear his
mother....utterly useless, rather opposite of truth GOD loves us as
desperately as one can possibly imagine

------
wtimoney
"Don't bother people"

~~~
mahmud
That one hurt me bad.

Life is much better after you gather a few restraining orders.

------
agentcris
GPA is just a number. It isn't important.

------
imran
awesome comments guys ! i love hacker news :) btw totally agree with jdietrich
and ericb ..

------
buckwild
"I want you to hit me as hard as you can." A whole downward spiral started
from there. Until I hit bottom. :-D

------
neworbit
"People are mostly good"

~~~
alexro
Maybe you were extremely unlucky or mostly in the unusual situations, but
people ARE mostly good, for me and other I know.

Also, think about this: if people were mostly bad and that would mean they
were getting worse and worse every next generation (because all the good ones
were 'eaten' by the bad ones), how it'd have been right now? I think our world
isn't THAT horrible!

------
hasenj
Not from any specific person, but the idea that you have to step outside your
comfort zone and do X and Y even though it doesn't come naturally to you.

Every time I did that things got messed up and I ended up worse than I was
before.

If you're outside your comfort zone, you will act in non-authentic ways, and
when you're not being authentic, you can't be the best possible you.

Examples of stepping outside comfort zone:

* Wear a suite and act professional for a job interview

* Say hi to random strangers so you can make friends (even though you're introverted and doing this makes you look like a fool)

* Go to social events where you don't know anyone there.

EDIT: thanks for the down votes. Now let me explain why this is bad advice:

\- Act not like yourself for a job interview:

This is bad because instead of showing them your strong points, you'll be busy
trying to hide your weak points and seem like a "good, obedient" employee.
Eventually you fail at both: your bad points will still show, while your good
points won't get a chance.

\- Begging friendship from random strangers:

Makes you look like a fool, insecure person that nobody wants to be friends
with.

EDIT2: I'm not talking about little steps. Venturing into new areas is fun.
Throwing yourself into the middle of an extremely uncomfortable situation is
completely different.

One of the reasons I found "step outside your comfort zone" to be bad advice
is that they never tell you how far to go and when you should stop. It seems
consequential that you never know when you have gone too far, because you're
outside the zone where you can use your intuition sensibly. If you were able
to tell that you've gone too far, then by definition you're still inside your
comfort zone.

If something only makes you a little bit uncomfortable, it will feel like it's
still inside your comfort zone, and if you're trying to follow the "step
outside your comfort zone" advice, you'll be tempted to go even further.

~~~
il
If you're trolling this post with spectacularly bad advice about bad advice,
well done. If you truly believe that, you have a very cynical worldview.

I am quite introverted but whenever I force myself to go to a social event
where I don't know anyone and make friends, I always have a great time and
meet awesome people, and it invariably goes better than I thought it would. If
you just assume the people there WANT to be your friend, you don't look needy
and your extroverted side comes out, and you can still be yourself.

~~~
silvestrov
It sounds more like you're a shy extrovert rather than an introvert.

~~~
il
As I've heard it defined, extroverts gain energy from social interactions,
introverts are fatigued by them. If, like me, after a few hours of small talk
you feel exhausted and want to sit in front of a screen alone, you're probably
an introvert. I have some extroverted friends who will not go to the grocery
store unless someone goes with them to keep them company. I prefer taking
walks alone, and so on.

~~~
wallflower
> I have some extroverted friends who will not go to the grocery store unless
> someone goes with them

We did a teamwork exercise where they split the E's and I's. To both groups,
they said that you have the next day off - tell us what you're going to do.
The E's were going nuts with chartering a plane to Vegas, big party while all
of the I's were going to do something _alone_ , maybe even just catch up on
laundry. The difference was shocking.

In another exercise, they had an E monitor a team of us I's on a logic puzzle.
As the E later described, he was just basically watching us I's sit there and
not say anything and then a few minutes later - we started talking. We won but
the non-talking communication really weirded him out.

------
TotlolRon
Things along these lines:

 _As long as you've made something that a few users are ecstatic about, you're
on the right track. ... It may take a while, but as long as you keep plugging
away, you'll win in the end._

That's not realllllllly how it works in the valley.

------
J3L2404
No advice messed up my life, I did.

------
GrandMasterBirt
Bad advice: Don't be a programmer, programmers can't find work and is
miserable work.

I had a major passion for it at the time (pre college) and had I taken this
advice from everyone in my family, I would probably be working in McDonalds at
this point.

------
zackattack
I think it's best to listen to advice from people with the results you want.
Moreover, it's best to understand the rationale behind successful people's
processes rather than copy them outright.

