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As a compulsive, I have the problem of liking too many things. I don’t drink coffee because in a month I’ll be neck deep in forums about the proper way to grind

As a compulsive, I have the problem of liking too many things. I don’t drink coffee because in a month I’ll be neck deep in forums about the proper way to grind beans. I don’t own an aquarium because I’ll be obsessively learning about perfect water pH for the most exotic fish. I don’t drink hot tea because I’ll be studying growth patterns and how seasonality affects leaves and their flavor. I don’t drink beer because I’d be sucked into learning how to craft my own. I appreciate that it’s useful to have an open mind about your tastes and preferences, but each rabbit hole I stumble into is far deeper than the time I have available to explore. So for me, i have to find reasons to dislike things to protect my time and my existing obsessions.

leetrout 1y ago
What are some of your current obsessions? I enjoy learning and discovering so I enjoy tech and when I get into something the joy is from the rabbit hole and then I am done and move on. What has kept your interest?
- nathan_douglas 1y ago
  Not OP, but I was also replying and had thoughts along a similar vein. I'm 44 and have had countless hobbies over my adolescent and adult lives. Some I've taken up multiple times, some I've visited multiple variations on a core idea (e.g. aquariums/planted tanks/dwarf shrimp tanks). I've learned (and subseqeuntly forgotten) a tremendous amount, and spent an unholy amount of money. Most things have not stayed with me. Miniature painting is one thing that I think might last me the rest of my life. I think it boils down to a few factors: - miniatures aren't alive; I don't need to care for them, so the worst that can happen is I break or scratch something. This keeps my anxiety/concern/guilt largely out of the equation. - the feedback cycles are fairly short; I know almost immediately if a paint stroke was good or bad, if my brush is too wet or too dry, etc. A single project is normally just a couple of hours, and then it's done and I can view it as a completed whole. - the product occupies little space and it's trivial to keep around and compare to work done before and after and see progression and evolution over time. Also, if you're prone to collecting things, just keeping the product on the shelf next to other things becomes an ongoing source of reward. - if I absolutely fubar something, I can buy or print a new mini for a couple bucks or throw it in some Simple Green overnight and brush the old paint off. Most of the time I can just paint over the issue. - paint, brushes, a wet palette, minis, airbrush, etc all add up, but you can have an amazing setup for under a thousand bucks, and you can transcend the realm of mortals for $2K. The ongoing costs after that are manageable unless you're into Warhammer. You can get started and do some really fun and cool things with a $50 starter kit. So there's some higher-dimension graph with effort, frustration, reward, feedback latency, etc, and for me at least painting miniatures tends to sit in a happy area.
  - leetrout 1y ago
    How hard is cleanup in order to keep things usable? I love the idea of painting minis and models- especially learning the various weathering effects but it seemed like it would take a lot of energy to keep everything functional.
    - nathan_douglas 1y ago
      Trivial, honestly. And I'm not a particularly disciplined or functional person. The overwhelming majority of hobbyists use acrylic, which has no meaningful smell and can be thinned with a drop of water. I haven't had any issues with staining or the paint going where it's unwanted, and you typically only use a few drops at a time. Sometimes I use a dry palette and sometimes a wet palette. The dry palettes are plastic and cheap on Amazon. You rinse them off in the sink. If the paint dries, use a greenie or a brush - no problem. The wet palette just needs to be wiped off with a wet napkin before you close it up, and to have the wax paper replaced when it starts to rub through. If you get the sponge dirty, it's a sponge - just fill it up with water, squish it, maybe use a little Mean Green/Simple Green/etc to clean it up. The airbrush is a little more involved, but I dramatically overestimated how much of a pain in the ass it would be. Most of the time the cleanup for that is 3-5 minutes and not unpleasant. Occasionally it'll need to be broken down a little further, but it's still not a big deal. The mechanism isn't nearly as complex as it may initially seem. Brushes aren't a big deal to keep clean. You'd destroy a bunch, but you'll learn over time what not to do. Just don't start with the (comparatively expensive and arguably barbaric) sable brushes, start with garbage quality brushes and treat them as disposable. Rinse them, use a little brush soap, and don't brutalize or drown them and they'll last longer and longer and maintain a better quality, then you can upgrade. Nothing else really comes to mind in terms of labor.
  - navbaker 1y ago
    > the product occupies little space and it's trivial to keep around Haha, I have found this to absolutely NOT be the case! Each individual mini only takes up and inch or so, but they multiply and between them and the brushes/airbrush/paint racks and the ever-increasing grey Pile of Shame, it’s not a small amount of space taken up! It is an extremely rewarding hobby with a low bar to entry, though, and I agree that I will probably never stop.
nathan_douglas 1y ago
As I creak and grunt into my mid-forties, I find a major concern of mine is my mind growing stale and stiff like an old slice of bread, and a good random deep dive into cheesemaking or the different uses of tofu in traditional Chinese cooking might help stave that off. Or it might just make me boring in a different way, IDK.
- YinglingHeavy 1y ago
  Everything is a distraction from a distraction from a distraction. -Kierkegaard
cardanome 1y ago
As someone with ADHD, for me obsessing over something to the point of needing to be reminded to eat and drink is actually extremely healthy. It took me a long time to accept that following my special interests is what my brain craves and what gives me a sense of fulfillment. It might be unhealthy for a neurotypical person but very healthy for me. In fact when I am losing the spark and just can't get into anything that is when I know I am burning out and need to make changes.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Quizzical4230 1y ago
  While I enjoy (and crave) the waves (of time) that make my brain obsess over things which bring me immense joy to the point I neglect essentials (food and water), what follows is a hard learned crash where I have no energy (or dopamine) left to give to anything!
- atoav 1y ago
  Similar for my approach (although I haven't been diagnosed with ADHD). This is how I learned electronics enough to manage becoming a certified electrical engineer without ever officially studying anything even remotely like it. I was in the exam with people who did this professionally for half of their lives. This is also how I learned anything I ever did as a freelancer, including sound mixing for movies, VFX work, color grading, programming: I was curious about it, I was young, had time and just followed my interest. It is still how I learn new things, only now all the knowledge from other domains helps me doing it even faster. The trick is to play judo instead of karate with your own drive. Instead of trying to stop your urge and force yourself to do the boring stuff, it can work to take your energy and just slightly redirect it to where you want to go and where it makes sense for you to go. Maybe you have the urge to play a video game and can redirect it to reading a book like homo ludens instead, or maybe you redirect it towards making a game? Even if you never finished it you learned something.
- Chris2048 1y ago
  Strange question: Could you obsess mainly over time management / optimisation and fix all of this?
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
Your comment immediately made me think of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK8Z8hulFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK8Z8hulFg
- trentnix 1y ago
  While I'm savvy enough to keep my madness to myself (most of the time), that's pretty much what's happening in my brain!
wccrawford 1y ago
Similarly, I have so many hobbies now that I am actually stressed by them taking us so much space and costing so much money, and me spending so little time on each of them. I'm now actively trying to cut down on them instead, and accept that I'll have some "boredom" time as a result. I can "like" just about any hobby. I definitely don't need to explore more of them. They find me on their own, and I really don't need them to.
gchamonlive 1y ago
I'm in the other spectrum I think. I like a lot of stuff, but I don't seem to be able to immerse myself in them. The flow doesn't come easily. Instead I feel detached and ambivalent about pretty much everything. It's fine that I'm doing, and while I'm doing it I'll do it with a lot of presence. I also get very good at it. But in time I just wanna lazy out and watch TV while browsing the web. It's pretty sad and I wish I could will myself into one obsession or another.
- alsetmusic 1y ago
  > I wish I could will myself into one obsession or another. I understand. Not sure if you’re in the same boat, but for me, it’s a combination of age, energy, time, and becoming jaded. I used to spend late night hours poking at new things to learn about new hobbies and the like. The older I get, the less time and energy I’m willing to excerpt. This has been great for my getting back to reading books, but it’s been a sinkhole for self-learning and new skill development. The dopamine is lacking.
  - omgmajk 1y ago
    Are you me? I feel like this 100% mirrors myself. I've been slowing down the learning, I have a list of things I need to get myself to learn but I just can't find the energy to poke and prod. But I have started reading more books again.
freetime2 1y ago
> I don’t drink coffee because in a month I’ll be neck deep in forums about the proper way to grind beans. This was me last week. I was looking to buy a new coffee grinder, and I just could not believe the way that people on the Internet talk about these things. One popular coffee YouTuber recommended a $200 hand grinder as an entry level grinder [1]. There's also a widely repeated concept in the community of the "end game" grinder - as if working your way up to a $1000 coffee grinder should be the goal of every coffee drinker rather than just being satisfied with a $200 - $300 grinder (or even a $100 grinder, god forbid). And I decided not to go down the rabbit hole because I really doubt whether spending more and obsessing more would actually increase my enjoyment of coffee. I currently use a $23 hand grinder [2] that makes a tasty cup of coffee (I am looking for a new grinder not because I am dissatisfied with the results, but rather because grinding by hand can be annoying). Now that I know there are $200 grinders out there, it makes me wonder what I am missing out on. And I'm sure if I had a $200 grinder, I would be wondering what $500 would get me, etc. And how am I ever going to be able to enjoy a cup of coffee at a restaraunt, or at a friend's house, if I allow my standards to get so high? So I guess to bring this back to the original article: try to find enjoyment in the basic, no-frills version. If you're a coffee snob, can you still enjoy a cup of Nescafe instant coffee? If you're a wine snob, can you enjoy a glass of Yellow Tail? If you're a music snob, can you enjoy listening to Taylor Swift? [1] https://youtu.be/1t8qUbZ6nSs?si=JrpezhykYAm2lZoq&t=705 https://youtu.be/1t8qUbZ6nSs?si=JrpezhykYAm2lZoq&t=705 [2] https://a.co/d/aIqZtw1 https://a.co/d/aIqZtw1
- j_bum 1y ago
  I am a calm coffee (espresso) snob. I love the basic, and I love the fine. Believe it or not, expensive grinders (~$500 range) create an unbelievable difference. But they’re a luxury :) Lance Hedrick (popular coffee YouTuber) demonstrates time and time again that cheap machines and setups can rival even the most expensive end-game setups.
  - dripdry45 1y ago
    The first part of your post and second part seem to contradict each other; please explain.
bravura 1y ago
There's a difference between being present and enjoying something in the moment versus equating the background process with the moment itself.
colechristensen 1y ago
As an alternative... I have fun, for lack of a better phrase, collecting hobbies. I don't intentionally try to stop having one interest to give another "more important" one space, I just follow my nose. (most recently, auto repair and painting)
exe34 1y ago
I never learnt to bake, because I'm already fat enough.

leetrout 1y ago

What are some of your current obsessions? I enjoy learning and discovering so I enjoy tech and when I get into something the joy is from the rabbit hole and then I am done and move on. What has kept your interest?

nathan_douglas 1y ago
Not OP, but I was also replying and had thoughts along a similar vein. I'm 44 and have had countless hobbies over my adolescent and adult lives. Some I've taken up multiple times, some I've visited multiple variations on a core idea (e.g. aquariums/planted tanks/dwarf shrimp tanks). I've learned (and subseqeuntly forgotten) a tremendous amount, and spent an unholy amount of money. Most things have not stayed with me. Miniature painting is one thing that I think might last me the rest of my life. I think it boils down to a few factors: - miniatures aren't alive; I don't need to care for them, so the worst that can happen is I break or scratch something. This keeps my anxiety/concern/guilt largely out of the equation. - the feedback cycles are fairly short; I know almost immediately if a paint stroke was good or bad, if my brush is too wet or too dry, etc. A single project is normally just a couple of hours, and then it's done and I can view it as a completed whole. - the product occupies little space and it's trivial to keep around and compare to work done before and after and see progression and evolution over time. Also, if you're prone to collecting things, just keeping the product on the shelf next to other things becomes an ongoing source of reward. - if I absolutely fubar something, I can buy or print a new mini for a couple bucks or throw it in some Simple Green overnight and brush the old paint off. Most of the time I can just paint over the issue. - paint, brushes, a wet palette, minis, airbrush, etc all add up, but you can have an amazing setup for under a thousand bucks, and you can transcend the realm of mortals for $2K. The ongoing costs after that are manageable unless you're into Warhammer. You can get started and do some really fun and cool things with a $50 starter kit. So there's some higher-dimension graph with effort, frustration, reward, feedback latency, etc, and for me at least painting miniatures tends to sit in a happy area.
- leetrout 1y ago
  How hard is cleanup in order to keep things usable? I love the idea of painting minis and models- especially learning the various weathering effects but it seemed like it would take a lot of energy to keep everything functional.
  - nathan_douglas 1y ago
    Trivial, honestly. And I'm not a particularly disciplined or functional person. The overwhelming majority of hobbyists use acrylic, which has no meaningful smell and can be thinned with a drop of water. I haven't had any issues with staining or the paint going where it's unwanted, and you typically only use a few drops at a time. Sometimes I use a dry palette and sometimes a wet palette. The dry palettes are plastic and cheap on Amazon. You rinse them off in the sink. If the paint dries, use a greenie or a brush - no problem. The wet palette just needs to be wiped off with a wet napkin before you close it up, and to have the wax paper replaced when it starts to rub through. If you get the sponge dirty, it's a sponge - just fill it up with water, squish it, maybe use a little Mean Green/Simple Green/etc to clean it up. The airbrush is a little more involved, but I dramatically overestimated how much of a pain in the ass it would be. Most of the time the cleanup for that is 3-5 minutes and not unpleasant. Occasionally it'll need to be broken down a little further, but it's still not a big deal. The mechanism isn't nearly as complex as it may initially seem. Brushes aren't a big deal to keep clean. You'd destroy a bunch, but you'll learn over time what not to do. Just don't start with the (comparatively expensive and arguably barbaric) sable brushes, start with garbage quality brushes and treat them as disposable. Rinse them, use a little brush soap, and don't brutalize or drown them and they'll last longer and longer and maintain a better quality, then you can upgrade. Nothing else really comes to mind in terms of labor.
- navbaker 1y ago
  > the product occupies little space and it's trivial to keep around Haha, I have found this to absolutely NOT be the case! Each individual mini only takes up and inch or so, but they multiply and between them and the brushes/airbrush/paint racks and the ever-increasing grey Pile of Shame, it’s not a small amount of space taken up! It is an extremely rewarding hobby with a low bar to entry, though, and I agree that I will probably never stop.

nathan_douglas 1y ago

As I creak and grunt into my mid-forties, I find a major concern of mine is my mind growing stale and stiff like an old slice of bread, and a good random deep dive into cheesemaking or the different uses of tofu in traditional Chinese cooking might help stave that off. Or it might just make me boring in a different way, IDK.

YinglingHeavy 1y ago
Everything is a distraction from a distraction from a distraction. -Kierkegaard

cardanome 1y ago

As someone with ADHD, for me obsessing over something to the point of needing to be reminded to eat and drink is actually extremely healthy. It took me a long time to accept that following my special interests is what my brain craves and what gives me a sense of fulfillment. It might be unhealthy for a neurotypical person but very healthy for me. In fact when I am losing the spark and just can't get into anything that is when I know I am burning out and need to make changes.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Quizzical4230 1y ago
While I enjoy (and crave) the waves (of time) that make my brain obsess over things which bring me immense joy to the point I neglect essentials (food and water), what follows is a hard learned crash where I have no energy (or dopamine) left to give to anything!
atoav 1y ago
Similar for my approach (although I haven't been diagnosed with ADHD). This is how I learned electronics enough to manage becoming a certified electrical engineer without ever officially studying anything even remotely like it. I was in the exam with people who did this professionally for half of their lives. This is also how I learned anything I ever did as a freelancer, including sound mixing for movies, VFX work, color grading, programming: I was curious about it, I was young, had time and just followed my interest. It is still how I learn new things, only now all the knowledge from other domains helps me doing it even faster. The trick is to play judo instead of karate with your own drive. Instead of trying to stop your urge and force yourself to do the boring stuff, it can work to take your energy and just slightly redirect it to where you want to go and where it makes sense for you to go. Maybe you have the urge to play a video game and can redirect it to reading a book like homo ludens instead, or maybe you redirect it towards making a game? Even if you never finished it you learned something.
Chris2048 1y ago
Strange question: Could you obsess mainly over time management / optimisation and fix all of this?

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago

Your comment immediately made me think of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK8Z8hulFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK8Z8hulFg

trentnix 1y ago
While I'm savvy enough to keep my madness to myself (most of the time), that's pretty much what's happening in my brain!

wccrawford 1y ago

Similarly, I have so many hobbies now that I am actually stressed by them taking us so much space and costing so much money, and me spending so little time on each of them. I'm now actively trying to cut down on them instead, and accept that I'll have some "boredom" time as a result. I can "like" just about any hobby. I definitely don't need to explore more of them. They find me on their own, and I really don't need them to.

gchamonlive 1y ago

I'm in the other spectrum I think. I like a lot of stuff, but I don't seem to be able to immerse myself in them. The flow doesn't come easily. Instead I feel detached and ambivalent about pretty much everything. It's fine that I'm doing, and while I'm doing it I'll do it with a lot of presence. I also get very good at it. But in time I just wanna lazy out and watch TV while browsing the web. It's pretty sad and I wish I could will myself into one obsession or another.

alsetmusic 1y ago
> I wish I could will myself into one obsession or another. I understand. Not sure if you’re in the same boat, but for me, it’s a combination of age, energy, time, and becoming jaded. I used to spend late night hours poking at new things to learn about new hobbies and the like. The older I get, the less time and energy I’m willing to excerpt. This has been great for my getting back to reading books, but it’s been a sinkhole for self-learning and new skill development. The dopamine is lacking.
- omgmajk 1y ago
  Are you me? I feel like this 100% mirrors myself. I've been slowing down the learning, I have a list of things I need to get myself to learn but I just can't find the energy to poke and prod. But I have started reading more books again.

freetime2 1y ago

> I don’t drink coffee because in a month I’ll be neck deep in forums about the proper way to grind beans. This was me last week. I was looking to buy a new coffee grinder, and I just could not believe the way that people on the Internet talk about these things. One popular coffee YouTuber recommended a $200 hand grinder as an entry level grinder [1]. There's also a widely repeated concept in the community of the "end game" grinder - as if working your way up to a $1000 coffee grinder should be the goal of every coffee drinker rather than just being satisfied with a $200 - $300 grinder (or even a $100 grinder, god forbid). And I decided not to go down the rabbit hole because I really doubt whether spending more and obsessing more would actually increase my enjoyment of coffee. I currently use a $23 hand grinder [2] that makes a tasty cup of coffee (I am looking for a new grinder not because I am dissatisfied with the results, but rather because grinding by hand can be annoying). Now that I know there are $200 grinders out there, it makes me wonder what I am missing out on. And I'm sure if I had a $200 grinder, I would be wondering what $500 would get me, etc. And how am I ever going to be able to enjoy a cup of coffee at a restaraunt, or at a friend's house, if I allow my standards to get so high? So I guess to bring this back to the original article: try to find enjoyment in the basic, no-frills version. If you're a coffee snob, can you still enjoy a cup of Nescafe instant coffee? If you're a wine snob, can you enjoy a glass of Yellow Tail? If you're a music snob, can you enjoy listening to Taylor Swift? [1] https://youtu.be/1t8qUbZ6nSs?si=JrpezhykYAm2lZoq&t=705 https://youtu.be/1t8qUbZ6nSs?si=JrpezhykYAm2lZoq&t=705 [2] https://a.co/d/aIqZtw1 https://a.co/d/aIqZtw1

j_bum 1y ago
I am a calm coffee (espresso) snob. I love the basic, and I love the fine. Believe it or not, expensive grinders (~$500 range) create an unbelievable difference. But they’re a luxury :) Lance Hedrick (popular coffee YouTuber) demonstrates time and time again that cheap machines and setups can rival even the most expensive end-game setups.
- dripdry45 1y ago
  The first part of your post and second part seem to contradict each other; please explain.

bravura 1y ago

There's a difference between being present and enjoying something in the moment versus equating the background process with the moment itself.

colechristensen 1y ago

As an alternative... I have fun, for lack of a better phrase, collecting hobbies. I don't intentionally try to stop having one interest to give another "more important" one space, I just follow my nose. (most recently, auto repair and painting)

exe34 1y ago

I never learnt to bake, because I'm already fat enough.