Don't tell people your goals.<p>I heard this in a TED talk years ago[0].<p>Telling people what you plan to do can evoke the same emotions as actually doing that thing, lowering the drive to do the work to accomplish the goal because you got your emotional reward already.<p>Being a serial starter, I retroactively noticed this pattern in myself when I heard this. Now, when I want to do something new, I shut up about it until I either complete it or have enough momentum in the project to have reached critical mass.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4</a>
“Try to never be the person who cares the most” was an offhand remark my dad made to me when I was stressed over a group project in school. It helped me what in hindsight would’ve been very stressful situation many, many times.
The best advice I received only applies to younger folks, but it was immensely helpful when starting my career. The advice was to look at those older than me in the workplace and to ask myself if that was the type of person I wanted to be when I get older. If the answer is no, then it’s probably a good time to leave.
One of my old bosses told me, "remove the phrase 'it works for me' from your vocabulary. If it worked for _them_, they wouldn't be bringing their problem to you."<p>This made me realize that the phrase "it works for me" can be dismissive and condescending, and that I should spend at least a little bit of time under the assumption that I am the one that screwed up (personally, my team, or my company) until I can prove otherwise. Anecdotally, I'd say 90% of the time it is either a bug or poorly documented processes -- and those can be fixed! Only about 10% of the time is it truly users doing something stupid.
I think a lot of stuff in this thread is general proverbs rather than actual advice received from another person.<p>This isn't advice that I've gotten either, but also just general wisdom: never give anyone advice about anything, unless they specifically ask for it. Web search for "unsolicited advice" finds a ton of info about why the practice is annoying. I take it to mean it is ok to try to lead by example instead, or say "for solving problem X, I usually try approach Y", but maybe that also edges too close to advice.<p>One specific piece of advice I got that I have found valuable is that to debug a misbehaving program, instead of trying to map the misbehaviour into a hypothesis of what is happening in the code, go immediately to running the code under a debugger and incrementally (e.g. single stepping etc.) run it until you see something go wrong, then backtrack and figure out how that wrong thing happened.
Best advice I ever read came from an indiehacker post, years ago. Someone asked for advice for improving their landing page, and someone with marketing experience weighed in:<p>Don't believe for one moment that 5 hours on Product Hunt or anywhere else for that matter represents a serious marketing effort.<p>If you want to run a business rather just create stuff, your work has only just begun. In the light of Facebook and other social media revelations, the idea of a truly disposable email address which means your entire life is not analysed and spammed to death has to be worth something.<p>You haven't told anyone about it though. And I mean you shout from the rooftops every day and everywhere you can think of. You market. People are not going to come looking for you. You have to start approaching influencers, be seen and be heard everywhere you think your potential users might lurk.<p>And, by the way, everyone sees a million new ideas a day so you have to be consistent, appear to be permanent and appear to be solid. No-one is going to entrust communications with you if they think you are a small, one-man band with an idea and little else.<p>Time to start reading marketing articles and strategies and applying them.<p>And expect it to take time.<p>Added bit : I've just watched your video. No, I won't be using your service and nor will anyone else. I have no idea how good it is and I am not going to find out. And nor is anyone else.<p>Why not? Because you uploaded a silent, technical video. You have made the classic mistake of trying to show me how something works before I even know if I care. This is a technical video, not a selling one.<p>You need a voice.<p>You need to tell me what my problem is and make it resonate with me.<p>You need to tell me how to solve it.<p>You need to tell me it is simple.<p>You need to tell me what it costs.<p>You need to tell me to link right now to the place I can sign up.<p>You might need some other things but these are the basics.<p>You need to sell your idea to me, not explain how the software works. I do not give a damn about the bloody software until I give a damn about the bloody problem!<p>Tell me where I'm hurting, sympathise and then magic-kiss it better. You know - just like Mummy did when I was small!
"Always be the smartest (eg, 'most well informed' or 'best educated') person in the room - ON SOMETHING".<p>Or to paraphrase slightly "Have a <i>thing</i> that is your speciality, to the point that you are almost always the most knowledgeable person in the room w/r/t that topic."<p>I think this is a valuable idea to keep in mind, even if it remains forever an aspiration (which it probably will if interpreted in the strictest sense).
It terms of making: It usually takes twice as long and cost twice as much as the inital estimate.<p>In term of personal finances: Save early and save often. Compound interest is your retirement friend.
"Stop while it's good"<p>I don't need to work until I'm completely exhausted, it's okay to stop with some fuel left in the tank...and resume some other time.
From this Ted talk on making tough decisions. <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/ruth_chang_how_to_make_hard_choices?language=en" rel="nofollow">https://www.ted.com/talks/ruth_chang_how_to_make_hard_choice...</a><p>If your making a tough decision, you have already determined that both options are equally attractive and equally good decisions. If this wasn't the case, it would be an easy choice. So if you are choosing between two seemingly equally good decisions, your choice doesn't matter. They are both equally good options, and so are the same level of risk in having a bad outcome.
<i>"It's not what you know, it's who you know"</i><p>Probably not a popular tip for many on HN who enjoy tinkering, but its truth has served me well in my entrepreneurial endeavors, where as my nerdiness less so.<p>One cannot know everything and we all are bound by finite time, but if you learn the skills and build the network to bring many talents together, you can accomplish greater things than doing it all on your own.<p>Similarly: <i>"No man is an island"</i>
Beat advice I've heard regarding opinions: "you are on average most likely to be wrong. Therefore try to understand how and why you are wrong".
Learn to be OK being misunderstood. If everything you're working on or doing is easily understood by most people, it's probably not very valuable.<p>Related: if you can't find anyone to fund you to work on what you think are the most important projects, just take the work that people will pay you to do but that allows you enough free time to work on the stuff you think is the most important.
Not as advice, but more an inspiration..<p>Being straightforward with feedback is most often helpful to both parties than beating around the bush to make the person feel okay.<p>When I started my masters program I was trying to find interesting research projects to work on to eventually write my thesis about. My advisor is a pleasure to work with because he listens and tells me what I _need_ to hear to my face. He once said “You’ve spent too much time on this and the results show they are close to useless or if no value towards your goal. I think you should stop spending your time on this and look at X instead.”. I felt sad and disappointed for two hot minutes, but then I clearly moved on to what eventually became my masters thesis.<p>Halfway into the program, my advisor quit and I took up another advisor, and he was the opposite wherein I always get soft feedback and spend weeks more effort only to realise that he meant to say it was not worth it.<p>I took that as a lesson to always be straight with my feedback for people I work with.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.<p>We all tend to worry too much. I used to make plans to fix the future. Something which we can not fix. I have learned to make plans with broader strokes. I have been fortunate in my working life to pursue my love of technology. I am very grateful for where I have landed. Not where I had planned to land but possibly where my heart wanted me to be. That may sound corny. Let me phrase it as my work is now doing what I once mused upon rather than the business I thought I would be running. As someone else put it, plans are useless but planning is invaluable.
<a href="https://lyricstranslate.com/en/wear-sunscreen-lyrics.html" rel="nofollow">https://lyricstranslate.com/en/wear-sunscreen-lyrics.html</a> It's funny and most of it is pretty solid advice.