Never, never, not in a million years, listen to a single word of advice uttered by someone who isn't happy with their life. They have absolutely nothing to teach you. This is strong stuff, granted, but I think it is tremendously important.
Every single piece of bad advice I have ever received was from someone who didn't like their life. If you're unhappy, you have two basic options. You can do something to make yourself happier, or you can rationalise a reason why happiness isn't possible. The former is generally a steady upward slog. The latter is like quicksand - the longer you're there, the more solidly you become stuck.
All the bad career advice I got was from people who didn't like their job. Some believed that jobs were just inherently unpleasant, so you might as well go for the unpleasantness that pays the most and gives the best pension. Some believed that good jobs were just inaccessible for 'the likes of us', so there's no point getting you hopes up. Some were so uncertain of their employability that they took the first job offered to them and never dared do anything to jeopardise it. I heard rationalisations dressed up as philosophy, as ethics, as macroeconomics, but they were rationalisations all the same.
Learning from the mistakes of others is useful and productive, but an unhappy person can never provide any insight into how to be happy. Either they don't know what would make them happy, or worse, they do know but won't do it. Never underestimate how hard someone will work to rationalise why they just can't go back to college or start their own business or visit Europe or leave their awful wife.
When seeking advice, ignore status, intelligence and experience. Seek out the happy people, they're the only people who can help you.
You might not understand why you are being downvoted since you are new there.
Don't take it personally, is just that we don't want any kind of humour or otherwise pointless (as in: adds nothing to the conversation) informations.
We are trying to keep the signal to noise ratio high, just say something only when it adds to the conversation and you'll do great!
I don't think it's that we don't want humor—there is plenty of that on HN. I think it's that "lmao" is better conveyed (and with less noise, as you say) by an upvote.
I completely and profoundly disagree. Why do you think many great philosophers, intellectuals, and achievers have struggled with depression? Because they made bad decisions? There are plenty of idiots dispensing awful advice while wearing a smile on their face, as well. If you want to feel good, talk to a happy person that will tell you what you want to hear. If you want the truth, talk to a thinker.
There's a difference between being "unhappy with life" and being "unhappy with your life." Maybe folks who style themselves as philosophers and intellectuals are incapable of making this delineation -- or that we, reading their writings, do not see them as having done so. Time, cultural shifts, language.. these things are all dense filters.
You will gain something by listening to anyone. "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." And even though THAT advice is thousands of years old, we are nothing to each other if we cannot learn vicariously from shared experience.
I don't agree. As already point, many philosophers, scientists, programmers have been bitter people, largely unhappy with life.
Some people are bitter by design. No matter what I do, I will always have many complains to be unhappy about. Right now, I am trying to boot-up my startup. If it doesn't work, I will be bitter. If it works out, I will be bitter about my other pet peeve - schools killing creativity and I would like to contribute towards making it better. If it too is sorted out, I would be bitter about people being bitter about each other owing to religious, regional or some other non-rational biases. I am bitter about Government corruption and lack of infrastructure in my country. I am bitter about common man's rights not implemented in spirit. I am bitter about morons dividing people on religion and reason, and worse, people listening to them.
All of these isn't going to change(some might) in my lifetime. And the only way to be happy about it is to turn a blind eye. If happiness is ignorance, I don't seek it.
This would be blatant generalization, but many happy people I have met are blissfully ignorant. They have accepted life as is, and are happy with the current state of thing.
I generally listen to all advice, and ignore most of it - the adviser being happy or not doesn't figure in my criteria.
I believe that unless you are chemically, neurologically or biologically imbalanced, there's no excuse to be bitter or unhappy. I won't discuss happiness here, but even if the advice of some bitter person is good, I would say that an advice of a person who I lookup to will always be "better".
Of course, things should be placed in context. An advice of a bitter math teacher on mathematics will always be better than an advice from a happy ignorant person.
On a personal note, don't be bitter. You can accomplish the same without the bitterness, it's just weighing you down.
It means the parent post assumes the world can be pigeonholed in whatever criteria he thinks/has been taught to be ideal. Anyone who doesn't fits there is abnormal in some way.
He assumes there is no reason to be unhappy, completely ignoring the various reasons I have pointed out and stated that ignoring them would lead to bliss, but that's not what I seek.
> Never, never, not in a million years, listen to a single word of advice uttered by someone who isn't happy with their life. They have absolutely nothing to teach you.
" Some believed that good jobs were just inaccessible for 'the likes of us', so there's no point getting you hopes up. Some were so uncertain of their employability that they took the first job offered to them and never dared do anything to jeopardise it. "
This chimes with my personal experience. I suppose the demographic I'm from in the UK gave me certain blind spots and self imposed ceilings. I'm now 25 and only just starting to figure out and balance against them.
In my opinion, those "self imposed ceilings" are far worse in the UK that any other limit to personal development - they also vary a lot given your background.
I grew up in a small fishing village in the North of Scotland - where everyone (and I mean everyone) was very supportive of education and the idea that anyone pretty much do anything they wanted if they had ability and worked hard enough. My parents weren't well off but all 4 of my siblings and I went to university.
My wife comes from a urban-working class background in a post-industrial area near Glasgow, she is extremely bright and went to University at 16. However, she had to constantly battle a "that's not for the likes of us" attitude from everyone in her community, including her parents (who are nice people, but just don't "get it").
When we first met she always made fun of me for having no concept of "class" whereas it was something that had always been made clear to her by her peers. Ironically, she became a lawyer and entered that bastion of upper middle class eccentric respectablilty: the Scottish Bar.
I have a similar rule when it comes to business advice. It's only useful when coming from someone made rich through their own business. Of course there will be exceptions, but I've found this rule works from my own experiences. Maybe a more general rule would be to only take advice from people who already are where you want to be.
>>When seeking advice, ignore status, intelligence and experience. Seek out the happy people, they're the only people who can help you.
That argument needs that I would become happy following the same path as the person giving advice. That is just not true for quite a few happy people I know.
"You're smart." It took me five years of coasting on that presumption before I realized that being "smart" isn't nearly enough. I'm still working (after a few more years) to develop the habits that would have come from hearing "you're a hard worker."
The internet really helps with that, by expanding your world to include some people who are just dazzlingly brilliant, and remind you how far you have to go. This guy, for example:
The nice thing about this kind of ego-shrinking is that it's combined with inspiration to do something about it, rather than just feeling deflated. There's so much interesting stuff out there.
"Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts."
tl;dr: Praise kids for their hard work, not for being smart.
To some extent education tries to do that, but imo it's pretty bad when it really does it consistently. The person who spent a lot of hours on a-not-really-working project gets a better grade than the person who actually produced an impressive result, but managed to pull it off the night before and made the mistake of not hiding the fact that they didn't spend a lot of hours on it. That's not actually that uncommon in college, since there's a huge range of ability and prior experience in a typical class, and professors do try to base some of their grade on how earnestly the student appeared to work on it: to save face, they can't give an A to the student who did the whole semester project in a day, even if the result was objectively better than most of the others.
End result of that approach is that the kids learn that hard work matters, but results don't. Now you have someone who'll optimize for "hours put in", worrying more about whether they're impressing the boss with their work ethic than about the quality of the end results they're delivering. Sort of a common feature of corporate culture, where the guy who stays late and comes in weekends is praised, even if the guy who went home at 5pm every day is the one producing most of the working code.
The other lesson you learn from that is: if you solve a major problem in two hours, withhold the result and pretend you spent two weeks working on it, then present it later and get praised for working hard on the problem for two weeks and solving it.
I always cringe a bit when I come home for the holidays and get praise from family on my purported intelligence and achievements. I feel as though this mentality kept me intellectually fat and happy for most of my teenage years, inhibiting the drive to constantly grow that I've fostered since entering college.
I hate to say me too, but definitely me too. I'm convinced that I procrastinate more because of being told how smart I was as a kid, as opposed to being petrified of not working hard enough.
Even worse is when people are told they are smart when really they might just be about average or a little above and really need to put the hard yards in rather than coasting.
"You should buy a house - it's the best investment you can make!" This was the advice I was given countless times when I lived in Nebraska in the early 00's, at my first job out of college. Thank God I didn't listen.
It just didn't make any sense: I was 23 years old, had plenty of talent, and could't wait to get out of Nebraska, but I was supposed to buy a house? I couldn't think of a worse way to spend my money, time, and freedom.
Instead of spending my evenings fixing up my "house," I was blogging and learning to code. Instead of spending my money on a mortgage and property taxes, I bought GOOG & AAPL.
After a few years, a startup in Silicon Valley found me, liked my blog, and moved me out to California. Once I was done working for other people, I had enough of a stock portfolio to fund starting my own business.
If I had followed that advice, I would still be in Nebraska, would owe more than my house would be worth, and would hate my job/life.
"The best investment you can make" is always in yourself.
+1 I think many people like houses as investments because they FEEL so "real" and tangible - you can touch them! Feelings are not a good way to decide what to invest in, however.
People also like houses because they've seen them go up all their life. In their anecdotal experience, it was the best investment. But the fact that house prices rocketed up in their lifetime is exactly the problem! People think it's a good investment for precisely the reason it's a terrible investment!
The property bubble in Australia hasn't burst yet, so I'm still listening to this. It's painful. Sometimes I find it hard not to advise people to sell their houses now...
I'm not exactly sure how to word it, and I'm not aware of a single source who advised me on it, but it seems like there's a pervasive feeling in society that "If I want to learn something, I need a teacher." I outgrew this mental model around 14, and now in college I feel so much further ahead of many of my peers who are lucky to have taken a HS programming course once before choosing a programming degree. I wish I had outgrown it much earlier, I feel like there was a lot of lost potential in my earlier years that I wasted because I had no interest in teaching myself things. Who knows how devastating this "cultural advice(?)" is to people who still haven't outgrown it.
I can definitely echo your feeling of lost potential in my earlier years. I too am a current college student and wish I could go tell my 15-year-old self to learn Python instead of spending most of my free time playing Counter-Strike.
The truth isn't that you don't need a teacher. You may be able to learn everything from a book or solitary practice, like yourself. But others probably can do that sometimes, may sometimes need a teacher, may sometimes need to discuss with peers, etc. And I don't mean that some people are visual learners, or readers, etc. I mean that people learn different topics in different ways, on different days, with different contexts, etc.
I think the cultural norm should be that if one way of learning isn't working for you, try another way. Practice, read it yourself, ask a friend for help, get a tutor, whatever you need.
Absolutely, I'm not saying teachers are never useful or needed. I'd much rather have a conversation with someone familiar with a large codebase to get a feel for it than diving in and creating assumptions. But the bad advice is that a teacher of some form is essential, and that's wrong-headed, and it paralyzes people when asked instead to not just solve a well-rehearsed problem, but actually to discover the problem that needs solving.
A related assumption is that the best way to learn is through classes or lectures. I can learn faster by reading, experimenting, and asking questions when I'm stuck. Forums are your friend.
There's a big difference between and teacher and an advisor. Teachers are absolutely a dime a dozen, and the capable student can teach themselves anything a teacher might. However, my research advisor (and more informal "advisors" who I've come across in open source contribution, TAing, etc.) have been absolutely invaluable. You can absolutely teach yourself to program, but you'll never be heads and shoulders above the rest without seeking out people who really know what they're talking about and absorbing the best they have to offer.
Socialize with talented people. They won't teach you, but you can learn few things from them. Also, get to work in a real company and real problems. You'll learn many things from your colleges and job.
True, being able to teach yourself is a hugely valuable skill. But I think you also shouldn't underestimate the value of a mentor (as in someone to guide your self teaching) - I've been teaching myself guitar for years and finally got around to getting some lessons. It's been an eye opener seeing the obvious things I missed by just relying on myself.
Agreed. You don't know what you don't know. A mentor can help you learn the topics in the most effective order, offer suggestions that you wouldn't otherwise find, and motivate you on your bad days.
I somewhat agree. You dont need a teacher to learn anything, but you do need a mentor. To me mentors have changed my life, career and the way I approach everything. They usually enlighten you with their own experience and help guide you when you are lost.
In 1987 or 88, when I was a teenager, my parents, noting my emerging passion for coding, tried to sign me up for a Explorer Scout "post" whose focus was programming.
This should have been good, but I came back from the first meeting not wanting to go back. I just didn't click with the group, and the language/environment they were using (Fortran on an IBM System/3x0 variant, I think) were of no interest to me.
This upset my father, in particular, because he was convinced that the programming I was doing in my bedroom (C, on a Commodore Amiga) was of no value. Programming a personal computer was fine for a kid, but making a career in software meant doing "serious" work, which to my (very non-tech) parents, meant programming IBM mainframes.
In retrospect, their career advice was about as bad as it could have been. I was learning exactly what I should have been learning. I was completely right to ignore them and continue doing what I was doing.
Except I could never shake the idea of "serious" vs. "not serious" software development. So while I continued to learn C, then learned C++, when I finished college in the mid-90s I went into a "serious" industry . Despite living within walking distance of Netscape's old headquarters, I completely missed out on the dot-com era, justifying it by telling myself that I was doing "serious" work. And while I've never been unemployed, until this year, I can't say I ever did anything remotely notable, or fun, either.
And worse of all: it became obvious within the last 3-4 years that my industry was a career dead-end. If I stuck with it, I'd eventually be one of those stereotypical unemployed, and unemployable, 40-something developers.
But there is a silver lining: over the last couple of years I started playing around with some new technologies and ended up reinventing myself. Earlier this year, I quit my old job and am now working for a startup that's doing stuff that's nowhere near my Dad's old idea of "serious". But I've treated my new job seriously, working harder than at any time in my career. And I'm happier now than I've been in nearly a decade.
"Quit your job and start a company" - Yep, that totally didn't work out as I had hoped. Stuff that are easy to do when there is no pressure suddenly become impossible. Thinking about it as walking on a board one foot wide on the ground, easy right. Now, put that board one thousand foot up in the air now try walking on it, not so easy now that your life depends on it. For some bootstrapping after your normal work hours is a better path to startup.
"Change the system from the inside" - If you are apart of a system that encourages physical and mental abuse of its members, don't try to change it, leave. Systems include: Fraternity, Brotherhoods, Cults, Gangs, Churches, Country, Jobs and the like. In general don't try to change systems, just move to a better one.
In the early 80's at Rice University my academic advisor steered me from computer science which I enjoyed (APL rocked!) to chemical engineering because "computers will be programming themselves in 20 years and comp sci isn't real engineering anyways". I hated chem eng but after a decade of detours final came back to coding. I didn't mind the detours but it was spectacularly bad advice and I was dumb enough to take it.
Variations of "you'll just meet someone" and "dating will get easier in your 30s" and "the important thing is you do well in school, and everything else will follow". Fuck that. Someone should have shaken the shit out of me when I was 18, forced me to go to a school with a normal gender ratio, and gotten me to strike while the iron was still hot while I still had some sexual attraction to women, and never take for granted any time a woman is vaguely interested.
Right there with you. My life would probably be much better had I spent more (well, any) time drinking and partying in high school and college. The traditional advice to be responsible and avoid peer pressure is correct for the majority of the population, but geeky introverts need to develop social skills much more than we need to incrementally improve our GPAs.
"dating will get easier in your 30s"
Supposedly this really is true for men. Not for me yet.
This is not just untrue for me, but dramatic and stark in a way that has surprised me a lot. I have some really awkward hair loss and I get mistaken for a college student at age 34, and that doesn't help. To a couple orders of approximation, women now have absolutely and universally no sexual interest in me, and this just wasn't true in my 20s. (This is despite me having more money now and being lot more sure of myself, more comfortable with people, less shy, and in better physical shape.)
Someone should have shaken the shit out of me when I was 18, forced me to go to a school with a normal gender ratio, and gotten me to strike while the iron was still hot
Why is it someone else's responsibility to make you live your life the "right" way? I thought your bad advice post was fine up until you were blaming other people for how you lived your life.
This post is asking for blame!! Someone can take my anecdote for what its worth in a way that may help them out (I hope). Yes I'm whiny but also have some altruism:)
When people ask me about "computers" I often remind them that it's the only skill that will allow you to work in just about any industry. Art, hard science, medicine, whatever...
If I were a blacksmith in a mediaeval village I would make sure my kids knew that they were tool makers, not blacksmiths. People will always need tools weather they are made in a forge or a factory.
Similar scenario -- though I admit, a lot of what I was doing on the computer during those years was probably 'deadend'. A lot of my formative years were spent digging into MUDs, building computers & just random nerdery as a whole.
Despite a lot of it simply consisting of mucking around, a lot of generic information and knowledge stuck consistently. Despite being told frequently I was 'wasting my life away', in the process I was slowly sponging in information that would later assist me in launching a startup that nowadays employs even my father. :)
I do wish that early on my parents were more supportive of my passions and interests, and it's a mistake I hope not to make with my own children. When you see passion in someone, be it with any topic, it shouldn't matter whether or not it's something that can generate financial stability. These days with the sheer size of the internet -- there's a market (rule 34 I think ;)).
Do what you love, find interesting ways to fuel others with your passion and you can make just about anything pay the rent.
Parents still to this day share this sentiment. Although my Dad has come around a lot in recent years when I've explained how some internet startups have done and the types of jobs available in programming.
Plus it's easier to see now, Dad uses the internet every day now so it's easier to see how much job opportunity is there.
It didn't mess up my life, but when I was in high school the conventional wisdom was that being well rounded helped you get into good colleges. I spent a lot of time playing team sports and the saxophone; neither of those are hobbies of mine today. I wish I had spent some of that time doing something that would still be relevant to me today, like programming (there are a LOT of successful founders that started programming in their early teens; I didn't start until college).
I sort of value well-roundedness even into adult life. Sure, I didn't morph into a programming genius that spits out code in his sleep, but I do think time spent playing sports and hanging around with friends sort of saved me from being less introverted and shy than I could have been.
There are times that I envy young, successful founders running companies worth millions, laser-focused on their goals from childhood to adulthood, but then again I sort of do a double-take and think: They couldn't have been this awesome without missing some important aspects (to me anyway) of life. Aspects like falling in love, winning a girl's heart, getting into trouble, exploring new places, learning a musical instrument and hanging out with people with different interests and intelligence (street smart or artsy types). I mean, you can only be young once (and of course, your hormones would only be THIS active once).
Most of this will be considered a massive waste of time for some people (I certainly considered all my years spent playing games a waste. Damnit.). Still moderation is key.
Oh, I didn't start seriously programming until I went to college, and life didn't turn out so bad. (Still, no million-dollar company under my name though =()
That's a good one. What colleges are really looking for is:
1. Expertise in something the college values. For Ivy Leagues and the like, that's usually something academic or artistic. For military academies, that's leadership. Athletics for some schools, though you've gotta be world class or clearly heading there.
2. Good grades (unless you're going for a sports scholarship)
3. A few interesting extra-curriculars to show you can 'multitask' and aren't completely 1 dimensional.
But many parents seem to over-emphasize #3 to the detriment of #1 and #2. If you take them seriously you'll find yourself a jack of many trades, master of none. But it's the masters of particular trades/crafts/domains/knowledge these days that are irreplaceable, un-interchangeable, and who make the advances that push the human race forward, not the jacks.
And the ability to truly master something is difficult, a skill in and of itself. Those who develop that skill early in life will have a significant advantage over those who don't.
So if you find yourself trying to do all three and struggling to keep all those balls in the air, don't be afraid to drop #3. It's expendable.
Starting early is not a requisite for success. I started programming when I was 19 or 20 (not that I'm necessarily a successful founder but I have found some measure of success during my IT career).
Your knowledge in various domains likely helps you in ways that aren't immediately apparent. (Team sports, for example, are great for health but also for social skills.)
The big advantage is that you can get to your mid-20s with 10 years of experience and lots of practice, and then be mentally ready without having the commitments of a house, wife, kids, mortgage, etc. tying you down. You can get those same advantages by delaying dating & childbirth until later in life, although then you sacrifice in that your kids may never know their grandparents.
When it comes to software, I don't think starting age matters that much, except perhaps on the margins. The field changes too quickly for amateur technical experience from 10+ years ago to have much of an impact on quality. The kind of experience that ages well is the kind that you can't easily get as a teenager with a Linux install.
Also, every time I interview someone, I ask them how they got into programming. So far, there's been no strong correlation between quality and years of experience. The people who started programming in elementary school are just as likely to be crappy as those who didn't start until college.
The strongest predictor I've seen for engineer quality is college GPA. People who work hard and get things done also tend to get good grades.
It's just something people say to console, not actually anything that's remotely useful or true. Magic never happens on its own. You have to go out there and make it happen.
I'm honestly not sure I'm understanding you properly, but if I am, this is true up to a point. We like to believe in a world where everyone's results are directly correlated with how much work they've done, but that's just as much a fantasy as it is to believe that all you have to do is sit around and wait for the right opportunity to magically appear.
I hate to break it to you, but the most successful people in society usually got there not only from hard work but from being in the right place at the right time.
I hate to break it to you, but the most successful people in society usually got there not only from hard work but from being in the right place at the right time.
According to studies on "luck", one key is to be in a LOT of places. It increases your chance of being in some right place at some right time. Another key is a positive attitude, of seeing opportunities and taking advantage of them.
So it is difficult to tell when someone's behavior (work) causes a success versus when it truly is a lucky break.
I was mostly talking about dating girls. It may seem obvious in hindsight, but at the time, I just took it as word. But it's also applicable to other aspects of my life.
Whenever I've taken initiative and grabbed the situation by the horns to change, it's been for the better.
Odd. For me it's the exact opposite--any and all advice about how to grab the situation by the horns and take the initiative and approach girls, nothing ever worked out, but things did happen when I least expected them.
I wouldn't go quite as far as "messed up" but between 2003-2007 I was frequently hassled by people to "buy a house" because it "never goes down (much) in value."
I argued that that was a nonsensical claim, although over the previous 30 years it was pretty much true (the UK dip in the early 1990s was quite short and localized). In mid 2007 I noticed prices continuing to go up and up and bit the bullet. Naturally, I exchanged contracts the very month before prices started to go down. Out of principle, I'm stuck with this house until it's worth more than I paid for it ;-)
Your obligations are spelled out in the contract, and defaulting is (normally) a legitimate course of action.
The bank and you made a mutually beneficial contract: the bank loans you money, and in return you promise to give them back their money plus interest or your collateral. If you've elected to assign a moral value to one of your options, it can only hurt you.
I've never done this myself, so definitely make sure you know what you're getting into.
That is not true in the UK (or much of the world). Indeed, people here are typically shocked to learn how flimsy US mortgages are, though I'm aware of abandonment as an option there (and I think it's totally crazy that they allow it - it's not at all beneficial for them to make a loss due to falling house prices).
You can, of course, default but if they sell your property for less than the outstanding amount, you're still on the line for the difference and can be bankrupted over it. Hardly a moral choice when so much of your life can be disturbed over it.
The "principle" I was referring to was not "not defaulting", btw, but not making a loss. I could sell, move, and take the loss, but I refuse, considering it'd put me in the tiny percentage of home owners who've ever made a loss. Sunk cost fallacy, sure, but I don't need to move yet, luckily.
Everybody in college pretends to be not working hard as they like to admit, thus the advice that comes from colleagues along the lines of "don't do the homework, it's really a waste of time" when everybody is actually doing it, could screw you over. It didn't mess up my life per se, but definitely had an impact on my grades when I was a naive freshman.
It's funny, all the advice I had from upperclassmen when I started college was "do your homework and go to class", and I did neither, and I don't regret it at all. Yes, it hurt my grades. However, I've found that my grades haven't mattered at all.
I am graduating from CS, currently in my final year. GPA does matters a lot when you are a fresher. Companies which visit universities for hiring (Campus recruitment drive) places a GPA cutoff, henceforth making low GPA fellas ineligible to even appear in their hiring process. All the big guns do so (Google, Y!, Amazon etc etc).
Given grades are correlated with having understood the material, I assume the implication is that the material you might have learned but didn't hasn't been at all relevant.
It's more that understanding the material is a necessary but not sufficient condition for getting good grades. It's quite possible to understand all the material and still get bad grades.
If there's anything you don't want as a role model in college, it's the mythical "slacker genius" (I say mythical because pretty much everyone who falls into this category is either a work of fiction or someone who works both hard and efficiently). Go to class, do the homework, study (and if you don't know how, learn!). If you get good at those things, there's plenty of time left over to have fun.
> Everybody in college pretends to be not working hard as they like to admit
Is this true when it's a student telling the outside world? It's a useful strategy to claim one's working really hard in school to explain why he hasn't been calling / doesn't want to visit over spring break / doesn't have a girlfriend / why the parents should keep sending money / etc.
> Everybody in college pretends to be not working hard as they like to admit
My experience was the exact opposite. People liked to compete to see who had the most coursework to do. People would complain about having to pull all nighters, but still spend hours on youtube or facebook beforehand. Some people were genuinely overwhelmed with work, but it was never downplayed as far as I could tell.
I have been told that it might be a cultural thing by someone who has studied in the UK and the US. US = overplay amount of work done, UK = under play it.
You should treat college homework and studying as a constrained optimization problem. Decide up front how many hours you're going to put in per weak and then figure out how to maximize your GPA within that limit. In the remaining time you can do whatever you want.
Worst advice for me was "don't let any doors close", "keep your options open", and variations on that theme. Did a lot of damage because it sounds so reasonable, yet the net effect is to prevent or forestall commitment.
"Watch your mouth." and "Wait your turn." Perhaps, it's something girls are harassed about more than guys, but until I stopped following that "advice" (early college), things were quite mediocre for me.
I learned to resist peer pressure and defer gratification early on. Sound advice, except I followed it to an extreme. Now I dress like a slob and have no motivation in life, and I don't even care.
I achieved plenty, but realized late in college that constantly studying was a defense mechanism for depression and loneliness. It's my biggest college regret. I even think that if I had studied less and spent more time getting to know housemates and classmates, I would have been happier and more relaxed, leading to higher grades. Sharing life with others is a reward in itself though, which took me a while to understand.
That investing time and effort into the skills necessary to build things with technology is a waste because within a couple of years it will all be outsourced to third world countries and there will be no jobs left in this area for people in first world countries. I should develop my interpersonal skills, design and creative arts ability with a view to becoming a translator between large corporate insensibility and those that will have to actually get things done for them in the future in aforementioned third world countries.
This was not 100% terrible advice, because it did make me actually look outside the sphere of science and technology into areas I was before utterly uninterested in and considered to be faintly grimy. However in retrospect the premise is utterly flawed and there would have been much, much better ways to expand my interpersonal skills without feeling guilty about being passionate about technology and actually getting things done with it myself.
I got this advice in 2002. As long as I actually considered it useful, my life has been worse, as soon as I gave up on it, my life immediately got immensely better.
I don't remember if anyone in particular gave me this advice, but it was definitely a prevailing notion around 2002 and it's probably the biggest reason I didn't study computer science in university.
I didn't give up on technology entirely, but studied nanotech instead because I thought that was the next big thing and couldn't be outsourced so easily. Now that's only useful in a few huge companies or universities and I wish I had been programming all this time so I could do my own cool projects without millions of dollars.
I've found most "conventional wisdom" to be bad advice. "Wait for marriage", "wait for kids" are both bad advice. "Go to college" is not necessarily bad advice, but the universal expectation that one will do so is bad, and it is bad advice for a lot of people. There's a lot of other bad advice out there.
Because for most people, marriage and children are the high points of their lives. Even the most successful businesspeople, when they reach the end of their life, rarely lament missed business opportunities, but frequently lament lost time with family.
Not buying it, old people get married all the time and some even adopt kids. But I'm in the camp that thinks one should wait for marriage and kids, not horribly long, but wait, so don't listen to me. :) I know a lot of people in Utah who got married way too soon and suffered for it.
I wouldn't advise to marry and have children age 18. But I just had my first child and I am 38, wish I was younger. If my son had children at the same age I do, I would be 76. Will I still be a fit and healthy grandfather by then? Also, how fit will I be age 50, to play soccer with my boy?
Better late than never, though - I am certainly happy.
As a father, I'd say that being "too old" for kids is probably a good thing, because it means they weren't high enough on your priority list for you to do a good job at anyway.
Well, this advice didn't mess me up but pushed me in the opposite direction.
When I was a kid, my parents told me that little girls like me should study in a local college, get good grades, find a comfortable job (preferably an accountant), settle down in the same city (as my parents) and get married by 21 (years).
My college was in a different city as compared to where I grew up. This really helped in teaching me how to live on my own. I took to computers, interned at a couple of companies and got hired by another software company, moved to the United States, and dated and married a fellow computer nerd a little over a month ago (let's just say I'm way over 21 now).
Pretty much everything I was ever told about love, dating, sex and romance, prior to discovering the "seduction community" a couple of years ago. Then again, it's not that a lot of the advice I got about women was bad, it just wasn't useful. Take the stock "be confident" tidbit for example... well, that's not bad advice (in that being confident is not harmful) but it's not actionable advice, because telling someone who isn't confident to "be confident" is useless. I also bought into the generic "there's somebody for everybody, don't look for a girl, you'll just stumble into somebody one day and it'll happen if it's mean to" crap. Uuuuggggghhh...
Outside of that, not much. But I tend to be pretty selective about the advice I take anyway... I'm the kind of person who tends to "keep my own council" more often than not (or, as my dad would say, I'm hard-headed). So I tend to ignore a lot of the well-meaning advice I've been given.. so I miss out by ignoring some good advice here and there, but I also avoid most of the bad advice.
For the most part, I'd look back and say that approach has worked out well for me.
Knock on wood, nothing that has ruined my life, but little things that I have caused me opportunities.
-"Should I tell a recruiter or HR person about my current salary?"
Friend of mine said always tell, reveal everything and be truthful. The reality, I got fucking low balled on salary, pretty much they would not go above $5K of what I currently made. It wasn't till I spoke to someone else that told me NEVER tell your salary, either say you rather not say or give a large range. So far giving a range has worked out for me every time. I give a large range and they tend to lean towards the high end.
- Never talk about sex, politics and religion on a date.
I found out it is the BEST way to quickly find out if you are compatible or not with someone. I am referring to if you're dating for a serious long term or possibly marriage relationship. Of course the way you talk about it does matter.
I have done this to everyone of my dates and I can tell right away if it's wort the effort or not. Usually it's the politics that is the deal breaker.
Advisor suggested I should go ahead and to start my next venture concurrent with my 3 yr earnout on the company I'd just sold. Long story short, my idea + my money + 25% of my time + nontechnical cofounder getting salary and 40% sweat equity = 9 mos of dev turned into 24, launching after several competitors, all seed money burned on dev, no money for marketing, slow sales ramp, running out of cash, selling my stake to another investor for 50% of what I paid. Company still exists, cash flow breakeven, but my equity is all but washed out. Had I focused 100% I would have 100% of a very nice micro ISV.
Its hard for me to find any piece of advice that 'messed' up my life per say. From the sounds of it, it seems like I'm blaming some advice when I should be accepting majority of the blame myself.
It's interesting: when I look back on my life so far, I don't feel like my path has been messed up significantly because of any particular piece of advice.
There were times in my life where acting on a particular bit of advice kept me from getting what I wanted. Those were frustrating times. But those times caused me to learn to deal with being frustrated; to stop and reflect on why I was reacting with such emotion.
There were times when the advice that I received was unclear, which made it easy for my motivation-to-follow to falter. I would waste time and not get homework done. Familiarity with a topic would grow more faint and my class performance would show it. And then I started to learn how to best use my time to learn the material. (In small groups, using multiple forms of engagement; reading/writing/speaking/listening)
The advice that, on-balance, seemed least helpful at the time:
* "such-and-such will happen when you least expect it"
* "don't ever give up"
* "don't run with scissors"
But in later reflection these lead me to different conclusions about these same items:
* The advisor understands that you're in pain, but really likes who you are when you're not moping. They're trying to help you get there, but they're not sure how.
* Admitting defeat is OK, and you can change focus (pivot) without stopping (giving up) entirely. This is a loophole. Use it.
* This has always been a good idea. Still is.
The advice I would offer would be to use advice wisely. Don't follow it blindly; reflect often, and be adaptable.
"Honesty is the best policy." This is quite possibly the single biggest lie we tell our kids. There are times when dissembling or even outright lying is the right thing to do. It's important to learn to recognize when telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is not the right thing to do. It's not easy.
It's still good advice for young children since they lack the judgment to know when a lie is appropriate. Gaining that judgment and learning when and how to lie is a natural part of growing up.
That's not true of all institutions in the UK - you can transfer credits between Unis and you can change courses with in them too. Some courses are harder to switch between for sure. After 2 years of Uni (4year course) I had option still to graduate in 3 different faculties.
Without a doubt, I would say all advice on my college education. The first bad advice I got was that I absolutely needed to go to a small school that would give me more personal time in the classroom. This ended up stressing me greatly in school... I wouldn't find out until long after I graduated that I excel greatly in environments that require me to investigate and learn on my own with some guidance.
The other poor advice was that county college is only for loosers. My advisors and teachers impressed this on me bigtime. In retrospect, county college would have been awesome to buy me a year or so until I was able to maturely handle a challenging curriculum. I needed some time to learn how to learn and gain some confidence in my ability to learn.
Bad advice can't mess up your life. Taking action on bad advice can mess up your life, but the advice itself can't do anything. I can't think of any examples of situations where I took particularly bad advice, but if I did, it is totally on me.
From that perspective; that I am in control and making the decisions in my life... I can't really say that any of the decisions that I have made have 'messed up' my life.
Whatever I've done, it clearly seemed like a good idea at the time. I probably couldn't have made the decision any differently.
(I find this kind of an interesting paradox, as my agency with regard to one thing, bad advice, implies my lack of agency with regard to my own bad decisions).
Stuff they tell you in Sunday school which is impossible/undesirable in practical terms yet leaves a lingering sense of unworthiness about one's own character and a lack of healthy ambition:
What about those things is undesirable? Leaving religion aside, it seems like all those (OpenOffice aside :) lead to a much happier state of mind than the alternative.
1. Automatically loving thy neighbour (ie. everyone) is a ridiculous notion. You love the people that are most important to you, that deserve your utmost respect and kindness, so of course this will mean you love a select few. Furthermore, trying to think up reasons why you should love any random neighbour would be an exhausting exercise in self-deception. Plus if you don't love people for their qualities, but instead for the mere fact of their existence, then your love doesn't mean anything. So not only does this advice set a near impossible task, but it devalues real love.
2. Obviously being an inconsiderate jerk is a bad life strategy, but it's easy to embrace 'unselfishness' as the reason for not pursuing your talents until you reach brilliance, or not maximizing your earning potential. Most people don't have the energy to live their lives in the service of others (becoming aid workers or whatever), but many dabble in a sort of self-congratulatory mediocrity. Also breeds an unhealthy resentment for the entrepreneurs and geniuses that propel our civilization.
3. Not caring about money/possessions, all the while enjoying the material comfort brought by your parents' or society's wealth, is a sure fire way to end up in a situation when you don't have that comfort anymore. At which point you'll realize that you really do care about money/possessions, because you can't pretend anymore, reality has caught up with you.
4. 'Judge not and ye shall not be judged' is another ridiculous notion. Obviously it should be 'judge, and expect to be judged' - which leads to principles and integrity. Of course Christians want you to have principles/morality etc., but simultaneously to refrain from pronouncing judgement on those that fail to meet these standards. This means the bad people get away with a lot of stuff, and also makes you timid and unsure about what's right. Nothing's anchored, everything's a case of 'who knows what I would have done in their shoes.' Undermines your own will/agency (just say what you would do in their shoes, or what they should have done), and self-esteem (your only a noble person because you have an easy life blablabla)
In short these sorts of teachings make you constantly unsure of your place in the world and encourage poor career decisions.
I think you're putting an unnecessarily negative spin on these things, and perhaps taking them more literally than they're intended. Here's my take:
1. "love thy neighbor" - Don't waste time hating people. Forgive and forget.
2. "don't be selfish" - Put others before yourself. Anyone who has been in a relationship will tell you this is a good idea, but it applies elsewhere as well. If you manage people at your job, put their needs above yours. It doesn't mean give up any ambitions of your own, but living a life focused solely on yourself doesn't yield happiness either.
3. "don't care about money/possessions" - The basic necessities, like a roof over your head and food on your plate, are fine. Spending your life in pursuit of material possessions isn't going to be satisfying. Having things is fine. Letting your life center around acquiring money and possessions isn't.
4. "don't judge" - You're not perfect, neither is anybody else. It's not about letting people get away with things, but not condemning them when they make mistakes.
I don't think I'm taking things too literally, although obviously I'm focusing on the negative impact, as per the original question.
1. Sorry, but the verse isn't 'try to get along with thy neighbour' or 'tolerate thy neighbour' it's love thy neighbour. I'm all for amicable and polite relations with people/strangers, but as far as i can tell the teaching really aspires to a sort of 'what would Jesus do?' level of care towards people wherever you find them.
2. I don't think putting others before yourself is a good idea, except in the case of close family or partners. Have faith in yourself, take opportunities where you find them, better yourself, don't feel bad about it - if you put others first you can't necessarily do those things, and whats more the others wont necessarily appreciate your action and/or see that it wasn't done in vain. Of course, you should still be honourable towards others.
3. Interior dialogue goes something like this - 'Well, what career should I choose? Medicine perhaps? Well, that makes lots of money, but I don't feel a natural calling for it. And since money isn't important, I ought to choose something else. I'll study English literature, which wont land me a high-paying job, but that's not what I care about.' Ten years later: 'Well writing isn't going to get me a job at all, so I'm not much different from an unskilled/uneducated member of the workforce. I feel I could achieve a lot and offer a lot to society, but now I'll just take a low paying office job. If I was a doctor, I could be having kids right now, buying a house, saving for their education, have long-term financial security and the ability to help other family members, going around the world on holiday having enriching experiences. Oh well.' Money gives you security and freedom, the idea of settling for the basic necessities is very dangerous IMO and not likely to lead to happiness.
4. Christianity at its core is about forgiveness, and in the end it leads to sacrificing justice for mercy, which leads to dysfunctional relationships or communities. Yeah 'nobody's perfect' is a good lesson but these teachings go further than that
1. My point is there needs to be a cap, otherwise it would take over your life and/or leave you with feelings of guilt
2. Historically, the tide of people demanding sacrifice for others' sake tends to be a bloody one.
3. It's not a binary choice. The advice should be something like 'pursue wealth until it gives you the freedom and comfort you need for happiness, but be careful about pursuing more wealth than you know what to do with whilst neglecting your spiritual wellbeing.' But instead the advice is that beyond basic necessities, you shouldn't care about worldly possessions. This is really bad advice, it says nothing about what money can do for you.
4. Not mercy in itself, but the neglect of justice, which comes about readily when people can't make confident judgments. Mercy is desirable, but at what price?
It appears that you think loving your neighbour means trying to generate an artificial emotion, as if the goal is to become so smitten you spend all day writing them poems and blowing kisses.
To see that this is ridiculous, try substituting other emotions in for love:
Happy thy neighbour, Angry thy neighbour, Sad thy neighbour.
In the phrase love is a solid verb. It is about taking the time to help the person out when they require external assistance.
Crawling out of bed at 3am to change the sheets after your kid pisses the bed -> Picking up an extra coffee at lunch for Bob at the office when he has had a ton of work dumped on him and can't get away from his desk.
Taking your spouse out to dinner to celebrate their new promotion -> Congratulating Sue from down the hall when her daughter makes the news for winning a spelling bee.
Picking up your brother from the airport -> Inviting the new guy over for a beer.
I would claim that all of these are loving actions but none of them require you to have exactly one special emotional state. Certainly, being dragged out of bed doesn't inspire much poetry at the time.
Further, none of these requires a specific justification beyond reducing human suffering/making the world a better place so you needn't exhaust yourself looking for reasons. And I certainly hope that welcoming the new guy without even knowing his qualities to judge him by doesn't devalue the act.
Just because you can ascribe a more sensible interpretation to a Bible verse doesn't change the nature of how it's usually taught. The verse says essentially you can never love enough, no matter how considerate you are towards others you can always do more, and the ultimate example would be Jesus who loved us enough to die horribly. Even if you try to follow this, you'll come up against people who simply do not deserve your care/assistance, but by this doctrine you must not only help them but strive to harbor positive loving emotions towards them whilst doing so (and no, that doesn't mean writing poems, but it does mean feeling love in your heart and limitless good will). A real blast.
I don't know this man's beliefs, but I can think of no better example of loving thy neighbor, being selfless, being unconcerned about possessions, and not judging. I think this is what Jesus would do.
Taking this story as an example of what it means to follow Jesus, I don't see how following him could leave a sense of unworthiness about one's character or lack of healthy ambition.
Maybe that's just what you needed to hear! you probably have a greater understanding of what music means in your life than someone who went to a conservatory straight out of highschool or made it big in a band without trying.
In my experience, the people that make this statement rarely understand opportunity cost. It took me years to figure out that it's OK to let new opportunities pass you by if pursuing them would take your time away from the opportunities you're already committed to.
The more successful you get, the more opportunities come your way, so I think this is something successful people have to figure out eventually. If you make a success of one opportunity, it's always at the expense of another. It's good to be selective.
Skipped a grade in elementary. The relative physical immaturity circa puberty made socialization tougher, and the virtues of the move are dubious. I think I'd rather have done the reverse.
I believe I understand the intention of this entire thread: in order to flush out good advice try to first highlight 'bad advice'. However I hope that all those who read it and all those who posted in it remember something very important.
Regret is suffering. It is being attached to a different reality that you "should" be experiencing that is somehow better than the reality you are in. Everything that happened in your life, every single stupid thing, was required/essential/instrumental in your life being exactly as it is right now.
I hope we can make use of this thread as a means to help us guide future decisions without it functioning as a way to make us feel regret. Do not expend energy suffering over that which is not only out of your control, but an illusion. Your past is not reality: you are, right here, right now.
"Houses always go up in value" -- paraphrase of David Allen's "Automatic Millionaire Homeowner" which convinced me to buy a place in Atlanta in 2005. Could've been a lot worse, but taking on a mortgage & furnishing a place at 23 was not the best idea.
"Go with the flow" - it's ok for being friendly, but crap for making the life you want to live
"Run away from a fight" - A knife fight sure, but in grade school and in metaphor it's pretty bad advice.
"Smart is sufficient" - it's not even necessary
Though I think some of the thinking given to millenial-generation kids in making them think that they can be what ever they want to be for example an astronaut, is still useful. It's just most people forget about it or give up on that thinking.
The naivety in thinking that you could become an astronaut or something special will probably mean you are more likely to reach your goal or at least go further than other people. I guess if you believe you have the ability to change the world, you probably will.
yeah, I agree. I thought about this today and realized some of the worst advice we got was from our middle school principal telling us to be well-rounded and develop real-world skills. It's the opposite of forcing yourself to focus on things that make you be "special".
And it made me more concerned about fitting into little social groups than focusing on what I want to do.
What's with all the jaded young adults on here and reddit blaming their shortcomings on being told that they were special?
My take on it is this: "you're special" is not a declaration of your supposed super-human intellect or abilities, but a reminder of your uniqueness and independence as a person who can choose to distinguish yourself if you choose to. The moment you stop believing in that is the moment you cease to be special, by that definition.
Don't reject the wrong mantra. "You're special" is fine. "Special means you're better" is what causes you problems.
My best friend told me re: having to pee at night "you just gotta go man otherwise you will just lay there and suffer" since that day I've not had a full nights sleep. I'll never forgive him.
"Just do your best". This advice is intended to allow focused effort without harping on competitive aspects, but it has the effect of detaching the doer from any sense of responsibility for the outcome, and also leads to self-deception if you lie to yourself and claim that you did your best.
Sometimes it's OK to do less than your best, other times your best isn't good enough. Results are what matter, so figure out what result you want and accomplish it.
I don't think anything messed up my life, but if I had it to do over again, I might choose music as a career and programming as a hobby, instead of vice versa.
Even though I had a great time, got two great degrees and actually found a really good job in the City I cannot help but feel why I couldn't have gone straight to work skipped all this debt and invested even more money/time in other endeavours like getting solid operational experience in a company. For instance, my head of opts at my firm built the biggest mutual fund in the UK around the age of 20.
Nothing that messed up my life, but the pieces of bad advice I'm glad I dropped are "you should try to please everyone" and "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" which are a rough translation of two Romanian proverbs encouraging obedience and complacency.
As soon as I ignored those I started accomplishing meaningful things.
You only take as you've given, and now your hope is all but gone - though you lost your way (Now is not forever). But I know your pain. We all fall sometimes you're not the first !
But I know it hurts. In the end you'll find what you deserve, still I know it hurts.
"don't try too hard"
I used to be a star student/great work ethic. then i figured that i was working too hard thanks to this advise and my work ethic became horrible and i am struggling to keep my grades. always work at full capacity. itll get you places in life
Growing up I though engineer meant making cool shit. But going to engineering school meant learning things from first pricipals and not making cool shit. I should have gone in to arts and gotten laid more while making stuff on my free time.
"Good news should travel fast, bad news should travel even faster."
Sure, but not in an environment where "shoot the messenger" is the m.o. I learned to keep my head down pretty quickly, and now I'm looking for an exit strategy.
I was never told this, but I know it is said, and said often that "you can be whatever you want". I don't believe that, nor do I think it's healthy for children to be told it because it's flat out not true.
Insert story about a kid born to a family with a long history of shortness, say all under 5'6", it is very, very doubtful he will get to be in the NBA on that factor alone.
Though in general I agree, we often overestimate the limits, that doesn't mean there are none, and I'd rather let the children explore than have a path set out for them before they're even teenagers.
I think you miss the point in that expression. It isn't advice, nor is it literal. They are words of encouragement, of optimism and hope. I don't even think kids understand what it means.
Anything coming from people significantly older than me, who are still talking about how they wanted to live their lives 20 or 30 (even 40) years ago, in a world completely different from the current one.
Go to school, get a good education, go get a good job and live happily ever after. Guess what the world changes and that doesn't cut it anymore. Now I believe in making my own future.
that "You should fear GOD"....its like a new born baby should fear his mother....utterly useless, rather opposite of truth GOD loves us as desperately as one can possibly imagine
Maybe you were extremely unlucky or mostly in the unusual situations, but people ARE mostly good, for me and other I know.
Also, think about this: if people were mostly bad and that would mean they were getting worse and worse every next generation (because all the good ones were 'eaten' by the bad ones), how it'd have been right now? I think our world isn't THAT horrible!
Not from any specific person, but the idea that you have to step outside your comfort zone and do X and Y even though it doesn't come naturally to you.
Every time I did that things got messed up and I ended up worse than I was before.
If you're outside your comfort zone, you will act in non-authentic ways, and when you're not being authentic, you can't be the best possible you.
Examples of stepping outside comfort zone:
* Wear a suite and act professional for a job interview
* Say hi to random strangers so you can make friends (even though you're introverted and doing this makes you look like a fool)
* Go to social events where you don't know anyone there.
EDIT: thanks for the down votes. Now let me explain why this is bad advice:
- Act not like yourself for a job interview:
This is bad because instead of showing them your strong points, you'll be busy trying to hide your weak points and seem like a "good, obedient" employee. Eventually you fail at both: your bad points will still show, while your good points won't get a chance.
- Begging friendship from random strangers:
Makes you look like a fool, insecure person that nobody wants to be friends with.
EDIT2: I'm not talking about little steps. Venturing into new areas is fun. Throwing yourself into the middle of an extremely uncomfortable situation is completely different.
One of the reasons I found "step outside your comfort zone" to be bad advice is that they never tell you how far to go and when you should stop. It seems consequential that you never know when you have gone too far, because you're outside the zone where you can use your intuition sensibly. If you were able to tell that you've gone too far, then by definition you're still inside your comfort zone.
If something only makes you a little bit uncomfortable, it will feel like it's still inside your comfort zone, and if you're trying to follow the "step outside your comfort zone" advice, you'll be tempted to go even further.
As an opposing viewpoint, every major advance in my life has come from stepping outside of my comfort zone and tackling something in which I had no idea what I was doing.
-public speaking
-asking women out
-learning to dance
-socializing/making friends
-lifting weights
-starting a business
-doing sales work
-learning to program
edit: The vast majority of these made me very uncomfortable and awkard, not "a little".
To piggyback off your example to make a point,
1) public speaking: preach to the choir or speak your mind?
2) picking up women: be a nice guy or be assertive about your needs?
3) socializing/making friends: manipulate to get ahead or be loyal and get snubbed?
4) lifting weights: long day at work, go to the gym anyways?
5) starting a business: when to quit your job or when to admit that your project is a dead-horse
6) doing sales work: where is the fine-line between lying and marketing?
7) learning to program: programming before hoes or the other way around? (sadly I took up this ill-advised vocation at an age before I realized the importance of women).
Pushing ourselves beyond the comfort zone most likely reveal ugly truth about ourselves that our ego have been trying to protect ourselves from. I found that what I thought were world's injustices directed at me were really my own insecurities and sheer laziness; or my notion that I'm a nice and considerate person is really sour grapes that I didn't have X; and in the position of getting X, I could be as selfish and manipulative as the next guy who has X, whom I previously vilified. Stepping out of comfort zone reveals who we really are and sometimes the truth is ugly.
I see a lot of straw men in your examples. They are almost all cases of how to handle the success you receive from leaving your comfort zone.
In all of these things, you strike a balance and find what is moral or healthy--that is part of the journey. I wouldn't want to use possible straw-men morality as an excuse for continued ineptness. Like white hat security pros, you can know how to do something but choose not to do it.
mind telling more about your experience on this?
how far would you say "getting out of your comfort zone" did you reach?
how did programming affected your life (seems like you meant you spent too much time doing so before getting to that... how was it?)
Personally after college, I had four goals: 1) be able to bench-press 200lb, 2) play guitar in a band/be able to improvise, solo, play at performance tempo etc., 3) be able to play pick-up basketball and win more games for my team than lose, 4) to approach women and other people in bar and other urban scenario's and f-close or the social equivalent.
No, I haven't completely achieved all of my goals although I have gone very far in all of them. But I'm not as anxious about them nor about admitting on my shortcomings on my goals in public; like in programming, at a point you develop a sense of confidence that even on a long programming project, it's only a matter a time that you will finish it. It's just a sequence of iterations of coding & debugging.
How did programming affect my life? It made me a nerd with inferiority-superiority complex who on one hand views average human beings as automatons who let their sense of social insecurity get in their way; and who on the other hand is insecure himself, requires constant social re-assurances, stroking of the ego and (most importantly) sexual gratification. And for that, I'm eternally indebted to programming.
I couldn't agree more with the sentiment that - often - stepping outside your comfort zone can lead to good things. However there has to be some reason you want to do it, despite it making you uncomfortable. Otherwise the fact that you're not being yourself will overshadow whatever it is you're trying to achieve.
I made myself go back to university when my first experience was not successful, I'm now on track for a great degree. I am in the process of chasing a few business opportunities, and I'm putting myself in the position of a marketing man. This has already lead to some promising leads. I also tried to be a bit more open minded and non-judgemental, and socialise in ways I didn't previously, and I made some great friends as a result.
Your life is in many ways, very much in your own hands.
You bifurcate "I" and "me" implying the former can reliably create such a state in the latter; if this is the case, then what's actually at work in forming your "me"?
I used two different terms to aid the reader, but I and me are just pointers to self and like a ruby class running metaprogramming on self, one can rewrite oneself. The new code still comes from the self, though.
not felicitous to say the least. you're ignoring my point that your self is formed by something which also has a form that you're ignoring since you're so in love with its ability to change.
Of course you have to have some reason to go outside your comfort zone. If anyone has ever suggested otherwise, they have misunderstood the concept completely. The point is to grow as a person and achieve proficiency in an area you want, but which doesn't come naturally to you.
You're not supposed to be awkward and uncomfortable just for the hell of it.
If you're trolling this post with spectacularly bad advice about bad advice, well done. If you truly believe that, you have a very cynical worldview.
I am quite introverted but whenever I force myself to go to a social event where I don't know anyone and make friends, I always have a great time and meet awesome people, and it invariably goes better than I thought it would. If you just assume the people there WANT to be your friend, you don't look needy and your extroverted side comes out, and you can still be yourself.
As I've heard it defined, extroverts gain energy from social interactions, introverts are fatigued by them. If, like me, after a few hours of small talk you feel exhausted and want to sit in front of a screen alone, you're probably an introvert. I have some extroverted friends who will not go to the grocery store unless someone goes with them to keep them company. I prefer taking walks alone, and so on.
> I have some extroverted friends who will not go to the grocery store unless someone goes with them
We did a teamwork exercise where they split the E's and I's. To both groups, they said that you have the next day off - tell us what you're going to do. The E's were going nuts with chartering a plane to Vegas, big party while all of the I's were going to do something alone, maybe even just catch up on laundry. The difference was shocking.
In another exercise, they had an E monitor a team of us I's on a logic puzzle. As the E later described, he was just basically watching us I's sit there and not say anything and then a few minutes later - we started talking. We won but the non-talking communication really weirded him out.
No, it doesn't. Introverts are perfectly capable of overcoming their personality tendencies. Introversion or extraversion refer to your natural inclination, but it determines nothing.
"Introverts are perfectly capable of overcoming their personality tendencies."
The first thing you're assuming is that introverts either want or need to overcome their introversion. There isn't anything wrong with being an introvert. There is something wrong with being an extreme introvert.
The first thing you're assuming is that introverts either want or need to overcome their introversion
I certainly did not mean to say that. I don't believe it. What I said was that introverts are capable of overcoming their tendencies. They're tendencies, not fate.
The commenter a few levels above said they had a great time at parties; the comment I responded to said that sounded like a shy extrovert. Not so, say I: introverts can have fun at parties too, even ones where they don't know anybody.
No value judgement intended in any direction. I'm a strong introvert who does well at parties because I need to for my work; but it's difficult and I don't have fun.
Introverts can increase their tolerance to being social in much the same way you can increase your physical stamina. However, as an introvert, I don't think I could ever train myself to recharge from social situations the way extroverts do.
> What I said was that introverts are capable of overcoming their tendencies
I think the person above was pointing out that by saying that introverts need to "overcome" their tendencies, you are effectively saying that introverts have an issue that needs to be overcome.
I'm fairly introverted myself so I can relate to the notion of just spending time by myself and feeling quite happy about it. However, you miss out on so many opportunities.
I just moved overseas to a new university and I've been forcing myself to go to many, many talks and chat with the people there. Some huge proportion of time I walk away with some useful bit of information "You have to read the new paper by x! It covers exactly what you're looking for." or "Y just got a grant and is looking for PhD students in your area."
Every connection you make adds potential access to another life times experience and knowledge.
[I'm vaguely expecting you to weasle word "Ah, but not doing that is being an /extreme/ introvert."]
I think the grandparent's point is that you shouldn't force yourself to be an extravert no matter what extraverts tell you. Yeah, it's good to engage your extraverted side, but there's a big difference between that and actually becoming an extravert.
> If you just assume the people there WANT to be your friend, you don't look needy and your extroverted side comes out, and you can still be yourself.
Sadly, I believe most introverts are pretty selfish - worrying what other people think of them when, in reality, most everyone is not thinking of them - and may not even notice them.
Another thing about Introverts - with most extroverts, it is fairly easy to figure out who a person is or at least who they primarily represent themselves as. With an introvert, a stranger is going to have to invest a lot more in getting to know who an introvert is - that's exhausting to some people - why expend energy figuring out the quiet ones when you can have fun talking to the loud ones.
>>I believe most introverts are pretty selfish - worrying what other people think of them
WTF? :-)
Did that come out wrong? Are you a non-native English speaker and don't know the word "selfish"?
That kind of worrying is normal insecurity. If you up the ante with e.g. unusual clothes, non-introvert people wills start worrying like that too. Introverts just start doing it at a lower threshold.
The idea behind stepping outside of your comfort zone is that you keep doing it until it becomes your new comfort zone. If you're not ready to invest the effort needed to see it through, you shouldn't do it.
Every time I've tried stepping out of my comfort zone "just for the hell of it", it usually ends up being pointless at best and embarrassing at worst. I'm not changed at all, I don't really accomplish anything besides making myself feel uncomfortable, and nothing much comes of it.
But the really big, life-changing events in my life have all come from stepping outside my comfort zone, and staying outside my comfort zone until I became comfortable. Switching school districts for high school. Going away for college. Posting things on the Internet. Rocking the job interview process. Founding a company, and sticking with it until everyone except me had given up. Moving to Silicon Valley.
I feel like this is often misunderstood, that a lot of people step outside their comfort zone simply because that's what they're told to do, and don't follow through with it enough to reap the rewards.
"The idea behind stepping outside of your comfort zone is that you keep doing it until it becomes your new comfort zone."
No it isn't. The point of stepping outside your comfort zone is to see if it really does belong outside your comfort zone. Stepping outside your comfort zone and demanding that that be the new way, results be damned, is just as foolish as never stepping outside your comfort zone. Not everything outside your comfort zone is good and usually the only way to determine what is and isn't good is to jump in and try it out.
That's fair too. The point is that you do have to stick with it long enough that you can actually judge the results. If you've been outside your comfort zone for a long time and it's still not comfortable, maybe it's time to try stepping in a different direction. But if you just went to a meetup once and you felt terribly socially awkward and you never went back, how do you know whether it's because first meetings are always awkwards vs. you just don't click with those people?
> The idea behind stepping outside of your comfort zone is that you keep doing it until it becomes your new comfort zone.
That's kinda worse. The only good way to venture into new areas, in my opinion, is to make little steps forward, to the extent that you're not standing still "as-is" but also while you're still in control of your emotions.
This will expand your comfort zone gradually until the thing that was originally very uncomfortable, is now only slightly uncomfortable.
But going completely outside your zone over and over again? No thanks. This might work for some people, specifically people with SP temperament (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artisan_temperament) who tend to seek stimulation, but it's not a good advice for the general population.
I'm an INTP, not exactly an SP temperament. I have historically been very change-averse, almost Aspergian, enough that I almost didn't want to go to college because I couldn't imagine living anywhere but my parents' house. I moved across the country for a new job in a challenging field, and knew virtually nobody there. That isn't exactly baby steps.
It worked because I pretty much made it the focus of my life to adjust to my new situation. Yes, it was scary. It was also a huge opportunity, and I wasn't going to pass it up.
If the idea of a big change completely fills you with dread, you shouldn't do it. That's my point - you should either go all-in or not-at-all-in. But if it's only a little scary, and you think you can do it, my experience has been that it's almost always better to do it and keep at it until it's no longer scary.
1. Take "temperament theory" with a grain of salt. It's somewhat in vogue right now with a lot of psychologists, but there are also plenty of reasons to think that it's conflating two separate issues (temperament and typology) and is an oversimplification.
2. The only way to develop your personality is to step outside your comfort zone. Your type only determines where that comfort zone is, not whether you can or should do it often. For SP (really more ESP, but whatever) types, doing crazy things physically is their comfort zone. They need to learn to get in touch with their more subdued side.
I'm not aware of any personality theory that psychologists agree on, each school has its own theories. I find the temperaments derived from MBTI to be very convincing.
Wearing a suit != "[seeming] like a 'good, obedient' employee." I have always really appreciated it when job candidates dress up for their interviews. It makes it seem like they're saying to me 'I know this isn't your dress code, but I want to put my best foot forward and make sure you know I take this interaction seriously.'
Say hi to random strangers so you can make friends (even though you're introverted and doing this makes you look like a fool)
I wouldn't be with my girlfriend of a year and a half if I hadn't stuck my neck out and gotten outside my comfort zone when I was introduced to her. It doesn't make you look like a fool; it provides you with an aura of confidence.
Go to social events where you don't know anyone there.
As a corollary, I imagine you'd also suggest never moving to a new city where you don't know anyone, right?
I have heard that certain mid-size to large technology companies in Silicon Valley actually ding people on "culture fit" if they wear a suit to the interview. This was actually one of those pieces of advice my mom gave me that turned out to be bad advice.
Instead, I'd suggest "Know the culture that you're entering, respect it, and do your best to adhere to it."
When I interviewed for my current job, it was at a company where I knew a lot of people and was pretty familiar with th culture. I knew a jacket and tie would be overkill but it seemed respectful overkill. A suit would have been way overboard though I'd be surprised had anyone really dinged me for it. There is a matter of understanding norms but, usually at least, a degree of overdressing for interviews seems a reasonable approach.
> As a corollary, I imagine you'd also suggest never moving to a new city where you don't know anyone, right?
I don't see that as a corollary (a city is not a social event). But for me personally, that's right, I wouldn't do that unless I had an extroverted friend or family moving with me, or I had something specific to do (job, study, etc). Although I wouldn't necessarily suggest that to other people; this is just me, and each to his own.
I think you missed the point of this advice. Stepping out of your comfort zone is designed to allow you to grow as a person, not make you be something you are not.
If you are so introverted that you can't possibly go to an event without making a complete fool out of yourself (a real fool, not just what you think is foolish) you've got a serious issue that is going to put you at a disadvantage in many areas of your life.
There's a huge gap between having faults, recognizing them, accepting them and overcoming them when you choose to and being perfect in every way.
I don't see how completely ignoring your weak points and pretending they aren't relevant to you makes you a better person, however.
Not from any specific person, but the idea that you have to step outside your comfort zone and do X and Y even though it doesn't come naturally to you.
I've been reading some of the arguments and counterarguments. It seems like a lot of assumptions are being made on both sides. I raised two special needs kids and found that you can help someone grow into doing things they could not before without forcing them to step outside their comfort zone. I now have a job and I find that similar principles work with "normal" adults who need to do something new and aren't sure what they are supposed to be doing.
At home with my oldest son, I had him watch me cook while I explained. Later, he began assisting -- getting out ingredients I needed, stirring things, etc. but only doing what he felt comfortable with. He gradually took over more parts of it as he became comfortable. He now does most of the cooking. At work, I have volunteered to walk someone to where they need to go for a special procedure and show them whom they needed to speak with. One young woman was very shy, so I did intros and did the initial talking until she was more comfortable with this new person. Just walking a new person through the procedure the first time really took the pressure off. It's a big building and everything looks alike and it's easy to get lost, plus my job has a lot of time pressure which adds to the psychological stress because getting lost and wandering around costs you time.
If you don't have someone that can help walk you through something (or some other means to ramp up comfortably), it may be best to take some personal risks. But it is absolutely possible to grow as a person without doing stuff that makes you feel all stressed primarily because it is extremely unfamiliar. Some things may require taking a leap of faith but many things that are routinely handled that way do not inherently require that approach. (I could argue that Y-combinator does something similar to what I am suggesting here: They take you under their wing, introduce you to a lot of folks who already have experience founding a company, help you work out the kinks, etc. so you don't have to simply sink or swim/figure it out all on your own/grow from being burned so much.)
Say hi to random strangers so you can make friends (even though you're introverted and doing this makes you look like a fool)
Genuinely curious: are you saying this as a matter or philosophy or did you try this and come out of it feeling foolish and insecure? Or may be both?
I won't down vote you because I think I can relate to both sides of this. There are things I was never into that I got into after a lot of struggles and looking foolish. And there are things that I was never into that I could never feel comfortable with no matter how much I tried.
In either case, until I got out of my comfort zone I could never know what I can and cannot eventually be.
Just to add to this, it's good to do things outside of your comfort zone in low pressure/stress situations where the consequences of failure are minor.
It's not a good idea to pick up skydiving when you're in a burning plane and it's the only option.
What I learned is that, if you're an educated individual living in a first world country, the consequences of failure are _almost always_ minor. Act accordingly.
Public speaking is way outside my comfort zone. I have absolutely dreaded it ever since I had to do presentations in school. At the same time, it's really important to me to able to do it, so I accept every opportunity for public speaking that I can.
After several experiences delivering talks or sitting on panel discussions, I've gotten a lot more comfortable - and progressively better (I truly feel sorry for the people who had to sit through my first few times).
I'm still not great at it, but the thought of speaking no longer grips me with panic. The last couple of times I even found myself enjoying it - and feeling a positive response from my audience.
> After 15 years of practice, and about 1000 live shows, I was finally a very good singer, at least by my own standards. (You can judge for yourself at sivers.org/music. Old stuff at the bottom. New stuff at the top.)
> Someone who heard me for the first time then said, “Singing is a gift you're either born with or you're not. You're lucky. You were born with it!”
As a musician doing non-mainstream music, I hear this a lot too. People will say something like, "just write somethin catchy and mainstream and you will make a million dollars!". What they don't understand is that you cannot force yourself to create something that is not in your head, no matter how "simple" it seems.
I agree with the advice that stepping out of your comfort zone is necessary for personal development. But I also agree that rest (getting back into the comfort zone) is absolutely necessary. Some of my best life experiences were going out of my comfort zone for an hour or so then returning more enlightened. Some of my worst were going out of it for an entire day or week without any time to rest and reflect.
That being said, your points are valid depending on what you are used to. The social event where you know no one is a natural step after you learn to mingle with strangers alongside friends; if you haven't done that at least, the event will probably suck.
It seems like you didn't quite apply the idea of "step outside of your comfort zone" correctly. It's about little steps, and repeated trying of things until you get it right. It means stop being so worried about what other people think and start being the person you want to be, not someone who's fearful of trying and doing new things. How do you think you learned most of your social behavior up to this point?
I think the key point here is not about never expanding your comfort zone - it's about not doing it just because someone else advises it.
There's a world of difference between choosing to step outside your limits because you've identified something that you aspire to, and doing so because someone else thinks they know what's good for you.
good advice i actually got from a professor (via c.s. peirce): do nothing to stand in the way of enquiry. this forces you to confront the inadequacy of your knowledge (which you'll realize is intensely personal) and how much help you need.
i should also mention that peirce died a penniless drunk, after leading a tumultuous (huge understatement) life, including a lecturing at harvard.
it's interesting and a little sobering to see how fucked up the lives of many dedicated scholars end up being.
As long as you've made something that a few users are ecstatic about, you're on the right track. ... It may take a while, but as long as you keep plugging away, you'll win in the end.
That's not realllllllly how it works in the valley.
Bad advice:
Don't be a programmer, programmers can't find work and is miserable work.
I had a major passion for it at the time (pre college) and had I taken this advice from everyone in my family, I would probably be working in McDonalds at this point.
I think it's best to listen to advice from people with the results you want. Moreover, it's best to understand the rationale behind successful people's processes rather than copy them outright.
Every single piece of bad advice I have ever received was from someone who didn't like their life. If you're unhappy, you have two basic options. You can do something to make yourself happier, or you can rationalise a reason why happiness isn't possible. The former is generally a steady upward slog. The latter is like quicksand - the longer you're there, the more solidly you become stuck.
All the bad career advice I got was from people who didn't like their job. Some believed that jobs were just inherently unpleasant, so you might as well go for the unpleasantness that pays the most and gives the best pension. Some believed that good jobs were just inaccessible for 'the likes of us', so there's no point getting you hopes up. Some were so uncertain of their employability that they took the first job offered to them and never dared do anything to jeopardise it. I heard rationalisations dressed up as philosophy, as ethics, as macroeconomics, but they were rationalisations all the same.
Learning from the mistakes of others is useful and productive, but an unhappy person can never provide any insight into how to be happy. Either they don't know what would make them happy, or worse, they do know but won't do it. Never underestimate how hard someone will work to rationalise why they just can't go back to college or start their own business or visit Europe or leave their awful wife.
When seeking advice, ignore status, intelligence and experience. Seek out the happy people, they're the only people who can help you.