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Ask HN: What do you wish you had known before you turned 40?

• gregd 12y ago
  I wish I knew how unimportant material things were. Live in the now. You are not your job. Don't take things personally. Ask for what you want. Would you rather be right, or loved?
  • Lambdanaut 12y ago
    I'm in my early 20s and I learned this. I'm so thankful that I'll be able to live the rest of my life free of an over-bearing ego. Meditation got me there. I think people should seriously give it a shot. It's potentially lifechanging in very positive ways.
    • l33tbro 12y ago
      Beware, I had similar revelations in my early 20s and personally found it very tough to uphold these ideals. I doubt that I'm alone here on this. Life throws curveballs at you, and the more you stack responisiblity and ambition - the harder it is to live for your own ideals. Eventually your friends start getting married and getting ahead, and you begin wanting more for your own family than for yourself. All I'm saying is that it's one thing to realize these values, yet another entirely to consistently uphold them throughout your adult life. But, as gregd will attest, it is possible.
      • Lambdanaut 12y ago
        Certainly. I'm living largely stress-free right now because of my remote job that pays well, and so it allows me to easily live an unfettered life. I know for a fact that if I were not so fortunate that living lucidly and carefree would not come as naturally. In the past I was very stressed and not happy with myself, yet still needed to be the best for some reason. I think living in the now and keeping a clear mind is the best thing I can do to maintain my peace with myself and my situation, whether it be fortunate or unfortunate.
• michaelpinto 12y ago
  Something to keep in mind: I turned 40 in the year 2005, but my life experience was someone different than my father who turned 40 in the year 1982, and I suspect that if someone was 20 today that their life experience looking back will be a bit different in the year 2035. Yes I can give you all of the cliches from "enjoy your hair while you have it" to "i wish i put aside more in my IRA". But aside from that the lessons in your life could be different than mine. For my father's generation (the silent generation) the path to success was a steady union job or say becoming a professional like a lawyer. However for my generation (gen x) union jobs didn't exist and many of my friends who became lawyers are doing quite badly. So I would say that to take the advice of anyone over 40 with a grain of salt as your results may not be the same. Common assumptions of the path of success of today could be badly placed bets. For example even though I was a hardcore Apple fanboy if you told me to load up on Apple stock in 1996 I would have thought that you were crazy. Also if you told me in the 80s that Japan would face a lost decade in the 90s followed by being in the shadow of China i would have thought that you were crazy.
  • PublicEnemy111 12y ago
    >For my father's generation (the silent generation) the path to success was a steady union job or say becoming a professional like a lawyer. However for my generation (gen x) union jobs didn't exist and many of my friends who became lawyers are doing quite badly. I wish I could up vote this more than once. the past two decades have taught us that there is no such thing as a safe job or a risk free investment
    • AndrewKemendo 12y ago
      the past two decades have taught us that there is no such thing as a safe job or a risk free investment This conclusion is what has driven me to just jump in head first to doing my own thing. I think a lot of people are searching for something "stable" and I'm not sure that really exists anymore if it ever really did.
    • mathattack 12y ago
      These things ebb and flow. Now is the right time to "Jump in" as you don't lose much from joining a startup and gain a lot of potential upside. But who knows - in 30 years, it could be the return of "the Company Person".
• bsegraves 12y ago
  Don't be passive in your life, or you might wake up one day on the wrong side of 40 and realize that you haven't been in control of your life.
  • michaelochurch 12y ago
    Isn't the idea that there's a "wrong" side of 40 a bit silly? Sorry for the snipe/snark, but... I mean, there's no right or wrong to chronological age. It's not something we have any control over.
    • anigbrowl 12y ago
      You're pretty successful already. I'm turning 45 this year and and am uncomfortably aware that I need to accomplish certain career goals within the next few years or see the chances of ever doing so diminish dramatically.
      • michaelochurch 12y ago
        I wasn't debating the substance of what you are saying. I was only questioning the idea that there's a "wrong" side of an age, as opposed to just "later". My read of age in software is that the age discrimination culture is less severe outside of the Bay Area. I certainly meet people over 50-60+ in Chicago and New York who are still programming and highly respected.
        • anigbrowl 12y ago
          I wasn't thinking of any region or profession in particular, but I am more aware of age as a filtering strategy than I was a few years back.
          • michaelochurch 12y ago
            Got it. Sorry to hear that you're dealing with that shit. It does seem better in the Midwest. And it's not that bad in New York, although the cost of living is brutal. The nuttiness going on in the Bay Area seems to be a young man's game (and, if you're not well-connected enough to be made a founder out of the gates, a stupid young man's game).
• arcticsoul 12y ago
  Floss
  • ross_lambert 12y ago
    * No tombstone ever said, "He wrote great code." Ponder the implications of that. * Don't let anybody else define success. You are not in high school anymore--chart your own path. * Count your blessings. Be grateful, if not to God then to your parents or somebody besides yourself.
    • wyclif 12y ago
      Nobody on their deathbed ever says, "I wish I had worked more instead of spending time with my family."
      • toolz 12y ago
        While that's not strictly true. It's also worth considering that working more means nothing to someone on their death bed. What does money do for a dying man? Of course people ask for family and friends when they are dying because there is no longer any value in the products of work. With that said, there are plenty of people who believe their job does the world good and wish they could do more good before they are taken away from this life. I hope to be one of them.
        • wyclif 12y ago
          That's missing the point, though. It's about regret—what people feel they didn't pay attention to when they were younger and healthy, not what is going on at the moment of death. To say such a thing also isn't necessarily opposed to belief that hard work is good, or that it is valuable to one's self and society. It simply means that if you work too much, you can miss out on life.
          • nightski 12y ago
            Or that death is a very emotional time which increases our desire for people/things that play on that emotion - such as family. But even if this is the case that does not mean that the person did not get more enjoyment from what they actually did than to what was thought on the deathbed.
• pan69 12y ago
  Start exercising when you're young and make it a life long habit.
• wyclif 12y ago
  Don't listen to people who say that you are "job hopping" or unreliable if you change jobs earlier than 5 years in the same role.
• issa 12y ago
  One of the lessons I've learned is that things don't really change very much. Obviously the internet has changed how we do things, but not by much: A time traveler snatched from 1975 would feel right at home in most ways that matter. When I was younger, I expected change to happen much faster. Hovercars and jetpacks, but also World Government, peace on Earth, and food for the hungry. We haven't really made much progress. I have high hopes for new players in the transportation and space industries, and for medical advances based on genetics and bioinformatics, but experience tells me not to hold my breath. But there are also surprises the other way. In 1975, no one believed the U.S. would have a non-white president so soon. I now live in a state of (very) tempered optimism.
• dpweb 12y ago
  Don't borrow money.
  • squiguy7 12y ago
    Don't borrow more money than you believe you can repay within in a reasonable amount of time. But your overarching goal is true.
  • crimsonalucard 12y ago
    The super rich had to leverage there way up to the sky.
• lmg643 12y ago
  I'm not a fan of the saying "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" - too easy to take that literally. A similar sentiment, but more precise, that fits for me is "know your temperament and strengths, and if you find a career that fits them, most importantly you will enjoy yourself, and have better odds of doing well at it since you are more fully engaged."
• lkesteloot 12y ago
  Practice is the key to getting better at everything. Ignore the concept of innate talent or gift. People who are good are good because they spent a lot of time practicing. People who practice a lot usually do so because they’re interested in it. It’s not hard or homework for them. If there’s a gift, it’s the gift of interest. Artists copy a lot. They don’t come up with stuff clear out of their heads. They look at a lot of things, keep a lot of references, and blend ideas together. Most people who are famous are so not because they’re good, but because they’ve worked hard to become famous. It was important to them, so they did what it took to become famous. Being good at something is a small part of that, small enough that famous people aren’t usually all that good. Their time was better spent becoming famous. (This is the biggest lesson from this list. It basically implies that you can ignore people who have blogs and podcasts. Seek out the unknown experts in your field.) Don’t make decisions based on money. Don’t stay at a job because the shares might be worth something, or because the company might get acquired. These things rarely happen and you can’t get your time back. Everyone is totally winging it all the time. Confident people are just better at hiding it.
  • mortenjorck 12y ago
    My favorite example of someone gradually working their way from rank amateur to accomplished professional through sheer volume of dedicated practice has to be the cartoonist Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade. Over the span of about ten years, you see his art style transform from what would pass for an average college newspaper comic into the richly expressive vision of a master illustrator.
    • stingraycharles 12y ago
      Would you mind to show us some concrete samples that show us what you mean?
      • OedipusRex 12y ago
        Not Penny Arcade but here is an early xkcd: https://xkcd.com/6/ https://xkcd.com/6/ Contrast that against current xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1471/ https://xkcd.com/1471/ And it doesn't stop there. He's done amazing things that stretch the concept of "web comic", like https://xkcd.com/1446/ https://xkcd.com/1446/ or arguably his most famous work https://xkcd.com/1190/ https://xkcd.com/1190/ "Time" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_%28xkcd%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_%28xkcd%29
• anigbrowl 12y ago
  - Most people are foolish, and rationalize their emotions rather than thinking. Relying too much on logic or rationality will thus be a barrier to social advancement. In other words, it doesn't matter how right you are; if what you say makes people feel bad, that's ll they'll remember. - The more vociferously people express their opinions about some external issue, the more likely it is that they're talking about themselves. - Pay less attention to the news. If it's really important you'll hear about it anyway. Devote more of your mental attention to what you're really interested in. - Quitting smoking starts to really pay off after about a year. After a few years, it feels outstanding.
  • griffinheart 12y ago
    > - Most people are foolish, and rationalize their emotions rather than thinking. Relying too much on logic or rationality will thus be a barrier to social advancement. In other words, it doesn't matter how right you are; if what you say makes people feel bad, that's ll they'll remember. This one is bitting me so much, I always thought my biggest challenge in my career would be something technical. Now I know better and am trying to improve my communication skills. I'm the kind of guy that is usually right but the way I communicate things makes people hostile, feel bad or defensive. It was easy to see/admit this was hurting me, it hasn't been so easy to change it. > - Quitting smoking starts to really pay off after about a year. After a few years, it feels outstanding. It been 2 months now I stopped smoking, that is good to know.
    • darkmighty 12y ago
      Tip: Extract useful information from people's mistakes, and show it to them. They'll love it (and it's really fun!). (It's a bit like when you ask a smart physicist a silly question instead of telling you're wrong he'll make the most out of it) Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8 https://what-if.xkcd.com/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/
  • darkmighty 12y ago
    > Relying too much on logic or rationality will thus be a barrier to social advancement I would like to think that we should be careful when and how to relay knowledge and advice (and not a statement about how you actually think!). Logic soundness is irrelevant if the listener can't absorb it, and as obvious as it is, even more irrelevant if it doesn't positively impact my life/his life/our relationship. That's one of the things I love the most about online forums. If you're wrong, people will probably tell you. You learn it's far more useful to let go of barriers on your beliefs (I think we built them as a culture to avoid volatility of knowledge). You gain a lot of confidence if you're sincere to yourself about your beliefs (I think denying opposite opinions is a dishonesty to yourself). > Pay less attention to the news. If it's really important you'll hear about it anyway. Devote more of your mental attention to what you're really interested in. This varies a lot by occupation I guess. But this looks like very sound advice to me. For most news, you would "gain" a lot more per time reading a compressed delayed perspective. It really is important to judge how actionable each medium of news is.
• JeffL 12y ago
  I wish I took better care of my knees. It's important to do quad strengthening and hamstring stretching. Just playing a lot of soccer and basketball by themselves can lead to loss of cartilage and having to give it all up.
• cglee 12y ago
  Find someone to love, and who loves you back. Try to find a community of people, not only here on HN or online, but who you can be with physically. Also, while I love the startup ecosystem, I highly suggest finding a community that doesn't hinge around "success" or money. For example, a gardening group, or a city league team, etc. Find people who you wouldn't mind giving your time to for nothing in return.
  • crimsonalucard 12y ago
    I'm looking for such a group. Got any tips?
    • lightwithin 12y ago
      join the Quakers!
  • graycat 12y ago
    Congratulations: You just rediscovered solution #3 to the fundamental problem in life! From the E. Fromm, The Art of Loving (say, love and its connections with emotions, psychology, and religion), I simplify and paraphrase: "For humans, the fundamental problem in life is doing something effective about feeling alone. Only four solutions have been found, #1 love of spouse, #2 love of God, #3 membership in a group, and #4 [not recommended]." So you rediscovered #3! Darned good!
• ronilan 12y ago
  1. That people would prefer a piece of advice to be given by Kurt Vonnegut at an MIT commencement speech rather than for the same advice to be provided by Mary Schmich in her Chicago Tribune column. Even if she wrote the original and he never gave the speech. 2. That people will always prefer the YouTube video over all other alternatives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI 3. That meta is convoluted.
• seajosh 12y ago
  Take cash over equity. Drop acid or shrooms at least once. Don't get married young.
  • SuddsMcDuff 12y ago
    Agree with acid or mushrooms, everyone should experience this. Or DMT.
• chilicuil 12y ago
  wow, even with so little entries these ones are lot better than the other 2x threads.
• protomyth 12y ago
  Get the stories from your mentors (and parents / relatives if they're not your mentors) before you turn 40. Learn about their history. Sadly, your turning 40 is going to start being the age where these folks are passing away. Ask the questions now. Knowing about their history will give you some great insight into the whys of their beliefs and actions.
• 11thEarlOfMar 12y ago
  I wish I'd realized that everything I'd ever looked forward to eventually had happened, no matter how far into the future it was.
• visarga 12y ago
  My realization is that I am about in the middle of my life. That means half of it has already passed. There's only half left, and that includes old age. It makes me think deeper about how I am living my life.
  • Surio 12y ago
    Yes, you've summarised my everyday thoughts rather well. This is something that is pretty predominant lately in my mind, and also the fact that my own parents' mortality is an impending one from this point onwards. These two thoughts combined, have become sufficient to make so many other things appear trivial by comparison (and thank God for that).
• carsongross 12y ago
  1) For some reason it got a lot easier to not care about things I knew, rationally, that I should not care about, right around age 35. 2) The red pill. I don't agree with everything what comes out of that cesspool of a community, but there is a lot of ugly truth in it as well. 3) Kids, job, sleep (and, therefore, happiness). Pick two in your twenties & thirties. However, if you pick the first two, sleep comes later. If you pick the last two, kids probably won't. The happiest people I know picked the outer two.
  • mahyarm 12y ago
    Isn't the sleep part more the first few years where kids don't keep a single-block-of-time sleep schedule? Then you have even more free time when they go to school.
    • carsongross 12y ago
      If you have three kids two years apart, it's about a decade of bad sleep. At two most kids are sleeping and at four they are sufficiently independent that your mental fatigue starts getting better. Of course, at that point, organized sports start up. But at least you are getting sleep again.
  • OmarIsmail 12y ago
    As someone who has picked the first two, glad to hear that sleep comes later... though I think my wife will be much happier to hear that.
  • oldclock 12y ago
    > The red pill. I don't agree with everything what comes out of that cesspool of a community, but there is a lot of ugly truth in it as well Examples of "ugly truths" on TRP? All I've seen there is trash and misogyny.
    • mycroft-holmes 12y ago
      The general realization that men and women are different and probably want different things in life. That alone causes controversy within the feminist spheres of social media.
• Bulkington 12y ago
  Anyone over 40 who is certain of anything hasn't been paying attention.
• Sukotto 12y ago
  At 40-something, I find that money and health have become increasingly important. However, they both depend heavily on the foundations I laid in my 20s and 30s. So watch out. I can't think of too much I wish I had known, but there are quite a few things I wish I had fully internalized: - the math behind financial freedom and how small differences in savings rate, burn rates, and the carrying cost of owning "stuff" can greatly impact one's chances of reaching it; - the almost unbelievable opportunity and money costs of having children (I thought I knew.... but I was off by orders of magnitude); - that compounding growth (in any aspect of one's life, not just investing) only matters if you give it time. Start today with a little instead of waiting for the day you have "enough" to start; - the importance of due diligence. I spent more time and care speccing out my personal computers than I did buying my home. Then compounded my error by hanging on to it long after I should have cut my losses; - that if you are not working towards a specific destination, you're just floating where the wind and tide take you and hoping you end up somewhere good; - the importance of caring for your body, listening and acting on its complaints rather than pushing yourself harder; - that where you end up is mostly (aside from a certain element of sheer chance) the result of the choices YOU make (or allow others to make on your behalf) in life; - to seek out relationships with the kind of people you wish you were. You grow to be more like the people you have around you; - to learn from the past, and then let go of it. You need to focus on the future. It's especially important to let go of cynicism and bitterness as they poison your future and hurt everyone else around you; - to take the long view when weighing your options and making your plans; - that willpower is severely limited. I wish I had done more to make the right choices the easiest/default ones. Examples include automated savings, only keeping healthy foods in the house, building exercise habits into my daily routine, etc.;
  • graycat 12y ago
    > - the importance of caring for your body, listening and acting on its complaints rather than pushing yourself harder; Yes! I found it way too easy to push way too hard and, thus, do some serious damage. One case took surgery and, then, years to recover -- I'm back to normal now.
  • fasteo 12y ago
    I spent more time and care speccing out my personal computers than I did buying my home LOL, I can relate. Good one.
• ekanes 12y ago
  Who you know matters. Choose your friends carefully, surround yourself with people who can teach you something, and invest in meaningful relationships.
• ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Time only flows in one direction.
• akg_67 12y ago
  * Life is much more than just chasing shiny new things. * Value experience more than things.
• gmays 12y ago
  - Learn to say "I'm sorry." - In arguments being right isn't as important as being happy. - Be nice, especially to people who can't do anything for you. - Be grateful. - Figure out what you want in this life and go for it, it's the only one you get. - Do as much for your body as you do for your mind (i.e. workout, eat well). - Learn to manage money. - Stop doing stupid shit (you know what I'm talking about). - Make decisions using the regret minimization framework. What would you regret NOT doing the most? Do that. - Invest in yourself. You can lose everything, but you'll always have this. - Don't watch the news. - Don't be an asshole. - Do be happy, you deserve it. It's ok, we're works in progress.
  • hackuser 12y ago
    > Make decisions using the regret minimization framework. What would you regret NOT doing the most? Do that. It's not a bad question to ask for considering different angles, but I disagree that it should have much influence. It discourages risk-taking. I know it's a popular meme but when people say they have no regrets, I think to myself that either 1) They are bullsh-g me (usually the case), 2) they are bullsh-g themselves, often by closing their eyes to what they missed on, and/or 3) they aren't taking enough risks. Regret and pain are part of life. It's a fantasy, and emotionally immature, to think you will avoid them or that you have. "May your reach exceed your grasp."
    • MarkMc 12y ago
      That's odd - I always thought that 'regret minimisation' meant taking risks and NOT taking the safe option which you might later regret. If you take a risk and it doesn't work out, you can still have no regrets because (a) it was the right thing to with the available information at the time; (b) you learnt something valuable from the experience.
    • gmays 12y ago
      I guess it depends on your OS. Minimizing regrets to me means taking risks. It's why I joined the Marine Corps. It's why I bought my first house at 21. It's why I got married. It's why I started investing in real estate. It's why I quit my job to start a company. If I didn't work to minimize my regrets I'd have a very dull life. Do I use it to decide whether I want Chinese or Italian? No, but when I have a major decision and I'm having a hard time deciding I give it a spin.
• graycat 12y ago
  (1) Catalogs of some of the more common behavior and emotional patterns and their development over time of human females and how to recognize these patterns in real life and respond to them. (2) The role of entrepreneurship in our economy and society and how to be a successful entrepreneur. (3) The connections, common and/or possible, between high end academics and careers, especially business and entrepreneurship. (4) Clinical Psychology 101 and how to detect, understand, and respond to the common problems. (5) The shockingly large fraction of people who make messes out of their lives for no good reason, and how to detect, understand, and respond to what they are doing. (6) The surprising ability of some people to have terrible lives for their first 20 years but seemingly put all that aside and have good lives. (7) What parts of advanced mathematics are powerful for valuable applications and how to make such applications. (8) Real Politics 101, or how to please 50+% of the people saying next to nothing and otherwise saying just lies! (9) Always look for the hidden agenda. (10) Organizational Behavior 101. (11) The common real situations of marriage and parenting in the US, e.g., "there are a lot of affairs". If you have or may have significant wealth, then no way should you get married without a rock solid pre-nup. As in the opera Rigoletto, La donna è mobile, that is, "The woman is fickle". From "The Big Sky", "You can never tell what a woman will do next.". (12) How fiction works in books, plays, TV, and movies, and how it connects with the mass media including what is called the news. (13) What are the really important things in life and how to understand their importance. (14) The world changed a lot from 1800 to 1900 and then from 1900 to 2000 and then from 2000 to 2015. Rapid change will likely continue. Expect and accept it, welcome it, and take advantage of it. (15) A good family is one of the most important things, and to have one likely you have to work hard to make it so.
• JabavuAdams 12y ago
  Raising kids is mundane, boring, uninteresting or intensely irritating 80% of the time. When it's good it's really good, but you don't get to choose when, and you've got to be at least somewhat on your game the rest of the time too if you don't want to be a jerk to them. EDIT> This is for people with strong (non-kid) passions that are time-consuming. I know people who are just amazing with kids, but typically they don't seem to have much else going on in their lives.
  • swframe 12y ago
    Note there is a hell of lot you can do to make raising kids enormous fun. 1. Play with your kids as if you are a kid too. I mean take it extremely seriously. Leave the smartphone off and join in. Build the most amazing things (sand castles, robots, tree houses, paintings, drawings, etc). Your kids will see you and appear to ignore you and then one day you will see them doing the same thing. 2. Explore like mad. Visit every place you can think of hanging out. Bike all over. Visit every park in your area, every library, etc. Do it every weekend. Catch bugs. Watch the stars. Hike, camp, boat, etc. 3. If you code at home, try to code an interest AI problem that has great visuals and then explain it to your kids. 4. Make movies. Write the script with the kids. Get the kids to act the parts. I could go on but I think you get the point. I think you can see that if you stop trying to be an adult, you can have a lot of fun. The biggest problem I have with kids is that they sometimes fight over silly things. I forbade my kids from playing with each other. Since it was against the rules, they played with each other much better and when they fought they knew they were breaking the rules. After watching Monster Inc. I realized that you could tickle kids instead of spanking them to get them to behave. No one likes to be tickled. I can imagine my kids being kicked out of therapy when they explain how they were disciplined by being made to laugh. There are so many tricks that reduce the irritation to a minimum. For me, it was a challenge to find them so I really enjoyed it. I wish I could do it again. My oldest daughter is taking comp sci at stanford.
    • codinghorror 12y ago
      This is really beautiful, thank you for sharing this.
    • 12y ago
• steven2012 12y ago
  1) You will have to continue studying and learning for the rest of your career, unless you want to be easily replaceable. If you want to be easily employable with a great job and great salary past the age of 45, you can't just be a coder. You need to be a tech lead, architect, etc, someone that can lead so that you add value in ways other than coding. If you are a coder at the age of 45, you have to be significantly better than someone who is half your age and half you salary to keep employed. An average, or below average coder at age 45 is not easily employable, at least in Silicon Valley. 2) Salaries for pure coders flatline around the age of 35, unless the entire industry's salary range goes up like it has over the last 5 years. There is a sweet spot of experience between 8-10 years, and companies don't value 20 years experience more than 10 years experience. The industry simply isn't the same 10-20 years ago as it is today. The only significant difference that I bring to the table over an 32 year old coder is that my code is probably incrementally more reliable and my manual testing abilities are probably incrementally better, but for the most part, the differences are intangible and definitely not enough to justify a salary increase. 3) Take care of your body. Age is not just a number. Practice good eating habits and do not gain weight because it becomes much harder to lose as you age. Your body goes through physical changes from your early 30s, and you are weaker. My memory is significantly worse now than it was 10 years ago, and often forget things that I've known for 10-20 years. My body is significantly weaker than it was even 5 years back. 4) Learning how to be personable and sociable will help accelerate and lengthen your career. No one wants to be around someone who is a technical genius but an asshole. They would rather hire someone who is very good, but great to work with. 5) Customers don't care about technology, they care about solutions. In the end, as long as you are solving customer problems, you are employable.
• mingabunga 12y ago
  Marry the right person
  • sbate1987 12y ago
    Divorce the wrong person
• anotherevan 12y ago
  Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
  • tdoggette 12y ago
    People always say this (or the more general "take care of your joints"). What the hell does it mean? Don't skateboard? Run? Don't run? Start taking fish oil at age 25?
• noobplusplus 12y ago
  Reading HN is a waste of time. You should come here to know, what NOT to do.
• swframe 12y ago
  Don't get married. Marriage is a very tight coupling that is too easy to get into and too hard to get out of. You don't need it.
  • ssiddharth 12y ago
    Interesting point. Would you mind elaborating further?
• jedberg 12y ago
  I'm 38, but hopefully that's close enough. There is no suck thing as luck. There is opportunity and the people who take advantage of it. A "lucky" person is just someone who takes advantage of the opportunities they make for themselves. For example, when I see someone who might be interesting to talk to, I walk up and talk to them. CTO of Amazon? Go up and say hi. Then suddenly I'm "lucky" enough to get this: http://aws.amazon.com/heroes/usa/jeremy-edberg/ http://aws.amazon.com/heroes/usa/jeremy-edberg/
  • greggman 12y ago
    It's a good attitude that seizing opportunity is something you could always try to do but it's certainly arguable luck plays a HUGE role in which specific opportunities show up. There are countless examples and very famous and successful people will often point to all the luck in their lives. To name just one example Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation points out all the luck in his life in his Creativity Inc book. Luck that Lucas decided to sell Pixar, Luck that Jobs bought it before it got disbanded. Luck that Jobs failed to turn Pixar into a computer company like he tried to do for a couple of years. Luck that Jobs was willing to sink so much money into a losing company IIRC 57 million before they switch to animation. I'm sure others can name other examples.
    • weddpros 12y ago
      If this guy hadn't thought he was lucky, he would have resigned from Disney early. So maybe Luck is a belief... and belief is what decisions are made of, good and bad.
  • kimcheekumquat 12y ago
    Awesome, jedberg replied :) I completely agree though. There is a famous quote that goes something along the lines of "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity". If you want "luck", you need to go out and meet people! Go out and cast the net of opportunity! Funny you linked to that exact AWS page, since I was just on there an hour ago. I was reading AWS for Dummies to prepare for an upcoming interview at AWS. I know you handled reddit's EC2 traffic. What advice would you give to somebody looking to get into a career with AWS? I'm a senior in EE at college with a background in networking and I see Amazon's cloud services only growing in the upcoming decades.
• andersthue 12y ago
  I wished I had learned to let go while much younger. 43
• ssarkar 12y ago
  1. Dont read/listen to news. 2. Read history. 3. Try to avoid alcohol.
• narrator 12y ago
  1. Realize that reading political/world news probably won't have any direct impact on your life. Don't watch TV news. Instead, spend time diving very deep into a particular subject areas by reading books about these areas and trying to answer your own specific questions. 2. Find something useful to do with your commute (e.g audio books) or eliminate it. This could be a large part of your life and it adds up. 3. Marry the right person. Don't marry too young. 4. Fix your chronic health problems. 5. Understand and study nutrition. 6. Build relationships. This takes time. 7. Make things happen. Create things that weren't there before that other people participate in. Practice planning things in advance and executing on them. 8. Learn what you can from your parents before they go senile. 9. Have some sort of passion besides your job and passive entertainment. You will become a far more interesting person and attract interesting people. 10. Do not undercharge for your labor. Live well below your means. Don't work for or with jerks. 11. If something isn't working in your life, change something, measure and retry. Iterate. This is basically applying lean principals to everything. Don't get stuck with "good enough" and then it's a year later.
  • lgieron 12y ago
    > 1. Realize that reading political/world news probably won't have any direct impact on your life. Don't watch TV news. Instead, spend time diving very deep into a particular subject areas by reading books about these areas and trying to answer your own specific questions. While following this advice might make an individual happier, if most people followed it, we'd gradually become slaves to the ruling class which would happily exploit us without us noticing or willing to do anything about it.
    • narrator 12y ago
      I think most of the "news" is slanted to get people to do or think things. It's only in lesser visited corners of knowledge wrapped up in books or specialized study that the persuasion background noise dies down and real understanding is easier to piece together. I avoid a lot of mass media (e.g TV) because if I absorb and process the same information everyone else does I'll think thoughts that are similar to everyone else. I guess that's good and bad. It's helpful to at least be aware of what everyone else is thinking.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• weddpros 12y ago
  You must have goals, but "I'm 40 and I've achieved all I wanted for my life" is the least desirable outcome of your life. Because life doesn't end at 40, and you'll feel a deep void... Stay in motion, don't plan for a plateau in your life.
• LBarret 12y ago
  - listen to yourself, you cannot go against your fundamental nature, you can "surf" it to reach your goals - speak your mind, with diplomacy, but don't stay silent. - sweat.
• loumf 12y ago
  1. Low cost whole market index funds from (e.g. Fidelity), not individual stocks. See the Bogleheads site and books. 2. Work out 3-4 days per week 3. Portion control works. Eating from a restricted list works (YES fruits, vegetables, meats, nuts, seeds, non-grain-based oils. LIMIT dairy. NO sugar/grain(flour,rice,corn)) So, weight watchers or something like Paleo or Zone. (Fat all my life until 35 or so)
  • swalsh 12y ago
    "1. Low cost whole market index funds from (e.g. Fidelity), not individual stocks. See the Bogleheads site and books." What's your opinion on leveraged equity? I have a few mutual funds that have been killing it since I bought them (a few years ago) but everything I read, says not to hold them longer then a few days. Its hard to sell something that's actively making money. One example, is I bought bipix back around Sept 2011.
    • loumf 12y ago
      I do not own anything that I wouldn't hold for years and years. My plan to make money via knowledge and work is through writing software. The risky instruments I hold are options in the company I work for and equity in my own projects. I want to spend near 0 time on financial engineering -- the purpose of the portfolio is to balance the risks I take at work. My accumulated wealth is in low-fee index funds (mostly stocks, but a fair amount of bonds and international). In your specific example, BIPIX is trying to outdo the Dow Jones U.S. Biotechnology Index. In 3yrs, DJBioTech returned ~200% and BIPIX is better (~240%). I'd have to know the fees to know which returned better net fees. The BIPIX managers claim they are going for 1.5 return of the DJBioTech, which they have not in the 3 year period. In the 1 year they are swapping back and forth (BIPIX currently (EDIT: I said ahead, but it's actually) behind not taking fees into account) If I wanted the return of a specific sub-market industry, I would buy the unmanaged index that best represents that industry. Basically -- we have no evidence that mutual fund managers can beat indexes in the long term, but we know fees and taxes for sure.
• jxf 12y ago
  Don't read Hacker News when you're working on things. Especially not the comments. (Except maybe for this article.)
• sbfeibish 12y ago
  Don't be afraid to lose other people's money. Do whatever you have to do before you have to take care of your parents, your wife, your children. Find a mentor(s) so you avoid mistakes, so maybe you get funding. Sop up all you can from the Internet/Youtube. We never had it so good. You can learn about startups, pitching, finance, programming, etc. Be careful who you select as friends. Don't dismiss, but fade the ones not interested in success. Don't think that any project is too big for you. Don't separate yourself from society. You can't just program in a dark room. You need to get out and meet others or you'll miss something important. If you wait till things get cheap you'll be at the end of the line (I'm thinking of not starting businesses like auctions, search, employment, etc. in the 1990's because everything was expensive. ) Learn about Robert Kiyosaki's (Rich Dad, Poor Dad) four quandrants. Investing Learn what's meant by secular & cyclical bull markets and what their length is. Learn how important demographics are (Right now my "baby boom" generation is trying to sell it's homes to a generation with fewer people.) Learn what normally happens when the Fed pumps money into the economy. First it goes into the stock market, then the economy, then inflation takes hold. Since the emerging economies (Asia) will grow faster then the older developed economies (North America & Europe), over a long period of time the returns should be higher in Asia. If you have a long period of time (100yrs) you don't need to take risk. You can simply invest in the big, growing companies that increase their dividend year after year. Buy when there's blood in the streets. After a disaster is always a good time to invest somewhere. Just because some junior mining company says they've found an anomaly, it doesn't mean anything. So few mines prove to be economic it's unreal. 1 in 1,000? 1 in 10,000? Look it up. There's too much :)
  • sbfeibish 12y ago
    That is, don't be afraid you'll lose other people's money. And use that as a reason not to act.
• facepalm 12y ago
  Even if there is high demand for software developers, you might not be much in demand after 40. Just look at the average job page - how many old dudes do you typically see in the "this is our cool company" photo?
• daSn0wie 12y ago
  keep failing at things in one focused area. review your failures and note what you learned from each of them. if you make incremental improvements to anything on a daily basis, in 10 years you'll be a master. never measure yourself against where you want to be, but to where you were. always ask for things, no one is going to do it for you. you can't make everyone happy (especially on hacker news ;) ). find an audience that resonates with you and make them happy. you're not a special snowflake.
• graycat 12y ago
  When communicating to others, just must pay close attention to and consider your intended audience; for successful communications, your message alone constructed independent of your audience will, in practice, often give some bad reactions and, thus, is usually not good enough. If don't pay close attention to your audience, then you risk offending, confusing, or losing your audience and creating emotional upset, rational misunderstanding, and maybe even hostility. In paying attention to your audience, often have to put yourself in the state, i.e., position, of your audience. That is, from paying attention to your audience, you have to try to understand their backgrounds, thinking, and emotions, anticipate (that is, guess in advance) what their reactions will be, and, then, revise your message for them, say, to get your real message across and avoid misunderstandings, terrible emotional reactions, etc. This advice is especially important in romantic and/or family communications. Right, this extra step means that in communicating you have to think about two things, not just one, that is, think about both the core content you are trying to communicate and also what your audience might be getting. Especially good in one on one communications, one, good, sometimes crucial, general technique is reflective listening, that is, asking the other person to summarize and repeat back their understanding of what you communicated. Or, in terms of electronic engineering, write, read back, and then compare what tried to write with what read back! A big reason here is that emotions, unstated assumptions, various fears, etc. can get seriously in the way of even simple messages. In particular, for a large fraction of human females, often their first reaction to any communications from a man is to be afraid of various things -- or just be afraid even without knowing why. For some 101 level lessons, maybe have a nervous kitty cat (some are quite nervous, are scaredy cats) and learn how to detect when they are scared and how to respond and, then, how over time to make them much less scared. Then for human females, slowly work your way up from this 101 level lesson to a graduate course!
• graycat 12y ago
  "Youth is such a wonderful time of life. Too bad it's wasted on young people." Commonly attributed to Mark Twain
• bettyx1138 12y ago
  I wish I'd known how IMPOSSIBLE it is to obtain a life partner/LTR/marriage in my late 40s and now 50! (I'm female.) I would have made an effort to get a beau 10 years ago if I'd known! PS - Shameless plug - If you are a single and looking cool-as-all-fuck male unicorn open to a super fucking cool 50 year old women (former punk rock chick, grad degree, nerdgrrl) who looks and acts 30, find me on okc, same uid as here.
  • infiniteseeker 12y ago
    It is easier for males in their late 40s and 50s then it is for females. Look up SMV (Sexual Market Value)
• mathattack 12y ago
  - Over the short term there are a lot of variables to success other than being a smart, hard working, good person. Over the long term things start to even out. - Being smart is the price of entry, but drive matters more. (The #1 & #2 people from my high school class of 500+ had nominal professional success. The breakout successes were the 5'2" guy who made the basketball team, and the chunky musician who never missed a class 6-12. Both were smart, but their drive carried them.) - If you see a partial ethical lapse from someone, the odds are there are more full lapses to follow. Give second chances for a lot of failures, but not ethical lapses. - The group of who you is important to you shrinks, not grows over time. - Somehow you have a lot less free time when you have the so-called "boring, married and 2 kids" life. It's still worth doing. (Kids are simultaneously much more time than you'd imagine, much more frustration, and much more awesome) - Be smart about money. Remember that every dollar of debt needs to be paid back. Would the future you say, "I really wish I had pissed away X getting..." - Throw out stuff. You won't miss it, and there's a cost of carrying it around. Spend on experience instead. - With alcohol, go for quality over quantity. You'll spend less money for a better experience. - It's not worth spending time with negative people. - Don't wait until you have a daughter to lose the sexism. - Go to the dentist and doctor regularly, and listen to them. - Prepare to reinvent yourself multiple times. - Most of your peer group won't achieve the success that they assume will happen naturally. (Life is a pyramid scheme, and what gets you across the first few steps won't get you past the next few, and lots of people drop off along the way) - Luck matters a lot, but operate like it doesn't at all. - Be twice as responsible as you think you need to be, because you don't know the other person's perception. Assume the other person will only be half as responsible. - If you see warning signs at work, move quickly, leaving the handcuffs behind. They won't stay gold for long. - Take the soft classes seriously. - Become so talented that you're the "Go To" person, and such a good teacher that you've replaced yourself by the time you want to go to bigger and better things. - With other people, you sometimes have to choose between Being Right and Having a Relationship. There's no loss of character for keeping quiet. - Confidence inspires confidence. It's ok to commit on 80% certainty when the other guy is committing on 60%.
• graycat 12y ago
  Take love seriously. E.g., watch the 2014 Budweiser SuperBowl commercial about a puppy and love at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQB7QRyF4p4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQB7QRyF4p4 There pay attention to the song and, as at http://commercialwith.weebly.com/budweiser-puppy-super-bowl-commercial.html http://commercialwith.weebly.com/budweiser-puppy-super-bowl-... to the words of the song, i.e., "Well you only need the light when it's burning low, Only miss the sun when it starts to snow. Only know you love her when you let her go. Only know you've been high when you're feeling low, Only hate the road when you're missing home, Only know you love her when you let her go. And you let her go. And you let her go (oh woah). When you let her go." So, when you do have her, Lesson: Don't let her go. And, if she lets you go, try to be a good leader and guide her to seeing the importance of her not letting you go. Both of you need love, and together both of your can solve that problem for both of you. It's important.