Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?

[arikr]

Where things = products, services, tools, strategies, books, systems, etc.

For me:

* Internal Family Systems made me more peaceful

* "The Sleep Book" by Meadows made me sleep better

* Apps: Otter for taking notes, Superhuman for email

* Websites: Wirecutter

* Books: How to Get Lucky, Self-Therapy

[csallen]

I've spent a ton of time as a developer trying to make money from various side projects and businesses. So most of my top "wish I'd discovered this earlier" list revolves around tech+business stuff:

* Strategy #1: Charge more. patio11 has been shouting this from the rooftops for years, but it didn't sink in until after I started Indie Hackers[0]. If you charge something like $300/customer instead of $5/customer, you can get to profitability with something like 50 phone calls rather than years of slogging. It's still hard, but it's way faster.

* Strategy #2: Brian Balfour's four fits model[1]. It's not enough to think about the product. You also need to think about the market, distribution channels, and pricing, and how each of these four things fit together. I imagine them as four wheels on a car. It's better to have 4 mediocre wheels than 3 great ones and a flat.

* Book: The Mom Test.[2] Amazing book about how to talk to customers to research your ideas without being misled, which is a step I've stumbled on before.

* Tool: Notion. I just discovered it recently. I use it for all my docs and planning.

[0] https://www.indiehackers.com - my latest business, and the one that actually worked

[1] https://brianbalfour.com/four-fits-growth-framework

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...

[rcavezza]

The mom test a million times over! When people hear the name, they assume it's about usability (i.e. make something easy that your mom understands it), but it's not - its' the best book on customer development that exists. I recommend it to every startup person I meet.

[jayeshgopalan]

This is exactly what I was looking for. Mom's test purchased and going to read and implement the same.

[bananamansion]

how does one find business ideas that you can charge 300/customer? is it 300 per month or per year?

[otras]

Learning How To Learn (https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn) and Barbara Oakley's book A Mind For Numbers. Completely changed my approach to studying and learning, and my academic efforts after taking it were tremendously better than before.

Also related: highly recommend Anki. It feels like magic when the spaced repetition works!

[tapanjk]

> Barbara Oakley's book A Mind For Numbers

Thank you for the recommendation! I am looking forward to reading the book. It is good know that someone who started off their education assuming they cannot do well in STEM subjects, can actually pick up the skills much later in their carrier, is refreshing. I belong to the camp that I did well in STEM subjects through formal education but then lost touch with math later on. Am looking forward to regaining this skill.

[mpascale00]

If there's one thing in life you want to know before anything else, it's how to get better at things! :)

We have a whole field of science that deals with human behavior, wouldn't it be useful if we had that as a basic part of school?

[Valk3_]

What would you say are your biggest take-aways from that course?

[rezeroed]

Which tools do you use for anki? Make your own decks?

[valgor]

Is it necessary to go through the entire Learning How to Learn course or is there a TL;DR somewhere?

[leblancfg]

You are the sum of your habits. I've always had "sort-of passable" ones, but they were never chosen by design, only by what had accreted with time. I had played with some systems and apps, but nothing had really worked until I took the time to write out in excrutiating detail what I would be doing for every minute of my morning and evening. At first I had to follow my schedule, but that didn't last long.

With the birth of my son, daycare, and a new job, I was finally forced to actually plan out a morning and evening routine. I wish I had done this in university.

Every day for the last 6 months, I have now a routine I don't have to think twice about:

* Woke up at 5 AM,

* Exercise hard, take a shower and have breakfast,

* Get to work before 7:30 AM with my day's tasks already in mind.

Similar for the evening preparing my breakfast, lunch and clothes. It's liberating to do these now without thinking. It took about a month, and my brain is now free to plan out the day or listen to an audiobook.

[tony]

Nice job on Internal family systems OP! I'm not there quite yet but getting close

- TypeScript : Absolute game changer for JS. I can't imagine programming regular ES. Sort of hoping TypeScript becomes the next ES.

- Desktops : Desktop processors and video cards are insanely powerful compared to laptops. If you're doing any sort of compilation (even if it's webpack / frontend) this stuff helps a ton. A project that takes 90s to build on a mbp is 30s on a desktop.

- Windows 10 + WSL

- Attachment Theory: https://www.behaviorology.org/oldsite/pdf/AttachmentTheoryBe..., https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1d36/ac75d7081fcd86d467f6d2... (The stuff by Cindy Hazan and Philip Shaver are very relevant for adults)

- Schema Therapy: https://www.guilford.com/excerpts/young.pdf

Look up Psychology in Seattle on Patreon and download the deep dives for Attachment Theory and Schema Therapy. After that it's easier to grok the research papers/books.

[copperx]

Do you mind sharing briefly what you got out of attachment theory and schema therapy? Or why are they worth a look?

[sharadov]

Thinking strategically from a career and life perspective.

Managing your investments

Eating right and exercise

Risk Taking - take big risks early in your life, ones which have the biggest upside. The terror of the unknown and leaping into it and coming out at the other end multiple times makes you fearless. The journey is all that matters, the destination is not in your hand. But the journey teaches a lot.

Some of the above, I was fortunate to learn early on from good mentors, and I've reaped big rewards, the rest I only wish someone had told me earlier.

[ljf]

I wish I'd learnt about investing before I was in my late 30s - and same about value of a good pension. Still - it is never too late.

[hprotagonist]

I wish i had learned that going to the gym is the thing to do when your brain is full.

My undergrad GPA would’ve been higher and i’d have gotten fit earlier in life.

[penetrarthur]

I especially like the exact moment during the workout when you feel that "blood starts flowing in the head again" and you gain some sort of clarity. Especially if I've been working really hard that day.

[rsync]

I wish I had discovered Hacker News earlier.

I kept having customers sign up for rsync.net citing "Hacker News" in the "where you found out about us" but I assumed it was the old hacker news that was run by a certain defcon/cdc personality and was sort of a clone of attrition.org ... it had been around since 99/00/01 or so ...

It took me several years to figure out there was a new hacker news out there ...

[WnZ39p0Dgydaz1]

Realizing how much incentives matter. Everything around you is driven by incentives: Coworkers, your boss, customers, personal relationships. More importantly, everything is driven by "personal incentives" more so than "business incentives", and those two aren't usually aligned. For example, if you are talking to a potential customer (who may represent a company), it's invaluable to understand what incentives drive this person (not company!). What is he or she trying to get out of working with you? A promotion? Recognition from his boss? A story to tell his family at dinner? What are his current life and career goals and how does that align with choosing you? What is his decision making progress and why? And so on. The same can be applied to your coworkers, or anyone else you're working with. Even to you friends and family, whose incentives may to be simply have a good time, feel loved and accepted, or have someone to listen.

There are rarely true "irrational" decisions. If a decision looks irrational to you, it's most likely because you don't truly understand the incentives driving that person.

[deanmoriarty]

If you're interested in seeing financial returns for your time/work, don't work as a startup employee, ever.

[bakuninsbart]

Friend gave up probably one of the best tech jobs in the world because it was too boring. The company is owned by a foundation, so they think very long-term and have their employees welfare as one of the highest priorities.

Well, for him that was too good a deal, so now he's working 60 hours for half the salary.

[AndrewHayes]

How about, don't work as an undercompensated startup employee who is relying on shares to become valuable. You can have incredibly rewarding jobs both personally and financially working for a startup.

[ambivalents]

Could you elaborate? Seems like this is heavily dependent on the success of the startup and at which stage you joined.

[channel_t]

I wish I had discovered the wonders of attending college earlier on. I spent a good chunk of my teens and twenties in a constant state of alienation because I wasn't around people who put much value towards analytical thought. It wasn't until when I finally discovered it on my own in my mid-20s that life started making sense. It seems like that for many, the high school -> university pipeline is the path of least resistance, but if you don't have any pressure from family or direct peers involved in that kind of thing, it can fall far under the radar.

[notacoward]

#1 How to run. I hated and avoided running for 30 years, then I got to the point where I hated going to a club and I hated having a machine in my home (and not getting any aerobic exercise at all was of course intolerable) so I decided to give running a try. At first it sucked, but then I figured out I'd been doing it wrong so I fixed my stride etc. It sucked less. I still don't enjoy the activity itself, but I'm sure glad for the results.

#2 The power of compound interest. I was lucky to learn this one early, but I think a lot of others weren't so lucky. More than any other single thing, any skill, any stroke of luck, this is why I now feel comfortable about my financial future into retirement.

[thirdsun]

> I still don't enjoy the activity itself, but I'm sure glad for the results.

I don't think that's a sustainable or worthwhile approach. Exercise and training can be found in many forms and countless different activities - pick those you actually enjoy.

[wurp]

Meditation. Download a free 20-minute guided meditation and do it every day. Maybe at some point read "The Miracle of Mindfulness" by Thich Nhat Hanh.

I can provide a good guided breathing meditation on request.

Meditation will help you be calm and focused. It will help you recognize and work through emotions with a minimum of harm to yourself or others.

I'm definitely not advocating self-immolation, but the same training that let monks sit calmly as they burned to death in the 60s (in an attempt to call attention to the horrifying war in Vietnam) will definitely help you deal with your breakup, illness, work troubles, or loss of a loved one.

[niklasmtj]

This is something I also learnt this year after reading The Headspace Guide to Meditation & Mindfulness by Andy Puddicombe the founder of Headspace.

After only 10 minutes of meditation you feel a lot better than before. I can not recommend it enough to try it.

I use the Headspace App for the guided meditations and it's free to learn the basics in 10 sessions/days.

[mikhailfranco]

Not just the Vietnam war, but continuing now against Chinese occupation of Tibet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation_protests_by_Ti...

I sometimes wonder if Buddhist monks are powered by lithium batteries.

[_vn5r]

I’d appreciate a link to a good guided breathing meditation

[bobosha]

Absolutely second this. Long-time PTSD sufferer here, just meditating 30 mins every day has worked wonders for me.

[algaeontoast]

How to effectively learn and balance my use of mental energy.

My diagnosis of depression and ADD inattentive-type (my parents were great, but denied that mental health was a factor until I decided to at age 22). I don't fault them, but I know for a fact my years in highschool and college struggling to learn / focus but knowing I had cognitive ability will irk me until the day that I die.

[brailsafe]

Was going to respond with this as well. At 27 I decided to reflect on my abilities vs test scores and ability to focus and spoke to a doctor. Parents never considered mental health as a factor, and looking back—but without blame—opportunies and growth were missed. Care to expand on your case?

Edit: Saw your response below.

[atentaten]

How do you now balance the use of your mental energy?

[wufufufu]

So what did you do about it

[SamReidHughes]

How much playing Bach would improve my piano ability as a function of time spent. Some HN comment recently mentioned this, so I gave it a try.

The importance of keeping a clean sleeping environment.

[bakuninsbart]

* Bouldering: Could be generalized as "a sport that fits you". Bouldering changed my life, as it is the perfect balance to a desk job. I met a lot of great people, improved my self confidence and am much healthier now.

* The power of routine: I never liked routine and thought it stifles creativity. In some ways it actually might, but creaitivity without productivity isn't worth that much.

* To not take myself so seriously: Life is so much easier and more fun if you can laugh about yourself, if you don't try to uphold a self-imposed picture towards others, and if you can accept that sometimes things go wrong, and sometimes it's your fault. - Not only am I happier now, I think it also made me a better person.

[ian0]

Hard Sci-fi.

Holy crap it just overdelivers. In addition to entertainment, a way to take my mind off things, it also delivers context to daily life and keeps me focussed on trying to deliver something truly worthwhile.

[martindbp]

I dearly wish I had used something like Anki throughout college instead of many years later. And actually focusing on understanding and long term recall rather than passing tests. It would have been difficult though, since having multiple difficult classes simultaneously often requires cramming at the end followed by focusing on the next course. But if I went back to school now that's what I would have done.

[molteanu]

That cheap mice and keyboards will ruin ones hands beyond repair after years of heavy use.

Don't be that person. Learn to type and invest in your hardware early on.

[lutorm]

This is important, but some people use crappy keyboards all their life and never have problems. I think more important is learning to be in touch with your body and applying corrections if and when things start feeling wrong. Unfortunately that's the kind of thing you learn from pain, though...

[aequitas]

Expensive ones will ruin them just as well, for me the size matters a lot. I love Apple products but I can't stand their mice. They are just too small. The previous model (with the knob) and the current touch models are just instant CTS inducers for me (same as typing while standing, wrists bent). I stuck with large mice (Logitech gamer mice) and good touchpad (Apple) for the last few years and haven't had any issues since.

[jszymborski]

Do you have specific suggestions re: peripherals. I've been using the Logitech MX Vertical Wireless lately and it's been a huge improvement from my previous bulky Logitech G600.

I'm wondering if there are keyboard set-ups people really like? I'm enjoying my Gigabyte mechanical keyboard, but would be willing to give it up for something that'll let me get more mileage out of my hands/arms.

[proverbialbunny]

Really? I have an exercise ball which works pretty well.

[bobbean]

No amount of telling yourself you're happy will make you happy. You can't just "make yourself happy", it's a side effect of other things you do in your life.

[tzs]

• Bread freezes and thaws really well, with little or no loss of texture and flavor. If I had found this out 35 years earlier, I probably would have replaced thousands of visits to fast food restaurants with sandwiches made at home.