7 ms·

What life lessons are unintuitive or go against common sense or wisdom?

213 points by sajithw 16y ago

diN0bot 16y ago
"retirement is boring" is only true if the current way you spend your free time is boring. i love my free time and i know from experience that having more of it simply allows me to learn and achieve more of what i want. maybe these hobbies would become professional if they were full time, maybe not. people are different and spend their free time in different ways. (wrt free time, i would say: stop procrastinating! i'm lucky, because i naturally prefer to work immediately and then be able to spend my free time exactly as i prefer, rather than wasting time and working under pressure near deadlines. if you can figure out how to trade your procrastination time for real pleasure, then you win both now and later.)
- nostrademons 16y ago
  More accurately, "retirement is boring" is only true if your job is more interesting than your free time. I love my free time. I currently love my job more, mostly, and so I often end up doing work things in my free time. At this point, "retirement" would be a net loss even aside from the money issue. This will probably change once I've learned everything there is to learn at my job, but YMMV.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
eoghan 16y ago
"You can't be anything you want to be." I believe in this very strongly.
- Maro 16y ago
  There are things that mostly depend on you, like studying hard in school or training for and finishing an Ironman. There are other things where external conditions (like where you're located, whom you know, how wealthy you are, what your competitors are doing) are very strong factors and are hard to work around.
  - jasonkester 16y ago
    Well said. One of the most confident, motivated, well spoken people I've ever seen, I met at a bus station in Zambia. This guy, who I can honestly say would be far more successful than myself if he were to make it to America, had risen to pretty much the pinnacle of what he could achieve given the circumstances of his birth: He was the most respected hustler at the biggest bus yard in Zambia.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    All but one of those "external" factors can be worked around based on your actions.
    - Maro 16y ago
      But it's very hard to do in terms of knowing how to do it. Most people here on HN know what it takes to get good grades or work out, but even here on HN not everyone is good at networking, not everyone can relocate to SV (eg. because you have a family or don't get a Visa), not everyone can afford to repeatedle try again with a new company. Also, when I said "wealthy" I meant "how wealthy is your family", as in how big a risk can you afford to take. Where I live (E.Europe) I find most tech entrepeneurs are from somewhat wealthy families (= they don't have to worry about getting a 9-5 job, but they're not driving around in sportcars), so they're motivated but get to take bigger risks, don't have to worry about making a steady income, and also receive free networking from their parents, who are usually also businessman. You can still try to work around these problems, in fact I have tried to, but you're taking on very large risks which are hard to control. Eg. if you're supporting your startup with contract work because there's no VC money around, and your contracts dry up, then what. Or, if your competition, located in another part of the world gets VC money and speeds away in terms of hype (not even the product), then what.
      - piguy314 16y ago
        How much do the punitive debt repayment, personal liability and bankruptcy laws cause a chilling effect on entrepreneurship in your country? The common wisdom is that America has more risk taking because of our permissive bankruptcy laws and limited liability that allow people to discharge onerous business debt, but I'm wondering if that is actually true.
megablast 16y ago
"Self promotion works" i do not believe this one. If you are any good, you do not need to talk yourself up, as others will do it for you.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  You have to be really good for others to do it for you. In general, people's attention is focused on themselves. It's pretty rare for someone to talk you up unless they were really impressed by you. That's why it counts for so much when they do. I suspect (actually, I'm pretty sure of it) that self-promoters do better than the average person, and it's only when you're much, much better than average (multiple standard deviations away) that you can get away with letting your accomplishments speak for themselves.
  - blacksmythe 16y ago
    >> (actually, I'm pretty sure of it) that self-promoters do better than the average person This is certainly true. If you look at a group of well-known people, the percentage that put a lot of effort into self-promotion is much, much higher than in the general population. In many cases self-promotion seems to be their main strength.
- patio11 16y ago
  This is difficult to square with the evidence. Many good people, for any definition of good, are not talked about. Many people who are talked about have no externally verifiable accomplishment which would point to them being good, aside from being talked about. I have a bit of the engineer skepticism about self-promotion, but to the extent that I have a positive reputation that continues to open doors for me, it is partially because I'm talented and largely because I have worked hard and effectively for years at marketing myself. (Only partially consciously at points. It turns out that helping people and writing well are both really effective methods of self-promotion.)
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    helping people is always a good thing, but the troubble with good writting is that there is no good way to get better. Once you have mastered spelling and grammar, it is very difficult to improv. A better tactic may be to write tolerably and have someting interesting to say.
1010011010 16y ago
Never help the cops. This includes never talking to the cops. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik -- Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE -- Part 2
- Joakal 16y ago
  Pretty much only applies in USA.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - dimitar 16y ago
    Really? So the police cannot be called as a witness in other countries and incriminate you by contradicting you with your own words?
    - mechanical_fish 16y ago
      To be fair, what the comment may be saying is something entirely different: Many countries don't have a Fifth Amendment. You have to talk to the cops, or they will force you. Possibly by torture. (Even in the USA, cops torturing people into talking is not just a routine staple of crime drama, but is also tragically common in real life.)
      - dimitar 16y ago
        I'm pretty aware that in my country it is highly probable (but not for sure) for the police to get 'physical' (as the guy in the second video said), but I don't expect to get tortured in the way you see in movies. I still think the best course of action is to endure some mild abuse and display non-defiant, respectful behaviour and still refuse to answer any questions.
  - StrawberryFrog 16y ago
    So you'd be happy to say anything to cops in any corrupt 3rd-world country then?
donnyg107 16y ago
A few weeks ago I decided that all common life lessons are only notable because they are unintuitive, go directly against millions of years of human development. Don't judge a book by its cover, don't count your chickens before they hatch, etc. I feel like all these phrases came about as condescending told-you-so's rather than actual meaningful guidelines.
heyitsnick 16y ago
I hate to be negative and there's some good advice here, but really a lot of this is just replacing old unresearched assumptions with newer pronouncements that are similarly without any reference. At best these are left un-sourced, at worst they seem to be based purely on personal experience. Yet most of these are or could be topics of unbias study. A few examples: Buy a nice bed. Buy a very nice mattress and high-thread-count sheets. You will need to test out a variety of mattresses to find the one that fits you best but if you find the right one, it will greatly enhance the quality of your sleep, and subsequently, your waking life. Why is it that more expensive mattresses = better sleep? Cite the evidence showing that high thread-count sheets = better sleep, which in tern laeds to improvements in waking life. You can accomplish more if you work less and sleep more. Hypothetically a well-rested person working 55-hour work weeks can usually outperform a sleep-deprived person working 80-hour work weeks in terms of quality, all else equal (specifically for knowledge work). Hypothetically this isn't true at all. Is there evidence to support this hypothesis or not? If not, this adds nothing to the debate. You can pay the farmer, or you can pay the doctor. Prevention (i.e. good diet and food ingredients) is an order of magnitude cheaper than treatment (most age-related diseases are correlated with poor dietary choices). This is trite and catch-all. What is good diet? There is no common agreement (see: high carb/high protein/high fat discussions). Show the evidence that this is 'an order of magnitude' cheaper than treatment. What are 'good ingredients'. You recommend free-range meats? Grass-fed beef? Locally produced? Define 'good'. A cheap chair and mattress may end up costing you 10-20x in doctor's bills. Says who? 10-20x seems pretty specific - what's the citation on that? A 'cheap' chair - so is price the only metric? Any $2000 chair is worth it and saves money on doctor's bills? Doesn't it matter how often i spend sitting? Could there not be cheap chairs that are actually better than many expensive ones? What's an 'expensive' mattress? Spoken communication has a massive non-verbal component. Study body language and you'll be pretty shocked at how often peoples' spoken words contradict their telltale non-verbal cues. Citation please. A lot of the 'non-verbal communication' stuff (read: NLP) is considered unscientific gumf. Don't get me wrong, there's some great advice in here. But around half is stuff that can be scientifically demonstrated and just off-handedly saying something is invalid whilst proclaiming the opposite without providing any citations is counter-productive. It just encourages "common knowledge" of the same old wives tales and folklore that it itself is trying to counteract.
JeanPierre 16y ago
Happiness = Outcome - Expectations. The key to enjoying life is keeping expectations low to the degree that you're always pleasantly surprised. I find this a bad advice due to many different reasons. First and foremost, startups must have high expectations in order to, well, start up. People would never, ever create a company assuming it would go straight to hell after six months. What also bothers me with this statement is that, by keeping expectations low, you would probably not work as much as you would if you had higher expectations. As a final note, I have always kept my expectations very, very high. I always aim for A's at university. Yet, I do not feel less happy than the average Joe, even though I sometimes get a B or a C.
- Joeri 16y ago
  You don't start a company to become happy, and most young entrepreneurs have to work at it for years until they get ROI, so if they went into it with high initial expectations, they're almost guaranteed to burn out before reaching their goals. Speaking of goals, you're confusing them with expectations. Having high goals and low expectations is generally the most potent mix to ensure that you're working hard. If you're working hard for an exam, but expect you'll only get a B, getting that A makes you happy. If you instead expect the A, and only get a B, you'll be unhappy and discouraged. We all know about that one star student who cried because they got "only a B".
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  I think you are mistaking "expectations" and "ambitions". by keeping expectations low, you would probably not work as much as you would if you had higher expectations. I think the opposite is true-- there are many startups that have failed because they expected the traffic to be there when they launched, because they expected the world to sit up and take notice, instead of realizing that there was a lot of hard work they had to do to get it. Lower expectations, in this case, leads to harder work (and a higher likelihood of success.)
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petervandijck 16y ago
If you have long-term dreams and can visualize them, they tend to work out, but the path of how you get there is often surprising and unexpected.
edw519 16y ago
OK, let me give this a shot... In the past year or two, I have learned my greatest life lesson. As a lifelong high achiever, it was extremely counter-intuitive yet it was right in front of me all along. First, a little background... In the past couple of years: - My father died. - My aunt (and best friend) died. - My cousin (who was really like my brother) died. - My 19 year old cat died. - We had our first ever family reunion. - My mother's dimentia has turned her back into a child. Sure we all have great memories and are busy working at building even better futures, but ultimately it all boils down to: All we have is now. My pets have been trying to teach me this for years, if only I had listened. And now my mother is teaching me. They don't really remember yesterday. They don't care about tomorrow. But they really care about the moment. Intensely. I have had to really slow down and let this sink in. When I visit my mother in her nursing home, we have a great time laughing, talking, visiting others, and of course, playing Jeopardy. We can't have the conversations we used to, so we just have new experiences, one time only, in the moment, and only for those who are there. We never talk about the past and she simply doesn't understand, "I'll see you tomorrow." I haven't stopped building my future, but I no longer sacrifice the present in order to get there. I have learned that the process must be as enjoyable as the outcome. After all, the process is "now" and the outcome is just an instant in time. It may sound cliche, but everyone should take inventory of all the good stuff in their lives (especially other people) and make the most of it now. You'll be surprised how quickly it'll be gone. Don't wait half your life to learn my most valuable counter-intuitive lesson.
- CallMeV 16y ago
  All we have is now. Bingo. If I had to like or upvote only one thing today, anywhere, I would upvote this. I seriously wish I could upvote it twice. Thank you for reminding me.
- ihodes 16y ago
  It does sound cliché. And, respectfully, I think it's just as wrong [Edit: not wrong, but maybe shortsighted. Then again, if what I say in the following paragraphs doesn't change your view in the slightest, then more power to you: my view isn't the absolute. Do what you think is "right", whatever right might be.] as most clichés tend to be. We have now, certainly, and now is amazing. But we have the past, too; at least for a while (dementia and all sorts of other things can rob us of the past). We have the future, too (though we can be robbed of that). I live for all three. The past is where I draw from to inform my present actions; the present is where I enjoy myself and prepare for the future; the future is where we're all heading. If I lived for the now, I wouldn't be going to college. I wouldn't be planning to study for a PhD in Neuroscience and researching assistive brain/spine implants. I wouldn't study programming languages and designs. I wouldn't be reading The Intelligent Investor. In fact, if you lived for the now, you'd probably be living in a soma-induced haze à la Huxley's Brave New World: it'd be the optimal choice, in fact. Pure neurochemical bliss. The argument that you should live for now because you could be dead at any second is obscene, to me: it's more likely that you live than you die, and you're likely to be consistently happier now and in the future if you act like you'll be alive in the future. Evidence: planning for retirement. Seriously. So live for yourself, sure, but live for all of yourself. Think of yourself as a smudge on a timeline: not in one place, not just in the past, not just in the future. Optimize the smudge.
phugoid 16y ago
There's a class of situations where the more you want something, the less likely you are to get it. Desperation puts you at a disadvantage when you're looking for a mate or a job. People who can fake disinterest have the advantage over those with genuine neediness. Yet, I would think that honesty and sincerity are key attributes of mates and employees.
- yef 16y ago
  Absolutely true. Maybe I'm mincing words but there is a corollary here too. There is a class of situations where the harder you try, the bigger the disadvantage you have. This can be hard for workaholic types to understand. Class A (Effort correlates with results) = Work, school, etc. Class B (Ease correlates with results) = Socializing, dating, etc.
deleted 16y ago
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Kilimanjaro 16y ago
Have as many kids as you can. Only they can give you the happiest and saddest moments of your life. And to better understand life, you need to know and go both extremes. Every smile is a hug to your heart, every tear is a kick to your soul. At the end of the journey, they will be the real treasure of your existence.
yason 16y ago
In life, you first have the test and then you learn. In many modern institutions we're accustomed to it being vice versa.
jimmyjazz14 16y ago
"Money CAN buy happiness", have a child and suddenly the value of having money goes up a hundred fold. The desire to make lots of money is not always based on greed!
- joshkaufman 16y ago
  I just had a daughter, and experienced the opposite. We're beyond the point of financial sufficiency, and I could make a lot more money if I chose to work more. What I really want is more time every day to spend with her AND get work done.
  - jimmyjazz14 16y ago
    For me having more money means I can work less and therefore focus more time on my child more.
    - joshkaufman 16y ago
      My work is very fulfilling - that's why I want to do both.
- jtheory 16y ago
  I had a child almost 2 years ago now, and the value of money didn't change much. The value of time underwent some volcanic upheavals, on the other hand. There's an awful lot of crap that modern parents buy for their babies that's actually totally irrelevant to what the baby needs to do well (plus it's crazy expensive -- there's a massive "baby tax" -- where everything for babies is extra pricey unless you buy cheap-o brand -- that's kinda like the "wedding tax"). But babies don't need their own rooms, furniture, etc. etc. etc. -- they really couldn't care less about having all of this stuff of their own. They want their parents, and they want to do what their parents do. But their parents are busy working harder so they can pay for the furniture, fancy "genius baby" toys, and fake baby versions of all of the things adults use, when the kid is just dying to use the things the parents already have, and interact with the parents themselves in surprisingly sophisticated ways (if the parents let it happen, that is). Don't even get me started on baby food (hint: eat healthy, breastfeed, and when the kid starts wanting solid foods just leave out the salt and amazingly they pick up on how to chew right away!). Having a kid isn't expensive at all -- monetarily -- unless you get suckered by the industry. (Note: Unless you need to pay serious money for schooling; then it will be very expensive further down the line...). But in terms of time... well, everything changes. We're doing better & better at integrating her into our lives (rather than "now I'm watching the baby so everything else stops), but I'm a developer. There's no good way to involve a 2-year-old in writing code, so while the laundry may be done and the dishes washed, I tend to work a lot at night.....
pasbesoin 16y ago
There is an inverse relationship between the extent to which someone labels themself as an authority and the extent to which they actually are an authority. Corollary: Be particularly wary of medical "experts". Second, and self-referential, corollary: Be particularly wary of "bitter" people and comments.
VB6_Foreverr 16y ago
That there was a market for expired lightbulbs in the Soviet Union because working ones were hard to source. People would bring the expired ones to work and swap them for working ones. There's a life lesson there somewhere.
- rwmj 16y ago
  That communism is never going to work because it goes against human nature?
  - rwmj 16y ago
    Downvotes? Someone care to explain what's wrong with this?
klochner 16y ago
That thread points out a huge problem with the quora format - ideally people could vote up suggestions on a per-item basis, so that the community could collectively produce the best list of items. Instead people produce long-winded all-encompassing content-duplicating posts, so we end up with a jumbled mess of data.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
One thing I haven't seen yet: Generally, in most companies you have as much authority as you dare. The best way to get promoted is to just start doing the job you want to have and then have your title changed later. The idea that the organization and leadership of a company flows in exactly the manner the org chart specifies is a complete and utter fallacy. In reality, in most companies there is a lot of leadership coming from unexpected places, especially at a tech. company. If you sit back and wait for authority to be given to you that'll almost never happen, if you start spearheading worthwhile initiatives and start being an advocate for useful change, you'll get that authority in practice before you get it officially.
- GFischer 16y ago
  That can lead to a lot of inefficiency and friction, and people ditching their jobs for the jobs they'd like to do. How do I know? At my current company, the IT department currently has no formal boss. So a few ambitious people decided they'd rather not do the boring programming work, and take advantage of the void. But they don't feel like being called to task. The current climate is far from ideal, and there's a lot of backstabbing going on, and if you feel responsible (for maintaining the invisible legacy systems for example), you lose to the ambitious guys. On the plus side, I'm learning a lot about social dynamics :) . I've given up on advancing here, but the experience will be useful.
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bloggergirl 16y ago
After reading through all the awesome comments on this thread on Quora, I created a Prezi to summarize it all. I posted it as an answer summary. But some guy named Richard Henry --- Quora Admin --- deleted it. Said it wasn't a summary and was not useful. Here it is, if you're interested in the summary: http://prezi.com/l1wuvbaya37o/quora-life-lessons/ http://prezi.com/l1wuvbaya37o/quora-life-lessons/
Calamitous 16y ago
All of them, it seems.
da5e 16y ago
What you resist, persists.

213 points by sajithw 16y ago

"retirement is boring" is only true if the current way you spend your free time is boring. i love my free time and i know from experience that having more of it simply allows me to learn and achieve more of what i want. maybe these hobbies would become professional if they were full time, maybe not. people are different and spend their free time in different ways. (wrt free time, i would say: stop procrastinating! i'm lucky, because i naturally prefer to work immediately and then be able to spend my free time exactly as i prefer, rather than wasting time and working under pressure near deadlines. if you can figure out how to trade your procrastination time for real pleasure, then you win both now and later.)

nostrademons 16y ago
More accurately, "retirement is boring" is only true if your job is more interesting than your free time. I love my free time. I currently love my job more, mostly, and so I often end up doing work things in my free time. At this point, "retirement" would be a net loss even aside from the money issue. This will probably change once I've learned everything there is to learn at my job, but YMMV.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

eoghan 16y ago

"You can't be anything you want to be." I believe in this very strongly.

Maro 16y ago
There are things that mostly depend on you, like studying hard in school or training for and finishing an Ironman. There are other things where external conditions (like where you're located, whom you know, how wealthy you are, what your competitors are doing) are very strong factors and are hard to work around.
- jasonkester 16y ago
  Well said. One of the most confident, motivated, well spoken people I've ever seen, I met at a bus station in Zambia. This guy, who I can honestly say would be far more successful than myself if he were to make it to America, had risen to pretty much the pinnacle of what he could achieve given the circumstances of his birth: He was the most respected hustler at the biggest bus yard in Zambia.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  All but one of those "external" factors can be worked around based on your actions.
  - Maro 16y ago
    But it's very hard to do in terms of knowing how to do it. Most people here on HN know what it takes to get good grades or work out, but even here on HN not everyone is good at networking, not everyone can relocate to SV (eg. because you have a family or don't get a Visa), not everyone can afford to repeatedle try again with a new company. Also, when I said "wealthy" I meant "how wealthy is your family", as in how big a risk can you afford to take. Where I live (E.Europe) I find most tech entrepeneurs are from somewhat wealthy families (= they don't have to worry about getting a 9-5 job, but they're not driving around in sportcars), so they're motivated but get to take bigger risks, don't have to worry about making a steady income, and also receive free networking from their parents, who are usually also businessman. You can still try to work around these problems, in fact I have tried to, but you're taking on very large risks which are hard to control. Eg. if you're supporting your startup with contract work because there's no VC money around, and your contracts dry up, then what. Or, if your competition, located in another part of the world gets VC money and speeds away in terms of hype (not even the product), then what.
    - piguy314 16y ago
      How much do the punitive debt repayment, personal liability and bankruptcy laws cause a chilling effect on entrepreneurship in your country? The common wisdom is that America has more risk taking because of our permissive bankruptcy laws and limited liability that allow people to discharge onerous business debt, but I'm wondering if that is actually true.

megablast 16y ago

"Self promotion works" i do not believe this one. If you are any good, you do not need to talk yourself up, as others will do it for you.

nostrademons 16y ago
You have to be really good for others to do it for you. In general, people's attention is focused on themselves. It's pretty rare for someone to talk you up unless they were really impressed by you. That's why it counts for so much when they do. I suspect (actually, I'm pretty sure of it) that self-promoters do better than the average person, and it's only when you're much, much better than average (multiple standard deviations away) that you can get away with letting your accomplishments speak for themselves.
- blacksmythe 16y ago
  >> (actually, I'm pretty sure of it) that self-promoters do better than the average person This is certainly true. If you look at a group of well-known people, the percentage that put a lot of effort into self-promotion is much, much higher than in the general population. In many cases self-promotion seems to be their main strength.
patio11 16y ago
This is difficult to square with the evidence. Many good people, for any definition of good, are not talked about. Many people who are talked about have no externally verifiable accomplishment which would point to them being good, aside from being talked about. I have a bit of the engineer skepticism about self-promotion, but to the extent that I have a positive reputation that continues to open doors for me, it is partially because I'm talented and largely because I have worked hard and effectively for years at marketing myself. (Only partially consciously at points. It turns out that helping people and writing well are both really effective methods of self-promotion.)
- tomjen3 16y ago
  helping people is always a good thing, but the troubble with good writting is that there is no good way to get better. Once you have mastered spelling and grammar, it is very difficult to improv. A better tactic may be to write tolerably and have someting interesting to say.

1010011010 16y ago

Never help the cops. This includes never talking to the cops. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik -- Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE -- Part 2

Joakal 16y ago
Pretty much only applies in USA.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- dimitar 16y ago
  Really? So the police cannot be called as a witness in other countries and incriminate you by contradicting you with your own words?
  - mechanical_fish 16y ago
    To be fair, what the comment may be saying is something entirely different: Many countries don't have a Fifth Amendment. You have to talk to the cops, or they will force you. Possibly by torture. (Even in the USA, cops torturing people into talking is not just a routine staple of crime drama, but is also tragically common in real life.)
    - dimitar 16y ago
      I'm pretty aware that in my country it is highly probable (but not for sure) for the police to get 'physical' (as the guy in the second video said), but I don't expect to get tortured in the way you see in movies. I still think the best course of action is to endure some mild abuse and display non-defiant, respectful behaviour and still refuse to answer any questions.
- StrawberryFrog 16y ago
  So you'd be happy to say anything to cops in any corrupt 3rd-world country then?

donnyg107 16y ago

A few weeks ago I decided that all common life lessons are only notable because they are unintuitive, go directly against millions of years of human development. Don't judge a book by its cover, don't count your chickens before they hatch, etc. I feel like all these phrases came about as condescending told-you-so's rather than actual meaningful guidelines.

heyitsnick 16y ago

I hate to be negative and there's some good advice here, but really a lot of this is just replacing old unresearched assumptions with newer pronouncements that are similarly without any reference. At best these are left un-sourced, at worst they seem to be based purely on personal experience. Yet most of these are or could be topics of unbias study. A few examples: Buy a nice bed. Buy a very nice mattress and high-thread-count sheets. You will need to test out a variety of mattresses to find the one that fits you best but if you find the right one, it will greatly enhance the quality of your sleep, and subsequently, your waking life. Why is it that more expensive mattresses = better sleep? Cite the evidence showing that high thread-count sheets = better sleep, which in tern laeds to improvements in waking life. You can accomplish more if you work less and sleep more. Hypothetically a well-rested person working 55-hour work weeks can usually outperform a sleep-deprived person working 80-hour work weeks in terms of quality, all else equal (specifically for knowledge work). Hypothetically this isn't true at all. Is there evidence to support this hypothesis or not? If not, this adds nothing to the debate. You can pay the farmer, or you can pay the doctor. Prevention (i.e. good diet and food ingredients) is an order of magnitude cheaper than treatment (most age-related diseases are correlated with poor dietary choices). This is trite and catch-all. What is good diet? There is no common agreement (see: high carb/high protein/high fat discussions). Show the evidence that this is 'an order of magnitude' cheaper than treatment. What are 'good ingredients'. You recommend free-range meats? Grass-fed beef? Locally produced? Define 'good'. A cheap chair and mattress may end up costing you 10-20x in doctor's bills. Says who? 10-20x seems pretty specific - what's the citation on that? A 'cheap' chair - so is price the only metric? Any $2000 chair is worth it and saves money on doctor's bills? Doesn't it matter how often i spend sitting? Could there not be cheap chairs that are actually better than many expensive ones? What's an 'expensive' mattress? Spoken communication has a massive non-verbal component. Study body language and you'll be pretty shocked at how often peoples' spoken words contradict their telltale non-verbal cues. Citation please. A lot of the 'non-verbal communication' stuff (read: NLP) is considered unscientific gumf. Don't get me wrong, there's some great advice in here. But around half is stuff that can be scientifically demonstrated and just off-handedly saying something is invalid whilst proclaiming the opposite without providing any citations is counter-productive. It just encourages "common knowledge" of the same old wives tales and folklore that it itself is trying to counteract.

JeanPierre 16y ago

Happiness = Outcome - Expectations. The key to enjoying life is keeping expectations low to the degree that you're always pleasantly surprised. I find this a bad advice due to many different reasons. First and foremost, startups must have high expectations in order to, well, start up. People would never, ever create a company assuming it would go straight to hell after six months. What also bothers me with this statement is that, by keeping expectations low, you would probably not work as much as you would if you had higher expectations. As a final note, I have always kept my expectations very, very high. I always aim for A's at university. Yet, I do not feel less happy than the average Joe, even though I sometimes get a B or a C.

Joeri 16y ago
You don't start a company to become happy, and most young entrepreneurs have to work at it for years until they get ROI, so if they went into it with high initial expectations, they're almost guaranteed to burn out before reaching their goals. Speaking of goals, you're confusing them with expectations. Having high goals and low expectations is generally the most potent mix to ensure that you're working hard. If you're working hard for an exam, but expect you'll only get a B, getting that A makes you happy. If you instead expect the A, and only get a B, you'll be unhappy and discouraged. We all know about that one star student who cried because they got "only a B".
michael_dorfman 16y ago
I think you are mistaking "expectations" and "ambitions". by keeping expectations low, you would probably not work as much as you would if you had higher expectations. I think the opposite is true-- there are many startups that have failed because they expected the traffic to be there when they launched, because they expected the world to sit up and take notice, instead of realizing that there was a lot of hard work they had to do to get it. Lower expectations, in this case, leads to harder work (and a higher likelihood of success.)

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sdfgtrh 16y ago

petervandijck 16y ago

If you have long-term dreams and can visualize them, they tend to work out, but the path of how you get there is often surprising and unexpected.

edw519 16y ago

OK, let me give this a shot... In the past year or two, I have learned my greatest life lesson. As a lifelong high achiever, it was extremely counter-intuitive yet it was right in front of me all along. First, a little background... In the past couple of years: - My father died. - My aunt (and best friend) died. - My cousin (who was really like my brother) died. - My 19 year old cat died. - We had our first ever family reunion. - My mother's dimentia has turned her back into a child. Sure we all have great memories and are busy working at building even better futures, but ultimately it all boils down to: All we have is now. My pets have been trying to teach me this for years, if only I had listened. And now my mother is teaching me. They don't really remember yesterday. They don't care about tomorrow. But they really care about the moment. Intensely. I have had to really slow down and let this sink in. When I visit my mother in her nursing home, we have a great time laughing, talking, visiting others, and of course, playing Jeopardy. We can't have the conversations we used to, so we just have new experiences, one time only, in the moment, and only for those who are there. We never talk about the past and she simply doesn't understand, "I'll see you tomorrow." I haven't stopped building my future, but I no longer sacrifice the present in order to get there. I have learned that the process must be as enjoyable as the outcome. After all, the process is "now" and the outcome is just an instant in time. It may sound cliche, but everyone should take inventory of all the good stuff in their lives (especially other people) and make the most of it now. You'll be surprised how quickly it'll be gone. Don't wait half your life to learn my most valuable counter-intuitive lesson.

CallMeV 16y ago
All we have is now. Bingo. If I had to like or upvote only one thing today, anywhere, I would upvote this. I seriously wish I could upvote it twice. Thank you for reminding me.
ihodes 16y ago
It does sound cliché. And, respectfully, I think it's just as wrong [Edit: not wrong, but maybe shortsighted. Then again, if what I say in the following paragraphs doesn't change your view in the slightest, then more power to you: my view isn't the absolute. Do what you think is "right", whatever right might be.] as most clichés tend to be. We have now, certainly, and now is amazing. But we have the past, too; at least for a while (dementia and all sorts of other things can rob us of the past). We have the future, too (though we can be robbed of that). I live for all three. The past is where I draw from to inform my present actions; the present is where I enjoy myself and prepare for the future; the future is where we're all heading. If I lived for the now, I wouldn't be going to college. I wouldn't be planning to study for a PhD in Neuroscience and researching assistive brain/spine implants. I wouldn't study programming languages and designs. I wouldn't be reading The Intelligent Investor. In fact, if you lived for the now, you'd probably be living in a soma-induced haze à la Huxley's Brave New World: it'd be the optimal choice, in fact. Pure neurochemical bliss. The argument that you should live for now because you could be dead at any second is obscene, to me: it's more likely that you live than you die, and you're likely to be consistently happier now and in the future if you act like you'll be alive in the future. Evidence: planning for retirement. Seriously. So live for yourself, sure, but live for all of yourself. Think of yourself as a smudge on a timeline: not in one place, not just in the past, not just in the future. Optimize the smudge.

phugoid 16y ago

There's a class of situations where the more you want something, the less likely you are to get it. Desperation puts you at a disadvantage when you're looking for a mate or a job. People who can fake disinterest have the advantage over those with genuine neediness. Yet, I would think that honesty and sincerity are key attributes of mates and employees.

yef 16y ago
Absolutely true. Maybe I'm mincing words but there is a corollary here too. There is a class of situations where the harder you try, the bigger the disadvantage you have. This can be hard for workaholic types to understand. Class A (Effort correlates with results) = Work, school, etc. Class B (Ease correlates with results) = Socializing, dating, etc.

deleted 16y ago

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Kilimanjaro 16y ago

Have as many kids as you can. Only they can give you the happiest and saddest moments of your life. And to better understand life, you need to know and go both extremes. Every smile is a hug to your heart, every tear is a kick to your soul. At the end of the journey, they will be the real treasure of your existence.

yason 16y ago

In life, you first have the test and then you learn. In many modern institutions we're accustomed to it being vice versa.

jimmyjazz14 16y ago

"Money CAN buy happiness", have a child and suddenly the value of having money goes up a hundred fold. The desire to make lots of money is not always based on greed!

joshkaufman 16y ago
I just had a daughter, and experienced the opposite. We're beyond the point of financial sufficiency, and I could make a lot more money if I chose to work more. What I really want is more time every day to spend with her AND get work done.
- jimmyjazz14 16y ago
  For me having more money means I can work less and therefore focus more time on my child more.
  - joshkaufman 16y ago
    My work is very fulfilling - that's why I want to do both.
jtheory 16y ago
I had a child almost 2 years ago now, and the value of money didn't change much. The value of time underwent some volcanic upheavals, on the other hand. There's an awful lot of crap that modern parents buy for their babies that's actually totally irrelevant to what the baby needs to do well (plus it's crazy expensive -- there's a massive "baby tax" -- where everything for babies is extra pricey unless you buy cheap-o brand -- that's kinda like the "wedding tax"). But babies don't need their own rooms, furniture, etc. etc. etc. -- they really couldn't care less about having all of this stuff of their own. They want their parents, and they want to do what their parents do. But their parents are busy working harder so they can pay for the furniture, fancy "genius baby" toys, and fake baby versions of all of the things adults use, when the kid is just dying to use the things the parents already have, and interact with the parents themselves in surprisingly sophisticated ways (if the parents let it happen, that is). Don't even get me started on baby food (hint: eat healthy, breastfeed, and when the kid starts wanting solid foods just leave out the salt and amazingly they pick up on how to chew right away!). Having a kid isn't expensive at all -- monetarily -- unless you get suckered by the industry. (Note: Unless you need to pay serious money for schooling; then it will be very expensive further down the line...). But in terms of time... well, everything changes. We're doing better & better at integrating her into our lives (rather than "now I'm watching the baby so everything else stops), but I'm a developer. There's no good way to involve a 2-year-old in writing code, so while the laundry may be done and the dishes washed, I tend to work a lot at night.....

pasbesoin 16y ago

There is an inverse relationship between the extent to which someone labels themself as an authority and the extent to which they actually are an authority. Corollary: Be particularly wary of medical "experts". Second, and self-referential, corollary: Be particularly wary of "bitter" people and comments.

VB6_Foreverr 16y ago

That there was a market for expired lightbulbs in the Soviet Union because working ones were hard to source. People would bring the expired ones to work and swap them for working ones. There's a life lesson there somewhere.

rwmj 16y ago
That communism is never going to work because it goes against human nature?
- rwmj 16y ago
  Downvotes? Someone care to explain what's wrong with this?

klochner 16y ago

That thread points out a huge problem with the quora format - ideally people could vote up suggestions on a per-item basis, so that the community could collectively produce the best list of items. Instead people produce long-winded all-encompassing content-duplicating posts, so we end up with a jumbled mess of data.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

One thing I haven't seen yet: Generally, in most companies you have as much authority as you dare. The best way to get promoted is to just start doing the job you want to have and then have your title changed later. The idea that the organization and leadership of a company flows in exactly the manner the org chart specifies is a complete and utter fallacy. In reality, in most companies there is a lot of leadership coming from unexpected places, especially at a tech. company. If you sit back and wait for authority to be given to you that'll almost never happen, if you start spearheading worthwhile initiatives and start being an advocate for useful change, you'll get that authority in practice before you get it officially.

GFischer 16y ago
That can lead to a lot of inefficiency and friction, and people ditching their jobs for the jobs they'd like to do. How do I know? At my current company, the IT department currently has no formal boss. So a few ambitious people decided they'd rather not do the boring programming work, and take advantage of the void. But they don't feel like being called to task. The current climate is far from ideal, and there's a lot of backstabbing going on, and if you feel responsible (for maintaining the invisible legacy systems for example), you lose to the ambitious guys. On the plus side, I'm learning a lot about social dynamics :) . I've given up on advancing here, but the experience will be useful.

deleted 16y ago

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bloggergirl 16y ago

After reading through all the awesome comments on this thread on Quora, I created a Prezi to summarize it all. I posted it as an answer summary. But some guy named Richard Henry --- Quora Admin --- deleted it. Said it wasn't a summary and was not useful. Here it is, if you're interested in the summary: http://prezi.com/l1wuvbaya37o/quora-life-lessons/ http://prezi.com/l1wuvbaya37o/quora-life-lessons/

Calamitous 16y ago

All of them, it seems.

da5e 16y ago

What you resist, persists.