30
votes
What’s a mistake many people do not know they are making?
Any answer in any scope is fair game: can be something very minor or something quite significant. It can be very domain-specific or very general.
Also the goal of the thread isn’t to judge people for their mistakes but more just highlight some common errors in hopes of bringing more awareness to them.
Don't work or study when you're tired.
A lot of people (inexperienced people especially, but also plenty of seniors) have this idea that one hour of work is always worth one hour of work. But in nearly every situation (even most blue collar jobs), you will be less productive, less efficient and less diligent when you are tired.
In some jobs (programming …), you may even be creating more work for yourself by "staying up a bit longer to finish this". The next day you'll wake up and wonder what the fuck you were thinking last night.
Do not work when you are tired. Go to sleep.
I heard this so often that I consider it the norm. Fact is, near 100% of times I “went to sleep” instead of finishing something hard, in a night shortly before a deadline, I regretted it. Yea, I’ll get some sleep. But I lose time. The productivity increase from being well rested cannot replace hours of work.
What I’ll agree with is that you should ideally have a good night sleep before a final pass on your work to get some distance and a more relaxed view that helps with spotting mistakes and realizing things you missed. But it always turned out to be a net positive for me to pull an all nighter to finish up stuff so it’s fucking done the next day instead of hoping to magically get it done in a morning's worth of well rested work. Never worked, always was a bad idea.
I’m not saying this is a good way to do things and whenever possible you should avoid situations like this. But once you’re in it, it’s too late. You already messed up. There’s no more room for good time management because time ran out. Finish your work and learn from your mistake for the next project.
As with all things i ever say, there is nuance.
However, if you were exhausted and went to sleep instead of finishing work that required any sort of brainpower, odds are the alternative wouldn't have been "you did the work at the expense of being more tired", but "you did shit work, didn't finish it, and are utterly exhausted".
The above is not a license to do nothing but sleep until your next deadline. Apply all advice parsimoniously.
This is probably my biggest take away from 7+ years of grad school.
I've been tired.. exhausted for over a week and I don't know why. :(
Sorry to hear. That's always annoying. I deal with a lot of sleep-related issues in my day to day, so let me know if any of this is helpful:
If your exhaustion is sleep-related, try improving or changing up your sleeping arrangements. This can be as simple as cleaning and aerating the room, changing the sheets and pillows, or tweaking how you sleep (sleep masks are very effective for me, I use the manta masks).
If it's stress-induced, permit yourself a day of r&r. Whatever's good for your soul; I personally enjoy a day out of town somewhere nice with a friend or SO, with good food and a cozy hotel, that kind of stuff. Something to get you away from what's stressing you.
This one hit me a few years back. It turned out to be a combo of some medications I was taking and low hormone levels. I never would have figured that out without going to the doctor, especially in my fatigued state!
A lot of people get marginal tax brackets wrong, and think that once their income reaches a bracket, all of their income is taxed at that rate. It isn't, only the income made over a bracket is taxed at that bracket's rate, and it leads people to do ridiculous things like turning down raises because they think they'll make less money due to taxes. The only thing that can cause that for real is welfare cliffs that claw back benefits faster than gains in equivalent income.
This one is so frustrating because often people don't believe me even though it makes total sense.
I didn't know that. I just knew I lost a higher percentage when I worked more.
Usually paying more in taxes is a sign that you're making more money, so it's nothing to worry about.
The exceptions are worth watching out for, though. People have ended up with large tax bills for money they don't have any more. (For example, getting stock that goes down.)
Oh yeah, I totally get that. I just thought somehow the whole rate went up, rather than it being the sum of taxes at different brackets. If I made 300 one week and 400 the next, I was still taking home more the next week.
Like putting money into an IRA and then leaving it in a money market fund.
Could you expand on that a little more? I need to open an IRA, for transferring my 401k
After you put money into an investment account, you still need to invest it. Just putting it in the account does nothing, you still have to do something with it. A lot of people skip this critical step and miss out on years of compounding interest.
Not knowing about rubber ducking and/or being patient.
As a "computer person" I cannot count the number of times this has occurred:
"Omnicrola can you help me? My computer is stuck/broken/not doing that thing I want"
"Sure one moment"
Within the time it takes me to physically walk to them:
"Never mind it's working now"
- or -
"So what's happening is _____"
And in the process of explaining it to me, they realize their mistake, or the step that they missed.
The second is so commonly known to software developers it has a nickname: rubber ducking. Referring to the practice of explaining your problem out loud to another person. And if there's nobody available, explaining it to an inanimate object, like a rubber duck. The process of having to articulate the problem coherently forces you to reframe it and think through it more thoughtfully, and will often reveal the solution.
Related, not knowing how to ask a question, which I think also is a form of rubber ducking.
I can never bring myself to talk to an inanimate object, but I do frequently find that in the process of writing a proper question when asking for help I end up answering my own question, but so many of my coworkers don't know how to even ask a question.
My usual experience on Slack:
THEM: Hi NomadicCoder
ME: <waiting, not going to bite... I've begged and begged to just put the question in the first message>
ME: <waiting>
THEM: <typing indicator>
THEM: I have a question
ME: <waiting... not gonna bite, eventually they'll get the message, I even have a Confluence page on this!>
THEM: X doesn't work, what's wrong? <no details, of course>
Or there's also this form:
Hi NomadicCoder
I have a question
about the
XYZ, that's not
working very
well and
I can't seem
to type an entire thought
in one message
... on my side... beep beep beep beep beep
I've written confluence pages, given presentations, asked my manager to push for it, etc, but no luck. The process of documenting the problem, the detailed error messages, and what you've tried and what happened often ends up answering the question.
Similarly related, I wish that more people would be better at deciding when to ask or notify via Slack and when to ask or notify via Email.
My favourite is
"There was an error message"
"What did it say?"
"I don't know I closed it."
I hang out in newbie programmer forums and one thing that drives me nuts is when the question is way too narrow and without context. They ask "How do I do Task Y?" in service of accomplishing Goal X, but maybe Task Y won't actually help them complete Goal X and what they need is to do Task X instead. Without telling me what the goal is even in brief, I might just tell them how to do Y, which is unhelpful to them.
Sometimes if the question is weird enough I catch on to this ("how do I print the name of a variable instead of its value in Python" was my favourite one that made me go, "OK, hang on, how did you get there") and am able to walk them back to a better solution.
I understand the need to sometimes do hacky, inadvisable garbage work to fullfil a strange requirement, or get around a restriction, or work with a particular piece of legacy code. Sometimes a weird question is due to that, so I try to avoid jumping right to the answer to "how do I X?" being "don't do X". But it's still best to be clear from the outset.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem
Hah, that's funny - I didn't know it had a name, much less the name "XY problem". Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, everything in my company is moving to Slack where if you want to find something from the past, you have to wade through mountains of irrelevant garbage. We had several really useful mailing lists and people seem evenly split between wanting to move everything to slack or not wanting to move any of it. I’m on the not wanting to move any of it side. I find Slack to be pretty bad at searching, and terrible for asking detailed questions and giving detailed responses. The nature of it encourages everyone to chime in at once with even the littlest thing and it’s difficult to follow the flow usually.
Succumbing to addiction.
The sad thing is that most people don't even know that they have an addiction. Part of that is because many people simply don't think you can be addicted to anything other than drugs. But you can be addicted to anything that brings you pleasure; gambling, video games, food, sex, everything.
I'd venture to guess that food addiction is the most common one, seeing how common obesity is today.
I think smart phone addiction is also up there. A significant number of people can't even put their phones down while driving.
The pinnacle example of this for me was walking into a bathroom at work and standing at a urinal. Then noticing that the guy next to me was looking at his phone while also using a urinal. The only things urgent enough to compel me to do that, are things that would compel me not to pee in the first place. Like the building behind on fire.
I get what your saying but It has nothing to do with urgency but everything to do with habit. Whenever there's just a few seconds break/waiting time the phone come out. No matter where you are or what you're doing.
I've got a non-traditional one: I'm a bit addicted to arguing.
I didn't really notice it about myself until I had cut some really toxic people from my life, to whom I always had to make huge detailed arguements about very fundemental things like "please respect my boundaries".
Once I did cut them out, I became a lot more arguementative with other people whom I never really argued with before. It's like my brain has been hardwired to aurgue to my last breath, because I lived in an environment where that was neccessary to do anything autonomously.
So to you Tildionos out there who I argue too much with, I'm sorry. It's a bit in my nature and doing it online with strangers (on a platform that generally avoids devolving to namecalling and insults) is less destructive than doing it with those around me.
That said, one thing that has made me take pause more was the recent Bo Burnam special. His pointing out about our opinions on the internet and refusal to just shut up once in awhile hit home. Ever since, I've really tried to disengage when I sense I'm feeding an addiction and not just having a discussion.
Well I have no idea if you really argue too much because I rarely memorize usernames. I generally don't mind people that like to argue, as long as they make an effort to avoid emotional and accusatorial language. Sadly, many people don't make that effort (some think they do...), and because of that the amount of subjects I'm open to argue online gets smaller every day. Every time I go against my own "rules", I eventually regret it. Total agreement is often the only acceptable response, and Tildes is no exception.
Oh god, that describes parts of my life, too. Exact same thing. Sorry you went through that.
I totally get that, but at the same I feel it's kinda weird to consider addiction voluntary. Granted, exposing yourself to lots of potencially addictive drugs and behaviors will increase the likelyhood of becoming addicted, but ultimately everyone will expose themselves to the genetics roullete at some point.
I think the mistake is not understanding the risks and being insufficiently wary. You might think something is pretty harmless until it gets you. But this is true of lots of risks.
I saw someone comment that tobacco taxes have gone up and that people are just substituting a food addiction for a nicotine addiction.
I don't know how much that has to do with tobacoo taxes to be honest. If you've smoked for a while, it's weird not having your hand and mouth doing something. And to that the lack of nicotine spikes and lots of things that I used to really enjoy are boring, going for walks, driving, ect. So I understand replacing that with food would make the initial break easier but unfortunately often people wind up changing addictions instead of quitting one.
To judge others too harshly (the only loser is the one that gives up).
Some of the messages I get on what constitutes success are alarming. This seems to be more prevalent in North America, but I'm certain every country has its own version. The conditions for success seem to be quite narrow in America. Conversely, it is not that hard to become a "loser". I've seen terrible things said in that regard, from every socio-economic background and position in the political spectrum.
Don't make a lot of money? Loser. Virgin? Loser. Unmarried? Loser. Ugly? Loser. Don't have many friends? Loser. Work at Mcdonald's as an adult? Loser. Have a roommate when you're 40? Loser. Lives with your parents, grandparents, uncle, aunt, or any close relative? You are a fucking loser!
It's puzzling how pretty much everyone thinks it is funny to make jokes about who fits some of these criteria, especially the last one. I see that on American stand-up specials, podcasts, TV series, movies... it's everywhere. Seems pretty cruel to me, as an outsider.
It is obvious to me that not everyone will be able to fulfill all of those expectations, even when they do everything in their power to avoid that. Some people have severe physical, developmental, or mental health issues. Some tried really hard to become independent and failed big time, not because they're immoral, but because failure is a big part of life, and some people take a lot longer to find their place in life. Some lost a lot of money on bad investments, divorces, or paying for a cancer treatment.
While you can work to increase your amount of successes, sometimes shit hits the fan. It can happen to anyone. It can happen with you, even if you're at the top of the world right now. It is a good idea to treat others with kindness, because maybe you'll be the one in need tomorrow. If that happens, don't beat yourself up. You can always try again. The only loser is the one that gives up.[1]
[1] Some clarification on what I meant by that.
Well said.
Agreed. It's really unfortunate and is rampant in America.
I've talked here before about disappointing my parents because I'm gay, but I haven't talked much about disappointing them because I rejected their script for "success" in life. They looked down on me for foregoing a high paying job in favor of teaching. They still judge my decision not to have children.
It's easy to look at this and respond in hostility, especially from the outside, but I honestly feel bad for my parents, as it's clear that their worries about the "success" of me and my siblings has a deep-seated, almost pathological root. It's not just them either -- a lot of people from their generation that I know are similarly hyper-aware of "pecking order" and often make significant life decisions simply on the basis of "what others will think".
I actually consider myself somewhat lucky, as being gay let me discard the "script" for my life early, and I've been able to reestablish my own terms for "success". When the rest of the world says you're shit anyway, then you feel no burden to live up to their imposed standards and instead are free to make up your own.
You mentioned that you see it across the board, and that's definitely true, but for me it does have a significant class-based aspect. For years I taught in low-income school districts, but I recently moved to a wealthy area to teach, and one of the things that has really surprised me is the, well, pettiness of some of the people I work with when it comes to social comparison. In the low-income districts I worked in, judging someone's wealth or status was considered tacky at best and discriminatory at worst. Here in the wealthy district, however, there's a lot more commentary about people's socioeconomic position -- and this isn't the students talking -- it's coming from adults!
We'll finish a meeting, and other teachers will comment on the presenter's outfit looking cheap. When someone buys a house people will pass around their phone with photos of it up or the Zillow listing for the purposes of judging its size, appearance, and cost. There's a lot of credence given to "where" someone lives, with "where" being understood as a proxy for their relative income. I internally call this sort of thing "petty" to myself, but then I feel guilty about being "petty" myself, as aren't I also being hyper-judgmental of their priorities in the same way that they're doing to others?
Reminds me of a really great quote from Oathbringer:
Honestly the wholesome “the only loser is the person that doesn’t try at all” bit has annoyed me recently. Help that person out if you can. They’re probably just scared.
I'm not sure I get what you mean.
Can't speak for them, but in my more cynical, defeated-feeling moments I look at it as a sunk cost fallacy thing-- if I've tried and tried and still not succeeded, why keep throwing good money and effort after bad? If "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results", at what point does continuing to try become insanity?
If you don't have much in the way of past success to draw upon, the whole quote just rings incredibly hollow.
Maybe I need to clarify that: when I say that "the only loser is the one that gives up" I don't mean you should never give up on specific goals and projects. There are many occasions in which one must be realistic, accept defeat. Not giving up, here, is not the same as stubbornly persisting on something when all evidence shows that it is not worth it anymore, but rather making an effort to move forward in life, whatever that means to you.
We definitely must redirect our efforts sometimes. But we should never give up on improving ourselves, and all that entails.
Trusting your own memories to be accurate.
Our memories feel/seem so real that it's hard to accept that they may be (in fact, very often are), inaccurate or even complete fantasy.
There is a good reason why eye-witness testimony is among the least-reliable forms of evidence in trials ... and yet we all really want to believe the witness.
"I'll never forget that face..."
I'm sorry, but yes, you will, and in fact, you probably already have.
An inability to recognize that you might in fact be wrong or the fear of making mistakes.
Being wrong is fantastic.
It's the first step to being right.
And mistakes are the only way to learn.
It's a thing I routinely have to hammer home with younger developers. You're going to screw up, it's fine. Your level of IDGAF should correspond to the cost of screwing up. With source control, your ability to recover from a screw up is really high. With both source control and some teamwork (code review) your ability to screw up in a meaningful way is dramatically reduced. Add in automated tests, and user testing, and you're on pretty solid footing.
Not being always nice. I think being nice is a better strategy, it costs you almost nothing, it feels good and you get all kind of rewards. There's really no reason not to be nice in most cases.
Being close-minded, or having self-imposed limits (or accepting societal limits). This is often expressed/rationalized as "this is not my style", "this is not for me", "I don't like that kind of things".
Marrying sooner without knowing a person fully.
Also marrying too late when the pickings are slim :)
This probably makes more sense if one thinks an unmarried live is not worth living.
I don’t know if married folks are happier than unmarried folks on average or less happy, but looking at the outliers in my life: the very happiest people I’ve met are married and the very unhappiest are unmarried.
I’m not very set on marriage yet. I’m actually the liberal libertine sort: frolicking in an unabashedly hedonistic jetsetting gay sex and kink scene. But I’ve come across more than enough 40 and 50-somethings chasing ever younger twinks and higher highs to make me rethink things a little.
I think that when I’m older, I’d like my nightstand to have pictures of a committed husband/partner and growing children on it, not be covered in popper bottles and empty GHB capsules.
Anyway, I’m getting off topic here on a niche that is probably not applicable to society at large.
When studied (afaik) married people are happier and live longer.
The rejoinder is that it's hard to say which direction the arrow of causality points (marriage-->happiness vs., unhappiness-->unmarriable). If you're a misanthrope or have a terminal illness odds are you're not going to be getting married.
Socially acceptable relationships are also broadening, and that may result in people finding what fits them best beyond married|bachelor. Maybe 1% of the population works really well as poly couples or switching between libertine and soccer dad.
I mean, you can always have two nightstands and one night stands.
Rather it's an indication that somebody who wants to be married at all thinks that being married is generally better than not being married, and so will try to get married while they are younger rather than older; this means that when you are older, there will be fewer marriageable people near your age (assuming proximity of age affects romantic compatibility, which seems reasonable). It can be argued, but it's not so obviously wrong as you make it out to be.
EDIT: in particular, I will note that the parent didn't say it was a mistake not to get married at all.
This is it.
30 is the most successful age to get married and is also the most popular.
Actually the opposite.
The most interesting people I know, never got married.
I would hate to fill this thread with noise, but there is an XKCD too relevant to not post.
https://xkcd.com/314/
The bars in your grill grate are probably upside down. The metal bars make a triangle, and you should have the wider side facing up.
https://www.weber.com/US/en/blog/burning-questions/which-side-faces-up-on-a-cast-iron-grate/weber-30495.html
Whoa. I never knew this, thanks!
A classic would be confusing weather with climate, with weather being short term and climate being long term. I think the best way to stop confusing the 2 is thinking of weather forecasts or stations and remembering that the collect data on the climate now and at most a week into the future and contrasting it with climate change, which is always discussed in the term of decades, even if those decades are coming soon.
Many people write “ect.” when they intended to write “etc.” That’s a little surprising to me for 2 reasons: 1) the automatic spellchecking that’s on by default in most contexts these days definitely catches it (I had to undo the correction to type this message), and 2) I see it very frequently on forums where large numbers of Unix users reside, and most of the are very aware that there’s a standard directory on most Unix systems named “/etc”.
In case you were curious, it’s an abbreviation of the Latin “et cetera”, which means “and more” or “and other similar things”.
No grammar thread is complete without pointing out the all time leaders: 'there, their, they're' and 'your, you're' misuse.
Example: "Your an idiot" actually translates to "I'm an idiot" to most of your readers as you walk away musing about your internet dunk.
Also "would of"/"could of"/"should of". Produced, I assume, because they are homophonous with the correct contractions ("would've" for "would have", etc.), but I find them distractingly wrong when they're present, and essentially can't read text in which they're especially prevalent.
Also "etc..." (use etc. or ... but not both).
etc....
I came here to mention this exact thing! I've noticed several people say et cetera aloud and it sounds like they're pronouncing "exetera/ek cetera". Maybe there's a component of how people have heard it and how they think it's written. Like a messed up egg corn.
Oh yeah! That's an interesting point. Like "for all intents and purposes" vs. "for all intensive purposes."
I guess it's also because they shorten it as "Et CeTera" instead of "ET Cetera".
I wonder if fewer people would make mistakes if they used the &c abbreviation instead.
"Never get involved in a land war in Asia"
And never go against a Sicilian, when death is on the line?
Never trust what atoms say. They make up everything.
You “need” a lot less caffeine than you think you do, even if you’re hopelessly addicted.
waiting