from Hacker News

Powerful Life Skills for the New Decade

by neilkakkar on 1/10/21, 5:09 PM with 70 comments

• by arcticbull on 1/10/21, 6:53 PM

  > In the world of immigration policies, letting some specific people in is better than letting no one or everyone in. The middle ground is better than the extremes.

  I've actually long wondered if this is true.

  Freedom of movement obviously works at the city level, up to 1 million or so. It obviously works at the megacity level, up to 10 million. It obviously works at the individual state/province level up to 40+ million. It obviously works at US scale (350M). It obviously works at EU scale, 800 million. It obviously works at India's scale, 1.3 billion people.

  Why is it that if you tried to open the border literally any wider than it is right now, it would all fall down?

  It's never made sense to me.

  There are huge disparities in wealth and income within America, right? America's poorest state has a median income of 45K (Mississippi) and it's richest state has a median income of 80K (Maryland). Why doesn't everyone just move to Maryland? Or better yet just move to San Francisco (median 112K). Obviously there's factors other than economics keeping people in place.

• by IgorPartola on 1/10/21, 7:40 PM

  I find it strange that this blog author keeps submitting these listickles to HN until they hit the front page like this. To me that seems like this is less good content and more blogspam. See for yourself: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=neilkakkar.com

• by mech422 on 1/10/21, 5:31 PM

  I find the 'learn to see systems' skill to be one that brings me the most benefit. Being able to see not only how, but _why_ a system works the way it does, from not only a technical but business perspective is incredibly valuable.

  I have the most difficulty with the 'learn to see what others see' point. It can take me a long time to see why non-technical people have some of views they do (regarding tech, requirements, etc.) Usually this comes in the form of them ascribing more value to something then I do. For instance, uber - to me its an unlicensed taxi service. To others I know, its the best thing since sliced bread. Many of the 'Unicorns' spark this reaction from me. Which is probably why I'm not retired on a private island somewhere :-P

• by dukeofdoom on 1/10/21, 7:32 PM

  This might be helpful.

  How to Trick Your Brain to Like Doing Hard Things – Atomic Habits by James Clear

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7w5r5PfBKo

  How To Speak by Patrick Winston

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

  Help with Writing: George Orwell -Politics and the English Language

  https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...

  Philosophy - A Guide to Happiness (7 parts) by Alain de Botton

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVA8jX9KQcE&list=PL6EB5455DD...

  Namaste Yoga (DVD set sold on Amazon) Best Yoga series I know. Combines synchronized breathing with movement/meditation. Especially nice to do after a hot bath, when muscles are warmed up.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7drLSbrHft0&t=2s

• by chrisseaton on 1/10/21, 5:35 PM

  One of my new-decade resolutions as we have just entered the 2020s is to keep a better lab book. Just a continuous stream of context, things tried, things that worked, things that didn't work, where I got information from, who I spoke to about things, decisions.

• by Bakary on 1/10/21, 6:31 PM

  As a corollary to the idea of taste, I've noticed that the most interesting people tend to have very definite tastes and views of the world. Moral relativism and its associated themes are generally not only a dead end but also an illusion since they imply aesthetic and moral choices in and of themselves.

• by honkycat on 1/10/21, 6:36 PM

  I hate that clay pot metaphor it gets trotted out to justify everything and I dont find it particularly insightful. I feel like in software the take-away should be "throw away your crappy previous attempts and keep iterating" but usually people use it to argue "dont plan anything and ship the poorly built prototype"

• by cheschire on 1/10/21, 6:23 PM

  I feel like the documentation/source code skill works the other direction too. A lot of software engineers who grew up as hobby coders before doing it professionally seem to have a hard time going to the documentation, and will start refactoring stuff to figure out how it works.

  Sure, it's possible to approach code in that way, but to me it's similar to never developing taste. The defining characteristics of the software (the documentation) is for many intents and purposes simply illegible to them, and they're basically saying "I'll know the entry / extensibility point / bug when I see it."

  I interview for this in part by asking the interviewee what the most interesting new features are about recent versions of X language.

• by jacksonkmarley on 1/10/21, 9:02 PM

  Actually, I think one of the most important skills that people should be learning/improving these days (not on this list) is the ability to parse dubious sources for elements of truth. (/irony if that is a thing.)

  Consider the recent events in Washington; almost everything you read about it is heavily slanted in some direction, whether deliberately or accidentally. Good luck finding anyone just reporting/analysing the plain old (actually complex and unsimplifiable) truth, with no narrative filtering.

• by idlewords on 1/10/21, 6:19 PM

  This is the kind of writing GPT-3 will help us auto-generate in the future, freeing up these deep systemic thinkers to go on with their mission of changing the world.

• by technobabble on 1/10/21, 7:50 PM

  One of the things I've struggled with implementing these life skills is dealing with the cost of failure/trying new things. Both as a monetary cost (switching degrees, studying "non-essential" humanities topics like philosophy), and the cost that we are mortal, and there's only so much time to explore, develop taste, etc.

  Can someone please offer me a counterpoint, or counter-perspective?

• by politelemon on 1/10/21, 7:09 PM

  >Learn to sequence things well

  Is this similar to delayed gratification? I find it much easier in general to do the 'boring' meeting prep and get stuff out of the way so I can relax later.

• by interfixus on 1/10/21, 7:51 PM

  Learn to appreciate a pragmatic, zero-based paradigm and realize that to all intents and purposes the present decade began one year ago.

• by hyko on 1/10/21, 7:55 PM

  Man, this is bleak. Is it just me or do the gurus of today inspire some pretty tepid trains of thought?

  What happened to all the interesting, utopian, and downright weird thinking that used to go on in the digital space?