9 ms·

Ask HN: Looking back, what have you wasted lots of time on?

• serpix 7y ago
  with awareness, time cannot be wasted. Everything happened just the way it needed to. Everything happening now happens just the way it should.
  • SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Is this a semi-mystical "everything happens for a reason", or a pragmatic "crap happened, whether it sucked or not is good enough"?
  • slang800 7y ago
    That sounds like a very low bar you set for yourself.
  • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    "Needed to". "Should". This sounds like you want to have, as Francis Schaeffer put it, "a mysticism with nobody there". You want the assurance of some guiding hand (God or god-like) controlling what happens, but without any guiding hand actually there. That is, without someone there to have a purpose or intent, there is no "needed to" or "should", there is only what did happen. This sounds like an attempt to have the emotional comfort of someone there, without actually believing that someone is actually there.
• markus_zhang 7y ago
  Doing a lot of pet projects but without finishing or digging deeper in any of them. Pretty much 90% of the wasted time can be distributed tot his single reason.
  • tunesmith 7y ago
    Think about the time you saved by recognizing them as sunk costs and ending them as soon as you did, though!
  • partisan 7y ago
    I can relate to this. I look back on all of those projects and I do see the basis of the learnings that really moved me forward in terms of technical skill and reasoning. School was horrible for teaching practical knowledge and if I had simply followed the patterns that were applied at work, I would be no better than I was 15 years ago. So yes, probably some level of time wasted, but best to take some of the learnings from that and count a few victories however small.
    • markus_zhang 7y ago
      Yeah agreed. Victories are very important, and a completed project, however crude or badly organized, is better than anything else.
  • comboy 7y ago
    Don't you think you've learned a lot of things that way which you wouldn't learn otherwise? I try to use technologies I want to learn/master in those projects and I don't know any better way to learn them. The project which you care about is not a good place to learn if you ever want to finish it.
    • markus_zhang 7y ago
      It's complicated. Here is a bit background: I have been working as a data analyst for a few years but I feel an inclination towards programming. Programming is, however, a huge field and I'm interested to many of its sub-fields. Thus the reason that I opened a lot of projects. For example taught myself C++, did a half-project about a crude tile map editor with SDL2, and then went down another route with Python, etc, etc. And now I'm learning C trying to do some parser stuffs. So the thing is I can never drill deep in any of them, which is really bad. But the root of it is that I changed my TOOLS too often but never learned enough PROGRAMMING. I recognize that I have a weak will and whence the topic went deeper I tended to drop it. The other reason is that I never got a full-time programming job so I don't have to focus. I have been going on like this since high school (back then I was interested in other fields). I could grasp the easy part of any tool pretty quickly, but do not have a focus/objective so I never truly learned anything.
• scarface74 7y ago
  A job I should left three years after I started instead of 9.5. My first marriage I should have left after a year. Real Estate before the crash.
  • 29_29 7y ago
    This is a good list. I dumped my house right away - it was such a time suck
    • scarface74 7y ago
      My personal house that I lived in was not a time suck -- it was a waste of money. Considering that now, 16 years after I bought it and 7 years after I did a "strategic default", it's only worth $7000 more than it was after I bought it. Now the two rental properties I owned at the time -- those were time and money sucks. On the other hand, walking away from three houses and five mortgages, and buying a new house in a better neighborhood less than four years later was one of the smartest things I've ever done.
• non-entity 7y ago
  Daydreaming, imagining myself in better positions and even planning goals to get there, but never actually starting
  • tjansen 7y ago
    I think daydreaming is not a wast of time, if you can use them to motivate yourself. You have to make a habit out of remembering that you need to start in order to make that daydream come true.
• peterbozso 7y ago
  World of Warcraft. :)
  • y4mi 7y ago
    And now it starts all over again with official classic servers
  • methodover 7y ago
    WoW Classic just came out. I’m obsessed.
• namdnay 7y ago
  Hacker News :)
• mosalarynolife 7y ago
  Television and video games are high up on my list of time-wasters. Mediocre girlfriends, PHP, music career, freelancing for crappy clients, electronics repair - the list goes on and on. Remember that you are not a robot, not everything in your life needs to 100% optimized. It's all a learning experience no matter how much time you fritter away.
  • sellingwebsite 7y ago
    Sure, if I've enjoyed my time and learned something useful I won't write it off as "wasted". Who knows what the future holds. I just recalled a Steve Jobs quote while writing this comment: "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards."
  • scarface74 7y ago
    I don't consider watching television a time waster. I'm either working out while I'm watching TV or spending some down time with my wife. Yeah we have "date nights" at least twice a month, but we often don't want to go out or even talk about what we jokingly call our "feelings and emotions", sometimes we just want to be.
• nrjames 7y ago
  Trying to figure out the "perfect" tech stack, game engine, etc. to use instead of just going with one for my personal project.
  • gremlinsinc 7y ago
    This! I'm always thinking of 'does it scale'. and How perfect does it scale, can I do better? I'm a perfectionist so it's hard to commit to a side project because of the tech stack conundrum... I think I'm about to nail down my perfect stack though... Quasar Framework + a custom postgres/hasura backend w/ koa+knex+passport for auth and migrations. Hasura provides full api via graphql. Migrations take care of 90% of the api code needed, so I can then focus on just migrations and frontend.
• teejmya 7y ago
  Reddit :)
• mnemonicsloth 7y ago
  Math. They tell you it's useful (it is) and beautiful (in a way, for a slightly stretched definition of beauty). What they don't tell you right away is that there's no end to the stuff. Sooner or later you have to say "enough." And since a significant fraction of what I learned before I said that was useless [1], I wish I had said it sooner. [1] I know you're not supposed to say math is useless. It's the kind of thing a disaffected sixth grader would do. But there are a lot of unnecessary proofs in math: things that seem perfectly obvious and are in fact true, but that require a long and counterintuitive argument to prove. Time and again I read the argument, pondered it, more than half-memorized it when the books could just as easily have said "A complex argument is necessary to establish what is obviously the case. Find it if you want to in Appendix J."
  • occitan 7y ago
    It seems what they really forget to tell you was "if you don't like Math - you don't have to study it."
  • WilliamEdward 7y ago
    Math really opens you up to new ideas and changes your way of thinking, but you're right it's a serious life long investment, not just a little tool you can pick up on the side.
  • ska 7y ago
    > things that seem perfectly obvious and are in fact true, The problem is there are lot of things that seem perfectly obvious and are, in fact, false. It's not easy to tell them apart.
    • mnemonicsloth 7y ago
      I think it depends on what you mean by false. I've always thought of falsity as a continuum. At one end are obvious non sequiturs like 1=3. A little further along are the novice blunders everybody makes while learning the theory. At the far end are propositions where you have to cook up a really abstruse counterexample to show they aren't true. But that's tantamount to saying that they almost are true. And in fact a lot of the time you can treat them as true and not get into trouble. Physicists, to take a notorious example, spend a lot more time on the real line than mathematicians do, but in their day to day work they ignore most of what we know about the real number system.
• hazeii 7y ago
  Possibly this depends on the definition of "wasted". In a life sense, the question is "how could I have spent the time better?". As it happens, I did some Windows 10 support today, for someone using Outlook for their email hosted by 1&1. But then, there's helping a neighbour out...
• austincheney 7y ago
  My parser - https://sparser.io https://sparser.io I was really burning the midnight oil on my previous military deployment with that thing. I was staying up late and waking up early to write code and test features for months. I gained some weight from not exercising. I dreamed about features and defects while sleeping. While in the office when I wasn’t writing code I just thought about accomplishing the next set of language support.
  • sellingwebsite 7y ago
    Why do you think your time has been wasted? I suppose you have had some expectations for the project you didn't meet EDIT: wording
    • austincheney 7y ago
      Incomplete expectations is perhaps the best description for how I feel. I am generally satisfied with the project, but it is an amazing amount of work for something that I, perhaps, do not communicating well.
• ironman1478 7y ago
  Video games. I think Dota 2, Street fighter 4, and Halo 2 comprise about 3000 hours of my life. It was fun in the moment and I have great memories, but I think it sort of stunted me socially, especially since I took those games so seriously. In retrospect I would've loved to have sunk that time into guitar or other activities like athletics.
• thedaemon 7y ago
  () Investing my time and effort into friendships. () Television viewing. (*) Caring about other's opinions of me.
  • non-entity 7y ago
    I've managed to somehow fall into a seemingly opposie situration where as a kid / teenaer I couldnt care what people thought of me, but as an adult, I'm extremely self conscious.
• tunesmith 7y ago
  A relationship that took too much work. (I have a work mentality, so tough to recognize.) Maintaining old wordpress blogs. What a nightmare, but I hate to lose old blog posts of mine.
  • sellingwebsite 7y ago
    Not familiar with WP, but can't you export your blog posts as HTML/CSS or as markdown at the very least, and deploy it to Github Pages or Netlify? THis way, you won't have to manage anything, except making sure domain names renew on time
• username90 7y ago
  Time is only wasted if you don't live in the moment, so I don't waste time. Maybe I could have achieved more if I stopped "wasting" time enjoying life, but I am not sure it is worth it.
• quanticle 7y ago
  Reading Hacker News. Even the time I spent on video games was more useful (in teaching me discipline, consistency, etc) than the time I've spent reading Hacker News and getting caught up in the latest insight porn/Javascript framework/argument about the "optimal way to interview"/etc.
  • rhinoceraptor 7y ago
    Is it really wasted time if it's intellectually stimulating, and you can finish what you need to while maintaining your required 8 hours of butt-in-seat office time?
    • quanticle 7y ago
      The question isn't whether it's intellectually stimulating or not. The question is whether a minute spent on Hacker News is best spent on Hacker News or better spent on something else. Is reading about a new Javascript framework on Hacker News more intellectually stimulating than actually writing some code? Even if you're just trying to get your 8-hours-of-butt-in-seat-time in, it's a pretty questionable assertion, IMO, that HN is the best you can do with that time.
      • scarface74 7y ago
        I would say in general depending on where you are in your career, knowing about a lot of stuff on a shallow level and knowing one or two things deeply is a competitive advantage. Especially as you move more into architect or consulting roles or even CTO.
  • WilliamEdward 7y ago
    I quit the site for about a month, came back because it really is a great idea generator.
  • meowface 7y ago
    I think it's still way more signal-to-noise than most websites and most subreddits. You just have to have an idea of which comment sections are worth skimming, which are worth skipping, and which are worth analyzing or contributing to.
• test1235 7y ago
  Warhammer 40'000 ... lots of time and money
• sadfu 7y ago
  Javascript frameworks
• mwizzle 7y ago
  Why do you regret Django/Python and wish you started with Rails?
  • sellingwebsite 7y ago
    I don't want to start a flame war here, but I think Rails (and gem ecosystem in general) is a better choice than Django, at least for SaaS apps. These are all my personal opinions, take it with a grain of salt. Having said that, here we go: * Authentication - it is a pain if you'd like to deviate from the standard Django User model (using username to login instead of an email). I don't like Devise either. * Asset pipeline, even though it is not updated anymore (sprockets) and partially replaced by webpacker is still better in Rails * Configuration in multiple files, by environment, instead of a single config.py file * Sidekiq has a better API compared to Celery. Also, Celery's default broker is RabbitMQ, not Redis. It is really hard to find managed RabbitMQ hosting, for Redis there are plenty * Mailer previews, small but quite useful utility * Testing - Minitest and Capybara is just a joy to work with * I prefer ActiveRecord over Django ORM I could go on and on, but I remember struggling a lot with Django/Celery when building a SaaS app. I decided to switch to Rails and haven't looked back (Rails has its warts as well). YMMV
    • whycombagator 7y ago
      > I don't like Devise either. What don't you like about it?
      • sellingwebsite 7y ago
        It works great if you won't deviate from the common use case. Otherwise, you have to do all sorts of crazy monkey patching. On top of that, it is a relatively old project that has to keep legacy code for backwards compatibility. I decided to roll my own auth, but was very cognizant about the risks of going down this route. I used primitives provided by Rails (has_secure_password, has_secure_token) and made sure that my implementation is not susceptible to known exploits, such as session fixation attack: https://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html#session-fixation https://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html#session-fixatio...
• ivanech 7y ago
  Definitely pure math. I spent a ton of time in college studying linear algebra and abstract algebra, and I remember very little of it. The issue with the advanced classes is that the time investment is enormous (1 class took more time than 4 others combined), and they're not worth doing halfway. I think if I'd stuck to computer science, I would have graduated a stronger programmer, and if I'd taken more sociology/art classes, I would have had more fun. A lot of people talk about beauty in math, but the beauty part of it never clicked for me the way it did for art. I think there's a sterility about proofs and numbers. If you don't love pure math, you will grow to hate it.
  • ryandrake 7y ago
    For all the starry-eyed love that math gets here, I’m glad it’s (currently) 2 out of the top 3 voted responses. Throughout a so far 20 year career in tech spanning device drivers, 3D graphics, video, maps, and location/GPS, the highest math I’ve really had to apply was high school trigonometry and some matrix math. I’m sure some programmers use graph theory and differential equations all the time, but they’re probably not plumbing one API to another or copying JSON around all day like the rest of us do. > I think if I'd stuck to computer science, I would have graduated a stronger programmer I took the minimum math needed to graduate with a comp eng undergrad degree (which imho was still way too much) and I agree with you, I’m probably a better general purpose programmer for it.
• Devthrowaway80 7y ago
  Alcoholism.
• 0xfaded 7y ago
  Nethack
• cauterize 7y ago
  Kubernetes.
  • meowface 7y ago
    Why, if I might ask? What were your use cases? Asking as someone deciding whether or not to use it for certain projects.
    • number6 7y ago
      Your projects are never big enough to justify kubernets unless they are. Rule of thumb: If you can manage it alone you can manage without kubernets. If you have kubernets you can manage it alone.
      • scarface74 7y ago
        I’ve never used kubernetes and only have the vaguest idea about what it does. But, in another life I used Nomad+Consul for orchestration of Docker containers and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. These days I’m all in on AWS.
• daw___ 7y ago
  Gentoo, and a couple unrequited loves :-)
• hashberry 7y ago
  Procrastination & masturbation.
• jadams5 7y ago
  Interested to hear about what your issues with Ansible were. It's been a game changer for us over the past couple years. Manual processes that used to take an engineer a week to do manually are done in 20 minutes and correctly every time.
• c3534l 7y ago
  I wasted the first 8 years of my life after college not knowing what to do professionally and being too depressed to actually get anything done in the meantime. I also used to wasted time being addicted to the 24/7 news, which not only made subtly upset all day long, but actually made me less informed because the news puts spin on everything and winds up getting almost every key fact wrong in the long run. I wasted time caring about memes and internet culture, but it did teach me about how ephemeral and quick-changing culture is. Everything is fashion and I know that better now. Other than that, video games make me happy, my coding forays have made me smarter, my unused accounting degree has made me financially responsible and knowlegable, reddit and hacker news have taught me cued into new things and connected me to people from across the globe.
  • nexus2045 7y ago
    Sounds exactly like me. I was and am still in somewhat depressed states. Lot of anxiety preventing me from putting myself out there, impostor syndrome whispering "you're not smart enough to be a developer", self shaming, etc. The internet being too accessible, yet not having enough of a BS detector myself, and getting sucked into believing polarized, weakly true viewpoints (9-5 is not the way to go! Etc...).
• sdinsn 7y ago
  Reddit & Video games
• NotPhysicsPhd 7y ago
  Higher Education and academia; Apparently, maybe that's more of a local thing, there are no job offerings in industry* for Physics BSc or MSc other than web development or data science, since most R&D Jobs either require experience and/or a PhD. Although I chose Physics mostly due to my curiosity, desire to understand how things work and the romantic idea of working in large scale physics experiments or performing researched that mattered. I soon realized, after working in different groups over 3-4 years, that academic R&D is fully driven by the publishing frenzy and scientific rigor is sidelined most of the times. Naively, I assumed that this was mostly due to the fact that I was not at PhD-level, and thought that the academic research world was not like this. I applied and got a PhD grant at a different institution, and to my surprise+shock nothing really changed, other than the added weight of pseudo-responsibility that was bestowed upon me. Maybe I have been unlucky, but the work just feels empty most of the time and void of any of the "spark" that initially got me into physics(and higher education for that matter). With that in mind, I should have pursued a CS, EE, Math degree or a professional/technical degree. Ironically, I'm currently pursuing a new master's degree in parallel with my PhD in an attempt to pursue a job in a different area(non physics academic research/webdev/data science). *Non-academia
  • dorchadas 7y ago
    Not sure where you are, but I pursued physics as well and found the exact same endpoint as you. I'm currently teaching, but there's just not the jobs for physics unless you're going to pursue a higher degree. Now, when I talk to students interested in physics, I always tell them to just do engineering and take some physics electives on the side, or to double major in something engineering related. My most apt description for physics is "useless engineering" when it comes to jobs; a decent overlap in content, but none of the opportunities. (I also wish I had done math; I've come to realize that's what I like about physics, outside of astro)
• mreome 7y ago
  Analysis Paralysis. I don't think I have any bigger wasted-time-sink in my life then over analysis/planning/selection. * Loosing an entire evening trying to find the best library/language/engine/etc for a side project idea, rather then actually getting the idea going. * Loosing entire days trying to find the best design/structure for a project rather then adding features. * Loosing hours comparing and reading reviews for trivial purchases. * Designing and redesigning an idea over and over in my head or on paper, but never getting it started as the design wasn't done/perfect. * Rewriting a side-project in a new language because it will be faster, more organized, more elegant, etc... rather then actually finishing it and releasing it. * Waiting for the perfect conditions, weather, time, mood, etc to do something.
  • sellingwebsite 7y ago
    I get what you're saying and I've been there, done that (still there, tbh). But I think there is a balance to strike here: sometimes it is worth spending some time on choosing a better tool/architecture/library because it can save you time/effort/money/mental stability (yes) down the road. As in most endeavors, you've gotta strike a right balance Rewriting a side-project in a new language because it will be faster, more organized, more elegant, etc... I've done that as well, although it wasn't a rewrite per se. It was a great decision and I am glad I made the leap, even though conventional wisdom is to stick with what you know..
  • jrs235 7y ago
    I realize this doesn't add to the conversation but, it is losing, not loosing. English is strange. Lose is unable to find (or the opposite of win), you lost your time, you're losing your mind. Loose is the opposite of tighten. Not sure loosing is a word. If you're not tightening it, you're loosening it.
• spcc 7y ago
  Commuting.
• sellingwebsite 7y ago
  OP here. Can't edit the post anymore, but I would add the following points: * Following mainstream news -- Lots of clickbait, glad I don't do it anymore. * Watching random YouTube videos -- however, I've also stumbled upon some great videos that have had huge positive impact on my life (and not only mine) * Tracking currency exchange rates trying to save few bucks * Buying cheap electronics -- time you spent fighting with it just doesn't worth the savings, unless you're in dire need
• psadri 7y ago
  Reading hacker news!
• tjansen 7y ago
  * using public transport / not having drivers license: I got a driver's license only in my mid 30s and I really regret not doing it earlier. So many beautiful days wasted at home, lost touch with friends etc because getting out of town was too much trouble. * related to that: staying at home too often instead of finding a SO. While I am very happy today, sometimes I wish I'd have found my wife and I had my children earlier. And maybe more children. * procrastinating and eventually giving up on too many side projects. I have a history of starting awesome side projects and not finishing them for whatever reason, starting as a teenager. If I had finished even one of them, I may be able to live without a day job.
  • sellingwebsite 7y ago
    staying at home too often instead of finding a SO I am still struggling with that. I am working from home and don't go out too often. I am quite an introverted person, plus not big on dating apps, since they're mostly waste of time :') I realize that this is a problem, but still don't know what to do about it..
    • tjansen 7y ago
      I never used dating apps, it always seemed like a ridiculous waste of time, at least for men. But as I am semi-introverted and don't drink, I also had no idea where to meet people. One day I found meetin.org, which was a very active community 15 years ago (today not so much, but meetup.com is somewhat similar). Through meetin.org I attended a Salsa class with other members, then started taking other salsa classes on my own and eventually found my wife at a party when my dance teacher introduced me to her. I think the key is just to a) get out and b) male-dominated places don't count.
      • sellingwebsite 7y ago
        Dancing classes is indeed a great way to meet people. Thanks for sharing your story!
• subpixel 7y ago
  Filtering my decisions through the lens of 'what will other people think'. Especially in my teens and twenties, I spent entirely too much time trying to impress and not enough time doing my thing.
• raindropm 7y ago
  Overthinking. The introverts' nightmare. :(
• bfffan 7y ago
  I have wasted a lot of time trying to develop people that are content. I tried to invest in them because I wasn't where I wanted to be and was unhappy with myself so I thought everyone was unhappy. I've realized that many people in my immediate network don't know what they're missing because they don't know what's possible. So instead of focusing on my own race, I was lugging dead weight across the finish line while people were stopping to ties their shoes or drinking water. I was moving about unsatisfied until I found startup school and see that I could bumble around in the dark until I find success. I wasted a lot of time preparing for success and researching and planning. I wanted to "get it right" but I had no barometer to measure success.
• thorgrimr 7y ago
  Time: * Falling asleep /// Waking up at a fixed time, also during weekends. Not eating or drinking (other than water) atleast 4 hours before bed. No screens 1.5 hours before bed. Wool duvet (comfortable temperature range is much higher than down or synthetic, less sweat). * Waking up /// Drink a glass of water, turn on daylights, do push-ups. * Styling my hair. Going to a barber /// Trimmed it to 2mm and maintain it bi/tri-weekly. * Shaving /// Grew a beard and trim it weekly. * Washing clothing /// Replaced t-shirts, sweaters and socks with merino wool. Doesn't stink wearing it a few times, dries quickly, good for hot and cold weather. Underpants are synthetic because of increased moisture wicking and durability. Money = time: * Using shampoo and conditioner /// Use 'No Poo' method (also when I had very long hair). * Using perfume /// I use deodorant (coconut oil based) to prevent smells.
• probinso 7y ago
  Computer science