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Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

• iamthemonster 5y ago
  I don't look back on it that fondly nowadays, but it would probably be Mr Money Mustache's classic "The Simple Math of Early Retirement". I am not on a path to FIRE really, but in my early twenties it was really incredibly eye-opening. At that age, I had very much assumed that the world had to work according to "work hard for 45 years, get the biggest house you can, buy as much stuff as you can, on your 65th birthday your company hands you a final salary pension that will last the rest of you life". Something had always felt a bit wrong about consumerism and the hedonic treadmill, but it took the brusque and entertaining prose of MMM to really stop and make me think. Funnily enough, I now find him very grating, but he absolutely set me on a path of rethinking my life in my early 20s to truly think about what matters to me.
  • qnsi 5y ago
    Link here: <1> Basically he talks about how when you retire depends on one number, percentage of money you can save from your pay. If you save 50% of your pay and invest it, you can retire in 16 years. Pretty eye openning <1>https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
    • codingdave 5y ago
      The problem I've always had with that story is that most people are struggling just to live on what they make. Saving 50% of your income when you are trying to make rent is a pipe dream. Even making decent money, if you have a family, saving is tough. The idea that we are poor because we buy lattes is over-simplified, and borderline insulting. Life is more complicated than a blog post with some arithmetic.
      • anm89 5y ago
        I could list more than 10 people I personally know who have probably permanently stunted their lives via credit card debt from door dash and uber eats. The the world doesn't owe you a standard of living. If you want to have more money, spend less money. Or don't. It's your choice. Nothing insulting about it.
        • thehomestayer 5y ago
          Your second line really resonated with me. Thanks for sharing.
      • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
        > The problem I've always had with that story is that most people are struggling just to live on what they make. FIRE obviously isn’t meant for someone trying to live in an expensive city on a $15/hr wage. However, there really are many career paths that readily allow the math. You’re obviously going to struggle to make it work if your goal is to work for a non-profit in Seattle or San Francisco, but it’s entirely within reach if you choose to work for an average tech company in an average city. It’s also trivial to make the math work out if you’re able to get a FAANG job anywhere and keep your lifestyle in check. > Saving 50% of your income when you are trying to make rent is a pipe dream. Depends entirely on your lifestyle and relationship situation. Many of us easily achieved FIRE savings rates by simply getting married to another professional, choosing to keep expenses within the limits of one person’s income, and putting 100% of the other person’s income into savings. Instant 50% savings rate, and it’s not even difficult to be honest. As a bonus, it was easy to transition to having kids and a stay-at-home spouse because we already lived on one income. Obviously doesn’t work for everyone in every situation, but it’s not correct to say it’s a pipe dream or that it can’t work. It’s a choice that requires choosing lifestyle and career directions to match, but everything is a tradeoff.
      • throwaway98797 5y ago
        Plenty of live on 55k a year. If you make $125k a year why cant you live like those making 55k? That’s the pickle at upper middle class incomes your spending is a choice. Most people refuse to see that.
    • Zababa 5y ago
      > The most important thing to note is that cutting your spending rate is much more powerful than increasing your income. I believe that part isn't exactly right, because you can increase your income way more than you can reduce what it takes for you to live. If you're a software engineer making let's say 70k, you can find a job where you make 150k, 200k or even more. If you currently spend 50k every year, it's way more effective than trying to spend less. You also have to take into account that once you retire you can live somewhere where the cost of living is lower.
      • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
        Agree. I think that advice panders to people who want advice they can act on today. You can choose to save $3 at your next grocery store visit right away and it won’t even hurt. However, telling people to work on earning more feels like an impossibly difficult ask for many. You’ll get instant pushback when you suggest it, so bloggers avoid it. FIRE blogging is more about pandering to what people want to hear. It is, after all, a big money blogging niche these days. Alienating the reader is to be avoided if you want to keep readership up, so career and earnings are to be approached delicately if at all in their writings.
        • Zababa 5y ago
          That's a good point. I wonder why we consider that people telling people to spend less is okay, while telling people to earn more is not. Maybe because we consider that they have total control over what they spend, but not over what they earn? While this may be true, most people still could probably find a better job.
      • froindt 5y ago
        Yes, doubling your income and maintaining your lifestyle would make a huge difference. In many cases such an extreme bump isn't reasonably available. I believe GP was more referring to the rough rule of thumb is to have 25x your annual expenses by the time you retire. +5k income versus -5k expenses, you're better off cutting your expenses. By cutting expenses, the target drops by 25xExpensesCut, and you're throwing an extra ExpensesCut towards savings, helping on both sides of the equation. Going from spending 95% of savings to 90% makes a huge difference on the timeline, but 50% to 45% is much more modest since the timeline for compounding growth is so much shorter. Using 70k income, 50k expenses, and a 5% return, this would take about 30 years. [0] 75k income, 50k expenses goes to 25.2 years [1] 70k income, 45k expenses goes to 24 years [2] 150k income, 50k expenses goes to 10.6 years [3] Another detail often forgotten about, salary is stated before taxes, spending is almost always after taxes. That further increases the power of decreasing expenses. [0] https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=70000&initialBalance=0&expenses=50000&annualPct=5&withdrawalRate=4 https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=70... [1] https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=75000&initialBalance=0&expenses=50000&annualPct=5&withdrawalRate=4 https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=75... [2] https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=70000&initialBalance=0&expenses=45000&annualPct=5&withdrawalRate=4 https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=70... [3] https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=150000&initialBalance=0&expenses=50000&annualPct=5&withdrawalRate=4 https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=15...*
    • rchaud 5y ago
      But isn't this just the financial equivalent of "lose weight by consuming fewer calories than what you use"? It's far easier said than done. If you lose your job, or spend a chunk of your savings in a family emergency of some kind, then what? Do you have to save 80% of your take home to make up for the lost savings?
    • deegles 5y ago
      The other half of it is how much you spend. You also have to keep your retirement spending at the same level. i.e. if you make 100k/yr and save 90% of it, you can retire in 3 years... however, you have to keep your spending at 10k/yr. So if you can handle living that frugally, great! Otherwise you have to save a lot more before you can retire at your "current" lifestyle.
  • jacknews 5y ago
    Honestly I find the whole movement quite dreary if taken too seriously. Of course, don't spend on frivolous things. Do you really need the designer bag, instead of just a bag? Do you need that road-trip with your friends in your 20s? Do you really need to impress that boy/girl by taking them to a michelin restaurant for a date? OTOH what is the opportunity, and life cost of being frugal or too frugal? Perhaps the designer bag caught the attention of the boss, and 'earned' their respect, which ultimately translated to a promotion. Perhaps you ended up finding your life parrter in one of your road-trip friends. Perhaps you didn't get the boy/girl because you cheaped out on the date. Etc. Life is to be lived. Some moderation is required. Not too much though.
    • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
      > Honestly I find the whole movement quite dreary if taken too seriously. FIRE content is best consumed in tiny doses. You can get 95% of what you need to know from a few blog posts, the Bogleheads Wiki, and creating a simple spreadsheet of your financial planning. That’s it. The problem is that FIRE has become a magnet for people who are miserable and think retirement will solve all of their problems. This subset of FIRE people see their job as the source of all of their misery and have glorified the idea of FIRE as the only escape hatch. They think they’ll be finally be happy just as soon as they can save enough money (from the job they hate) and reduce their expenses (by ruthlessly cutting spending, even on things they enjoy) until the lines intercept on their FIRE projections. There are many people following a FIRE path who don’t fit this stereotype, but those people aren’t the ones hanging out on FIRE forums discussing FIRE all day. The people who obsess over FIRE and want to create threads to trash talk their neighbors who had the audacity to go on an expensive vacation or write about how little they spent on food last year by eating lentils every day are predominantly the ones talking about it all the time. There just isn’t much to talk about once you’ve identified a retirement equilibrium target and established a plan, so most of the reasonable participants don’t bother hanging out in the FIRE communities. There are exceptions to everything, of course, but I found that most real-world FIRE people I know don’t want anything to do with internet FIRE communities or MMM. Finances are something that should enable the life you want, not something that should become the primary focus of your discussions, readings, and online discourse all of the time.
• ValentineC 5y ago
  I like re-reading this once every few months, and taking stock of how little I've internalised it: https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-y...
  • injb 5y ago
    This is the winner!
  • dcolkitt 5y ago
    I wish I could find an archive of Jason Pargin's old writings back from when he ran PointlessWasteOfTime.com under the David Wong handle. The Monkeysphere was a brilliant essay. https://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html https://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
  • adwn 5y ago
    You might want to rethink aligning your life to a Cracked listicle, in particular this one. For example: > For instance, some people want to respond to that speech with Tyler Durden's line from Fight Club: "You are not your job." But, well, actually, you totally are. Well, actually, you totally aren't. The next part is even worse and downright dehumanizing: > you are nothing more than the sum total of your useful skills [...] Your "job" -- the useful thing you do for other people -- is all you are. It's not a good idea to view yourself as purely a means to an end for other people. I'm strongly in favor of being a useful and productive part of society, but not to the point where nothing remains of your person except for an exploitable resource for others.
    • pricecomstock 5y ago
      I generally agree and don't know how well this holds up, but reading this article when I was around 20 really broke me out of some entitlement and helped me start working on myself. I think it made me view things less selfishly and think about other people's perspectives more. So I do think it works for the question asked here
    • 5y ago
• anm89 5y ago
  Not really life changing but still my favorite blog post of all time https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
  • michaelbuckbee 5y ago
    Yeah, this is the one that I came here to post. I probably think about it once a week in the context of news/life.
  • honkdaddy 5y ago
    Scott's writing definitely absolutely life changing for me.
    • anm89 5y ago
      Yeah I guess I agree. It's in a pretty intangible way but he has definitely influenced my thinking.
  • rtkaratekid 5y ago
    Man, that was a great read. Definitely wasted some work time reading this instead because I couldn’t pull myself away.
    • anm89 5y ago
      Another blog post that I love along very vaguely similar lines is https://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-pt-1/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-pt-1/
• Zealotux 5y ago
  Maybe not a life-changing thing but something that truly unlocked a lot of things: https://milan.cvitkovic.net/writing/things_youre_allowed_to_do/ https://milan.cvitkovic.net/writing/things_youre_allowed_to_... HN discussion about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25513713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25513713
  • mwcvitkovic 5y ago
    Aw I'm so glad!
  • kamaal 5y ago
    This is just a different way of saying There are no rules.
• Causality1 5y ago
  It wasn't a blog post, but CGP Grey's "This Video Will Make You Angry" has been a tremendously helpful tool in understanding the behavior of people online and in controlling my own behavior.
• prezjordan 5y ago
  Not a typical answer but this blog post led me to getting the help I needed and I'm forever grateful for it https://maxmanders.co.uk/2016/09/05/on-being-generally-anxious.html https://maxmanders.co.uk/2016/09/05/on-being-generally-anxio...
• rado 5y ago
  Not life changing, but my favourite is "The 100% correct way to do CSS breakpoints" by David Gilbertson, because it clearly and convincingly restores common sense in an industry quick to follow well established nonsense. https://medium.com/free-code-camp/the-100-correct-way-to-do-css-breakpoints-88d6a5ba1862 https://medium.com/free-code-camp/the-100-correct-way-to-do-...
  • RobertRoberts 5y ago
    I have only 1 break point now. 960px. This is based primarily on content, not the screen/window size. After 20+ years doing web design and multi-media, I just got tired of fighting changes to trends without any value for those changes.
• zschuessler 5y ago
  Soft skills every dev should know: * https://neilonsoftware.com/soft-skills-every-dev-should-know/ https://neilonsoftware.com/soft-skills-every-dev-should-know... This next one isn't life-changing. But, it has intriguing ideas in it, summarized from Fooled by Randomness: * https://jamesclear.com/book-summaries/fooled-by-randomness https://jamesclear.com/book-summaries/fooled-by-randomness The last link has a trove of top-tier content if you go to the articles section. Smart lad!
• slipwalker 5y ago
  not sure if it's the "most life-changing", but it was somewhat life-changing: https://iheartintelligence.com/discipline-beats-motivation/ https://iheartintelligence.com/discipline-beats-motivation/
• mrob 5y ago
  http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2014/07/instant-pot-electronic-pressure-cooker.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2014/07/instant-pot-el... If you see cooking primarily as a means of getting nutrients rather than a hobby, I very strongly recommend getting an electric pressure cooker. It greatly simplifies cooking because it's automated. Just add the ingredients, close the lid, press a button, and wait. You will get a perfectly cooked one-pot meal with minimum effort. You can even mix fresh and frozen ingredients and the timer won't start until the frozen ingredients are thawed. If you don't overfill it the only thing the food touches is the inner stainless steel pot, so it's very easy to clean. I get the majority of my nutrition from food cooked this way. I can't imagine going back to slow traditional methods. It also makes dried legumes far more practical, because you can skip the pre-soak phase. If you eat a lot of legumes, and you switch from canned to dried, the savings will most likely pay for the cost of the machine within a few years. In addition, energy costs are reduced because cooking at increased pressure is faster, and good electric pressure cookers are insulated. I am happy with an Instant Pot brand one, although I don't guarantee they are the best. If somebody has strong opinions on which is best then please post them. The one major downside is the texture of the food can become boring, because everything is mixed together and you can't make crispy foods with it, but you can always add things like pickles after you've cooked it.
  • voisin 5y ago
    Isn’t one of the benefits of presoaking is that it releases certain gases that can wreck havoc on your gastrointestinal system? Does the same thing happen if you use a pressure cooker?
    • mrob 5y ago
      If you're susceptible to that effect then presoaking will help, but susceptibility depends on your individual microbiome. Some vegans use the liquid that chickpeas were cooked in as an egg substitute ("aquafaba"). I personally drain the liquid off after cooking, and don't notice any problems.
      • poutrathor 5y ago
• benjaminwootton 5y ago
  I devoured all of Joel on Software and Kathy Sierras Creating Passionate Users. This was my favourite one on avoiding mediocrity. It crosses my mind at least weekly over a decade later! https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/02/mediocrity_by_a.html https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/...
  • jonnytran 5y ago
    I second both of these. Even though they write a lot about tech, you can replace the specific technologies with the modern day equivalent and it's still relevant. For a lot of the topics, I haven't come across anything else that better articulates it. The next level is getting into the mind of Kathy Sierra. The idea that helping people become passionate -- or badass, as she later rewords -- is an end in itself. This isn't just about tech.
• shaneos 5y ago
  Aphantasia: How it feels to be blind in your mind By Blake Ross https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A2862324277332876%7D&path=%2Fnotes%2Fnote%2F&refsrc=deprecated&_rdr https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A... Before reading this post I had no idea I had aphantasia and thought everyone else was the same as me, unable to see anything when they closed their eyes. This helped me understand myself and my relationships so much better than ever before. Thanks Blake!
  • bemmu 5y ago
    I still can’t quite believe there are people who can see clear images in their minds. Maybe it’s more a matter of how you report your experience? I’m very conscious of how poor my mental images are, but maybe with a little less introspection I would also say I have great mental imagery.
    • kilbuz 5y ago
      Yes, this. I honestly don't know if I see things vividly or not well at all because there is no baseline for comparison, such as a traditional vision and color test.
    • rolltopdesk 5y ago
      Yeah, I have asked people “ can you visualize Obama’s face on this piece of paper?” They say “oh, yes-perfectly! -it’s like I’m looking at a photograph” “Could you trace it and come away with a drawing that would compare well with a traced photo?” They can’t, and I think they are over-reporting the fidelity of their visualizations.
      • FinanceAnon 5y ago
        I agree that some people might under/over-estimate their abilities. However, I am not sure if drawing is the right way to test it. I can visualise a straight line or a perfect circle, but I wouldn't be able to draw them perfectly.
      • wizzwizz4 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• lemoid 5y ago
  https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm I remember reading this first time in early twenties - it was mindblowing. After several years I can say that many things I’ve expierenced, noticed and learned are mentioned somewhere along these lines. ‚One must permit his people the freedom to seek added work and greater responsibility. In my organization, there are no formal job descriptions or organizational charts. Responsibilities are defined in a general way, so that people are not circumscribed. All are permitted to do as they think best and to go to anyone and anywhere for help. Each person then is limited only by his own ability.’
  • hrnnnnnn 5y ago
    Working link: https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm
    • lemoid 5y ago
      Edited, thanks
  • sethammons 5y ago
    > Unless the individual truly responsible can be identified when something goes wrong, no one has really been responsible. With the advent of modern management theories it is becoming common for organizations to deal with problems in a collective manner, by dividing programs into subprograms, with no one left responsible for the entire effort. I was quite literally thinking about this exact problem at my organization last week. This quote is older than I am.
  • calderarrow 5y ago
    This is my absolute favorite essay of all time. I actually have it set to my default tab whenever I open a web browser, because I try to make sure I read it as often as I can. > To complaints of a job poorly done, one often hears the excuse, “I am not responsible.” I believe that is literally correct. The man who takes such a stand in fact is not responsible; he is irresponsible. While he may not be legally liable, or the work may not have been specifically assigned to him, no one involved in a job can divest himself of responsibility for its successful completion.
• bigie35 5y ago
  1,000 true fans. https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
• f0e4c2f7 5y ago
  How I became the honest broker. https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/how-i-became-the-honest-broker https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/how-i-became-the-honest-brok...
• hawski 5y ago
  I know that it is tempting to paste a link to your favorite blog post, but I would like to encourage you to post really life-changing posts. If you post "maybe not" or "not really" maybe refrain from posting? Otherwise it will be just another popularity contest of random blog posts, we have more of them than those from the title I believe. It's okay for the thread to be short. Not a GP. The opinion is my own.
  • stinkytaco 5y ago
    Every time I see something like this I have two answers: none and all. On one hand, "life changing" is a big word and I have never read anything that I could possibly say had as big an impact on me as, say, having children. It's hard to imagine articles and books are life changing, only that they can contribute to life changing actions. On the other, nearly everything I've read has changed me and how I saw the world, even ever so slightly. Different perspectives, bits of knowledge, connections made that I'm not even aware of. So I guess I just have to assume that everyone's definition of "life changing" is going to be quite wide depending on their own life experience and attitudes.
    • magicalhippo 5y ago
      > On the other, nearly everything I've read has changed me and how I saw the world, even ever so slightly. Same here. The discrete life-changing stuff in my life have been things that happened to me or someone close to me. Not stuff I've read. But the stuff I've read stay with me and have definitely changed my perspective, affected how I approach things etc. So rather than reading a particular blog post, I'd say: read lots!
  • elliekelly 5y ago
    > If you post "maybe not" or "not really" maybe refrain from posting? Sometimes people use hedging language like this because they’re being vulnerable beyond their comfort level. So even though a post might truly have been life changing for them they brace for someone responding with a dismissive or snarky comment by hedging with “maybe not really” type words. It’s a form of self-protection, in a way. So I fear your comment could very likely discourage people who were already on the fence about sharing, perhaps even sharing something interesting. So I say, the more the merrier! Who knows what might be life changing for someone. I definitely didn’t expect to open this thread and read a blog post about bone trumpets but I’m really glad I did.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• orbz 5y ago
  While not a blog post really, I often times revisit Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture[1] to act as a memento mori[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7zzQpvoYcQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7zzQpvoYcQ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori
• knuckleheads 5y ago
  In fall of 2018, I read a blog post by Dan Luu called "The googlebot monopoloy". https://danluu.com/googlebot-monopoly/ https://danluu.com/googlebot-monopoly/ It's a short blog post that I've probably read a thousand times at this point. He wrote about how websites give Google a big advantage when it comes to web crawling and how that big advantage probably makes it harder for other search engines to compete with Google. This was a pretty striking idea to me and there was a lot of talk at the time about antitrust and Big Tech. Dan's post had been written in 2015, so I was sure that a ton of other people, especially DC policy people, already knew about this and were talking about it. Right? Turns out, basically nobody in DC knew anything about this. A ton of website operators complain about it on their own forums like HN and SEO, it's not hard to find people griping about the cost of Bing's crawlers, but those people never saw fit to tell anybody in DC about this and how it impacts the market for general purpose search engines and gives Google such an advantage. So I started writing down everything that I was finding about Google's web crawling advantage and writing it in a way that policy people could understand these things called web crawlers they had probably never heard much about before. And, long story short, the policy people were very grateful that I had gotten in touch and explained all this, and I got cited in the Big Tech Antitrust report published by Congress last summer and then featured in The New York Times: https://knuckleheads.club/we-crawled-our-way-into-the-big-tech-antitrust-report/ https://knuckleheads.club/we-crawled-our-way-into-the-big-te... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/technology/how-google-dominates.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/technology/how-google-dom... So, Dan's blog post has had a pretty big impact on my life so far and it's not quite done yet. The pandemic has slowed me down this year much more than it did last year, but I'm working on preparing to submit a paper to an economics journal for peer review that lays out the dynamics of web crawling, why Google accrues this advantage and why it matters. I'm very grateful to Dan for writing that post and, as far as career advice goes, I heartily recommend going back every once in a while and rereading everything he has ever written. Who knows what else he's hiding in there?
  • 097A33B8 5y ago
    The difference between Bing and Google's crawlers causes me physical pain. As part of a team that runs several large sites, the performance difference between them is stunning, but not any any way complimentary to Bing. We want Bing to do better. We want them to challenges Google pole position. Bingbot will crawl the exact same set pages 10 times in a week, and will make hundreds of requests per minute doing so. Googlebot will crawl them once, at a much more reasonable pace. The bandwidth and power costs we incur from Bing crawlers are a hundredfold (at least) what we incur from Googlebot. Please, Microsoft, make Bingbots not suck so badly.
• elmalto 5y ago
  Ok it’s a bit of a stretch as it’s a speech, but “This Is Water” by David Foster Wallace is simply amazing. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI
  • tvirosi 5y ago
    I admit that I never really understood this speech. Could you explain why it was significant to you and what it means?
    • randcraw 5y ago
      https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/ https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/ Wallace says it himself in the speech: " Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.” I second this nomination. This is one of the most insightful essays I've ever read. Wallace's central points of consciously choosing A) what you give your attention to and B) how you construct meaning from experience REALLY DO lie at the heart of learning how to think and live a meaningful life. ("Water" is the noise in life that surrounds us every day which we've learned to ignore. But it's still the lens through which an untrained eye sees everything, that shapes who we are and how we live, since most of us don't act deliberately so much as react to life. Being oblivious to water is about remaining clueless to this noise, just going with the flow, unquestioningly and passively allowing your view of the world and your role in life to be shaped by mostly meaningless turbulence.)
• aarondf 5y ago
  I once had an entire podcast dedicated to sharing blog posts that had influenced my life. I recorded almost 50 episodes, it was a really rewarding experience. You can see the whole list at https://aaronfrancis.com/musicmakers https://aaronfrancis.com/musicmakers
• agomez314 5y ago
  Joel Spolsky's The Perils of JavaSchools really popped my bubble when I first read it. It was part of a suggested reading list from the Software Engineering MA program I was taking (hidden away on a dark corner of a syllabus). Reading it felt like a refutation of almost everything I knew about software at that point. He introduced to me new topics I had never heard about from my compsci classes like Lisp and SICP. Reading the post, it became clear to me that it was not about how quick or deep you can learn a language, but rather what are all the ideas and abstractions that enable such a language to exist. Computer science really was more than just computers. After reading that post I looked around and discovered the youtube videos of SICP, which have done more for my love and knowledge of programming than the entire MA program I took. Link: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-javaschools-2/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-java...
• foooobaba 5y ago
  When I was 13 I read ESR’s how to become a hacker and it changed my life.. I followed the instructions starting with c++ then linux and that’s basically how I got into coding! http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
  • zshrdlu 5y ago
    Ah, this one probably had more impact on me than I credit it for. Thanks for pointing it out :)
• ripitrust 5y ago
  https://blog.tjcx.me/p/consume-less-create-more https://blog.tjcx.me/p/consume-less-create-more This article inspired me on two things : 1) Lots of the things I do in everyday life is just to consume: buying, watching, following, etc. These things either consume my money, or my time. These things make me feel good, but it does not generate real value. In order to get rich, I need to create things. I also start to realize that great people are great because they started to create things at a very early stage of their life (but not consuming things as they advocate, think about celebrities, entrepreneurs etc), so they are able to practice and perfect the value creating skills to the extreme. 2) I start to realize that the world is binary in nature : I create to sell, I buy to consume. I either at the buyer side, or at the seller side. And in this current society, there is a huge buyer side trap, the whole idea of consumerism and social media is to trap you inside the buyer side, so you keep buying, you keep consuming. I really need to break free from this trap. This blog post was written before COVID-19, but the idea feels even fresher during this pandemic era
  • randprecision 5y ago
    I think I've been adjusting my life style to that idea for a couple months now. Being alone without friends for a few years makes working much more fun then I remember. Great article.
  • city41 5y ago
    Why do you have to create to sell? Creating just to create is the best kind of creation.
    • ripitrust 5y ago
      yeah it is not a reflection of causality, it is just that to sell is to create
  • ramraj07 5y ago
    If you keep reading murakami and Dan brown, sure you’re just juggling words for no real benefit. But if you’re gonna read the making of the atomic bomb, or team of teams, then maybe it’s not a wasteful exercise. Definitely better than writing if you ask me.
• videlov 5y ago
  Beating the Averages by pg: http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html He planted the idea of "The Blub Paradox" in my head, which years later made me look at Git and version control through a different lens. Eventually I co-founded a company (Sturdy YCW21) making collaborating on code better.
• mingusrude 5y ago
  Life changing in that it changed my professional life. Steve Yegge's piece that all programmers are typists, http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirtiest-little-secret.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirties.... It's been a while since I read it but my recollection of it is that your tools matter and that you need to practice to get good in using your tools. Prior to reading this I was so focused on solving "the problem" that I never realized that I spent a lot of mental energy on the tools rather that was much better spent on solving whatever I worked on. This realization has changed how I approach technical stuff in my day-to-day job.
• msandford 5y ago
  Your idea is just a multiplier on your execution: https://sive.rs/multiply https://sive.rs/multiply I spent a lot of time thinking about ideas that were good or smart or made me feel smart. Could easily have been a lifelong chase with no real gains. Focusing on execution hasn't made me a millionaire overnight but it has helped me think about concrete things that are undeniably moving in the right direction instead of hoping to strike a "genius idea jackpot" that changes everything in an instant.
• SamuelAdams 5y ago
  What you can’t say by the owner of this website. Really helped me understand my own reluctance on posting about certain topics or why my friends shied away from discussing certain things. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
• alichapman 5y ago
  https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/research-in-conversation/how-live-happy-life/michael-plant https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/research-in-conversation/how-l... Really interesting conversation about the nature of happiness. For a lot of my life I was convinced that if I achieved my goals then I would become happy - "if I get into this uni, get this grade, get this job, etc...". Then when I started working I couldn't work out why career success wasn't translating into feeling better. In hindsight it's obvious that getting paid more money doesn't automatically make you happy, but it was only after reading this article that it really clicked for me.
• ntoll 5y ago
  ... writing a blog can also be life changing. Putting thoughts into words for others to understand is a creative activity that keeps on giving for all sorts of subtle reasons. (What reasons..? Write a blog and find out for yourself!)
• LazyDev199 5y ago
  Do Things That Don't Scale, Paul Graham http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
• KingOfCoders 5y ago
  Many on the Last Psychatrist.
• mooreds 5y ago
  For me it was The Joel Test: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-steps-to-better-code/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s... I read it early in my career. It was a simple way to assess team quality. It's relevant today (there are parts that are out of date, but most of it is still on the mark). It showed me the power of long form writing to share ideas around software.
• jlengrand 5y ago
  I don't know if they changed my life, but they did literally made a big impact in how I value myself for sure. That led to 3x salary raise over time and how I interact with my day job. Both from patio11 * How to negotiate salary : https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ * Don't call yourself a programmer : https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...
  • fossuser 5y ago
    That salary one is great, I’ve used similar strategies to help people negotiate pretty large bumps when interviewing. It’s funny to see the sophistication of the recruiter on the other side (while they’re pretending not to be). One social thing I learned though is that some people are weird about it - not the recruiters but the friends you’re trying to help negotiate. They’re afraid to do it and instead rationalize how it won’t work and then get angry if you try to persuade them that it’s possible.
    • jlengrand 5y ago
      That is why I like those articles, they allow me to pass the links without trying to convince people. Folks tend to find it easier to borrow wisdom from people further from their network.
  • nicbou 5y ago
    This is the pair of articles I thought of while reading the title. It's excellent advice.
  • the_jeremy 5y ago
    During my last round of interviews, I chose to spew out salary numbers. This is because I exclusively interviewed with recruiters who reached out on LinkedIn (sometimes you have to know your limits on how much effort you're willing to put in while employed). I found a recruiter who was reasonably decent (placed a friend of mine). I asked what top-of-band for my YOE in my COL seemed to be, and he said $130k-$140k. I then gave $150k as my requirement to all future companies. Too many were saying yes, so I upped it to $170k, then $190k, then at $200k I only got one bite. (Caveat: of course I asked for numbers from them first - when the recruiter was unwilling, depending on my mood I would say I wasn't willing to proceed further without a comp range, or I would give out my desired number and see what they said.) I might have missed out on companies willing to offer $200k while earlier in this process, but about half of the recruiters reaching out were positions offering $100k, and I was unwilling to waste that much time in interviews for jobs I didn't want. In case anyone wants to know how it ended, I told my current company (paying $120k) that I was in final interview rounds for $200k and I wanted to quit to focus on studying for interviews. They offered me $200k to stay and I accepted. TL;DR: Interviews take a long time. If you're some rando on LinkedIn and they're some random company you've never heard of, it's not worth assuming they'll be able to pay you enough and going through the process.
• MrPowers 5y ago
  How to Start a Startup by Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html Specifically this line "So if you want to invest two years in something that will help you succeed in business, the evidence suggests you'd do better to learn how to hack than get an MBA." I spent 5 years building a good business school resume and this post encouraged me to try out programming instead. The flexibility of a programming job let me escape the NYC / San Fran scene and start living abroad. Having way more fun living in different countries around the world now.
  • joshxyz 5y ago
    those essays were really something. still grateful he wrote those.
• skyfaller 5y ago
  It would have to be "How to Build a Low-Tech Website?": https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a-lowtech-website.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a-low... All of Low-Tech Magazine's articles are worth reading, but this one in particular inspired me to start a web design business focused on radical sustainability. I haven't really succeeded yet, but this article gave me a goal I've been pursuing off and on since I read it.
• rodolphoarruda 5y ago
  https://beepb00p.xyz/sad-infra.html https://beepb00p.xyz/sad-infra.html This one had some impact on me because it revived the importance of taking ownership not only on my personal data, but the infrastructure which generates it, processes and stores it; and that the same infrastructure should be well thought of by me through a tinkering process which adds value to itself and to data the more I invest time on it. I felt very motivated to rethink my workflows, my opsec and the way I store any data, not only new data I create, but general content that find around the Internet and that I think could be of any use in the future. An honorable mention would be this one: https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm... which helped me look at how the web has been evolving from a different angle and, of course, triggered me to change some of my behaviors regarding privacy and the use of big tech derived products.
• rbanffy 5y ago
  I’d say it was @paulg’s Beating the Averages. It led me to introduce a friend of mine to Zope, and to another friend (who introduced me to Zope years before). This led the first friend’s company to shift focus and become a key player in the CMS space with Plone (which is built on Zope), with many government portals and a large contribution to open source software. Along with the second friend they were instrumental in the creation of the Brazilian Python (Zope is written in Python) user association, of which I am also a founder. Without it, we wouldn’t have the yearly PythonBrasil conferences that introduce so many professionals to the language and foster a welcoming and inclusive community. For me, personally, it was the third time I was smacked in the head with that qualitative productivity jump based on superior technology before I could articulate it in words. First was with Cincom’s Mantis, then Dataflex 2 (3 was crap), and then with Zope.
• phoe18 5y ago
  Rick and Morty and the Meaning of Life by Daniel Jeffries https://hackernoon.com/rick-and-morty-and-the-meaning-of-life-6640df17e263 https://hackernoon.com/rick-and-morty-and-the-meaning-of-lif... A blog about meaning of life and its purpose using clips from popular shows and movies. I have re-read this piece several times and I come out with something new at the end of each read.
• keb_ 5y ago
  Might seem trivial, but this popular post about technical interview anxiety, "Interviewing for the anxious programmer": https://archive.is/zRFN3 https://archive.is/zRFN3 It was extremely comforting to me at a time where I was suffering from depression, and jobless -- struggling to obtain employment as a Software Engineer 2 years out of college. Most of what the blogpost described was immediately relatable. It gave me some peace of mind knowing that I was not alone. I still suffer from intense anxiety during technical interviews, but I no longer have an existential crisis about it or feel guilty for not being able to whiteboard well.
• barrenko 5y ago
  This still haunts me https://www.nashvail.me/blog/stop-learning https://www.nashvail.me/blog/stop-learning. You got to build stuff too, not just learn. Still, you also have to figure out if you're a builder or a "learner". I like to figure stuff out, once I know the solution, my interest is minimal.
  • bangarsanju12 5y ago
    This is Insane !!
  • cityzen 5y ago
    I cannot get over the irony that next to that article he has an ad for "Take my Git course on Skillshare".
  • VBprogrammer 5y ago
    > You can be in the back seat and travel to a place a hundred times. But until you take the driver's seat you'll never know the way. I know this phenomenon well. In fact, when we moved into our new house which was an easy drive from where we used to live, I drove here half a dozen times using the GPS and still had no idea where I was going until I forced myself to do the trip without turning the GPS on.
    • silisili 5y ago
      It's really weird, but you're right, I noticed the same thing. Anymore I try to avoid using GPS anywhere in my city, and it's both taught me a lot and also 'explore' a lot. My wife always asks if I'm afraid of getting lost, but I always tell her 'ah, all roads connect somewhere', which makes me feel better at least. I can only think of a couple times I truly felt turned around enough to pull out GPS.
    • nicbou 5y ago
      Keeping north up on your GPS also helps a lot. At least you get a better sense of where you're heading.
  • avnigo 5y ago
• boringg 5y ago
  Maybe tone the superlatives down. I am not sure there are "life-changing" blog posts. Maybe a post that is either illuminating to a new way of thinking or point you in another direction. To be clear - I support the idea of sharing insightful information especially as everyone takes different paths of life. I do however loathe the over the top language. This day and age everything is "life-changing", "epic", "GOAT" - its devalues the rest of the content.
  • piyh 5y ago
    Mr Money Mustache was a life changing blog for me. I don't think that's a hyperbole. I saved way more money after internalizing that blog's message than I would have otherwise.
    • MandieD 5y ago
      It made me aware of, then helped me get off, the “hedonic treadmill”. Saving more to invest is one part of being able to retire early; needing less to be happy right now and later is even more important.
• yrannes 5y ago
  "How to Get Rich" by Naval Ravikant https://nav.al/rich https://nav.al/rich Also maybe not life-changing, but absolutely gave me a lot to think about that I found incredibly rewarding and enjoyable.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• vitorbaptistaa 5y ago
  Religion for the Nonreligious by waitbutwhy https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious... I was raised in a Christian family, as most Brazilians are, but was never really into it. I don't remember praying after I grew up a bit (10+ years), and even before I was more saying the words than really meaning it. Then my father passed away when I was 12 (he was in his 40s, died of cancer). This led me on a few rabbit roles reading and talking about religion and the great questions of life. As I think many with a more analytical mindset, nothing really felt right, so I ended up being mostly atheist, with a few sparkles of buddhism and cristianity here and there. Later in my 20s, I dated and later married an amazing woman who is a True Believer. She's the daughter of a shaman with a buddhist monk, and has been meditating since she was born. Many more conversations ensued. I explored some of the "alternative" religions, and enjoyed especially the animist ones (Earth, Sun and Moon are pretty close to gods in my mind). I also tried mushrooms, which were amazing on breaking my usual brain paths and allowing me to see from a different perspective. But it still didn't feel right. Again, I was trying to understand religions with an analytical mind, which can only get me so far. I felt I was missing on something big (I still do). The world is too complex to be explained only with rationality and the scientific method, but at the same time explaining things based on dreams and our collective memory didn't seem much better. It was around this time I read the "Religion for the Nonreligious" article. There were no giant breakthroughs, and the text is somewhat reductionist. Still, it was one of the first times I read about religion in a way that really clicked (other times were reading about some parts of buddhism and meditation). One of the things that religion provides to people is structure. The world is too complex, and the nonsensical things happening every day can weigh someone down. Religious people can go on with their days knowing that there's a bigger plan. I think this makes them more resilient to the life challenges that will appear, sooner or later (although this resiliency can disappear quickly, just see at the number of people that blame God after some disaster happen on their lives). This text gave me some structure to think about where I am, where humanity is, and where I want to be. It made the world a little less chaotic, allowing me to see not only the little daily things, but also keep the bigger picture in mind. It gave me some peace of mind and, after all these years since I first read it, I still think about it every week.
• riebschlager 5y ago
  Merlin Mann - "Better" http://www.merlinmann.com/better/ http://www.merlinmann.com/better/ Written in 2008, but still amazingly relevant today. The opening lines are eerily prescient about our current "everyone needs to have a take on everything" culture. "Politics, celebrity gossip, business headlines, tech punditry, odd news, and user-generated content. These are the chew toys that have made me sad and tired and cynical. Each, in its own way, contributes to the imperative that we constantly expand our portfolio of shallow but strongly-held opinions about nearly everything. Then we’re supposed to post something about it. Somewhere."
  • werber 5y ago
    I love the throw away, first draft, not edited, conversational nature of HN. I love hearing and engaging with people from different places and backgrounds on here, but I guess this place is more like a message board/chat room than what the author is describing
• WhompingWindows 5y ago
  This early retirement post got me to save a LOT more money for my future, while friends were out vacationing or even worse, buying very expensive gizmos. I have one friend who lives in a crappy apartment absolutely filled with "top of the line" gizmos, that amount of money could've had him retiring one year earlier. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
  • piyh 5y ago
    I went hard on this for 8 or 9 years for the start of my career. Now with a kid and a house FIRE is on the back burner, but I still saved a ton of money. If I were to never save another cent and just rely on growth on what I have, I'd still have a secure "normal" retirement fund. +1 for the money mustaches.
    • liveoneggs 5y ago
      CoastFIRE
  • javierbyte 5y ago
    Still, there is more to it. Don't wait to retire to do what makes you happy.
    • Dumblydorr 5y ago
      I surely do not :) my job is very interesting, yeah it can suck debugging or going through bureaucracy and documents. However, I get to WFH, do chores as my break time, then at 4 or 5 I say Good Day and I use my evening for family, friends, and hobby. Happy life so far!
  • itsoktocry 5y ago
    >while friends were out vacationing or even worse, buying very expensive gizmos What's wrong with either of these things if they give you pleasure? >I have one friend who lives in a crappy apartment Sounds like they have their priorities, and you have yours. >that amount of money could've had him retiring one year earlier. Big deal. Do what you enjoy. The entire FIRE movement of people who just can't wait to retire (and most likely continue pinching pennies) confuses me. Enjoy your life, you never know when it ends.
• ajkjk 5y ago
  "How I found & fixed the root problem behind my depression and anxiety after 20+ years" by Kaj Sotala. It describes the concept of 'self-concept' and a, I guess, pseudo-treatment for addressing deep-set neurosis/anxiety caused by having one that is a little malformed. This post led (in a sort of roundabout way, hitting at a good time in my life and while I was already thinking in the direction of fixing this problem) to a sort of self-therapy where I snapped out of an unhealthy mental state I had been in for something like a decade. Probably good therapy could have had the same effect but I've always had trouble with that, and the ideas here led to a non-unsuccessful self-therapy. My issue was not at all related to the one he describes in the post, but the approach seemed to work anyway. https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-problem-behind-my-depression-and-anxiety-after-20-years/ https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-prob...
  • rakejake 5y ago
    Amazing stuff
  • Dumblydorr 5y ago
    That seems like a very long-winded way of saying he didn't love himself, so he worked to reframe and reinforce positive memories and loving himself. That's pretty standard in metta meditation, you are instructed to direct love and kindness towards yourself.
    • ajkjk 5y ago
      I think it is not quite that simple. The key insight isn't realizing that you don't love yourself, or whatever, but realizing that your behavior today is seated in specific reinforcing memories from your past, which can be specifically re-framed in a way that causes the present behavior to dissipate, as if by magic. Assuming that is really the mechanism for what's happening, I don't see a reason to think, a priori, that just 'loving oneself' is sufficient, as it wouldn't exercise that exact mechanism for self-transformation. Anyway, my particular case did not involve anything to do with loving myself, but the same machinery seemed to work for a very different neurotic behavior.
  • 5y ago
• basch 5y ago
  https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7... Now Then by Adam Curtis for really reinforcing my suspicion that algorithms that feed me more of what I like prevent me from ever experiencing things I havent before. Tasting new flavors means ordering what I am least, not most, familiar with. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... And although I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup by Scott Alexander gets very lost and fails imho to come to a useful conclusion, I do muse both on its modern forgiveness-v-tolerance definition schism and more generally from the dark matter parts that an almost Time Machine Eloi/Morlock divide has happened to language, where everyone in America THINKS they are speaking the same language. But really, there are red and blue Englishes that are prominent, using the same words but that mean very different things. EG: Blue defines racism as something that cant happen to a majority. Red doesnt. They dont really acknowledge that the other is using the word to describe something different, they just call each other the word used from their own understanding, and then call the other side stupid. Through whistles, code switching, and signaling, phrases are now so detached from their meaning, that not speaking the language is almost assuredly an inability to interact with parts of the tribe, in any capacity more than the most superficial. In groups can have conversations where it sounds like they are saying one thing, but under the surface is a completely different conversation. Just imagine what the phrase "covid isnt real" (or "black lives matter [too/more]") means to you. If you read it ultra literally, you probably arent quite understanding what the speaker means.
  • tubbs 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup - I'd never read it before, and it's worth reading the whole thing. It has me reflecting on who my "out group" is.
    • basch 5y ago
      You may also enjoy https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid... Hes not someone ive read a lot of so there may be more better of which im unaware.
• Taylor_OD 5y ago
  This wait but why article was pretty eye opening to me. My main take away was that life is made up of mostly average days. You have to learn to enjoy, or at least not be miserable, on any given average Tuesday night. If you can accomplish that then you'll be a much happier person. https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/life-is-picture-but-you-live-in-pixel.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/life-is-picture-but-you-live-...
• paulrouget 5y ago
  Two articles: - https://vasilishynkarenka.com/how-to-make-hard-decisions/ https://vasilishynkarenka.com/how-to-make-hard-decisions/ That was just the trigger for me to finally take terrifying but necessary actions. - https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-17613/10-signs-fear-is-running-your-life-and-how-to-get-back-on-track.html https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-17613/10-signs-fear-is-runni... I hit almost all the boxes and understood why I felt like a control freak.
• Brajeshwar 5y ago
  Wow! Awesome links. Is there a way to get a bulleted list of all links/articles/posts mentioned in this thread?
  • kamaraju 5y ago
    You can use my python script [1] to get a list of urls. For example get_urls.py "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28232165&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28232165&p=2" [1] - https://github.com/KamarajuKusumanchi/rutils/blob/master/python3/get_urls.py https://github.com/KamarajuKusumanchi/rutils/blob/master/pyt...
  • tomcooks 5y ago
    If I were you I'd investigate how you can get the source of this page (for example with a beautiful soup python script) and filter out http* links (for example with python re library) and how to save them somewhere like a flat file (python file operations) or sage this page as linkstocheckout.html and in a terminal try filtering out urls with grep: ``` grep -Eoi '<a [^>]+>' linkstocheckout.html | grep -Eo 'href="[^\"]+"' | grep -Eo '(http|https)://[^/"]+' ```
• peteretep 5y ago
  Becoming a magician https://autotranslucence.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/becoming-a-magician/ https://autotranslucence.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/becoming-a...
• chubot 5y ago
  I would say "career changing" more than "life changing", but I just wrote a post that shows the longevity of Joel Spolsky's writing. People are still confused today about things he explained well 15-20 years ago: https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2021/07/spolsky.html https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2021/07/spolsky.html I don't think I've ever read a single life-changing blog post, but an entire blog over years and books can definitely be life changing. I'd say that life-changing stuff has to be contrarian, and Taleb and PG are pretty contrarian. This also means they can be wrong, repetitive, and piss a lot of people off. You can criticize individual posts or passages easily; it's harder to do that of their entire career. I'd also be careful to label them "not contrarian" -- contrarians can seem less so once people start agreeing with and imitating them, specifically as a result of the writing :)
• snarf21 5y ago
  I agree with others, there is no one thing that is going to change your life. You get there via experience. Experiencing the consequences at 30 of something may feel profound despite the fact your parents told you the same thing 100 times as a youth. My advice is this: Introspection is a super power. The more you take the time to step back and reevaluate all of your actions/assumptions in life, the more you will be able to make meaningful change towards the life you want from NOW. Also, find purpose outside of your career, find a hobby or cause and find fulfillment there. Corollary, if you are going to have regrets, regret doing something, don't regret not doing it.
  • danaos 5y ago
    > Corollary, if you are going to have regrets, regret doing something, don't regret not doing it. I need a time machine...
  • aalam 5y ago
    Your advice on introspection is helpful, especially for people who find themselves repeating the same mistakes. However, I would like to add a caveat on introspection. For some people, an absorption with introspection and self-understanding can be a distraction from making concrete progress in life goals. Sometimes, it helps to shut off or turn away from the stream of thought to plug away at important tasks. An excess of introspection can create an illusion of progress, though it’s still a crucial habit to practice.
• jenkstom 5y ago
  1) The reciprocity project. 2) Some post on how to find a niche and be a great consultant that I haven't found since. 3) "Respect and outcomes" 4) Findlaw's "What is the Definition of Domestic Violence" in where I finally realized that my ex was not just a painful person to deal with but a chronic abuser who I needed to get away from (as my therapist had been urging me to).
• urxvtcd 5y ago
  Not a blog post, but a piece of Kurt Vonnegut's talk randomly found on youtube had an impact on me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc
• ridiculous_leke 5y ago
  There's one about Consume less, create more.
• iambateman 5y ago
  https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli... Politics and the English language by Orwell. Not a blog post but it’s within the spirit of the question. It changed how I write.
• derwiki 5y ago
  The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office” https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... Read it a decade later than I should have, though
  • TheCapeGreek 5y ago
    Developer Hegemony references it and might be up your alley: https://daedtech.com/developer-hegemony-revisited-and-a-free-copy-if-you-like/ https://daedtech.com/developer-hegemony-revisited-and-a-free...
  • k__ 5y ago
    Same here. It was an eye-opener for me. This logic of alpha/beta/omega always seemed incomplete to me. The Gervais principle seems to capture reality better, the losers are the ones that form groups where people can be categorized as alpha/beta/omega etc. and the clueless and sociopaths act completely outside of such groups. For the worse (clueless) or the better (sociopaths) of themselves. Funny enough, lately alpha/beta/omega logic includes a "sigma", which is the ham-fisted try to add sociopaths to their flawed system.
• ema 5y ago
  7 years ago I had just aborted an internship, my foray into being an employed adult, because I found myself unable to deal with disagreements. Contrary to my naive hope that the confidence boost from being a Professional Software Developer(tm) would solve all my emotional problems I now knew that my limitations would follow me around anywhere I would go. But I had no idea how to change and was too stuck in my own anxiety and arrogance to ask for help. Around that time I Somehow stumbled upon this[1] article on how to make a Buddhist bone trumpet. It took me completely by surprise, the topic, the author, the tone, the context of Buddhism, nothing fit together like I expected. It was the most absurd thing I ever read and I kept laughing, at the same time it felt utterly genuine. My curiosity piqued I read the other less bizarre articles from the author about Buddhism and life in general. It dawned on me that my attempt at completely controlling my life had, in fact, caused me to lose control over it. The process of learning to accept unpredictability and open myself to the world, that started the evening I read that article, was by no means always this fun, but looking back boy was it worth it. [1] https://buddhism-for-vampires.com/kangling-chod https://buddhism-for-vampires.com/kangling-chod
  • yewenjie 5y ago
    Also a fan of David Chapman here. Really looking forward to him finishing at least one of the books.
    • tomComb 5y ago
      Yes, his writings are very interesting. I believe his two main sites are https://vividness.live/ https://vividness.live/ https://meaningness.com/ https://meaningness.com/
  • reidjs 5y ago
    > Finding a Femur: You probably already have at least a couple of femurs around the house. However, it is usually best to find one whose original owner no longer has any use for it.
  • zxlk21e 5y ago
    > It dawned on me that my attempt at completely controlling my life had, in fact, caused me to lose control over it. Could you possibly unpack this for me a little bit? It strikes me as absolutely true for me, too, or at least sounds like it could be true, but I'm pulling at a thread I can't quite grasp.
• decasteve 5y ago
  The Groklaw farewell post: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175 Given the circumstances of the Snowden revelations, I was struggling to articulate how I felt about privacy, the chilling effects of surveillance, and making sense of it all in terms of who I am, where I come from, and how I make my livelihood. That farewell post, along with introducing me to the writings of Janna Malamud Smith (Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life), helped shape and define my perspective on privacy.
• beeboop 5y ago
  https://medium.com/personal-growth/travel-is-no-cure-for-the-mind-e449d3109d71 https://medium.com/personal-growth/travel-is-no-cure-for-the... When I have anxiety and unhappy moments in my life, I feel stuck. My natural inclination in these moments is to run. To get away, to be somewhere new, do something new, just get the eff away from wherever I am. I frequently felt that traveling and being a digital nomad would cure this problem and I would never feel that way, but the article above outlines why that isn't the case. Our problems follow us everywhere, and just because I'm eating sushi in tokyo in some cool hole in the wall doesn't mean I won't dread and have anxiety. I am very grateful for the traveling I've done, which is a fair bit more than a lot of Americans. But in addition to that blog post it has helped me realize it isn't the cure to anything. The article is sort of dumb and probably doesn't resonate with everyone. But it helped me
  • rjh29 5y ago
    It does resonate with me. Having lived in Japan for a year I got a huge amount of benefit from it. I think the author dismisses too quickly the benefits of living and being exposed to a culture different from your own, as it acts as a new reference point for the rest of your life. If you've spent all your life in one country than living in another can really open up your mind in a genuine way. Not to mention learning a new language and being exposed to new things (like my love of karaoke and baths, not to mention tons of manga I never knew about) And personally giving up my friends and living in a new environment forced me to adapt and become more social and less anxious. It had a huge positive effect on my confidence. I made friends different to the types of friends I had before. I did things I had never done before. So yeah, if you end up reverting your 'baseline' then it won't help, and I can definitely understand that - I'll never be an extrovert, I'll always value having a few good friends and spending a lot of time alone - but that doesn't mean it can't be profoundly helpful for getting you out of a rut.
    • stnmtn 5y ago
      Did you know any japanese before traveling there?
• okareaman 5y ago
  I came of age before blogs and frankly, don't see any blog posts that could be life changing for an older person, so I'll add a life changing book and song. The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler, the sequel to Future Shock. I was a nuclear trained engineer in the Navy. This book convinced me not to pursue a career in nuclear power after the Navy, which was the standard career path for guys like me, because it was "Second Wave." The Third Wave was information technology, which I pursued despite having no training in it. At the height of my success, "The Arrangement" by Joni Mitchell made me realize that money hadn't made me happy and pursuing more was not something I wanted to do. You could have been more Than a name on the door On the thirty-third floor in the air More than a credit card Swimming pool in the backyard While you still have the time You could get away and find A better life, you know the grind is so ungrateful Racing cars, whiskey bars No one cares who you really are
  • UweSchmidt 5y ago
    I like the idea of making a life-changing decision based on a fundamental revelation about life, and catching that "Third Wave" would certainly have been good in the general case, particular regrets about how the details played out in your situation nonwithstanding!?
    • okareaman 5y ago
      None, both the decisions I made from the book and song turned out to be the best.
  • e12e 5y ago
    > I came of age before blogs and frankly, don't see any blog posts that could be life changing for an older person, so I'll add a life changing book and song. E. B. White wrote of the essay and the essayist - and I think it goes a long way towards arguing (unintended perhaps) that a good blog post is a good essay (and vice versa) - at least that was my thoughts when I first read it: > The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. Each new excursion of the essayist, each new “attempt,” differs from the last and takes him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays. > There are as many kinds of essays as there are human attitudes or poses, as many essay flavors as there are Howard Johnson ice creams. The essayist arises in the morning and, if he has work to do, selects his garb from an unusually extensive wardrobe: he can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter—philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil’s advocate, enthusiast. (...) > There is one thing the essayist cannot do, though—he cannot indulge himself in deceit or in concealment, for he will be found out in no time.
• Nemi 5y ago
  This post on social mobility. It really made me think about where I came from and how different it is from my wife and why we are comfortable in different situations. More specifically, the post explains the difference in Social Class and Working Class and how we often conflate those two things when in discussion. We often talk about “lower”, “middle” and “upper” classes, but the author proposes that those are actually Working Classes and not necessarily related to Social classes. We often migrate one or maybe two social classes higher or lower in our lifetime, but movements more than two rungs is prohibitively difficult. It is an interesting way to look at society. https://siderea.livejournal.com/1260265.html?format=light&fbclid=IwAR2fv67G9mR017huARy5Xi_J3ggeqLUapGTSWIe5flvdpEe4rESDKsmdSZc https://siderea.livejournal.com/1260265.html?format=light&fb...
• entaloneralie 5y ago
  Zen and the Art of Boat Building by Jill Schinas, published in November 2014 "Some people build boats to build boats – but that wasn’t us. We built a boat to go sailing. " https://www.yachtmollymawk.com/2014/11/zen-and-the-art-of-boat-building/ https://www.yachtmollymawk.com/2014/11/zen-and-the-art-of-bo...
• endriju 5y ago
  For me it's Scott Smith's blog post series describing his current journey after being diagnosed with ALS (Stephen Hawking's disease) as a young father of two little girls. There are unique perspectives on gratitude and how to stand strong in the face of one of the cruelest afflictions life might throw at you. https://www.flexonals.com/blog/chapter-3-silver-linings https://www.flexonals.com/blog/chapter-3-silver-linings
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• fmitchell0 5y ago
  https://fs.blog/mental-models/ https://fs.blog/mental-models/
• toto444 5y ago
  This one made the front page of HN : What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist https://www.thecut.com/article/what-its-like-to-have-narcissistic-personality-disorder.html https://www.thecut.com/article/what-its-like-to-have-narciss... It made me realise that some people are wired differently. You can't interpret their actions with the same framework you interpret yours.
  • exo-pla-net 5y ago
    A grain of salt is warranted. I also had Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and the interviewee said some pretty whacky things, maybe owing from the fact that he still has the disorder. He hasn't actually figured it out. NPD is a tool to protect yourself from mind-shattering degrees of shame. You latch onto something that makes you feel special, and you hold onto it for dear life. All of your decisions will stem from a desire to validate or protect that sense of being special. You'll seek admiration to validate it, and you'll seek to destroy critics to protect it. You might be capable of empathy, even great compassion, but you'll remain utterly cruel and self-absorbed, because you're a drowning man. You're desperate, and you'll see people as objects you can push underwater to get a gasp of air, and you'll treat someone who snubs you as someone actively stepping on your head to drown you: your anger will know no bounds. That's what fragile narcissists actually are. They're not wired differently; they're drowning men. If a narcissist is strongly motivated, and if they have a decade to devote to schema therapy for their underlying intense shame, then they can slowly morph into a normal prosocial human. However, that doesn't happen often, for a variety of reasons.
• Iuz 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8055HIDm1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8055HIDm1A Learned a lot from this fighting game community creator, Core-A gaming, video about community, and even tho I can't say it changed my life, it did change the way I see a couple of things forever.
• begueradj 5y ago
  Nothing and no one is big enough to change your life. There are only several things that make small changes to your life, at different stages of your life, whether negative or positive changes, depending on how you cope with them. Add to this, what could be important for you, could be completely meaningless for someone else.
• kitd 5y ago
  Not sure about life-changing as such, but I often think of "Argue well by losing" by Phil Haack [1] when I think about how I and others go about arguing, online or in person. It really helps me to step back and be objective about discussions I get involved in. [1] http://haacked.com/archive/2013/10/21/argue-well-by-losing.aspx/ http://haacked.com/archive/2013/10/21/argue-well-by-losing.a...
• lewisjoe 5y ago
  http://bookofhook.blogspot.com/2013/03/smart-guy-productivity-pitfalls.html http://bookofhook.blogspot.com/2013/03/smart-guy-productivit... Made me realise smartwork is bs. If you want to boost productivity, increase your focus span. There's no other hack.
  • nojito 5y ago
    That post reeks of confirmation bias.
• bluishgreen 5y ago
  "Try this at home" I did and became a Machine Scientist (took a few years) https://sifter.org/simon/journal/20061211.html https://sifter.org/simon/journal/20061211.html
• snarkypixel 5y ago
  PG's essays opened my eyes to starting a startup (rather than working as a employee). This in turned made me wealthy and pretty much changed my life.
• andredz 5y ago
  I've shared this before in a previous thread but I'll do so again: https://wall.org/~aron/blog/ https://wall.org/~aron/blog/ This blog has had a huge impact in my life and I'll be forever grateful to Aron for uploading it to the internet and also grateful to Fede_V who shared the blog in this HN comment a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18176929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18176929 My life is much more fun and fulfilling thanks to its influence. There are lots of other great blogs but none have had as great of an impact on my outlook.
• taxcoder 5y ago
  <https://wealthyaccountant.com/2016/10/10/mister-indispensable-everybodys-go-to-guy/ https://wealthyaccountant.com/2016/10/10/mister-indispensabl...> Gave me the confidence to make the final call, even if the issue is difficult. Someone has to, so why not me. It can take work and stress, but the answers are out there.
• codethief 5y ago
  https://markmanson.net/question https://markmanson.net/question This has changed my entire perception of what it means (or could possibly mean) to be happy and, by implication, of the entire self-improvement industry.
• BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Not life changing, but the last blog post that made me think and had a lasting impressions on me was "the animal is tired" from the awesome robin hobb: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27100299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27100299
• koboll 5y ago
  I wish I could find it. It was a blog post about how one man's perspective on fatherhood changed after he became a father, and he realized he regretted waiting so long, because all it really ended up doing was robbing him of being able to spend more time with his children. Before reading it, I was ambivalent about whether I wanted children. After reading it, I wasn't.
  • Recursing 5y ago
    Maybe this one? It seems to match except the "he regretted waiting so long" http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html
• davidwparker 5y ago
  Definitely The Tail End by Tim Urban https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html ``` It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end. ``` ^ This is the crux of it, in familial (parental) relationships, we spend most of our time with them early in life, and that we don't get nearly as much time with them after graduation.
  • judohacker 5y ago
    This is the one for me too. But, as a parent myself, I looked at it from the other end. There are only a few years left of living with my kids. I try to make the most of it every day.
• gringoDan 5y ago
  The Risk Not Taken, by Andy Dunn: https://dunn.medium.com/the-risk-not-taken-40cf0a8919cb https://dunn.medium.com/the-risk-not-taken-40cf0a8919cb Inspired me to renege on my investment banking offer straight out of college and move to South America to work on my startup instead. Good times.
• ryandrake 5y ago
  I know Slate Star Codex already gets a lot of attention here, but Meditations on Moloch [1] helped me to stop being a libertarian. I was already well along the way of abandoning those politics, but that blog post, especially the arguments about multi-polar traps was the final nail in the coffin. I think the past two years has provided even more evidence that simply letting people act however they want based on self-interest and relying on Nash for good outcomes can even be deadly. 1: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
• jmfldn 5y ago
  Bill Joy "Why the future doesn't need us" https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/amp https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/amp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_The_Future_Doesn%27t_Need_Us?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_The_Future_Doesn%27t_Need_... A very famous blog post by Bill Joy on the dangers of rapid technological change. Rather then dismiss fears over exponential tech he takes the claims seriously and tries to reason about them. He even factors anarcho-primitivism into his analysis which is as far away as you can get from Silicon Valley views which he obviously eptimomises being the founder of Sun Microsystems. I love it as its a truly open minded attempt to consider the potential existensial risk of tech and the deep, big picture, philosophical implications of technological progress. It's just so different to what most Silicon Valley luminaries talk about which are often full of certainty about our glorious future. It resonates with me a lot as I often feel like a bit of an outsider as a technologist and software engineer who has the odd sleepless night about where it's all heading. This quote haunts me... "I have always believed that making software more reliable, given its many uses, will make the world a safer and better place; if I were to come to believe the opposite, then I would be morally obligated to stop this work. I can now imagine such a day may come." For me that day has not come but I feel that moral obligation more as I get older so I think I'm on the same page as Bill here.
• kissgyorgy 5y ago
  Your place between all humans and what everyone wants from you. Insanely eye-opener: https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-y...
• dorianmariefr 5y ago
  "What you can't say" by Paul Graham http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
• saisundar 5y ago
  https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html This might be the second or third (and possibly redundant too) Tim urban blog post here. This uses a visual representation to drive home the point that the time you have with your loved ones, especially parents is very very limited, and choices that you make to increase/decrease face time with them, have a pretty pronounced impact, for life. This certainly woke me up to my relationship with my father and elder relatives in general.
• bwh2 5y ago
  There's No Speed Limit by Derek Sivers: https://sive.rs/kimo https://sive.rs/kimo
  • marto1 5y ago
    While I do agree with the self improvement part of this, I also like to point out it's a different game once you start interacting with/organize people, as the Arabic saying goes: "The soul travels at the speed of a camel"
• mprovost 5y ago
  The original NonZeroDay post [0] on Reddit. There are many variations of this productivity theme (Seinfeld etc) but the way this post is worded really hit me. I try and make progress on the book I'm writing every day - even if I just change one word, it's a NonZeroDay. Which then keeps me motivated to try harder the next day. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_just_dont_care_about_myself/cdah4af/ https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_ju...
• brudgers 5y ago
  Derek Sivers I assume I am below average: https://sive.rs/below-average https://sive.rs/below-average It frees me up to try things and to give myself the time to stick with them.
• marto1 5y ago
  probably this one: https://www.meta-nomad.net/avoiding-the-global-lobotomy/ https://www.meta-nomad.net/avoiding-the-global-lobotomy/ It's an incredibly concise "survival guide" for the modern "normal" way of life. It also raises way more questions than it answers so it's a great conversation starter.
• frob 5y ago
  https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2017/05/the-neil-story-with-additional-footnote.html?m=1 https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2017/05/the-neil-story-with-a... It's a story of two Neils dealing with imposter syndrome. Every time I start feeling like I'm just the guy who goes where others point and I didn't actually accomplish anything, I go back and read this. To every new engineer I've worked with who has struggled with self-doubt, I have sent this. I cannot overstate how calming and centering this post has been to me.
• brundolf 5y ago
  https://kotaku.com/we-are-explorers-in-search-of-mystery-in-videogames-5955326 https://kotaku.com/we-are-explorers-in-search-of-mystery-in-... This one crystallized for me a feeling that I'd always felt deep inside but never known how to express. I'd found it in virtual worlds, sure, but it goes far beyond that. Even beyond fiction. This longing for something beyond the fold, something that can never be reduced or pinned down or fully understood, a wormhole in understanding that always begs you to keep seeking, keep moving, keep wondering and imagining. The fundamental belief that there's always more out there above and beyond our grasp, and that that is a good thing, and not something to be remedied. What's described here is one of the most important north-stars in my life, if I'm being honest. It has almost religious significance to me. > Mystery is not merely the unknown. It is the impossibility of knowing and yet the continual attempt to know. It is unknowability itself. It is futile and essential.
  • trilinearnz 5y ago
    Very interesting ideas here. A similar one that has stuck with me is my notion of "personalisation" in a game. The idea is that your experience with the game is a combination of two things: a) the game itself and what it chooses to show to you, and b) the imagination that you unconciously employ in order to fill in the blanks of the experience. This is more obvious when you think of older games with very coarse-grained levels of detail, that essentially require you to imagine what is actually going on. Conversely, it is destroyed in modern AAA games which are over-designed and developed by a team of hundreds to the N-th degree. How well the game surfs this edge between "just enough detail" is more an art than a science, and you often find it games that had some kind of developmental problem that prevented a coherent vision from being thoroughly implemented. Take Quake, for example, in comparison to Quake II. For this reason, the former will forever hold a special place in my heart. I can vividly imaging myself sitting beside the watery bridge in E1M1, or leaning up against the bricks in the START map. It's truly that ingrained on my psyche, partly because I spent so much time in that world due to the modding scene, and partly because the game never tried to "tell" me anything about the environment, or try to instruct me as to how I should and should not interpret it. It was left up to me, and that made it more special than any designer could have imagined, because ultimately I became that designer.
• mxstbr 5y ago
  patio11's classic post on negotiation: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ I almost doubled my compensation in large part thanks to it for one of my positions. I increased: + Base salary by $75k + Signing bonus by $35k (from $0) + Stock options by $100k total (standard four year vesting, so $25k per year) If you're a knowledge worker in a sought-after field, particularly in the current environment of crazy salary explosion, you should absolutely read that blog post!
  • sydthrowaway 5y ago
    Can you tldr it?
• emodendroket 5y ago
  Probably Get that Job at Google for giving me some idea of things I should study, as a self-taught dev working in a tiny company by myself, if I wanted to play in the big leagues. Not as Google specific as the title suggests.
• rosalogia 5y ago
  I'm not super big on ESR myself, but somehow this[1] appeared in front of me when I was 11 or 12 and I sincerely believe that, had it not, I wouldn't have been as fascinated by open source software development as early as I did and for as long as I have. In retrospect I really don't agree with all of it, but a lot of its main ideas continue to ring true for me and I still find it an enjoyable read after all this time. Generally, I've found that I really like essays about hacker culture (like the Lisp Curse essay, which I won't link here) as opposed to career-advice or technical-lesson blog posts. When I'm getting a friend into software I try to urge them to check such essays out as they illustrate a kind of fun and exciting, intrinsically motivated culture that's seemingly detached from the image of corporate software engineering in most people's minds. [1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
• dusted 5y ago
  I must admit I can't recall a single experience as "life changing", maybe it's a cultural thing, but I can't imagine a single event (other than a very serious, debilitating accident, or winning an insane sum of money) could be understood as life changing, much less reading a blog post, or anything else for that matter.
• channel_t 5y ago
  I don't think I'm able to identify a blog post that truly had a major impact on my life, but the first thing that comes to mind was this really beautifully written piece about the life of a text message. Original: https://scottbot.net/the-route-of-a-text-message/ https://scottbot.net/the-route-of-a-text-message/ VICE article for prettier version: https://www.vice.com/en/article/kzdn8n/the-route-of-a-text-message-a-love-story https://www.vice.com/en/article/kzdn8n/the-route-of-a-text-m...
• clubdorothe 5y ago
  We just have a limited amount of time on earth. Don't kill yourself at work. Money exists to be spent. your health is your most precious asset. https://todaypurpose.com/posts/time-money-health/ https://todaypurpose.com/posts/time-money-health/
• zhynn 5y ago
  This changed how I view the problem of obesity and the world's problem with diet: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-part-i-mysteries/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p...
• cdelahousse 5y ago
  The top of My Todo List (http://www.paulgraham.com/todo.html http://www.paulgraham.com/todo.html), but more specifically, what Graham linked to: The Regrets of Dying (https://bronnieware.com/regrets-of-the-dying/ https://bronnieware.com/regrets-of-the-dying/) It is a succinct summary of what, with the benefit of hindsight, many people thought was important in their lives and what they should have done better. Absent is "I should have worked harder" and "I should have spent more time at the office".
• jcun4128 5y ago
  I can't find the link/specific site but before 2013 I was not into web development/didn't really use computers other than minor gaming. I was failing out of school and was trying to find an escape. I then stumbled on this figure of getting 100K page impressions a day adsense would equal $100K/yr. It's a little off now (less) but still. It drove me to make a lot of random crappy websites and I learned how websites work/LAMP stack. I didn't succeed in the goal of high traffic sites but I got into this field/ended up working out for me. I did fail out of school twice (as in 2.23 GPA) and never finished my phys-eng degree and at that time I was so stressed out like school was everything/I had debt piling up from loans, didn't know what I was going to do. Then this field pays you so much if you know what you're doing. Also lead me to the idea of entrepreneurship/trying to make some business like the stuff you'd see on Indie Hackers, this has not happened yet, I'm still an hourly Joe currently. Actually I remember one site in particular: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ where a guy made a million dollars by selling a million pixels of adspace. Similarly Peter Levels making $70K/month on his stuff... just things like this gave me the realization of an alternative life than what I thought to be "the way to success" at the time. I had some really stupid ideas though, like BeforeYouDoIdo or dn2d8 which was a dating site. Anyway also learned about external validation vs. self delusion regarding what some idea is actually worth.
• mrfusion 5y ago
  http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dweck http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dweck Aaron Schwartz reviews growth mindset. It really changed how I approach things and I’ve attempted so many things I would have previously not tried because of reading that. I know it’s silly to recommend a blog post about a book but it’s so well summarized that it’s better than the book IMO. The book seems to dilute the power of the message with a whole bunch of words and details.
• tharne 5y ago
  https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict... The concept of norms, laws, and social customs being set my the most stubborn and intolerant among us: "The Minority Rule", by Nassim Taleb.
• subpixel 5y ago
  We are living in Utopia. https://jimleff.blogspot.com/2019/04/did-you-miss-part-about-how-were-in.html https://jimleff.blogspot.com/2019/04/did-you-miss-part-about...
• dinvlad 5y ago
  https://levels.io/contact/ https://levels.io/contact/ by Pieter Levels (the author of NomadList). Just read it (and his other posts) and you will understand the whole philosophy behind Indie Hackers and why the traditional "jobs" are so broken.
• eebf 5y ago
  https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture/?utm_source=pocket_mylist https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture/?utm_sou...
• paloaltokid 5y ago
  This post for me contains deep wisdom: https://dhemery.com/articles/resistance_as_a_resource/ https://dhemery.com/articles/resistance_as_a_resource/
• TuringNYC 5y ago
  https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html
• Spivak 5y ago
  Might be an odd one for a tech blog but this article is what helped me stop doubting myself and start my transition. https://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/04/17/the-null-hypothecis/ https://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/04/17/the-null... The main point of the article is that for trans people our priors are way way off and if we asked ourselves "what's more likely, that I'm trans or that I'm cis?" instead of "am I really sure I'm trans?" then the answer is painfully obvious and the weird doubts we obsess over are nothing compared to the mountain of evidence in support.
• pretzell 5y ago
  very much a trope now, but waitbutwhy on Elon companies back in 2015. I felt like I had to be a part of it and got me into STEM. Now I'm fully in STEM, went back to school to take a bunch of STEM fundamentals, got into CS, etc. https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/03/elon-musk-post-series.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/03/elon-musk-post-series.html
• tedsanders 5y ago
  https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-everything-is-commensurable/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-ever... ^I believe this is the blog post that was the final straw on the camel's back that convinced me to start giving at least 10% of my income to charity. I don't think it will have the same effect on you, but it may.
• newbamboo 5y ago
  Surely the recency effect, but this is one I’ve been thinking about recently. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2019/10/21/chestertons-fence-and-frosts-wall/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2019/10/21/chester...
• mrjivraj 5y ago
  https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/p/the-coffee-can-portfolio https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/p/the-coffee-can-port... This article references something called The Coffee Can Portfolio. The idea of a coffee can is simple: You try to find the best stocks you can and let them sit for years. You incur no costs with such a portfolio, and it is simple to manage. Robert Kirby, the Portfolio Manager who first introduced the idea recognized that most professional investors in the stock market focused on preserving capital as opposed to growing it. As a result, when their portfolios became “unbalanced”, that is, their winning stocks started to become large portions of their portfolios, they trimmed those positions and transferred capital into their “less successful” investments, the ones that had gotten “cheaper”. Although that might sound prudent, what is really happening is that money is being transferred from the most dynamic companies, to the least dynamic companies. This idea helped me become a longer term investor, and as a result, a better investor.
• zajio1am 5y ago
  Not really blog post, but a newspaper article (in 1990s) about GNU project (and project Gutenberg), that radically changed my attitude to software.
• redraga 5y ago
  Two posts from Astral Star Codex * A THRIVE/SURVIVE THEORY OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM [1] - Still the best theory on the conservative/liberal divide. It changed how I view the conservative viewpoint and helped me understand it better. * MEDITATIONS ON MOLOCH [2] - One of the most famous blog posts on the internet (certainly in HN circles at least). Part fantasy, part philosophy, part game-theory - all of it brilliant. It changed how I approach my life goals and what I need to optimize for in life. A blog post so famous that it has it's own podcast[3]! [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory... [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ [3] https://open.spotify.com/episode/7yGVsF2VPi4knhfRujM1Yx?si=qvT2On9ZQKK8y38Bs-bdmw&dl_branch=1 https://open.spotify.com/episode/7yGVsF2VPi4knhfRujM1Yx?si=q...
• listenfaster 5y ago
  I reread Kreider’s pieces often, this [1] was the first that hooked me. The value of slack. [1] https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/ https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-tr...
• cr_huber 5y ago
  “ It’s Just Wood” on taking on new challenges and being self reliant https://aboutbryan.com/2014/05/08/its-just-wood/ https://aboutbryan.com/2014/05/08/its-just-wood/
• bluewalt 5y ago
  "Your Lifestyle has already been designed" from Raptitude blog. https://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/ https://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already... (the title is self explanatory)
• devenvdev 5y ago
  http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-... About how simple tasks can have unexpected complexity, it didn't change my life but now I have something to send fellow developers when their "simple features" explode into a week of hard work.
• hookedonwinter 5y ago
  https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html I read everything on this blog. This post made me realize how absolutely miserable I was running a company I had started, and led me down a path that resulted in selling my part of my company, taking time to be a stay at home dad, and getting back into tech. It also caused me to go off the deep end into 80000hours.org and read that whole site and associated books, and only apply for jobs with social impact. Pretty influential post in my life!
• geekraver 5y ago
  At age 57, it's easier for me to point to books, and I think there's three main inflection points for me. When I was about 15 I read Philip K. Dick's "Confessions of a Crap Artist", which really opened my eyes to how we each live in our own subjective version of reality. At age 17, I read Ram Dass's "Be Here Now", which exposed me to eastern spiritual traditions (I'm an atheist, but this was still very eye opening and, with Dick, made me realize that religions can be interesting and valuable while also being full of bullshit). Much later in life, learning about Robert Kegan's theories of adult development helped me understand people better and be a much better coach and manager (a good practical introduction is in Jennifer Garvey-Berger's "Changing on the Job"). And a book I really like for having a lot of condensed wisdom is Laurence Endersen's "Pebbles of Perception".
• ztjio 5y ago
  Perhaps it was my generation's timing but all throughout my life growing up we were constantly told how important self-esteem was, except, it never made any sense. Nobody ever explained how or why self-esteem was really important and even more critically, never really gave good explanations for what it even meant. So naturally it was totally ignorable. Then one day I happened upon this https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/12/18/bruce-lee-artist-of-life-self-esteem/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/12/18/bruce-lee-artist-of... That perspective on the meaning of self-esteem and its counterpart of Pride gives so much justification for the concern about it. It has also been extremely useful as a parent to explain the real value and meaning of self-esteem to my kids.
• des1nderlase 5y ago
  https://www.google.com/url?q=https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Is-There-Anything-Good-About-Men.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjj_tGzocDyAhWZgf0HHQCeAzcQFnoECAYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0RFcv35KIIP7jzTz9hdMFQ https://www.google.com/url?q=https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp... Can't find original blog post, by Roy Baumeister, but this were his thought while writing the book with sumirali title. Short writeup is even nicer and to-the-point condensed format. Connects, to me, very well biology, evolution, society (as a system). After reading this, I connected the dots for many behavior patterns and "social" programming.
• hhhhhhh777 5y ago
  https://www.entechin.com/python-if-else-one-line-statement/ https://www.entechin.com/python-if-else-one-line-statement/
• mhr_online 5y ago
  The Crossroads of Should and Must https://medium.com/@elleluna/the-crossroads-of-should-and-must-90c75eb7c5b0 https://medium.com/@elleluna/the-crossroads-of-should-and-mu...
• filipsch 5y ago
  Not necessarily the most life-changing blog post, but one I'll always remember: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-opinions-run-life.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-op... The light tone and funny images make it stick, up to the point that it became part of my vocabulary; when my SO is worrying too much about what other people think, I mimick a mammoth trunk and she immediately gets it, and vice versa.
• lostmsu 5y ago
  Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences https://www.skynettoday.com/editorials/humans-not-concentrating https://www.skynettoday.com/editorials/humans-not-concentrat...