
Ask HN: Looking back, what have you wasted lots of time on? - sellingwebsite
Personal life, career, dev work, trying to be &quot;clever&quot; about saving money: anything will do. What were&#x2F;are some of the biggest time wasters in your life?<p>This is anonymous account, so can be candid about mine... Things I regret as of today:<p><pre><code>  * Taking too many business&#x2F;economics courses, e.g. Managerial Economics, Marketing, etc..
  * Some DevOps stuff, particularly Ansible
  * Django&#x2F;Python - should&#x27;ve started with Rails
  * Failed side projects that I kept working on for a long time
  * Facebook - deleted it several years ago
  * TV - havent watch it for more than 5+ years
  * Porn - havent watched for several months
  * School, memorizing useless facts - nothing can be done about that, I suppose?
  * Studying Calculus&#x2F;Linear Algebra because I wanted to go into AI&#x2F;ML
  * Some video games
</code></pre>
EDIT: added mine
======
mreome
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.

~~~
jrs235
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.

------
mnemonicsloth
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."

~~~
ska
> 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
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.

~~~
FiberBundle
> 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.

It seems as if you totally didn't get the point of proof based mathematics.
Falsity is not a continuum, either something is false or its true. If you can
produce a counterexample the proposition is false.

~~~
kxyvr
This is not entirely true and depends on the logic system that you choose.
Something that helped open my eyes to the different possibilities is this
article, which talks about producing a formal logical system for statements in
Buddhism:

[https://aeon.co/essays/the-logic-of-buddhist-philosophy-
goes...](https://aeon.co/essays/the-logic-of-buddhist-philosophy-goes-beyond-
simple-truth)

This is written by a professor that I think has produced some really
interesting results. Anyway, he discusses something called a plurivalent
logic, which is a kind of paraconsistent logic:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic)

These logical systems allow for more than true or false. For example, they
allow for neither true nor false as well as both true and false. Outside of
their general theoretical interest, there are direct applications to systems
with contradictory information. I like the paper "A Useful Four-Valued Logic"
by Nuel Belnap:

[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-010-1161-7_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-010-1161-7_2)

which discusses a 4-value logic system and its application to databases.

------
quanticle
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
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
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
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.

------
NotPhysicsPhd
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
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)

------
mosalarynolife
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.

~~~
scarface74
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
Trying to figure out the "perfect" tech stack, game engine, etc. to use
instead of just going with one for my personal project.

~~~
gremlinsinc
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.

------
markus_zhang
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.

~~~
partisan
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
Yeah agreed. Victories are very important, and a completed project, however
crude or badly organized, is better than anything else.

------
sellingwebsite
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

------
scarface74
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
This is a good list. I dumped my house right away - it was such a time suck

~~~
scarface74
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
Daydreaming, imagining myself in better positions and even planning goals to
get there, but never actually starting

~~~
tjansen
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.

------
namdnay
Hacker News :)

------
thorgrimr
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.

------
ironman1478
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.

------
c3534l
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
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...).

------
hazeii
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...

------
ivanech
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
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.

------
tjansen
* 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

        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
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
Dancing classes is indeed a great way to meet people. Thanks for sharing your
story!

------
serpix
with awareness, time cannot be wasted. Everything happened just the way it
needed to. Everything happening now happens just the way it should.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
"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.

------
teejmya
Reddit :)

------
mwizzle
Why do you regret Django/Python and wish you started with Rails?

~~~
sellingwebsite
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
> I don't like Devise either.

What don't you like about it?

~~~
sellingwebsite
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-
fixatio...](https://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html#session-fixation)

~~~
whycombagator
> It works great if you won't deviate from the common use case

What have you needed to do that isn’t well supported by devise?

------
tunesmith
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
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

------
austincheney
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
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
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.

------
peterbozso
World of Warcraft. :)

~~~
y4mi
And now it starts all over again with official classic servers

------
jadams5
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.

------
bfffan
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.

------
subpixel
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.

------
username90
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.

------
sadfu
Javascript frameworks

------
cauterize
Kubernetes.

~~~
meowface
Why, if I might ask? What were your use cases? Asking as someone deciding
whether or not to use it for certain projects.

~~~
number6
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
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.

------
Devthrowaway80
Alcoholism.

------
test1235
Warhammer 40'000 ... lots of time and money

------
thedaemon
( _) Investing my time and effort into friendships.

(_) Television viewing.

(*) Caring about other's opinions of me.

~~~
non-entity
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.

------
raindropm
Overthinking. The introverts' nightmare. :(

------
daw___
Gentoo, and a couple unrequited loves :-)

------
0xfaded
Nethack

------
sdinsn
Reddit & Video games

------
psadri
Reading hacker news!

------
probinso
Computer science

