You know, like “always split on 18,” or “having kids is the most rewarding thing you can do in life.”
What’s that one bit of advice you got from a trusted friend that you know deep, deep down would just ruin your thing?
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“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
or
“Do what you’re passionate about.”
Just no. Most things I like don’t pay well and I started to resent the others while doing them professionally. Turning your hobby into your job is like setting your favorite song as your alarm. That’s my experience at least.
Turning your hobby into your job is like setting your favorite song as your alarm.
That’s an excellent analogy, I’m going to steal it
I used to love computers and technology. Now I get an idea about something I want to do, regurgitate a bit, shudder, and quickly throw that idea on the shelf.
I can’t even stand looking at the inside of a computer these days. It was 3/4 of my personality when I was younger.
That analogy is perfect.
“Do what you are passionate about”/" Choose a job that you love …" and
“Turning a hobby into a job”
is two different things for me.
For me anyone should try to find a job they are passionate about if it’s a possibility.
I love Space, when I started my engineering degree I did everything I could to orient my career toward aerospace and I loved it. I worked as an aerospace manufacturing engineer and I was good at it because I loved that.
I also love cooking but clearly I’m glad I did not tried to become a chef, I’m very happy that it stayed a hobby.
I love my job, I really do, but I wouldn’t do it as a hobby. I don’t think it’s so much advice about making your hobbies a career, as it is about finding work you enjoy.
Video games, skateboarding, riding a motorcycle, all things I love, but no way I’d try to make a living at any of them.
Same. I used to do something similar to my job as a hobby but now I just don’t get on my actual computer outside of work unless I’m playing a game.
I tried building guitars for others but found that I don’t like doing things to other people’s specs. So I still build for myself. Plus video games, motorcycles, playing guitar, tabletop games, and one rotating flavor of the month hobby.
I think you and I would be friends.
Couldn’t agree more. I decided to become a chef as my career of choice after school, cause I liked cooking. Can’t remember me cooking at home once in the three years of my training and the year I worked the job afterwards. Now I love it again and cook (almost) exclusively for my wife and me.
Liking your job is cool but making your hobby your job and still keeping it as a hobby works out for a very small minority of people. For most it either destroys your hobby or you start resenting yout job.
Yep.
Doing the thing you love, as your work, is a surefire way to hate the thing you once loved.
cause a lot of that love was born from the freedom to engage with it, and the escapism that it gave you.
Both of which completely disappear if you have to do it 9-5 or starve.
But like everything, theres always the exception. There are people out there, 9-5ing every day for 30 years the thing they love with no burnout… and they are usually the ones held up as examples, not the 100,000 other people who tried it, burnt out, and hated everything.
I’m doing what I love as my career, but it was a hard road to get here. I started off out of high school as a professional photographer, never charged enough, didn’t know how to run a business, got burnt out, didn’t touch a camera for a few years, then after some desk jobs, realized photography was the only career for me. I decided to do it right this time, took business courses and prayed I didn’t end up hating it again. It’s worked out for me so far.
It depends, really. I turned my hobby into a profession and I am mostly happy. I lost a hobby, absolutely. I don’t practice my craft much anymore outside of work, but I do have a job I really like. And I found new hobbies over the years. But yes, I did loose a hobby.
“Just be yourself”
Ask any neurodivergent person how that goes.
We mask because we are often punished for being ourselves most of the time.
As a religious trans person, it’s deeply insulting how many anti-trans religious authorities say things like “don’t let the world tell you who you are, trust in the voice of God in your own heart” or something, and then go all surprised Pikachu when I’m still trans afterwards.
See also: “Just do (whatever task you’re struggling with).”
As if it’s as easy as that for everyone.
I told my mum once that I hate washing the dishes.
“Just wash up!” was the response. Yeah, cheers, mum. Didn’t think of that one.
Can relate, when I start infodumping or talking in depth about stuff I enjoy I can see their eyes glaze over and they want to leave.
i mean, if its any comfort, my eyes glaze over and I want to leave anytime anyone even starts to talk to me, cause I cant stand social interaction, much less having to look at peoples faces to show i’m “engaged”
Why would this give anyone comfort?
It depends with whom you are yourself with. If you’re with other neurodivergent people, absolutely just be yourself, that tends to work well a lot of the time, at least in my experience.
I wasnt diagnosed with ADHD until I was in my 30s. By that time, masking had long since been instinctive to protect myself from other people. I have to feel very very safe around someone before I feel comfortable enough to start unmasking a bit because of the heinous things people did to me. That is what 30 years of trauma and abuse does and you do not fix that in an instant.
“Ground yourself to be safe with electricity”.
Some people out there seem to treat grounding as a magical means for controlling electricity. Even in so far as it’s true at all, you have to consider the situation and how it might move across your body.
Telling a teenager “enjoy these years, they’re the best ones of your life”.
First, tell that to a teenager undergoing severe depression is the opposite of helpful. Second, you just admitted to leading a shitty life. You got to 20 and the next 50 years were garbage?
Enjoy all of your years. I feel like each decade of my life has had amazing parts, and also shitty parts. They have all been objectively different though. Try to focus on the amazing parts and enjoy them, but also make sure to learn from the shitty parts.
The teenage years have the least responsibility with the most freedom. As you get older and have more responsibilities, it’s normal to look back at the time when you could spend 16 hours straight doing whatever the fuck you wanted as something great.
For a huge amount of people, the teenage years are the years with the most responsibility and the least freedom. You don’t control your health care, your income, your time, or your opportunities in the same way that adults can. Your needs can be neglected and there’s nothing you can do as a teenager.
“Never give up”.
Sometimes you’re wasting your time and should give up. Better advice would be “decide how much you’re willing to give to this before you start”.
Also see: sunk cost fallacy
“All kids think they are smarter than their parents.” - my father, constantly growing up
What I learned: Never tell anyone else how to think or feel about anything. Anyone that tries to shape your thinking directly is a fool.
Intelligence is like beauty, we don’t have a very good frame of reference to perceive ourselves. Physical beauty is largely measured by the reactions of others. Like beauty, intelligence has many facets. However my favorite measuring stick is curiosity. This is how I overcame my father’s admonition; while curiosity does not guarantee intelligence, an intelligent person is always curious.
Nah… if someone keeps trying to stick a fork in the light socket or tries to hurt other people, I think its pretty justified to try to change the thinking that leads to that behavior.
Neither of these is dead wrong but were rules of thumb that oversimplify changing and complex issues in the US:
“stay away from credit cards” - often prevents people from actually learning about how underlying mechanisms of loans, interest, credit ratings, and budgeting work. There are definitely people incapable of having access to credit and not spending it, so the saying may be true for a subset but if you always pay your bill in full on time and just use autopay so you don’t forget, you’re leaving 1-5% annual rebate for almost all your spend on the table. If you play credit card churning games, much more.
“The only things worth going into debt for are a home and education.” - while accurate in the US for decades, the applicability or even accuracy of this statement is now dubious depending on many factors: career field and interests for education; interest rates, geography and housing prices for homes.
“stay away from credit cards”
I followed this advice in my youth. Never applied for a credit card, never took out a loan, never bought anything I couldn’t afford to drop cash on. I thought it would show I’m fiscally responsible because I’m not accruing debt.
Then I got an opportunity to work a govt job providing communications for the White House; basically, following the president around and ensuring he’s able to communicate at press events, etc. I applied for the job and was told I was their #1 candidate…
…But they ran a credit check on me and was surprised when they got zero results. I proudly stated that I’ve never been in debt before, so my credit risk is zero. But according to them, zero credit history is shady as fuck. They said they couldn’t tell how well I manage money because there’s no history showing regular, on-time payments on credit cards, loans, etc.
They couldn’t tell if I had trouble managing money or not. That made me a potential bribe risk. Someone could offer me tons of money to slip a bomb into the president’s podium, or let a suspicious character into the White House, and if I’m hurting enough for money, they suspect I might be willing to do it.
Literally, my entire history of service in the govt had no bearing on my loyalty. Only my credit score. I lost that job opportunity because I was fiscally responsible.
I went out and got a credit card that same day. I now have an extremely high credit score, which I keep up by paying all my bills and utilities on credit, then paying off almost all of it at the end of the month. I think it’s stupid that I need to put myself in debt, then pay my way out of it over time, spending even more money in the long run, just to prove I’m fiscally responsible. That should prove that I suck at managing money, not the other way around. But that’s the broken system we have today.
I’m confused - you pay off almost all of your credit card and you’re “spending even more money in the long run”. Why not just pay off all of it? Surely if you were able to afford your bills with cash, you’d be able to pay off your credit card in full every month since the bills would be the same?
Only pay off what is due, not the full balance. So if I spent 100 on my cc last month and then 100 this month. My bill is for 100, but my balance is 200. Pay the 100, incur no interest.
Edit: by “what is due” I mean the full balance from the previous month, not the minimum payment.
If you don’t succeed, try and try again.
It leaves out the steps where you figure out why you think you failed the first time so trying again with a different approach has a chance of success instead of just failing over and over again.
There’s also a good quote about repeating the same thing over and over again being the definition of insanity. Some platitudes are useful
Edit: repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Attributed to Einstein, but who knows
That doesn’t mean to do it the exact same way over and over again.
Thats what it literally says, so if you don’t know the context…
Sometimes it is used for changing habits through repetition of the exact same steps when it isn’t possible. Like someone who has trouble falling asleep being told that going to bed the same time every night will just work to fix sleep issues when that doesn’t work for everyone.
As an autistic person who struggles with reading things too literal even I know it just means to not give up. It doesn’t mean to do it the exact same way and expect a difference. People who are reading that way are just being obtuse.
I have no idea how you’d take it so literally, you are just being uncharitable with its meaning. It could mean , oh you struggle sleeping. Have you tried melatonin, have you gone to the doctor, do you shut everything off before bed. Try that, don’t give up! You have to be looking to twist that saying to see it that way.
As someone who has trouble sleeping, I have literally been told by dozens of people that changing a sleep schedule is as simple as setting an alarm to wake up each moring and going to bed at the same time. They have even used this specific saying.
I am not saying that is what I think it means. I am saying that is how a lot of people use and understand it, which is why it is bad advice.
Also, yes I have tried all of those things and they don’t work for me. My body wants to wake up midmorning and decades of trying different approaches hasn’t worked. I am tired all the time except when I take a vacation and get up when I want, which is about 9 a.m. That is also the only time I ever feel rested.
I mean I sometimes take sleeping pills to get some sleep, I’m not arguing about the frustrations of things not working. You having a sleeping disorder or some other issue.
that line is more about. If you fall get back up. If your first painting sucks, that’s okay your next one will be a little bit better.
Some idiots may use it the way but it’s not how it should be used. Though I understand it would be irritating to hear for something like that.
Having a non-sterotypical sleeping pattern is not a disorder, that is insulting and a perpetuation of people who naturally rise earlier being seen as better than those with different sleep patterns.
If a lot of people are using it wrong because they take it literally, then it is bad advice. Better advice would be “If you don’t succeed, consider another approach”.
“Der klügere gibt nach” which directly translates to “the wiser one gives in” or more or less matches the idiom “it’s better to bend than to break”.
Growing up I heard this a lot and it’s mostly use to silence those who have (well-founded) objections. Took me a while to realize that this leads to us following the stupid because they don’t give in which subsequently makes the wise one the stupid one.
The Idiom is regularly abused and misunderstood. Its about being smart what fights are worth fighting. Often heard by kids from their Patents when they fight over “nothing”
Similarly, if you have kids, being completely authoritarian is a losing strategy.
Yeah, having kids made me realize how important it is to choose my battle.
I prefer being strict on a limited set of important rules and more lenient on the rest rather than trying to do too much and just giving up on everything when i’m exhausted.
Like it’s fine if my two years old is a bit messy on the table and does not finish his plate as long as he’s trying the food and let us have our dinner too in a relative peace.
Always give 110%, and one day your boss will notice and give you the promotion you deserve.
A lot of the advice in this thread is situationally good but this… is essentially universally bad advice.
I read some advice that loud work is the only type that is noticed and I can’t help but think with my experience in industry that that’s 100% right. It really doesn’t matter how hard you worked on something or how good it is in most cases, it only matters how many people know you did a thing.
20% of your effort produces 80% of your results, so giving 40% effort at work should be plenty. Don’t even half ass it.
Professionals are consistent and businesses are risk averse. It’s easier and more valued to be reliable. Learning to do enough is an important skill.
“Bring your authentic self to work”
Was pretty prevalent in tech for a while. Fuck no I’m not doing that.
This is sadly very true. Keep most of your coworkers, especially bosses, on a low information diet. It’s like dealing with the police. Some of them will try to use anything you say against you in the court of HR.
This is not to say you can’t make any friends at work. Just be very careful in who you pick. Make sure the person is trustworthy (and you know as much about them as they know about you).
Hell yeah. I only told my boss about my adhd diagnosis in case I need to use that as leverage some day. Otherwise I’m basically a mystery.
I have worked in the same office for 22 years, no one knows my birthday, what my hobbies are or where I live other than “downtown”. There is work me and then the real me and never the twain shall meet.
You sound like me. Do you want to not hang out sometime?
Absolutely! ☺
Sign me up for the not hanging out club!
I won’t hang out either.
You guys mind if I don’t tag along?
Can I join too?
I will say I’ll be there, but I’m also going to cancel.
Rosa from Brooklyn 99?
Ha! I love it!
- “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
- “Follow the food pyramid.”
- “Eat a well-balanced diet.”
- “Meat is a carcinogen.”
- “Saturated fat is bad for you.”
- “Don’t eat egg yolks because they’re high in cholesterol.”
- “Fruit and vegetables are good for you.”
- “The vegan diet is the healthiest diet.”
Ever since the US Department of Agriculture (not health) started their nutritional recommendations, once-rare diseases like cardiovascular disease, Diabetes II, obesity, and a whole host of mental illnesses have become extremely common.
People are only recently discovering that we can reverse/improve Diabetes I & II, arthritis, obesity, PCOS, psoriasis, depression, autism, anxiety, bipolar disorder, etc. by eating what humans have been primarily eating since becoming human ~2 million years ago when we left the trees, lost the ability to digest fiber, and evolved distinctly human traits for hunting (e.g. a skeletal composition that allows humans to throw heavy things accurately further than any other species, the ability to out-run every other land animal long-distance, and a large brain and complex communication for coordinated attacks on much larger animals).
Humans are still biologically evolved to be persistence pack hunters subsisting on fatty meat, a hyper-apex species that all other animals we evolved alongside (including other apex predators) fear just from the sound of our voices. We’ve lost sight of who we are as a species.
I think 95% or more of the problem with American diets is just excess calories. Or 50% inactivity 50% overeating. Eating more fat is great if you are walking around all day gathering leaves and berries and chasing after (and running away from) animals. If you are sitting at a desk eating more leaves and less meat will probably work better.
It’s not just Americans — the world is becoming increasingly obese and sick — and I highly doubt it’s because humanity has collectively lost our willpower and health-consiousness within 50 years.
Saturated fat has become so demonised that people can’t comprehend how I’ve lost so much body fat by eating mostly fat while doing minimal exercise. My mental clarity, focus, and energy have also noticeably improved by eating a mostly fatty-meat diet.
can you cite your source for “fruits and vegetables are bad for you”?
Source: the inside of his anus
From evolution.
Plants are living organisms, and they do not want to be eaten, so they have evolved many defences to that end. They cannot run away nor physically fight back, yet they are one of the most successful kingdoms on Earth.
How do plants protect themselves? Their primary form of defence is chemical warfare. Plants produce chemicals like oxalates, lectins, phytates, cyanide, hormone disruptors, nutrient blockers, and carcinogens to discourage animals from eating them.
Animals and plants have been evolving together in a never-ending evolutionary arms race for millions of years, wherein animals develop adaptations to be able to break down the plants’ defence chemicals safely, and plants evolve stronger defence chemicals. In nature, we see this manifest in herbivores being very specialised in the types of plants they can eat without getting sick. This is why we don’t see every animal desolating entire swaths of forests, marshes, grasslands, etc.
Humans, too, are animals, and it was only in the last 12,000 years or so when we invented agriculture and settled down, thus entering a new age of heavy plant intake. Almost immediately, we experienced negative effects such as a shrinkage of brain size, a shorter stature, and poor teeth health. However, while relying on plants at the individual level resulted in health sacrifices, especially later on in life, at the societal level, agriculture provided a means to dramatically increase a settlement’s population size and strength.
Humans still instinctively know to not eat plants unless necessary to survive. For example, if you were thrown into the middle of a forest, you would know that eating most of the plants around you will immediately make you sick. Parents also frequently see this when they force their kids to eat so-called healthy foods such as broccoli, spinach, and Brussels sprouts, which the kids will intuitively avoid, but are forced to accept in the name of health.
Essentially, each species has a species-appropriate diet, and humans are not special. We have specific adaptations for specific foods for optimum health, just like every other species — we’ve just forgotten what that is.
Meat is a carcinogen.
Fruit and vegetables are good for youWhat…?!
From the studies I’ve seen, meat does indeed carry higher endemic carcinogen and cardio-disease risks, particularly when processed, particularly when fried, compared to other foods.And yes, too much fruit can lead to glycemic issues, but assuming properly washed and/or cooked, fruits & veggies are indeed an extremely important part of a healthy diet.
The vegan diet is the healthiest diet.
A purely vegan diet means one needs to be careful about getting a full range of amino acids and IIRC some vitamins, but besides that, yes-- a core vegan diet (assuming properly varied) is indeed arguably one of the healthiest diets for most people.
Personally I don’t think one needs to be super-strict with it, but the point is that it’s a great base to build on.
The major problem with most studies in the field of nutrition is that most of them are correlation studies, which are useful in creating hypotheses but are not sufficient in determining causation.
I won’t argue that as a layman, but I feel that there are nutritional meta-studies, plus evidence from inter-disciplines (such as physiology of the colon, how the body processes food at the micro & molecular level, and what H.s.s’s typical diet was across many centuries) to suggest that what I posited above is true.
AFAIK the body of nutritionists and the national academies have to take all of this in to account (including the limitations of correlational studies) when making hypotheses about best diet, making for a reasonably clear picture that the human body (outside of people like the Inuit I guess) typically doesn’t handle excess meat well, and that we likely evolved as omnivores who didn’t eat processed foods, and who mainly ate vegetables & some fruit with opportunistic protein supplementing such.
If this is indeed what our bodies evolved to handle, it shouldn’t really be a surprise that we do best health-wise maintaining that approach. Not to mention, there are plenty of studies to suggest the various ways we can get in to health problems straying from that baseline.
Nutritional meta-studies are based on individual studies. If the foundation is composed of correlation studies, such a meta-study would still not be able to show causation.
I was disappointed in the science of nutrition compared to other disciplines, which is why I looked to adjacent fields of study, like anatomy, evolution, biology, psychology, anthropology, archeology, and the history of the study of nutrition itself.
Modern humans have been around for ~300,000 years, and humans have been around for ~2 million years. Looking at our diets across the last several centuries isn’t enough to get a clear understanding as we haven’t significantly changed anatomically for hundreds of thousands of years. Humans have become apex predators not from scavenging for vegetables and fruits.
Humans have thrived through multiple ice ages where vegetables and fruit were scarce as hunters of megafauna. Our anatomy and unique adaptations suggest that there were strong evolutionary pressures that shaped us into the apex predators we are, despite not having large claws, horns, teeth, jaws, etc. that are typical of other apex predators.
Humans handle fatty meat very well. The growing popularity of the carnivore diet is a testament to this, with several practicing medical doctors starting to speak out in support of it. On the other hand, various populations handle different vegetation with mixed results. For example, a large minority of many populations still can’t handle bread, of all things, very well.
You should double-check those studies, as they are likely to be correlation studies that do not prove causation and are riddled with confounding factors.
Humans have become apex predators not from scavenging for vegetables and fruits.
What’s your basis of conceiving of humans as apex predators? I haven’t heard them described that way before, moreso that we’re fantastic opportunists who can indeed hunt successfully when such is called for. But historically, based on the findings, I don’t know of any evidence that suggests we were universally ‘apex predators’ for any significant amount of time.
Humans handle fatty meat very well. The growing popularity of the carnivore diet is a testament to this, with several practicing medical doctors starting to speak out in support of it. On the other hand, various populations handle different vegetation with mixed results. For example, a large minority of many populations still can’t handle bread, of all things, very well.
This is starting to sound pretty disingenuous or poorly-informed based on my impressions of the science.
Feel free to have the last reply, and if there’s something to learn from it, I’ll try.
What’s your basis of conceiving of humans as apex predators?
Going off memory:
- Archeology tells us that human sites were littered with the bones of large and medium-sized animals
- Archeology also suggests that our diets were very meat-heavy from looking at stable isotopes in the bones of ancient humans
- Biology tells us that the sounds of human voices instill more fear in animals than even the sounds of lions
- Biology tells us that we once had the ability to break down fiber, but we have lost that ability after switching to an animal-heavy diet for more than 2-million years
- Anatomy tells us that we have many adaptations to hunt and consume meat, such as: our skeletal structure allows for precise long-distance throwing of heavy objects (such as rocks and spears), high stomach acidity (useful for eating old meat from megafauna that weren’t consumed immediately), forward-looking vision (characteristic of predators), the ability to sweat (that allows us to keep cool during persistence hunting), teeth with thin enamel that aren’t well-suited to grinding down vegetation, and an intestine-to-height ratio in line with predators
This is starting to sound pretty disingenuous or poorly-informed based on my impressions of the science.
I’m not sure what science you’re referring to, but from what I’ve learned, nutrition science is very much not a mature field of study, especially compared to adjacent disciplines. If you immediately discount the carnivore diet, I would ask you to ask yourself why (for example, is it because “everyone just knows that fruit, vegetables, and grains are healthy for you”?), and approach the question of what humanity’s species-appropriate diet is from first principles.
Anything about god taking you to and through things, or prayer. How’s that working for Ukraine or Gaza or a ton of other places with war, famine, violence, trafficking, etc.? Also, anything that refers to “fighting” cancer or other diseases - too bad your person is gone because they didn’t fight harder.
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
No it doesn’t. In most cases, you’re now weaker.
What doesnt kill you now may still be a contributing factor later down the road.
“Treat others the way you want to be treated”.
Why’s that bad advice?
Spank me harder, Daddy!
You should treat people as they want to be treated.
Most chess advice. It teaches you to think in simple terms without actually thinking about a position. It’s good if you want to get passably good, but it’s a handicap once you improve.
