Hard work does not always lead to success. Most of the time, it just leads to more work.
To be precise: Fast work leads to more work.
More like nonsmooth work leads to more work.
Smooth is fast
At my current job, people keep remarking how fast I unload a truck.
I just laugh to myself. I'm not fast - I just work at a steady pace and utilize efficient methods.
I know and have know plenty of people that can move faster than me but its almost always at the expense of their quality.
I just see no reason to be 'the fastest gun in the west' if you can't hit the broadside of a barn.
Don't trust any corporation. They will change their values when their stock goes down.
But we're a family! They told me!
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard
You can do everything right and still lose, still face heart break, and still face setbacks.
To this day, that is one of my favorite fictional quotes of all time. It's something that for years every now and again I have to remind myself of, since our modern world focuses so extremely on success in all ways at all costs.
It's kinda scary actually...
conflict-avoidance often leads to lying, and lying will lead to greater conflict. The truth will set you free.
Sometimes you don't get a chance to say what you wish you had.
Reminds me of a quote from a Reddit comment years ago:
"Sometimes we lack the strength to communicate, and we whisper what we need to shout."
Yeah, that hits in the feels too. In my case there have been two big ones. I wish I would've told the girl that got away that I just got jealous and it was my fault I pushed her away...that I forgave her or more realistically that she did nothing wrong. I was young and dumb. The other was what I didn't say to my stepson, that I wasn't ever going to try to be the "new sheriff in town" and that life is hard and he was fine just the way he was. Maybe that yesterday's painful lessons become tomorrow's triumphs. He was an angsty, antisocial teen and I always figured he'd be cooler towards me when he grew up a bit. He killed himself, so growing up never happened.
HR doesn't work for you and is never on your side. They exist to cover your employer's ass.
I think everyone has to experience this one. Going to hr because someone was an unbelievable ass and watching her sweep it under the rug and convincing you to keep it quiet to make the company happy
Don't stick your dick into crazy.
That there is no silver bullet, no quick fix, no "Eureka" moments that happen without work. "Progress" is less an exciting event, more a rhythm made by the repeated struggling against entropy; when you're doing it well, you'll come to hardly notice its beat until one day you look around and everything's different.
You'd think that recognising this progress might be motivating, but it's often demoralising because it demonstrates how unglamorous the work of self-improvement is. You hardly get time to enjoy your achievements, because as you grow, you become aware of how much more there is to do; the burdens on one's time and energy tend to expand as our personal capacities do, so even if one makes incredible progress it can feel like you haven't moved at all — in both your "before" and "after" snapshots, it can feel like you're still barely staying afloat in life, even if objectively, you have massively improved your coping skills.
And the worst part of it all is knowing that it's okay to be feeling like this. You're tired because it's a lot of work, and you're demoralised because the work doesn't end. You're not the only one who has the stake in your life and your wellbeing, and as you grow, this will be underscored by a greater sense of duty towards the systems and people that depend on you; When I was young and very depressed, I stayed alive for my family and I resented the fact that they cared about me because it bound me to life. (Un)fortunately(?), over the years, my attempts to stick around to avoid hurting the people I care about has led to a bunch more people being invested in my wellbeing and I ended up loving those people too. How privileged I am to have such wonderful people in my life, who give me hope for the world and embolden me to keep fighting. And yet, I resent these people too. I have to allow myself that, at least a little bit, otherwise I'd collapse under the pressure of a duty to a world so much larger than I am. The worst part of it all is that I wouldn't have it any other way.
So here I am, still plodding along, despite everything, hoping to make my existence a tiny little monument to resistance, as I stubbornly push back against all-consuming entropic decay. I know that in the grand scheme of things, nothing I, as an individual, does will matter, nor will it last, but I don't care. Well, I do care — the enormity of it threatens to swallow me whole — but I don't care that I care, because what difference does it make? The hardest lesson I've learned is that everyone feels this way, to an extent, and I'm nothing special. In that truth is terror, but also the comfort of solidarity. I may be scared and exhausted, but I know I'm not alone in this. For better or for worse, my life isn't just for me.
You can't just pretend that you're "driven by logic" and ignore your "weak" emotions forever. If the foundations upon which you build your personality are rotten, there will be point where it all comes crashing down. Until that moment you just waste time pretending to be someone you aren't.
This is something commonly misunderstood as:
Logic = correct = good
Emotion = irrational = bad
In truth your emotions are trying to tell you something. You certainly shouldn't be acting completely on emotion. But you do need to learn to interpret what your emotions are telling you and what that means, because there is critical information there that you would ignore at your peril.
Be prepared to be able to rely on nobody while knowing how to fend off against everyone.
You don't have to forgive everything.
Don't argue with idiots!
As Mark Twain said:
"Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."
I agree with the principle, but not in the same way.
It feels good to portray another person as an "idiot" or obviously wrong. Feels superior and legitimate.
The lesson for me has been: people are allowed to have their own thoughts and opinions, no matter how ill-informed I think they are. It is going to be just as difficult to force them to believe my opinion, as it would be for me to believe their position. So shouting "facts" and "logic" doesn't work at all. If you can get over branding someone an idiot you might be able to listen to why they actually believe such misguided information, but this would take non-judgemental questioning.
So I agree: stop arguing with people.
You cannot make people change their minds in a single sitting. You should aim to be less closed minded than they are. Stop thinking of others as "idiots" to begin with.
If you're really interested in diving into this, here's the first of a 3 part series talking about how to have difficult conversations with people who see the world differently, how to have better debates about contentious issues, and how to ethically and scientifically persuade one another about things that matter – in short, this is a three-part series about How Minds Change.
(I'm not affiliated with the podcast or this guy's books.....I just listen to a lot of cognitive science podcasts)
Interpret 'hardest' however suits you
I'll just scope it down to yesterday. I intentionally short-circuited a 36v battery to see if the battery is still functional or not because my multimeter is out of power. I did this intentionally or otherwise usually in 12v environment to either test out quickly if the wire is connected, or when i accidentally shorted the terminal. The spark are weak on 12v so no big deal with 36v right?
It's the brightest spark i've ever witnessed in a semi-controlled environment, second to welding spark, and it leave a blind spot in my vision for about 10 second. The terminal melted a bit, and the wire bit that touched the terminal disintegrated. Also almost start a house fire with that.
Note to self: wait until you get your equipment in working condition before you work with electric.
To keep my mouth shut more than it's open.
Still working on that one, actually.
Know when to ask for help. You can’t always hold the world on your shoulders.
That I’m safe now.
Although that implies I’ve successfully learned it, hah. PTSD is a bitch.
DO NOT actively try to help anyone who is not sincerely asking for help
A small amount of selfishness is necessary for a healthy life
Nothing matters, but neither does that fact.
Growing up in a population with lots of spirituality, it felt like a requirement to have some higher meaning to your life. And me deciding one-by-one that I didn't believe in the spiritual stuff, it felt like I was missing that higher meaning.
What I didn't realize for too long, is that if I don't believe in the spiritual stuff, then I necessarily also don't believe that the spiritual people have a higher meaning to their life. And that it's not a requirement. A regular meaning or even no meaning is just as fine.
Nothing you do matters, so the only thing that matters is what you do
Life having no meaning or purpose can be scary. Living in an artificial bubble of pretend is scarier.
While I'm sure there are many genuinely religious or spiritual people, the vast majority just mindlessly follow what they have been told.
Just about everything wrong in my life is my fault.
No one's worth my wellbeing. My happiness comes first. Be self suficient for my own happiness. Nobody's special.
Intentional change happens through years of dedicated work and organization. Very few people accidentally improve themselves overnight. Even fewer wake up to discover they've improved society.
Keep business and family separate.
Trust no one. Not fully at least.
Learned that the hard way. Within less than a week went from happily living in the house that I had grown up in, that I was renting from my father and that I was planning to eventually buy or inherit to having to look for an apartment because he sold it. The worst thing? That he never gave me a reason or even acknowledged how much he had hurt me. Quite the opposite, he later asked me to help the new owners set up their tv as if it was nothing.
Society sucks.
There are some great benefits, but it just feels like it's doing more harm than good.
Being alone doesn't always make you lonely, and loneliness doesn't always mean you're alone. The feeling of loneliness derives from feelings of helplessness or hopelessness.
Counterintuitively, some people make you feel lonely. Abusive people, even if close to you, will often make you feel lonely. Apathetic people can also make you feel lonely.
I'm not sure if this will be a revelation to everyone but it was to me.
Surround yourself with people you want to be like.
Be patient with a baby/child and not getting frustration.. They may not always do what you want and it's important to understand that it's not on purpose, they don't know any better (literally).
If you have to force it, you're going to break it.
Sidenote: rectal fistulas are awful.
As the government gradually erodes away our rights, at least we still have the right to wipe our asses with pinecones.
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