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Ask HN: How do you incorporate advice into your life?

5 points by audace ↗ HN
We're constantly inundated with best practices, theories, lists about doing better in all aspects of life (being successful, a good manager, efficient, happy). How do you actually cut out the noise and make use of the important tips?

6 comments

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[dead] voulevoule
This is an interesting question, and I would also like to hear what the community thinks :)
gt565k
It usually comes down to time management and a solid routine / schedule.

Start with getting 6-8 hours of sleep a night, consistently. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. Perform physical exercise for 45min - 1hr a day. That alone will allow you to manage your time significantly better.

pandaFish
Spot on. Being able to carve a 60-90 minute chunk out of your day to hit the gym is a great way to cut low hanging wasted time.

A consistent wake up time anchors your sleep schedule, and prevents you from accruing a sleep debt. Most sleep debts gradually sneak up, and can be hard to diagnose.

pandaFish
Find advice from people who are one step ahead of you. The advice from the CEO of a late state company doesn't have as much value to a first time founder trying to find product/market fit.
paulcole
This is paraphrased from The Lost World by Michael Crichton. I read it when I was in middle school and it has stuck with me for over 20 years:

"Most people are wrong about most things."

People give advice that is out of date, just plain wrong, irrelevant, self-serving, or otherwise generally useless. The key is to just ignore it and do whatever you want.

Over time you'll figure out what works and what doesn't. And in 30+ years of living, the only thing I've figured out that works is to ignore all the advice I receive.

heynickc
I think we have an innate fear of losing things forever and that's why we sometimes let information/advice overload inundate us - we're afraid that if we don't read that blog post, that we're going to miss out on a life hack and never see it again.

I don't really have a set way I cut out the noise - but I definitely try to in as many ways as I can. It helps me to look at it as a fear of loss/fear of missing things and when I make note of that fear - I can ignore the noise more easily.