
Wastes of Time We Regret When We Get Older - kawera
https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/01/the-biggest-wastes-of-time-we-regret-when-we-get-older/
======
F_J_H
I've posted this on HN before, and it seems appropriate here as well. I read
this every once in awhile, and it never fails to inspire meet to live by what
Jeff Bezos calls the "regret minimization framework":

 _If I were able to live my life anew, In the next I would try to commit more
errors. I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more. I would be more
foolish than I 've been, In fact, I would take few things seriously. I would
be less hygienic. I would run more risks, take more vacations, contemplate
more sunsets, climb more mountains, swim more rivers. I would go to more
places where I've never been, I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans, I
would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.

I was one of those people that lived sensibly and prolifically each minute of
his life; Of course I had moments of happiness. If I could go back I would try
to have only good moments. Because if you didn't know, of that is life made:
only of moments; Don't lose the now. I was one of those that never went
anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, an umbrella, and a
parachute; If I could live again, I would travel lighter.

If I could live again, I would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of
spring and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends. I would take more cart
rides, contemplate more dawns, and play with more children, If I had another
life ahead of me.

But already you see, I am 85, and I know that I am dying._

Edit: Not sure who the author is. I've seen it attributed to Jorge Luis
Borges, but am pretty sure that is incorrect.

~~~
codeulike
Nice quote but it is literally survival bias.

You might hear from old people wishing they'd done more, you don't hear from
young people who died while climbing mountains, swimming rivers, or ...er ...
eating ice cream.

Which is to say: how cautious or not to be at any point in time is actually a
very complex judgement. Seizing the day and living in the moment are
important, but so is planning ahead, thinking about the future, practicing
restraint at the right times and knowing when not to eat ice cream.

~~~
ntsplnkv2
You also don't hear from the people who died in a car accident after fighting
with their spouse on the way to their dead-end job.

You don't hear about the people who stayed at their "secure" job as opposed to
joining a more risky venture, only to lose their job the next month.

> how cautious or not to be at any point in time is actually a very complex
> judgement.

I think people are taking what was said a bit too far. You can do very safe
mountain climbs and see some awesome views, and safely swim rivers near shore,
You can reasonably live without taking absurd risks.

------
eliben
Isn't "taking more risks" simply survivorship bias? A-priori, you weigh every
risk and try to minimize your chances of getting hurt (physically,
financially, etc). But in hindsight, realizing that nothing bad happened _of
course_ you can wish you had taken _more_ risk.

I wonder how folks who took risks and got seriously hurt feel about this. Do
they regret taking those risks, or do they regret not taking enough?

~~~
lend000
The opposite is also victim bias. The only way to calculate risk for sure
without any emotional bias is to get some solid numbers per 'risky thing to
do.'

------
pbourke
I was disappointed that "commuting" was not on the list, because it's up there
for me.

~~~
sAbakumoff
Something relevant : I like walking. Really like. Google Maps report suggests
that I walked 100 mi (160 km) in December of 2017. It takes time and I
basically commute from the start point to back the same point. While one can
consider this as the time wasting, I am trying to get the most out of it by :
not assisting google maps for directions, finding path on my own; listening to
NPR podcasts; contemplating poker hands I recently played;

~~~
emptysands
Also better than driving to a gym and then walking on a treadmill for
exercise.

~~~
sincerely
I can't imagine most people who have gym memberships are spending their time
there /walking/.

~~~
lsc
I find it much easier to do cardio while reading... this is difficult while
walking outside, pretty easy while on a treadmill or elliptical.

------
nisa
As someone in the early 30s that mostly wasted away the last 15 years due to
anxiety, internet addiction and procrastion and unability to finish stuff: My
only advise to younger ones is to work on your problems early on and focus on
a stable income to survive on your own and your education. It's not getting
easier and progress on these problems rewards you for years to come. If you
are stuck in these loops consider taking a year off to get yourself together.
I've always somehow carried on without solving any problems and things only
got worse.

~~~
ramphastidae
I am you. Same age. Same issues. Same timeline.

About a year ago I finally broke, lost my job, and have since been focused on
taking a break and working on my issues.

Thank you for sharing. I sincerely, to the point that I am welling up with
tears, hope you can resolve your issues, as I totally understand the feeling.
Know that there are others like you and it is possible for things to improve.

Just FYI: I am not totally over my problems, but what really helped me was
therapy, medication for dermatological issues that were causing me distress
and insecurity, socializing with nice friends and family and completely
cutting out toxic family, dramatically cutting back on drugs I was using to
cope, and creating (and doing my best to stick to) a daily self-care routine,
tracked via a to-do app, that includes good sleep, daily showers and grooming,
and walks.

It hasn’t been perfect but it’s made a big difference and for the first time
in about seven years I am feeling OK about life.

------
acd
Most people regret noting living a life true to themselves, most regret
working too much missing time with loved ones. Many people regret not having
the courage to express their feelings.

This is from the book Top 5 regrets of the dying written by a nurse Bronnie
Ware at a nursing home.

Here is a link about the book
[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/03/top-5-regrets-
of-t...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/03/top-5-regrets-of-the-
dying_n_3640593.html)

~~~
dm319
I haven't read the book, but I was going to say..

1\. Not saying what you think 2\. Not doing what you think is right (even if
that would have been a mistake)

~~~
maxxxxx
In my 20s and 30s I did what I thought was right and said what I thought.
Turned out I was wrong.

~~~
felipemnoa
I would like to learn from your experiences. Care to give some examples?

~~~
maxxxxx
Investing in risk real estate. Starting businesses with people other people
warned me about. I thought I had figured it out. Stuff like that.

------
fizixer
The ideas in the post as well as the comments are a mixed bag. Case in point,
we hear a lot that people say they wish they had lived more in the now, or
relaxed more instead of working all the time, or given more time to family.

Well, in my opinion, for every such person there are probably hundreds who
actually do that and as a result get nowhere in their careers. Family,
especially an SO, to an extent looks up to you based on your success,
typically, and more importantly, counts on your (e.g., financial) success. If
you lived in the now and didn't succeed career-wise or financially, your SO
probably would've left you long time ago, and you wouldn't have a family to
begin with.

We don't hear from those people because they're "nobodys". We like to
interview successful people, who get there through workaholism more or less,
and we ask them what are their regrets and they tell us they wish they hadn't
worked so hard. What they're really trying to say is that they could settle
for a bit less success. But there's no guarantee they would've had minimum
desired success if they didn't work as hard to begin with. Such successful
people are simply telling you about their desire for some ideal/fantasy world,
that doesn't exist, where they spent more time with family, lived more in the
now, and still achieved the minimum desirable level of success ('minimum
desirable' according to their own personal/subjective standards, which is
probably not less than 80-90% of their actual success, e.g., someone with
$400m net worth would think he could settle for $300m and be able to spend
more time with family etc, but that's not how it works).

If someone interviewed any of those "nobodys" probably many of them would say
they're happy with how their life went. But you, the reader of such regret
lessons, have to ask yourself what do you want to do with your life. And based
on that, your have to "pick" the regret-lessons that apply to you.

~~~
somestag
Yeah, I think there's a certain fallacy going on with respect to uncertainty.

It's like studying for exams.

Sometimes in school I studied for 10 hours for exams that turned out to be
trivially easy. I barely needed to study at all. I could have gotten more
sleep, worked out, practiced some other skill... I would have been a much
happier person if I'd spent those hours on something other than school.

But then other times I studied for 10 hours for an exam, and when I saw the
questions I was kicking myself for not putting in just another hour or two.
The exam covered material just barely beyond what I studied, and my grade
would have improved dramatically if I'd only put in a little more effort.

When I put in long hours at my job--which I don't always do--I'm not doing so
because I'm mistakenly believing that working is more important than
relationships or relaxation; I'm working long hours because I'm unsure about
the future and I want to make sure I have some minimum level of security.
Sometimes I look back and those hours feel unnecessary, but other times I
realize how lucky I was to have put in all that work.

That said, I still think there's a lesson here. We should constantly step back
and ask ourselves what we really want to be doing. Sometimes that means
working less, and sometimes that means working more. Just because we worked 60
hours last week doesn't mean we need to work 60 hours this week, and by the
same token we shouldn't get complacent just because things are going well and
there's no immediate need for more effort. Some of my best decisions in life
have been when I completely re-evaluated where I was at and decided to do
something completely different. Sometimes that meant pursuing a passion, but
other times it meant _giving up_ on a passion to do something realistic.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> "You might feel dumb asking questions, but you look dumber when you don't
get it because you failed to ask."

That depends on having co-workers who also think this is true.

In my experience, this is not guaranteed. Frex, I used to work in that one
company as a junior dev, where I was expected to know everything about the
internal development processes of the dev team from day 1. Well, I hadn't
taken "<that_one_company> 101" in my CS course so I had no idea, e.g. which
one was the development server and how to get onto it. Still, when I asked
people that information, they reacted as if I had transgressed some invisible
barrier and I was taking up their time for no reason.

After a lot of this, I resolved to never ask anyone anything again. I mostly
kept to it (one time I was sure someone had done something incredibly stupid
that I didn't want to have to take the blame for, so I called them over to fix
it themselves- and it turned out I was right). The upshot of this was that I
learned a metric shit ton of things on my own, but of course the people who
depended on my work being done quickly were constantly breathing dow my neck
in rage.

On the bright side, once I felt I had received enough self-training at the
expense of that company, I gave myself a promotion by finding another one,
where I received some of the most brilliant mentoring I could ever expect, by
co-workers who were incredibly relieved that a new hire was interested in
learning about some of their legacy software.

~~~
white-flame
But there was no downside of the anecdote you described, so it's really odd
that you made that resolve.

While it can be uncomfortable (no downside) or expose that you don't know what
you're expected to know (but fixes that quickly), in the majority of cases
people are happy to explain their expertise.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
The downside was that I spent almost two years in that first company, being
treated like an incompetent idiot and developing an ulcer, before I could bail
out.

~~~
white-flame
I mean the social effect of you asking; that wasn't a prominent downside:

> _when I asked people that information, they reacted as if I had transgressed
> some invisible barrier and I was taking up their time for no reason._

The downside of your _resolution_ , of course, was your 2 years, and the
inefficiencies that not asking questions brings.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I think the inefficiences you mention were primarily caused by people
_refusing_ to answer questions. I mean, it's not like I was just made to feel
like a fool because I asked- people actively discouraged me from asking stuff.

I complained about that to my line manager who assured me it was OK to ask,
that it was part of more senior devs' job to answer questions etc, but of
course nothing changed.

------
sheeshkebab
Playing first person shooters in your twenty’s/thirties should be up there
somewhere...

~~~
HN15718653
Right up there with reading large amounts of fiction. I mean, one should
_experience life_ instead of sitting on a couch or wherever for hours on end,
staring at printed words and immersing yourself in some other person's
imagination! At the end of it, so many hours every year and you have nothing
to show for it.

~~~
majos
I think reasonable doses of fiction -- say a couple of books a month -- are
useful, so long as you choose your fiction carefully. To me the best fiction
is like hanging out with the coolest, smartest, and most articulate person
you've never met, and letting them show you things they believe to be
important.

This is not a substitute for experiencing things firsthand, but I can
certainly point to many novels that _shocked_ me into thinking about stuff
differently.

Good fiction reaches you in a strongly empathic way, in a place where you're
uniquely receptive to it. This is valuable for teaching things about your own
life and the lives of others, which seems valuable.

------
dazc
My biggest waste of time has been procrastination, simply because it's
avoidable. The time I spend thinking about doing stuff while staring at a
screen is hard to justify in any logical sense.

The time spent commuting, standing in-line, sitting in meetings and so on may
be felt like wasted time but they are activities which are, pretty much,
difficult to avoid.

~~~
JamesBarney
10 years ago I was laid back, easy to chill, hard to get work done
procrastinator. And now I'm a high strung, hard to relax, always super driven
work horse.

And let me tell you I'd go back to being lazy in a heartbeat. I was much less
successful and poorer, but happier, calmer, and more interesting.

I highly recommend procrastinating.

~~~
sammoorhouse
What happened? Did you get promoted? Start a family? Lose a bad bet with the
mafia?

~~~
akvadrako
I would bet it's just because working is addictive.

~~~
JamesBarney
Yeah, not exactly the work. But the success work brings.

------
pmoriarty
_If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret
it; if you marry or if you do not marry, you will regret both; whether you
marry or you do not marry, you will regret both. Laugh at the world 's
follies, you will regret it; weep over them, you will also regret it; if you
laugh at the world's follies or if you weep over them, you will regret both;
whether you laugh at the world's follies or you weep over them, you will
regret both. Believe a girl, you will regret it; if you do not believe her,
you will also regret it; if you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you
will regret both; whether you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you
will regret both. If you hang yourself, you will regret it; if you do not hang
yourself, you will regret it; if you hang yourself or you do not hang
yourself, you will regret both; whether you hang yourself or you do not hang
yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the sum of all practical
wisdom._

Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

~~~
arbie
So the entirety of human existence can be summed up as "Regret"?

------
code_duck
My biggest regret is not taking my health seriously when I was younger. It
turned out my nagging issues with eating were more serious than I thought, the
gravity having been cloaked by the gradual onset of symptoms. By the time I
was finally diagnosed with celiac, I had been suffering from debilitating
issues that harmed my ability to consistently work for well over a decade. The
problems with celiac shaped my life and even personality in negative ways, and
I’ve been left with chronic problems related to nerve damage that may never
heal.

------
tastyface
I'm 29 years old, and the biggest blocker in my recent life has been the
regret of wasted time. I left my job in late 2013 to travel and work on my own
projects, but the project-making has been very slow and sporadic at best. In
aggregate, I feel like I've literally wasted about 4 years of my life — just
dumped into the trash — and I don't know how to deal with that fact. (At least
people with failed startups have "the journey" to learn from. Not the case
when you literally can't get any work done.) Part of me feels that I should go
get a real job at this point, but a) I'm pretty sure I'm now behind engineers
in my age group by half a decade, and b) it will feel like giving up on my
ambitions. These thoughts keeps me up at night.

I wish there was some magic phrase that would convince me it's not too late to
catch up. If we have aspirations, how do we _stop_ comparing ourselves to
other people?

~~~
squidi
How did your travel go?

Careers can go like the game snakes and ladders sometimes. If you can phrase
the time you spent more positively I think it can work out.

~~~
tastyface
To be honest, I really suck at traveling. It was a great experience to live in
so many different cities around Europe, but there weren't many actual
activities involved. Mostly looking around, going on long walks, and eating
local food. Nothing like those Instagram travelbloggers who travel densely and
intensely. Frankly, I barely even talked to anyone.

The years weren't a total loss, since I did release a reasonably complex
tablet app (with $10k sales) plus a bunch of smaller, less profitable ones.
But it took me 3-4 times as long to develop them as it would have any
competent engineer, at least based on the stuff that gets posted to HN.

I still want to keep working on myself and break through to the other side of
productivity, but sometimes it feels like I'm just circling the drain. My
personality is such that I can lift my head one day and find that entire
months have disappeared out from under me.

------
contingencies
Reading badly written clickbait articles on the internet.

------
maxerickson
I wonder how much supposed wasted time ends up shaping the person that regrets
it.

~~~
code_duck
Positively or negatively?

------
chengiz
> In order to let the past go, you must forgive yourself officially. Feel the
> embarrassment or shame one final time. Really feel it throughout your body.
> ... Finally, make the decision to forgive yourself and do it. It helps to
> even say it out loud. From now on, it's OK. You are forgiven.

This is inane. I'm reminded of Mark Wahlberg "forgiving himself" for beating
the old Vietnamese man blind.

~~~
brucephillips
Why shouldn't he?

------
anotheryou
I know I'll regret work, but right now I don't know a good way out of it...

I just see two paths: working where the money is or trying to get by with
things I'm passionate about.

I'm quite fine with my current job, but for it to be more of my passion, it
would have to include more art and/or science and preferably not be 40h/week +
commute and breaks.

------
Hnrobert42
This is hacker news not reddit. Not only is this speculative fluff, it's not
even relevant.

------
lumberingjack
I bet a young female wrote this, checks yep a young female wrote this.

