Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

Staying warm.

In the winter, I used to stay warm by turning up the thermostat. Then I discovered (via HN) the Low-Tech Magazine article, "Insulation: first the body, then the home." [0] The article argued that it's much more efficient to focus on heating yourself rather than your whole living space.

I invested in high-quality wool clothes that I wear in layers and warm slippers. Now, I keep my home about 5 degrees F cooler than I used to for the same comfort, and it's a big reduction in oil and wood consumption for home heat.

[0] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/02/body-insulation-ther...

When my then-gf/now-wife and I first moved in together, I got really mad at her because she kept "hiding" my stuff when I left it out for more than a day. I couldn't find anything!

At some point, I yelled, "It's like you don't even want to see any of my things when I'm not using them!" Then I stopped for a second. For the first time in my life, it made sense.

The whole point of putting things away is to hide them! No one wants to look at your crap when you're not using it.

Not my whole life but stuff I’ve discovered:

Realizing that sitting for 8 to 12 hours per day coding is catastrophic for my health.

Understanding the incredibly high and hidden cost of conflict and anger. Films romanticize fighting the good fight. Avoiding a fight (legal, arguments, etc) until you absolutely can’t is worth a lot.

Creativity and intellectual progress happen in a quiet relaxed and happy environment.

Leadership starts with humility.

Big companies signal unassailable leads and competence but tend to be wildly dysfunctional which makes them vulnerable.

Yoga fixes lifelong back pain that drugs, swimming obsessively, chiropractors and workouts could not fix.

Confronting death isn’t that scary, even for an atheist.

We don’t deserve dogs.

Everyone is the main character in their story, including you.

You can be good at just about anything you love doing but can’t be good at many things.

You can’t buy time but managing your time obsessively has its own cost.

Early mornings are a very special time because no one else is up and it is the quietest and most productive part of the day.

Not using an electric toothbrush. First time I used one it felt like I'd had a proper dental cleaning. An extremely half-assed effort with that kind of brush beats a thorough one with a manual brush. I thought they were a gimmick, but no, they're amazing.

Pasta and sauce are not meant to be separate. Once you cook the pasta, drain it, and immediately toss with the sauce. This is part of the reason it was meant to be al dente, to absorb and deliver the flavor of the sauce better. Unlike rice, it's fine to "soak" pasta in the sauce; it expands when freshly cooked but not when cool.

Also most sauce recipes are probably overcomplicated. Most need less than 5 ingredients. You probably don't need all that onion and garlic, but one of them. Definitely not two tablespoons of dried oregano.

The way you cut onions and garlic changes the flavor a lot too. Finely minced garlic, from a food processor or garlic press can be overpowering yet not deliver the flavor. One trick is to crush the garlic and let the oil it's in carry the flavor. Half an onion can work really well in a sauce you cooking for half an hour.

I thought colorblindness tests were designed to be tricky and subtle, so I always passed them through very close inspection. I'm just colorblind.

My father said to me: "I like a shower better than a bath, but ugh, that first blast of cold water when you turn it on is always a bit shocking."

Me: "Why don't you turn on the shower, wait for it to get warm, then get in?"

Him, realizing he'd been using a shower wrong for over 6 decades: "... huh."

Worrying and arguing about things in the future.

I wasted so much time and energy on this but as I get older I've realised there is so little of what we can actually control vs what we think we can do. Most of the time just saying Yes and waiting for things to actually happen is so much easier. A lot of time what you worry about never happens and if it does it isn't always as bad as you make things out to be in your head. A lot of times it turns out to be actually good and it would've been a shame to avoid it.

Also when you say yes to people, a lot of time the other person never actually follows through the thing you didn't want. Otoh if you would argue or say No beforehand it always has the opposite effect.

I guess for most people this is common sense but I did this wrong for a large younger part of my life.

If when you coil a long cable or hose you find yourself fighting a twist as you coil… then you should learn to coil in an alternating overhand/underhand style. Google a video. Basically when grabbing the next hunk of cable you alternate between your thumb pointing away from you down the cable and your thumb point back up the cable to you and things just sort of happen right.

When you uncoil the cable it will be laying flat on the ground with no twists.

An alternative for massive cables it lay it out in a figure 8 on the ground. That will also pay out without twists.

Extension: The upright vacuum cleaner you've been using that releases the cord from the handle by twisting the top hook down? If it is leaving you with a twisted mess of cord, that means you haven't been winding it up in a figure 8.

Even more, since you got this far: Do this with your short cables too. Your USB and audio cables will last longer. When you have a twisted cable, a torque shows up at each individual wire where it meets its connector. The repeated twisting and untwisting leads to connection failure.

And when you get a new cable that is rolled up (any Apple cable), unroll it instead of pulling the ends apart. Then you cable need never have twists put into it.

I used to be a NIMBY. I thought small neighborhoods that have nice characteristics should never evolve or change, I thought places with tons of people were unpleasant to live in, I looked down on people who could afford market-rate new housing ("evil techies"), I thought new development increased rents (it doesn't).

20ish years later, seeing the homelessness, property crime, and housing crisis in the Bay Area, I am convinced I was wrong and wish that the area had built a ton more housing in the past. There used to be so many artists that were able to survive on a part-time cafe job back then. That's no longer possible and it's a bummer and makes the area so much more mundane.

I do still consider open space and parks important and valuable and don't support building new housing on a lot of those types of places.

Not telling my friends that I love them.

I was 28 the first time a friend told me "I love you" in a pure friendship way (and while sober), and without being a part of a special situation. I've also done it afterwards, and because I had never told my friend i love them, it made the message even stronger.

It feels wrong that we don't do this more often.

Chef knives are designed to be held by pinching the blade between the forefinger and the thumb, and wrapping the rest of your fingers around the handle. I used to wrap all my fingers around the handle, until Jacques Pepin showed me how to do it properly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMA2SqaDgG8

It was when I was younger, I was independent and living alone that I realized that I had the power to change myself. In order to succeed there was only one person responsible for my happiness and good fortune, myself. I had to stop waiting for good things to happen, and make sure that I took faith in my own hands.

This has led me to change employment, often, but not that often. It has made me approach many challenges from multiple angles.

Maybe it didn't made me rich (so far) but I feel much wiser and I observe people on the other side, they are stuck in their beliefs and loyalty. So many clever people, smarter than me, but lost to ideas, opportunities and self- improvement.

Not waking up earlier to the fact that the meat section in the supermarket is a product of systemic, gruesome torture of intelligent beings. Like probably many of you who read this, I usually felt a bit guilty when I was confronted with the ugly facts we are all vaguely familiar with. I justified my meat consumption with specieist arguments (humans are so much better than pigs, cows, etc). My wife challenged me to watch at least a little bit of a documentary, and if I still wanted to eat salami, so be it. Afterwards I didn't want to eat salami anymore. I now think that the extreme abuse of animals by the food industry on behalf of ignorant consumers is probably the worst evil of the 21st century. If you disagree, I challenge you - watch 15min and then post your reply: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko

Managing my money. For much of my career, or just my adult life, I never did anything related to money management. I just worked and saved. That's it.

A little context: Growing up, no one ever talked about managing their money. No one had any money to manage. Everyone in my circle lived paycheck-to-paycheck. Any talk about money management was for rich folk, and that wasn't us. So basically, I never learned any of this stuff. Next, my career hit its stride right after the Enron scandal, and then the early-2000s dot-com meltdown. So I just saw investment/retirement accounts, and the stock market in general, as a big con to steal my money. (If you don't know about the Enron scandal, and you wanna be depressed, read up.) Anyway, I was full of FUD, and I was just gonna keep stuffing money in my mattress.

Then, a random conversation with a trusted colleague led to him spending an entire afternoon explaining it all to me. He explained that his various investments were extremely low-risk, and he was still making thousands every year, and that my mattress-stuffing strategy was leaving a lot of easy money on the table. It was the way he explained it all, and the fact that I trusted/respected him that changed everything for me. I'll always owe him.

Mental health. Haven't seen it mentioned yet.

Never think of yourself as wrong, invalid, defective or unworthy. That's wrong. Don't do it.

For about 90 % of my life I've thought about myself as defective in many ways.

- In puberty I thought I was defective because other boys were talking about their crushes, how they'd like to f--- this girl or that girl or how they got a boner just looking at them. Later almost everyone got a girlfriend or two. None of that happened for me, so I felt defective. Turns out I'm gay.

- Also in puberty I'd get random boners when sitting down in the bus. It made me feel ashamed and like a pervert, so I stopped sitting down in public transit. Turns out many boys experience this in puberty because, well... the vibrations. They're called "bus boners".

- I always struggled a lot remembering faces and names. I felt bad about it because I thought it meant I didn't care or try enough. I've always had issues forming relationships and again I felt bad and thought I just had to try harder and make a better effort, which didn't work. And various other issues, and for each of them I thought it was a defect of myself. Turns out I'm on the spectrum and my parents didn't bother telling me about being diagnosed as a child. I only found out when bored me stumbled over online autism tests and literally all of them came out strongly autistic-neurodivergent.

I think I was in my late twenties when I found out I had been tying my shoes wrong all my life. There is a correct and an incorrect way to do it. This affects not just how the knot looks (straight vs crooked), but also how easily it becomes untied: https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/theres-a-better-way-to-tie-...

"Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?"

Worked hard believing it would be rewarded.

Not my entire life, but competing with my girlfriend/wife. Trying to win arguments instead of trying to solve the problem. Holding onto resentments instead of letting them go. We used to have huge arguements all the time, it took having a kid together to finally hammer it into my head that we are on the same team, we need to work together. Since then we've had 2 kids under 2 during covid and barely argued in 4 years

Putting off an annual checkup with a PCP (I’m 42, and the last PCP I had was a pediatrician). I had long suspected my cholesterol and triglycerides were high due to family history and my excessive love for cheese, and last week that suspicion was confirmed. I’m now more resolute than ever on lifestyle changes (exercise, less red meat, getting most of my calcium from 2% milk).

On the bright side, I also got reassurance that outside the lipid panel, everything else (sugar, kidney and liver function, PSA, etc.) seems normal.

Other than laziness and procrastination, a huge part of me was dreading being told I need a prostate exam and colonoscopy, but fortunately I don’t need either for at least 3 more years.

Wearing modern shoes. As a society, we have somehow led everyone down the path that feet must be wrapped in socks that constrict the feet, then placed in shoes that are designed for looks and not anatomy. It's led to generations of people that have weak feet, and unnecessary pain all throughout their body because the base of what they stand on has been weakened.

Wearing toe socks and minimalist shoes, combined with going barefoot as much as possible, has rescued my feet, ankles, and knees from pain.

Expecting other people to reach out to me without making any real effort myself.

At some point I heard this thought experiment: If you could only have one, which is more important: To love or to be loved?

Now I understand that if I want to receive love and connection that I have to be able to give it. This shift has strengthened so many of my relationships and helped me build new ones as well.

I used to assume the religious people were missing something and missing out on the latest and greatest.

Now I am seeing that often it's us the non-religious that have lost something of value and are trying to replace it with things that don't work as well.

Buying fewer more expensive items of clothing > buying more items at a much cheaper price point.

I've noticed this the most with outdoorsy equipment, like my pair of wool socks (Darn Tough). They are 3x more expensive that cotton, but they keep my feet warm without overheating them, are thicker so I can comfortably walk around the house with no other footwear, they don't hardly get smelly, they also dry really fast. That last one comes in handy when you need to cross streams.

A common one is the tying of one's shoelaces. It's pretty common to tie the knot in an unbalanced way. https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

Ive modestly tried to lose weight my whole life. Ive never been fat, but still had to work to keep my calories low. Im 5' 9", and it took 10 years to go from 170 to more like 160. Losing weight made me weaker and caused me to lose muscle.

Ive recently started weightlifting for strength (low reps high weights) and the mindset is totally different. With weightlifting to keep your lifts going up you have to eat more. One standard is 1g protein/pound of target body weight. It turns out it is really hard to eat that much protein and when you do you arent that hungry. Im now trying to gain weight to get up to 190-200. Ive gained 10 pounds back to 170, but it is more muscle than fat.

In the end weight is just a meaningless number and building muscle becomes a positive spiral. Losing weight causes a loss in muscle which becomes a negative spiral.

Paradoxically you can be leaner, look better, and be stronger at a higher weight.

Walking.

Currently in my late 30s, I've long enjoyed pushing my limits in many forms of physical exertion - running, climbing, skiing, mountain biking, etc. However, as I've aged and my bones are no longer made of rubber, I have been forced to realize that pain is not often gain.

Dealing with the many persistent aches and pains, I was prompted by a friend to get a 'gait analysis' to assist with my running longer distances and in more diverse terrain. I quickly learned from my very skillful physical therapist/gait analyst, that my gait for running is not sustainable- and will lead to kinks and pains as I progress. Taking a step back, she identified that many of those gait quirks stem from my walking gait. And she quickly identified that my walking gait is out-of-wack due to an injury I sustained while playing basketball when I was 13.

25 years later, I am challenged to learn how to walk correctly.. so the question I have is if I haven't yet learned to walk, have I really ever been able to run? I doubt it, but I'm a pretty firm believer that I will be able to in the future.

Edit: I can't spelle

You aren't supposed to rinse your mouth with water after brushing your teeth. You're supposed to spit excess, but leave the toothpaste on to absorb.

Monopoly. If the player elects not to buy the property he lands on, it gets auctioned to the other players. This oft unfollowed rule makes the game 100x more fun when followed.

OK here's a dumb one. You know how the label on EVERY toilet bowl cleaner bottle always says "Step 1: flush toilet"? I always dutifully followed those instructions, thinking "hmm, the extra splashing water must be pretty important and help it mix or something."

But no. One day I realized it's just that my toilet always started from a flushed state... like a normal person. But they knew somewhere out there, someone would try to clean their toilet still full of piss and shit.

Taking a number two without the use of a footstool to get into a more natural squatting position. I look forward to the ritual every morning and usually achieve 'poophoria'.

I have always taken my good relationship with my father for granted. Not sure how to properly express this in english, but I don't remember having issues with him. We were present in each others' lives but while at the same time not connected.

Yesterday while visiting him it just struck me like a lightning strike that I had no connection with him. Our world views are so fundamentally different that I might have disrespected him by some honest mistake. It was a difficult realization to process, but I feel like there's no going back from this.

Something very deep inside has changed. I spent the night awaken next to my toddler thinking how I want a different fate for our own relationship, while at the same time having no clue how to even bring this up to my father. He expects something from me that I just can't (and don't) want to give.

Still, I think this is progress, somehow.

Not using a bidet.

I was enlightened the first time I traveled to Japan, and an affordable ($50) add-on has been installed in our master bath ever since.

Not getting my dog professionally trained.

I spent the money to send him to a proper board and train, and it was life changing. Our relationship is better. He is happier and less stressed. I was able to take him off sedatives. Plus it's cool to have a dog with perfect recall that I can take anywhere without worrying.

If you can afford it, I can't recommend finding a reputable balanced trainer more highly.

My doctor had me work on increasing the amount of water I drink in a day until I hit the recommended amount, and journaling the result.

Turns out, I had spent most of my life dehydrated. I feel so much better when I drink a ton of water.

Being arrogant for 47~ish years, did nothing good for me.

Now I work hard on being friendly, curious and kind towards others.

I apparently hold chopsticks incorrectly. I am a white guy so it’s not like this is my culture—I just started holding them the way I do as a kid in sushi restaurants and no one ever corrected me. I found out when I married my wife, who is from Taiwan.

Here’s the kicker though: I’m more dexterous with chopsticks than even she is. I can pick and place a single grain of rice, or hold the most slippery noodles with ease. So she just laughed about it and told me to keep doing whatever the heck I do.

Thinking other people's emotions were my responsibility (or likewise that other people were responsible for my emotions). I can control my actions and that is all. If someone reacts negatively, it's not my fault, and it's not my responsibility. I may choose to help them through it, but at the end of the day, I can't, nor should I want to control other people's emotions.

One of the worst thing I did for many decades was drink bottled water and/or tap water. For many years I bought bottled water for home consumption. I eventually learned about under-sink reverse-osmosis water filtration systems and invested in one. For the last ~15 years, I've used such systems, following scheduled filter replacements. The water tastes and feels better than bottled water. Last year, my county water utility issued a boiled water alert due to high levels of e-coli. This wasn't a problem at all for me because of my water filtration system.

For the past 15 years or so, every night before bedtime I would proclaim “Time to hit the shack!” or “I’m going to hit the shack”.

In reality it is a “sack” that you hit, not a “shack”.

Oh! Another!

Car side mirrors. I spent more than a decade of driving adjusting them wrong. You want them so you don't see cars behind you at all in your side mirrors until they're transitioning off the edge of your center rear-view mirror. This gives you far more coverage of your sides, and every car is still visible in at least one mirror at all times. For me, where I put my seat, this usually means setting them as far out as they'll go.

Putting a teaspoon handle-down into a bottle of champagne when putting it in the fridge in order to "retain the fizziness" which I did unquestionably as something we just "did", until I had to tell someone else to do it a few months ago and realised that there was no reason this should work and, lo and behold, it makes no difference whatsoever.

Having my tongue rest on the bottom of your mouth.

Proper tongue positioning is when you rest your tongue on the roof of the mouth and away from the teeth. It's been 2 years I've been "mewing"[1]. A good side effect for me: Now I stop snoring and I believe I have better posture. Some claim that it will improve your jawline but not for me, I guess I started too late. If I had started in my teen, I believe I would have had a great face today ?

[1] Check youtube videos for "mewing" or lookup JawHacks videos

Ask my wife what she prefers and tell her what I prefer.

Years of marriage before we figured out I hate cleaning small things (silverware and glasses) and she hates cleaning big things (pots and pans). We permanently changed how we clean up after meals.

Not exactly in line with your premise, but changed my entire outlook about expressing what I want or prefer about almost anything.

I always thought I need to exercise [more] to lose weight. Wrong. For all practical purposes, to lose weight you must change what you eat.

Breathing.

I was sucking my gut in on inhale, and expanding it on exhale. Once I tried it the other way around, it locked and I've breathed this new way ever since.

It's obvious to give your lungs more room, couldn't believe to have been doing something so basic wrong.

Peeling bananas.

I used to open them from the hard stem bit which was not always successful, but it turns out that if you pinch them at the other end, they open up much easier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8svUCSuMS4

Dismissing people as undesirable without any thought of why they became the way they are. It's very easy to quickly make up your mind about someone who you don't like without asking yourself "why did this person became such an a-hole or someone you just don't want to have any relation with". I have realized that most of these people have had lives that have made them whatever negative adjectives I would give them.

For several years since I got my first cell phone I held my cell phone during conversations so its top side is on the same level as top edge of my ear. Seems neat an logical, right?

Then I realized that I should align its speaker to be right against my ear canal, that is 1-2 cm lower. And now I could hear the other person so much better!

How to text if you would like to date someone.

Not: “What’s up”

Not: “<open-ended question>”

Not: “<this is what I did over the weekend>. How was yours?”

Yes: <Logistics of meeting up>

That barring any real medical issue ... intermittent fasting is hard. We just think it is.

Every time I tried it, I'd sabotage my efforts not knowing by chewing gum, eating tic tacs, using flavored tea, etc this would just trigger my insulin response and I'd get hungry throughout the day.

All I had to do, is just simplify my intake to any of these: water, black coffee, black tea or any tea with a bitter profile.

And that's it. Fasting would get easier after that, especially after first few days.

And you could do 4h, 6h, 8h, 12h, 20h easy peasy. No problem.

And if you should experience the desire to eat during those periods, most of the time it was just psychological. Your body isn't dying. You are more resilient than that.

Arching my lower back as a default position for sitting and standing and avoiding rounding my back at all times. I always thought that slumped posture was the most important thing to avoid, but this created maladaptive muscle fixedness around the spine, confirmed by imaging taken by orthopedists.

The spine is adapted to bend multiple ways, including rounding, as a matter of good exercise form. It's a major function of your abdominal musculature, in fact, to compress the spine forward along the transverse plane. Just don't pick up heavy stuff that way or hunch over a desk all day.

Typing. I've always been a self-taught hunt-picker, but for some reason, as a teenager I picked up a terrible technique that involves using thumbs for keys to the side of the spacebar.

Later in life I trained myself into touch-typing (and then to use Colemak), but for some reason I can't seem to shake off this annoying thumb bit.

Not using a meat thermometer, especially when cooking fish, and extra especially when cooking halibut, which is ridiculously touchy and easy to overcook. Now I used a thermometer to get the interior to exactly 120F and it comes out perfect every time.

Avoiding and suppressing uncomfortable emotions and feelings instead of fully accepting and acting on them. This is of course a huge topic in itself and easier said than done but I'm confident that investment on this area almost always worth it. You are fortunate if you got this already in childhood!

Another thing would be flossing with dental brushes. Gum infections can ruin your health in many ways.

Cutting onion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwRttSfnfcc

Telling myself that I have no worth. Thinking that lead me to believe the only way to demonstrate my worth is to be superman at work. Being superman allowed me to demonstrate my value each day (corresponds to the 'but what have you done for me lately' mindset of American tech culture), allowed me to get validation that I was not worthless. That drive helped me professionally, which helped me demonstrate my worth as a provider, because obviously without the nice house, new cars, etc my wife would leave me (even though she didn't ask for these things). Being superman burned me out and took up all my time. Which lead to worse relationships with my wife/kids, which re-enforced I had no value/worth. We tried an external solution of moving to the countryside. But ultimately my thinking broke me completely. My court ordered rehab counselor trips out on it. He's like dude, you are a person, you lived better than I ever will, you helped tens of thousands of people in a demonstrable way (software I wrote and was the name on patents for had some life changing impacts), all of the women in this office comment on how it's crazy you are attractive and have no partner, talking to you you are well educated, present yourself well and people like you. In group you are the natural leader. Dude none of your thinking makes any sense. I hear him say it, but inside I know. I put on a good show, I can convince people I am a person, but I know the truth. I have no value. Everyone in group will see through and realize it eventually. I don't know how to change this or get past it.

But I want to. I want friends. But I can't accept friends, because they will find out I have no worth, so I only have acquaintances. Honestly, I want my best friend back, my ex, but that is way gone.

Being superman != a way to measure your worth. Work != the value of you. You != nothing.

Be kind to yourself, show yourself love. You have value. I know that you do. If only I knew that I do too.

I used to be a smoker. I started at a very young age. For the longest time I would carelessly flick cigarette butts.

One day it dawned on me that I was littering.

Odd thing was I never littered outside of that. In fact cleaning up litter was part of my job at the time.

Not going to a therapist because of fear of social stigma.

It doesn't matter if you do nice things for other people. Do it because you enjoy helping others, not because you want a response.

You are acting incredibly selfishly if you help people because you feel it entitles you to a specific outcome.

I now see why people have called me childish. You have to let people have their own agency and decide whether they want your help or even like what your doing. You can't get upset if they don't think it's as good as you do.

Find people who care and lean into those. Forget the rest. Don't get emotionally attached to people who don't care about you. You can never "nice" them into liking you. Fake friendships are everywhere and you may seem "rude" by realizing this or pointing it out... but you can both live better lives by not continuing the charade.

Swallowing ;) I learned from ortodontist that the reason I don’t have nice teeth arch and the reason that I have trouble with pills is because of „infantile swallowing”, basically pressing tongue to lower teeth and not lower palate. Learning this solved so many of my problems. This lowers efficiency of breathing and make you snore and might be related to sleep apnea and this makes you tired and depressed so please check your kids.

Using cannabis recreationally, regularly.

I've voted twice to (successfully) repeal prohibition laws in states I've lived in, and would do it again.

Cannabis dependency is real however, and it's the "safe" drug compared to, say, heroin; but I'd recommend taking breaks, or consider stopping.

Wrong in thinking that being a nice guy and always doing what women/partner want would make them desire me more. Robert glover's book was eye opening.

Multiple people beat me to the shoelace one, so here's one I don't see yet: running. At 48, I had hated running practically since I had first been able to do it, but I was in a situation where I decided to give it another try. I quickly figured out why I had hated it. I had been doing it wrong all my life. A little reading taught me about pacing and body lean and foot landings, and then ... well, it still kinda sucked TBH. But it sucked a lot less, in the way that anything hard will suck, and I've been able to stick with it year-round for almost nine years since. Still amazes me that I spent more than four decades doing something so basic so wrong. So much for being a smart guy, I guess.

I realized that blaming the The world and other people for my misery was a waste of my life.

http://scottrlarson.com/books/book-most-improved/

Rinsing after brushing my teeth.

This may be controversial, but keeping the fluoride on your teeth as much as possible helps prevent tooth decay. Rinsing immediately after brushing dilutes or removes fluoride. What was the point? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Drinking a glass of orange juice every morning. That stuff is full of sugar.

Actually managing sugar intake in general. I'm 30 and just starting to do something about it.

I always overengineer and min/max things. Simple and some progress is better than none.

No, grandma doesn't need a fibre connection with a NAS server with plex, using usenet, when she just wants the basic gardening channels :D

I've always thought the sun was some kind of yellowy orange. It's not, it's bright white. Not entirely my fault because if you check the NASA images of the sun they are all yellowy orange so either they are helping to perpetuate the conspiracy or, they don't know what color the sun is either!

Focusing on who is right. On average, when you want to improve any given situation, it's a lot less important then it intuitively should be.

I used to always stand up to wipe. At one point in my adult life, there was a conversation and I realized everyone else does not do this. Then I tried wiping while sitting down. So much easier.

For 30 years I sang "whoa-a, head waving" instead of "whoa-a, we're halfway there"

Making promises.

When my child would ask to do something or desire something I might have said, "Not today but I promise in the future ...". Often I would never follow up on those.

Now, I am more inclined to say, "I will do my best to make that happen" or something along those lines but no promises.

Assuming. As in, others understanding, maybe not believing, what I'm trying to get across. Others get a reasonable argument or are open minded. (Of course what's reasonable to me isn't always to others.) Others can walk their own life path instead of being led by others. (This is still very difficult for me as I try to understand how people are led by others who don't always have their best interest at heart.)

Now I've learned to take almost nothing for granted, which makes me happier.

I used to regularly feel bad but didn’t recognize the feeling as thirst. Turns out humans are supposed to drink water.

I used to always cut open packages in the kitchen with a sharp knife (typically a steak knife). When I got married, my SO was a big fan of kitchen shears, so I was introduced to them.

Using shears is a far better experience, and they're useful for pizza too.

This is for people who lift weights. Do you get calluses along the pads of your hand, just below your fingers? You are probably gripping the bar incorrectly. This also applies to pull-ups/chin-ups grip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OK-S3ZJZxQ.

TL;DR: grip the bar across the joint at the bottom of your fingers instead of across the middle of your palm. This doesn't apply to bench pressing (a push), but applies to all moves that involve pulling/lifting the bar.

Not using a bidet. I honestly feel like the single biggest quality of life improvement I've had in my adult life was realizing how much of a difference a bidet makes.

That, and using flushable wipes when at home instead of just 100% toilet paper.

Shoe lacing. Then I found out Ian's fantastic website:

https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

Small, but life-changing discovery.

As a developer you need to have a Documents, Downloads and Development folder. I was always shuffling things around in documents and downloads till i realised I need a Development folder. I'm sure i read it somewhere but never took it seriously. It is one of those things that needs to be included in CS 000 (how to use command line, github etc.)

Ice might not be the best treatment for aches, pains, muscle sprains, etc.:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34051860

such a fun thread. I started reading when there were 600 comments, I only managed to read a few and now there are 900. but I'm learning a lot! I even improved my shoe tying skills!

Breathing through my mouth.

I trained myself to breathe through my nose during the day. And at night, I put a little piece of tape on my mouth to make sure I breathe through my nose.

Tying my shoelaces: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

I was doing what Ian calls the "Un-balanced Shoelace Knot". Reversing the starting knot makes all the difference.

Eating. I’ve stressed and binged eaten all my life without knowing.

Removed the two, started surfing and 50kg (110 pounds) later I’m happier and more active than I’ve ever been.

Standing. Turns out you shouldn’t be standing with locked knees. I learned it in my twentees. People with hyperlordosis have tendency to do that it seems.

Tangential to the original question, just want to note that having such realizations constantly is one of the primary benefits that accrues if you expend the energy to constantly keep yourself in a learning/teaching mindset.

The primary global benefit of teaching, in my experience, is that it keeps us jaded experts constantly at the entry point to our field. Close to the basic, foundational material. Making sure that it’s easy for new people to join, because that’s how the field grows and it’s good for everyone in it.

The primary local benefit, to the teacher, is that you have moments like this that allow you to constantly refine your worldview to be more congruent with reality. This allows you to better define what should be taught, and how.

Being correct is extremely overrated, it’s better to allocate that time to doing more things or fully internalizing information you already know (I.e. how everyone knows it’s better to take chances than not but basically everyone is at least somewhat chance-averse).

I don't know to what extent it's wrong, but I've been drinking tap water for years. Here in Germany it's generally said to be of high quality, but apparently 1 litre contains 100 nanograms of hormones (via birth control medication).[1] Even at such concentrations the hormones are said to have an effect (the article quotes a professor for membrane technology and describes a new filtering process aiming to solve this issue).

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.de/umwelt/2022/03/hormone-im-...

Not really "wrong" but at some point in the last couple years I was using my microwave, putting something in for a minute, and for that I've always input 1:00 but suddenly I realized how obvious it was that I can just be inputting 60.

As long as you can easily modulo the time, this works for the range 1 minute (60) to 1 minute 39 seconds (99). Technically you could also do this for times like 2:65 instead of 3:05 but at that point you're not saving a keystroke. And on most microwaves they have an annoying delay between when you can do another keystoke after doing the last one, so I've appreciated the little bit of time saving I get with this knowledge.

I realised most of my basic health routine was useless to detrimental:

- Soap: it disrupt the skin microbiome. Only useful for hand washing and to clean private parts / the bottom. Even then use high quality soap like Marseille soap or Aleppo soap.

Note: Also as mentioned in the comments if you avoid soap / deodorant you *will* probably need to shower two times a day even without doing physical activities. Three times with physical activities.

You may also need to particularly rub the smelly parts of the body (e.g. the armpits) with a clean sponge, use mild to hot water (cold water doesn’t do it without soap) and trim your body hair. There is no magic. People use soap for a reason: it’s more “practical” and it requires less care to stay clean

And if you are used to wash yourself with soap and you brutally stop you may smell a little the first month until your microbiome is able to handle all the waste and your skin to balance its oil production. Even if you shower multiple times a day.

- Shampoo: Most shampoos are very a agressive for your scalp / hairs and should be avoided. Especially if you have fragile / curly hair. You can wash them with plain water or conditioner instead.

Note: Using a gentle shampoo without silicones and surfactants can still be useful from time to time. Especially to reset the pH of the scalp.

Also using a shampoo rarely and co-washing instead can be impractical if you have long hair as it’s way harder to clean and takes far longer to dry

- Toothpaste: it can be useful but it’s not so important. What really is important is to brush your teeth energetically to remove by mechanical friction the dental plaques and to change toothbrush frequently. Avoiding for a time to use toothpaste and using dental plaque revealer can be a great way to learn how to properly wash one’s teeth

Note: As someone else noted “energetically” means speed and taking your time. *Not* applying pressure on your teeth. Also toothpaste helps the teeth by providing fluoride. It’s just that using it every time may not be so useful and do not replace brushing your teeth effectively

How to blow my nose. I used to have to find a bathroom to blow my nose, because I couldn't figure out how to keep it from going everywhere, while still getting it emptied. I just recently learned the proper way in my late 40s.

Using a vegetable peeler. You can cut on both strokes, push and pull, and it goes (more than) twice as fast.

I have been tying my shoes the wrong way my whole life. It was thanks to HN that I found out, and it was mind-boggling. My knots were always untying, but I just thought that was the way they were, so I just kept tying them as hard as I could, to prevent them from untying.

This video explains it very well:

https://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_how_to_tie_your_shoes

Focussed too much on the technical side of things and not enough on the people side of things at work. I'm trying to change this but should have done it years ago.

Binding your shoe laces wrong with an easily loosening granny knot instead of a proper square knot.

Not answering strictly according to "you've done your whole life", but I see this often when deliberately looking at other's shoe laces. I just recently tried to correct someone's 40yr old habit :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granny_knot

Do you have to tie a double knot to keep your shoes from coming untied? Do your loops end up pointing down at your toes and up your leg instead of pointing to the sides of your shoe? Do you shoes come untied all the time? You are probably tying a granny knot instead of a square knot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAFcV7zuUDA

Proper hand washing. The only good thing about the pandemic. I wonder how many colds I could have avoided by spending 20 seconds soaping up instead of 2.

It's been awhile, but learning to set my side mirrors correctly on my car. Once set correctly my blind spot isn't 0%, but it was dramatically reduced by 95% or so. That's also when I learned only the passenger side mirror is convex (in the States) the driver side isn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIkodlp8HMM

I hold spoons kind of "wrong"; basically put your palm facing down, make a fist, and then support the spoon with your thumb. That's how I eat soup when I'm not actively thinking about it. I just control the angle of the spook with my thumb.

It's objectively not as flexible as the traditional spoon grip but I can't seem to shake the habit. Gets me strange looks sometimes

So many haha ...

1) Working for someone else instead of starting my own company.

2) Trusting people to do right thing instead of accepting that people are selfish.

3) Giving up on interesting tech projects because my friends didn't understand its value.

4) Write a lot of code before testing it haha

5) Avoiding tech bubbles instead of figuring out how to get in and out quickly.

6) Not keeping close contact with my tech friends (many of whom are super successful now).

Tying my shoelaces. It turns out, most of us have been doing this wrong for years. When you get to the stage where you have a loop in your right hand and are taking the left lace around that loop, it's actually better to go behind the right loop, not in front.

If you do this properly, you never need to double knot your shoes.

One thing to keep in mind, it will be harder at first and that might lead to your initial knot being looser which will lead to unties. Keep at it, and I guarantee it is better. It still blows me away that the other method is so prevalent when this one is better and no harder. How does that happen!?

Source and graphics: https://www.realmenrealstyle.com/tie-shoes-right-way/

Several years ago, I was reading the NYRB selections from Thoreau's journals. Somewhere well into it, he wrote of talking with a friend, and the two deciding that perhaps they were tying their shoes wrong. They switched the order of the first cross-over, and found the results much better.

I tried it (age 50-something), and discovered that I no longer needed to double-knot my shoes.

Food is not a reward. Food is not for recreation. Food is not for fun.

Food is fuel.

Food should be delicious and enjoyable. Your enjoyment can come from taste, not from quantity. Being hungry is a good sign, not a problem. And "Just full enough" is more than full enough.

I have a long way to go, but at 46 years old, this is all a revelation to me.

A couple of years ago I realized that the big metal rod inside the box that holds the knives is for sharpening.

How to tie my shoes. If if loop around the other way than I normally do, the bow stands parallel to the ground plane instead of vertical and gets tighter over time instead of looser and undone. I don’t have to constantly retie my shoes anymore since figuring that out.

Diet. I think everyone should do keto diet or carnivore. There is no "everbody has his own diet". It is a little bit strong, but I believe it to be true. Everything else is either addictive and harmful or doesn't have nutrients.

You are tying your shoes wrong: https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/theres-a-better-way-to-tie-... (tie the bow reversed from the square knot and it will last much longer)

But then trying to come up with a good link I hit this alternative version which is really cool: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm

Likely you can do an Ian knot reversed from the square knob, but I need to play with that.

I too kind of hold my pencil “wrong” when I write. I tend to rest my wrist on the paper, which leads to smudging of the text and graphite building up on my hands.

I never really learned a better way; I am just a really fast typist now and I type everything.

I've been playing guitar on and off for 30 years. I'm holding the pick completely wrong and it probably negatively impacts my playing - but I've struggled to correct it (I hold it with thumb, index and middle finger; if I try to hold it with just two fingers, it inevitably slides out after a few strums; I don't know how people do it).

I've also been trying to snap my fingers wrong for 20 years until somebody finally explained to me that it wasn't my fingers rubbing / clicking / pouncing against each other that made the sound, it was the finger snapping/clapping on the meaty part of your wrist. Doh!

The song jingle bells - I'd been saying "one horse slope and sleigh" for like 25 years.

I'm not dumb, I just never looked at the lyrics I guess? IDK, it was a life changing moment I'll tell you that much.

Rinsing my mouth with water after brushing my teeth.

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-teeth-and-gums/how-to-k...

> Don't rinse with water straight after toothbrushing

> After brushing, spit out any excess toothpaste.

> Don't rinse your mouth immediately after brushing, as it'll wash away the concentrated fluoride in the remaining toothpaste.

> Rinsing dilutes it and reduces its preventative effects.

I've been rinsing my mouth after brushing my teeth my whole life. Turns out you should not. Logically, why even buy that expensive toothpaste only to negate all its positive impact by rinsing it away?

I spent the first 25+ years of my life[1] thinking that philosophy, logic and reason were the most powerful and effective tools for driving and guiding my life.

Nope!

[1] OK, maybe not my whole like but at least from 10-11 onwards.

when regulating temperature, the body does better at heating than cooling: i sleep better and all the way through the night with a wool blanket @ 10C than with thin sheets @ 20C.

Realizing that the food we commonly eat, like butter, meat and dairy, are the main source of cardiovascular diseases that are the prevailing cause of death in our society.

A few years ago I discovered that I had spent my entire life tying my shoes incorrectly, with a Granny Knot instead of the stable Square Knot (the knots are very similar). My shoes would always come untied and I frequently double knotted them. Now a single knot is always sufficient.

https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

I realised in my 20's I was tying my shoes wrong and that's why my laces always got lose. I don't think I ever had them loosen themselves since I learned the correct way from this Ted X video : https://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_how_to_tie_your_shoes?...

Pronouncing "February" with an r after the b.

• Just be kind to women

• If you like a girl, tell her she's pretty

• Buy a girl some flowers and watch her appreciate it

• Just make her laugh, women love a guy with a sense of humour

• Just let her know how you really feel if you like her

• Just hold the door open for her

• Just ask her out, the worst she can say is no

• Just find a girl that likes you for you

• Just listen to her and show her you care

• Just be a gentleman and pay her compliments

• Just be yourself!

• Just stop trying and the girl of your dreams will come into your life when you least expect it.

What is the new writing grip and what were you doing before?

I always assumed dynamic tripod grip was what was taught, and the best, as it's how I write, but a couple of my kids used a cross between lateral tripod and quadrupod - and their teachers would complain about their writing.

I had to restrain myself when I realized this is what they'd been taught, and next met the teachers responsible.

When making jam or cooking anything to keep for later, not touching the inside of the lid after to boil it to kill germs! I learned that when making jam with a friend who's a doctor in a hospital and it's so easy to accidentally touch something to then comes into contact with the food. Also, to properly kill germs, you need to cook stuff for 7 minutes...

I walked wrong. When I was around 11 years old, a relative pointed out that my gait was weird because I placed the front-of-the-foot on the ground before the heel. I'm not sure if I'd done this for all my life, or if it was a recent habit, but once it was pointed out - I fixed it immediately, to the point where I forgot my old gait by the next few days.

Sleeping on my stomach. I'm pretty sure it makes my back/neck pain worse, but I'm just unable to change this habit.

Consuming animal products.

I previously used to rinse my mouth after brushing my teeth, then was told not to do this. Not rinsing is a big improvement.

I actually went up stairs up until my 20s always while holding my breath. Sometimes wondering why it's so exhausting.

Tying my shoes.

For almost 40 years my RT shoe lace would always come undone after walking for a few minutes.

Turns out I was making the same mistake on only my RT shoe, rather constantly.

Thanks Ian! https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

Realizing one needs to move their 401k plans when you leave a job or incur higher fees and potentially stagnant growth.

Also, it appears Roth IRAs need you to pick an investment option, but when I created one I don't recall there being an option. Invested ~3k and many moons later it was still ~3k.

There was a thing about tying shoelaces a few years back, for example this from the BBC [1]. Apparently I was doing it wrong but anyway I prefer the extra back exercise I get from bending down to retie.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT2XiPgiZK8

Honestly - when I bought a bidet seat, I truly felt like I had been lied to my whole life that TP was acceptable.

Tying shoelaces in a granny knot instead of a square knot. In a granny knot the shoe laces sit crooked and easily come undone.

https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

Tying my shoes: My knots would always come out, so i got into the habit of tying the loops together. A few years ago, in my mid 50's I realized that I was tying a granny not rather than a square not. I made the adjustment and have never tied my loops together again.

Trying to do everything by myself instead of asking for help.

Buying alcohol based mouthwash. For years the burning sensation was always terrible and I'd often cheat, either not using as much or not swishing as long as recommended. Accidentally grabbed alcohol free mouthwash one time and it was wonderful.

I recently realized why snowboard jackets have double zippers. I always struggled to bend down to clip in my boots into my snowboard bindings while standing up. I now unzip a third of the way there and it’s a lot easier to bend down.

Apparently, I've been doing lat pull-downs the wrong way for like 20 years, using too much biceps instead of the lats. Took a trainer just a few minutes to correct me and I def feel the difference.

So I learned recently that I was tying my shoes in the wrong way my whole life.

The classic knot has two versions, the weak one where loops are more vertical, and the strong one where loops are more horizontal.

It took me about two weeks to re-learn tying my shoes.

Self-doubt. Assume I was always the least intelligent person in the room.

Operated like Clarence Thomas did at oral arguments for close to a decade... Assumed that if something was worth asking someone else would ask it.

not wrong/right but I was watching a video where monkeys were eating bananas. And then I tried it and now I've stuck to it. I've always had issues opening bananas so for me, that's the right way.

I always thought the SUM() function in spreadsheets was “here be maths” function. So, whenever I do anything in spreadsheets I wrap it in =SUM(), like SUM(A1 / B1).

I know it’s wrong, but it’s in muscle memory already.

holding pens & pencils wrong. I've known since I was in like 2nd grade when my teacher told me. I only tried to change it in my twenties with some success in my mid-late twenties. I work on the computer mostly so I rarely write, but I keep trying to improve!

see second image here to see what I mean by wrong: https://thecrackedamethyst.tumblr.com/post/180226225116/appa...

Turns out there are two ways to tie your shoelaces (the direction of the top knot wrt the bottom) and the one I didn’t do never went untied.

(Also turns out you can buy perfectly good shoes without laces so extra win)

You-buntu vs oo-buntu,

Something coworkers from years ago still like to give me grief about.

Working on social interactions and refining nuances would have gone a long way for my career but my sheer technical aptitude has managed to carry me pretty far as I am happy to go.

Similar. When my baby lets air out of his esophagus, he makes a stuttering sound. I've started throttling my burps with my mouth and it's more comfortable.

For years I dealt cards with my non-dominant hand. When I switched I got twice as fast.

That and wearing incorrectly sized dress shirts and feeling like I was being choked in ties.

When I was about 12, I sprained my thumb and started holding pencils very differently because my thumb was in a splint. It took decades to go back to the right way.

As someone who sits at a desk for long hours it was not doing stretching exercises, such as yoga, every day.

I thank my partner for introducing that habit into my life.

Using toilet paper...bidets are easier and more hygienic.

I eat hotdogs "sideways". Since I don't put condiments on mine, I eat it so there's bun on top like a hamburger would be.

Supposedly you're not to rinse after brushing so the flouride can "apply" to your teeth. I think that's gross so oh well.

Peeling a banana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i733KI8B6-Q

Care about what the company I'm working with is making. If I'm not heavily in equity and it's just a job then I shouldn't be giving a dam about they are making. I should only be interesting in what they are paying me and the benefits I get from working at the company.

I used to get real upset when the codebase I working on was shit and even left companies due to this. In reality what was more important was those companies where paying a shit wage that was why their codebase stank.

I still innately spell maybe mabye. I have to stop myself and correct my spelling manually wver single time I write the word.

Eating Marmite instead of Vegemite. Only in my fifties did I discover that Marmite tastes different because it contains sugar.

Trying to get happiness from external conditions instead of making it at home in my body through meditation and understanding.

Not asking a questions.

Curiosity or lack of understanding of topic is great opportunity to learn new things. And also put my ego on side.

Acquired a utility knife with those cheap replaceable blades instead of abusing the kitchen scissors for everything

Now I'm curious how you held it!

In my late 30s, I learned that I'd been tying my shoes wrong my entire life.

I should have become a goat farmer...

Worry about what other people think

My psychology friends are going to be busy for months (or years) with the responses here…

I can't imagine dealers and manufacturers agreeing to fix these vehicles on their dime. I can't imagine the charging station owners offering to fix the vehicles on their dime.

I think the only option for these people will be to file an insurance claim, let the insurance company sort out who's at fault and try to pursue them.

It took me up until this year to learn I tie my shoes wrong.

The knot has to be balanced. I never knew.

Believing main-stream media when they would say "conspiracy theory".

Just about everything. Not a single thing I do is the right way. It is a way.

Elon Musk mentioned the "Elevate the head of your bed by 3"" a few months back. Had an open schedule that day so I said "f-it, let's go look at my lumber out back".

Long story short, I put a 4x4 (3.5" actual) across the head of the box spring and a 2x4" (1.5" actual) across the middle. I have been sleeping a whole lot better even since.

Reading hackernews to find out how to start a startup

Almost everything.

Not sure if I was doing it wrong, but I recently started putting the pizza out of the oven and into the frozen pizza box it came in. It's much cleaner!

What’s with the proliferation of Ask HN post? Take this back to Reddit.

Not liking how Ask HN is turning into AskReddit

ignoring god.

Thinking that most people have good intentions.

tabs, not spaces.

Being a smart-ass and saying to my kids: "I don't believe it, I know it" without first stopping to realise that knowledge of something additionally requires that one believes it to be true.