Ask Lemmy

You have to do something poorly before you can do it well.

I'll share (a crude translation of) a piece of song lyrics. It has two great nuggets of wisdom right next to each other!

"There are no meaningless days Or if there are the whole life is So useless that it's better not To think about it today

And I suppose it won't be a punishment If we go together for a while When we turn out to be monsters Will the good days be a lie even then?"

The first part, for me, is about the meaning of life. How it must come from within and how it is in every moment. The second part is good relationship advice, in my opinion. Duration does not equal quality or significance. (The monsters part I don't consider that important, but for some it may be.) And these points work well together. The meaning is in the moments.

The song is Sielunvihollinen by CMX.

Here's a few that stuck with me over the years:

"A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle." --Jeff VanderMeer

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." --Gustav Mahler

"If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy." - - Sir Terry Pratchett

Only break one law at a time.

For example; If you have an AI executive tied up in the trunk of your car, make sure the tail lights all work.

My most favourite saying is:

Do the right thing, for the sake of it being the right thing.

It has got me far in life, even if there are occasional dips.

Another one that my father taught me: put a smile on your face and make the best of it. (sometimes you can't change the situation, but you can change how you view it.)

My father always said ‘wherever you go, there you are’. Meaning don’t be afraid to explore and be comfortable wherever you find yourself.

Then again, when my stepmother hadn’t taken a turkey out to thaw in time for a family dinner such that it was still a bit frozen and she couldn’t get its legs apart to stuff it, he suggested she give it a margarita. So perhaps his advice wasn’t as sage as it sounded.

e: another gem from him, which should be on our family crest: ‘no project is too big to start’. Yeah, maybe don’t take that one to heart.

The boy complained about his shoes till he met the boy with no feet.

I learned kinda early that we were not rich and I didn't really bug my mom for much.

"The only decision you should do when you are angry is to stop being angry." Timothy Zahn

It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you realize there is a way to solve problems without using violence.

"I see now that the circumstances of one's birth is irrelevent, it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are."

- Mewtwo

As taught by my dad:

Some people think they're hot shit on a silver platter when they're really just cold diarrhea on a paper plate.

"You do not treat a man like a gentleman because he is. You treat a man like a gentleman because you are."

I have several that I live my life by. Being prompted has caused me to forget all of them

"Happiness is a choice."

You can't exclaim that everybody hates you. You haven't even met everyone yet.

In short: Don't worry about it.

In long: If you have a problem, you can either do something about it or you can't. If you can do something about it, do that thing instead of worrying. If you can't, worrying just gives you an additional problem.

If you wait till the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.

Perfection is the enemy of progress

The purpose of a system is what it does. Or The wizards 5th rule: Mind people's actions over words.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

And last: Trust your gut.

Edit bonus after reading others responses;

Don't let perfection get in the way of good enough.

There's a saying in Chinese. It rhymes in Chinese (which makes it so much cooler) but the translated version is this:

Given equivalent units of gold and time, it is easy to trade time for gold, but it is challenging to trade gold for time.

Essentially, be wary of how much you're devoting to your work, because it doesn't matter how successful you are, you will never get your life back

There's another one that I find to be very relevant with the times:

a boat with naturally straighten itself when it nears a bridge

It's a descriptivist version of the English saying "we'll cross that bridge when we get there." Essentially, problems have a way of sorting themselves out when things get desperate enough

The US signs contracts in pencil.

The classic weekend/party safety brief

• Do NOT add to the population.
• Do NOT subtract from the population.
• Do NOT end up in the newspaper, hospital or jail.
• • If you do end up in jail, establish dominance quickly.

We have a few addendums in my circles.

• A man should be in the newspaper three times, when he is born, when he is wed, and when he dies. (Ron Swanson)

• Never do anything you would be afraid to explain to the paramedics.

(Addressed to my college age relatives, I would always pick them up, the folks dont need to know, you do have to tell the guy scraping your sorry ass off the pavement what you broke)

If it's your job to eat a frog every day, eat it for breakfast. If it's your job to eat two frogs, eat the big one first.

All you can do is your best, and your best will always be good enough.

Just because something is old doesn't mean it's obsolete, and just because something is obsolete doesn't mean it's ineffective.

Here's a random weird one that stuck with me for some reason. I was a young child whining about getting ready, how I hated socks. And I grumbled, 'who even invented socks, and why??'

My dad responded "Mr. Socks, and his feet were cold." Which is 100% false, but I feel like that silly answer told me a lot on how to think about stuff.

Moving the body moves the mind.

It could always be worse.

The future will always surprise you.

Ignore negative people, they have a problem for every solution. When the wind changes, some will build walls, others build windmills. When God created man, she was only joking.