> Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). A person’s insatiable urge to buy equipment for their art or hobby, distracting them from actually practicing said art or hobby.
> It’s driven in part by the belief that new gear will improve one’s art or performance, e.g. I don’t sound like Jimi Hendrix because I don’t have the same effects pedal he used.
Bit tangent, but I think one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is collecting guitar gear, and my niche is things that Jimi Hendrix used or things that make sounds like he did”
There’s no shame in a hobby collecting and being honest with yourself might bring some clarity to your life.
I like this take. Nobody thinks of stamp collecting as a problematic hobby. Collecting and curating is fun in its own right.
Though I do think there can be another aspect at play; I often find myself collecting things that I think "might be useful". Eg: I have a ton of empty yogurt containers, for use in hypothetical future art projects. I do use them sometimes, but at this point I have plenty. I still feel the urge to keep saving them, though — for some imagined future. I wouldn't say "I enjoy collecting yogurt containers," though.
I'm no hoarder, but I do feel a certain pull/compulsion in that direction from time to time, and I could see the same being true elsewhere. It's not always easy to know whether I'm scratching an itch or worrying at it.
I am a bit disturbed by collecting hobbies to be honest. When there is some novelty, archival or scientific value to a collection, that is different and fascinating, it's the purely consumerist collecting that gives me the heebie-jeebies.
It's purely acquisitive and about the buying and getting and just seems quite sad and empty. Those afflicted become slaves to the companies pumping out items purely for this class of consumer. For example, "limited editions" and such are not rare because the product warrants it, it's just designed scarcity to press the buttons of the collectors and extract the most money from them. Or it's bidding wars on vintage items like wine where huge price inflation happens just for the collection kudos not the virtues of the item itself.
For example, I like fountain pens, but I can't really read r/fountainpens because it's mostly people building huge collections of pens and getting excited about buying a new pattern or colour of pen they already own. Nothing makes me sadder than seeing their full collections of 100s of fantastic tools that will sit idle for the vast majority of their life until the owner passes and a relative has to liquidate things they don't understand.
It looks like a dysfunction to me - a stimulation seeking addiction which is not satisfied by the next acquisition and will never fill the emptiness, the need, the dream, of the collector. I know people will be super defensive about their collecting but I would love for that money and energy to be redirected towards higher degrees of self-actualisation. It feels like a failure to scale the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and get stuck in a loop down the bottom. Instead of creating novelty or growing, there is something safe, comfortable and unchallenging to just acquire.
I wouldn't go so far as saying it give me "heebie-jeebies," but I also don't see the point in collecting mass market consumer items that are not and have never been rare. Probably the closest I come to ever wanting to do so is that I have a real appreciation for old computer systems. Once, I even got it in my head that I could theoretically own and run a working PDP-11. Fortunately/unfortunately, I've never had the space to properly store, much less display a collection of obsolete home computers, and I don't even want to think about the power and space requirements to actually operate a working PDP-11
So, yeah, I truly do not understand collecting Beanie Babies, Funko Pops, or fountain pens. But, I do collect coins. I find them interesting on multiple levels. I can't think of too many other hobbies that give one a good excuse to study history, economics, art, metallurgy, and more. So many things that happen involving humans and human societies also involve money and commerce. Going back to the rarity aspect, I own quite a few coins that are anywhere from quite scarce to truly rare. It also really helps that they don't take up a ton of space, either.
I don't see anything particularly maladaptive about it, except that it's a hobby that can take up arbitrarily much time and money. But, that's actually one thing I like about it: I could definitely have fun collecting coins on less than a $100/month budget, even though I actually spend quite a bit more than that on it. The acquisition process is fun as well. I like going to coin shops and coin shows. Buying online or at auction is slightly less fun, but it gives me a greater opportunity to find what I'm really looking for. When dealing with things that are, as I said, fairly scarce, the hunt itself becomes part of the enjoyment.
> that give one a good excuse to study history, economics, art, metallurgy
Not sharing this as a serious alternative, just sharing this as something nerdy and cool. It's a little more involved than coin collecting lol... but this guy making his own Carnyx (Celtic war horn) ticks many of those boxes:
I have a friend that makes medieval lutes. He even reproduced one from Skyrim - it sounded bad, apparently, as it was designed to look good, not sound good.
The new hot computer at Rose-Hulman in 1982 was the VAX 11/780. I always wanted to have one ever since. However, I've been through hording, and having had to purge things, I realize that it would be quite silly to actually own one.
So, I've done the next best thing... Thanks to Termux and SimH, I run one in my Android phone. I can telnet into it and log in, not quite the VT100 experience, but close enough. So for the low price of about 4GB of storage, I have a VAX 11/780, running OpenVMS 7.2 in my pocket. ;-)
> I even got it in my head that I could theoretically own and run a working PDP-11.
Me too. Thankfully, buying old PDP-11 manuals on eBay and assembling a PiDP-11 satisfied that urge. I also live close to two good computer museums that have plenty of PDPs to poke around on, when they're working. Watching the graybeards diagnose and fix things on these 50+ year old machines reminds me why I don't want to do that at home.
I used to collect old Sun, IBM, and HP Unix workstations. You know, the ones with weird architectures like SPARC, POWER, and PA-RISC. And the software to run on them, which was often very weird.
Like you, this isn't the mass market consumerism type of collecting, but is maybe a bit closer to it than your idea of somehow getting a working PDP-11.
Ha! I used to want an Inmos Transputer. Even tho I had zero experience in parallel process development. Saved myself some money by not being able to afford it. "I should buy a boat" meme appears.
what bothers me is not the people collecting them but the ones who offer such consumerist trash (e.g., funko pops). Because they are willfully using resources to create nothing from something so they can sell their nothing to people who have some need to express themselves by collecting. there are many quality things to collect however most of the "memorabilia" that exists today is not it.
now that my rant is over would you like to see my extensive collection of Star Trek memorabilia plates? The paint is toxic so we cannot eat from them so i just leave them in this box and bring it out when guests come over.
I was encouraged to collect things as a kid. I think it was even a badge in cub-scouts. I collected keyrings. I was given them from various places, spent pocket-money on them on holiday, that sort of stuff. I certainly didn't own any keys. I also collected model dinosaurs (usually acquired at museums) and Lego.
The Lego I would put in its own category because it was endlessly fascinating and rebuild-able. I used it all the time. The dinosaurs were at least educational.
But the keyrings were just hoarded and gathered dust. I'm trying to decide now if this was unhealthy and trained me to covet stuff, or if it was a good inoculation against the behaviour later in life. I now have zero interest in collecting anything just for the sake of collecting it. I'd rather be minimal where possible, and after accumulating a lot of crap in my early 20s (when owning stuff was a novelty) I now also try to avoid the "I might use that someday" trap.
I too like fountain pens and have about six, moderately priced, all made by 'Cross'. I put various coloured inks in them (I usually have about 3 good to go at any one moment) and ... I virtually never hand write anything.
The thing I have most of is certainly cables and tech widgets of various descriptions, but I don't try to collect them, somehow they just sort-of happen.
Mmm. That does remind me of the quite nice social interaction some types of collecting gives. For example, a neighbour was a thimble collector so whenever visiting somewhere, we would look for a thimble. It gave us some entertainment as a tourist, like a treasure hunt, and then the nice moment to give it to the neighbour and show we were thinking of them while away.
It can go wrong though. I've known a few friends who have become associated with "a thing" because their family saw they owned one of "the thing" and now it's the exclusive theme of all presents but they don't have the heart to correct them and reveal all their presents were unwanted!
Yes there can be a social thing, I had a friend who collected Starbucks city mugs, so people would bring them to her from all over the world.
On the “associated” thing - not so much about collections but there was an interesting article on the guardian website a few months ago, about a woman who came to realise that ‘I like Prosecco’ was not a substitute for a personality, but she had run with it for so long that that was all she ever got as a gift, and she discovered her friends knew very little else about her. A one-dimensional character trap.
> The thing I have most of is certainly cables and tech widgets of various descriptions, but I don't try to collect them
That makes me think that someone who is a hobby cable collector must have the easiest time of it!
People do collect all sort of non-expensive things (pebbles, seashells, ...) so it feels like just a coincidence that collecting pens means also collecting a lot of tools that will never be used.
I collected clothing tags as a kid for a few months because I saw a kid on TV for collecting something inane (I forget what). Used to do Philately for a while before that.
As an adult, I go by the motto of “Don’t save the candles”, which is to actually use the things you buy, even the expensive cutlery and the scented candles.
I agree that collecting is weird, but I also agree with the GP’s general point that one should accept they have a collecting hobby and find contentment in that fact alone. There is a large amount of personal satisfaction to be found by accepting who you are and what you like. So what if other people find it weird?
In all likelihood, you and I find collecting sad and empty because we’re not collectors. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For all we know, collectors have found more fulfillment than we will ever know.
I think seeking value in hobbies is a problem, they don't need to have any inherent value for the hobbyist other than being fun. I say it is a problem because it leads to a kind of mentality where one seeks productivity and optimization of RoI in all things in life. You are allowed to enjoy thing for no other reason than being fun. That being said, I agree with you, but I feel this kind of thinking could lead to see others who just want to enjoy a hobby as less than me, and that's where I draw the line.
Perhaps there are just some basic human urges at play, and in some cases it is directed into something you value (eg: archival pursuits), and in other cases it is being cynically manipulated by companies for profit.
It's hard to choose the line between "don't yuck someone else's yum" and not wanting to endorse others' self-destructive tendencies.
Part of me wants to chastise you for gatekeeping other people's enjoyment[1], but I do agree that it can slip into dysfunction, and also agree that some companies downright push people in that direction (looking at you, microtransactions).
Undoubtedly for some it is a dysfunction; but for most, I suspect it taps into something common to most of us and is encoded by our evolutionary past given that for most of human prehistory we were equipped to deal with scarcity. For many with collecting hobbies, the target items are very specific and their practices don’t preclude moving effectively through life.
It's because the law of marginal utility, which states that the satisfaction derived from each additional unit of a good decreases as one consumes more, often doesn't apply to collecting because collectors derive pleasure from uniqueness and completeness.
There's a vast and profitable opportunity awaiting the man who can connect "collecting hobbyists" with generative/AI production technology. A veritable money machine.
Any hobby can be a healthy, fun exercise you do on your spare time or an unhealthy compulsion that takes over your life. You are singling-out collection for no good reason.
I didn't realize accumulating a large funko-pop collection was an expression of "man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities ... to express and activate all the capacities of the organism"
Accumulating stuff that "might be useful" at some indefinite point in the future, without trying to curate the accumulation might not be hoarding, but, it's actually quite similar to the mindset of some of the actual hoarders on the TV show Hoarders. Those people obviously take it to pathological extremes, and I'm not suggesting having a bunch of empty, cleaned out yogurt containers stashed away somewhere is in any way equivalent to stuffing one's entire house from floor to ceiling with stuff. But, on the show, when the hoarders talk about why they do it, it's often a behavior that came about as a reaction to some kind of loss, or out of a fear of some kind of loss. I would suggest that what you've described ("I'll hold on to this 'just in case....") is a lot like the reasons they give for doing it, even if the real motivation is quite different.
There are differences as well. Magnitude is the obvious one, unless you actually filled your entire kitchen with yogurt containers or something lol. :) The other big one I can think of is that an actual hoarder will have genuine, severe anxiety at the mere thought of getting rid of anything from their hoard. This is another assumption, of course, but my guess is that if you had to get rid of some, or maybe even most of your accumulation of yogurt containers for some reason, you'd be able to do that, and the thought wouldn't fill you with dread or anything.
> Accumulating stuff that "might be useful" at some indefinite point in the future, without trying to curate the accumulation might not be hoarding, but, it's actually quite similar to the mindset of some of the actual hoarders
Every once and a while I'll try to curate my parts bin, tossing bulky or unused items that I haven't needed.
Every time I find myself needing some seemingly dumb part from what I got rid of a month or two later.
I still try to clean up, fully knowing I'll need that thing later. Its rough.
I finally collected/hoarded/acquired all house improvement gear I ever thought I'd be able to use. And when I also get to use them - like once every 5 years if I'm lucky - I get such a satisfaction! So was I unhealthy or prepared? I even asked myself but as they're only occupying a cupboard I let myself breathe and wait for the next opportunity to polish a handle or drill a square hole.
Late reply, but... I'm with you on this one! Reduce/Re-Use/Recycle, washing glass spaghetti jars, etc. What I've come to the conclusion is the following guidelines/rules:
1) "Save _all_ the things!" Yeah, save them, use them, etc.
2) Use it or lose it: I have a space under the sink for washed/clean plastic containers. If that gets too junky, it's time to throw them out in the trash, offer them "free" on craigslist/facebook marketplace, your neighborhood group, whatever.
3) Regularize: we've ended up with strict "use cases" after saving "_all_ the things!". Sour cream containers become waste-grease-buckets for the freezer. Glass spaghetti jars become candy/cookie containers. Peanut-butter-jars become nail/screw holders in the garage.
4) Limit the flow: Once you "run out of space", keep only one or two "on hand" if it's a particular type of jar that you know you will "flow through". Basically you should reach a steady-state of using the stuff you're saving rather than growing your "cache" unbounded. Unless it's a really useful/valuable/unique type of box/jar/product, get rid of it! Even if it's awesome (but unique), probably get rid of it, b/c it'll end up being "the odd one out" unless you have a really specific need for it.
5) re-Regularize: is there a certain type/brand of spaghetti-jars that are soooo awesome, because they fit on a shelf, have the right size opening, etc. etc.? Start consolidating around one particular type (as you "flow through" them) and getting rid of the oddball ones.
6) Front-door, back-door: Put things by the front door if they're going to be given away, sold, donated, etc. Put things by the back door if they're destined for the trash. Make those decisions and then take action on them as you can.
There's a lot of value in saving some of this "stuff" from the waste-stream, and lots of pleasure to have all your other "stuff" organized in solid plastic containers (that you ended up kindof paying "nothing" for)... just don't fall victim to the "save everything", instead know that you can just "stretch out your hand" and grab the things you need _when_ you need them, not _if_ you need them. :-)
There's a difference between collecting and preserving. Saving your old yogurt containers for a future use, is the later. In the same way you could save coffee grounds for growing mushrooms, Jars for growing sprouts, etc.
Buying artificially scarce dead trees isn't really the same.
> but I think one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is collecting guitar gear
That's something I noticed with a lot of people in my circle and 3d printers. They don't 3d print for their hobby. Most of them have 3d printing or even 3d printers as their hobby.
For a long time I was baffled by the seemingly unnecessary gizmos that are popular 3d print subjects, because to me 3d printing was just a means to an end. Eventually I realized that the printing itself is a hobby for a lot of printer people.
Personally I like to use my printer to enable my other hobbies, but along the way I've picked up 3d design and printing as secondary hobbies.
I designed a custom shape for something I needed for another hobby (holding a first-surface mirror at 45 degrees so I could try to learn to paint by copying) and that was really satisfying to learn 3d modeling and making a real object. I should probably do more things like that, such as making a robot or something.
I have realized I already have more hobbies than i have time for. I do need parts to repair my other hobbies, I might get a 3d printer for that, but i'm thinking about using some printing service to make parts for me instead
But it's only worth it if you have a reasonable number of those parts, or if lead-time is important. For most people designing stuff, led-time is essential, but not everybody that want some specific part designs it.
It is not cost effective to buy a 3d printer if you 3d print only when you actually need a 3d printed part. That is the main reason. You buy/build a 3d printer only if you want to tinker with them. Otherwise you just commission someone to do it or use the local fablab.
I don't know. I spent a couple years printing some parts at our library's maker space. The feedback loop is very, very slow.
Having a 3d printer now, I can get a half dozen iterations on something done in a day and compared to a single iteration per day from the library. So if you're designing your own parts and can't draw them perfectly first go, having the printer is huge.
Replacement battery covers for remote controls. If I value those at $200 each, I've broken even.
> It is not cost effective to buy a 3d printer [...] just commission someone to do it
If you are lucky enough to have a neighbour to do the commissioning, maybe, but otherwise shipping has gotten so expensive (at least in these parts), and 3D printers so cheap, that a getting few design iterations in your hands will practically buy you the printer.
I decided to install arch once. Didn't have any issues per se, but spent far too much time going through all the window manager options, file browser options etc etc etc.
I eventually decided that I needed an os to do stuff, not be the stuff to do.
That (and the at the time, in my personal opinion, superior to anything else Office 2010 with the improved tabbed interface) was the reason I went back to Windows. Nowadays most of the time I don't even bother to change the color scheme an set a background image.
I just recently started to customise my Powershell profile. Let's see where this leads...
I think it depends on whether you can do stuff in the os even if it is not yet set up exactly perfectly. If so, then you can do stuff when you need to, and play with the os when you want to.
But obviously some will be too distracted from doing anything such that that's still a bad idea.
I just bought my first 3d printer a couple weeks ago. It was so tempting to pull up the benchmark and see what I could do. Instead I sat down, drafted something I wanted to make, and made. So my first print is something that sees daily use.
My woodworking setup for my garage, however. Someday it will see use other than for organizing my woodworking setup in my garage. I just need that one more tool. And to build a place to put it.
But first, one should ask if the hobby is actually fun without the imagined success(Even if the imagined success is just an excuse for the hobby! Nobody said psychology always makes sense!).
I used to do a lot of DIY software when I first got started, that I now deeply question the value of. I think without the imaginary payoffs, I would have only done about a quarter of it for fun. I don't use any of that code now, nor do I write anything similar on a regular basis, and my entire approach to coding is completely different, so it kind of feels like I was throwing time and money away.
Waste is part of life. Especially waste as a byproduct of good faith attempts. Is it better to avoid creating waste? Yes, however; perfection is the enemy of progress, no one is clairvoyant, and best is conditional anyway.
My point is: you didn't do anything wrong. The mere fact you're thinking about it reveals you've grown wiser for the experience. Kudos, friend. Thanks for sharing.
Programming random small toy stuff that catches your interest is fun, as is making something you really believe is useful.
But when you design a project I a way that's not appropriate for your resources, and it becomes an overwhelming pile of bugs, because you tried to do something really complex and reinvent 20 different wheels, it's less fun, unless you can polish it up to be like what you imagined, but that could take years depending on how crazy your idea was.
There's a higher evolution of this seen in certain religious circles. Where any mention of "doing the thing" is reviled, called "impossible", "sinful" even. Any discussion of technique banned from the conversation.
So what they do is the other 3, and wait for a random bolt of lightning, or a favorable judgment from the inscrutable supreme authority, or even declare that the "doing" is in fact the "talking etc".
That's an interesting way of looking at it, it's not just different from person to person but also from hobby to hobby. For me climbing is mainly about 1, but on reflection I defnitely spend more time talking about competative games than actually playing. I can also think of a few people who have hobbies that focus around 3 and 4.
For many people reframing GAS as collecting wouldn't work. As stated in the quoted part of the article, people affected by GAS often expect that their new purchase will make them better at their hobby. This usually doesn't happen, or is not that significant - and so the search for a new piece of gear begins. Again, expanding the collection is not the goal, it's a compulsive side effect.
You see this a bit with hand tool woodworking. Some people will restore old tools (hand planes are a popular choice) and sell them on, some will keep then and claim they will use them some day, and others give up on making things and just collect the tools.
All of the above is fine, learning the history of and techniques in restoring things is cool.
There's a bit of The Toolmaker's Dilemma in both woodworking and programming.
You can work on a project, or you can work on a tool to make that project easier. A work-station, a jig, a library, a pod orchestration framework. Sometimes the new thing you've made will make the target project easier; sometimes you go down a rabbit hole and forget the project you were supposed to be working on as you start designing a new language to write a library in to write a database with that would suit your new project a lot better than SQLite.
Open any wood-working magazine, and half the projects are workbenches and shop organization.
I occasionally pick up old hand tools at rummage sales, estate sales, etc. just because I like the look of them, but have found that I enjoy cleaning up and using them too. I have an old cherrywood level that is a decoration in the house, but when I need to hang a shelf or a picture it's very handy to have a perfectly good level hiding in plain sight.
I always thought old hand tools were kind of crap to use though until I cleaned up an old block plane and sharpened the blade. With a sharpened blade it made incredibly satisfying curls of wood on my next woodworking project, where I would have normally used my loud and unpleasant belt sander. I think I get it now why some people really love collecting old tools.
> one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is collecting guitar gear, and my niche is things that Jimi Hendrix used or things that make sounds like he did”
GAS is a form of delusion. You are asking people to “just” self-recognize and somehow self-fix their deeply rooted psychological problems.
I think it’s deeply rooted, but only a problem because we live such safe lives.
It started as a deeply rooted necessity. If you want to get through a winter that you don’t know the severity of, you better have above-average stocks of food and wood, plus stuff to repair your home if a severe storm strikes, plus extra winter clothing in case the winter is truly severe or your house burns down, and you’ve got to flee to your family, a few days walking away.
True, but the problem is not the collecting. It's that people want to 'succeed' at some hobby, and are blaming the lack of gear for not achieving some particular goal or level of success (however they define it).
To re-imagine the situation, they would have to give up the original goal of the hobby.
Funny you should mention "succeeding" at a hobby. I collect coins. There are 2 major companies that will grade and encapsulate coins in clear, tamper-evident, sealed polycarbonate holders that have labels inside them with bar codes and serial numbers and all that jazz.
Both of those companies have this concept that's called a "registry set," which is where you can go on their websites and enter the serial numbers of coins you own, then create virtual sets out of those coins. You can create your own set lists, which I have no problem with, but there are also pre-made set lists the company created, which are scored according to a rarity-weighted average of the numerical grades of your coins, with a score of 0 for any missing coins. For instance, there's a Buffalo nickel registry and a wheat penny registry, and so on.
I think you can probably see where I'm going with this now. Before these companies came into existence and started publishing rankings of these sets, you couldn't really do something like say "@gilleain has the #1 ranked Buffalo Nickel set in the world," and such. Now you can, and it really annoys the piss out of me. It's not because my collection doesn't rate very highly (it doesn't, FYI), but because I think "competitive coin collecting" is bad for the hobby and only serves to make those 2 companies money.
If you want to reach the level of @gilleain you have to obtain the coins he has. Coin collecting is based entirely upon owning resources.
On the other hand let’s say that a guy collecting coins has built a very popular YouTube channel about numismatics. He has his own collection and talks about it. You are envious of his success and you want to become just as popular as him.
A person without GAS would think that in order to achieve this he would have to learn a lot about numismatics and then improve in his ability to speak and entertain.
Someone suffering from GAS would think that acquiring the guy’s collection is the solution and would blame his lack of popularity not on his skills but on his resources
As it happens, my coin-collection ranking is very low. Mainly as I have none.
Totally agree that this 'gamification' of collecting is an unpleasant way to monetise something that is otherwise quite a chill pursuit.
From the companies point of view, of course, it means collectors are more likely to try and 'finish' collections. Like how some card collections (I think?) would have books that you would put your cards in, which gives an endpoint to achieve.
edit: I lie, I do technically have a single coin I suppose. A 1918 silver 'threepenny bit' (3p coin) from a Christmas Pudding. King George V's head on it. Forgot it was in my wallet.
It's a hobby. There's no wrong way to do it. Have a budget and do what makes you happy. If that's accumulating gadgets, accumulate with joy. It's not an illness.
Another reason for what the article calls Gear Acquisition Syndrome, if not for Gear Fabrication Syndrome, is the nature of the learning curve for some things. For example, I'm learning electronics, slowly. Slowly because I have children and a stressful full-time job. A while ago I bought an oscilloscope. I don't really need an oscilloscope and it's possible I never will. I'm just hooking up 555 timers and trying to get my head round the mysteries of inductance at this stage. The machine is occasionally marginally useful, but mostly I get it out for the sake of fiddling with it.
Does this mean I just bought it for the thrill of owning it? I certainly felt that thrill when it arrived, but I bought it to learn how to use it, as part of the larger project of "learning electronics". My slow progress means it may be a long time before I'm doing things that really require it, but if and when that time comes I'll be ready, with the device and the knowledge to use it correctly (and not blow it up! [1]). I don't know how far I'll get in learning and applying this stuff, but learning the tools is a major part of it, and rewarding in itself.
Gear Acquisition Syndrome is tied to compulsive buying and hording, both are recognized illnesses (in ICD-11).
Of course, just buying an oscilloscope in the course of learning electronics is not getting you in psychiatry. I mean, it is part of the basic toolkit, plus, you are actually using it. But if you start buying 5 different soldering irons with 10 different types of solder, every kind of pliers known to man, some very specific tool for some obscure use case you don't have, etc... it can negatively impact your quality of life, for example because of the clutter.
> Gear Acquisition Syndrome is tied to compulsive buying and hording, both are recognized illnesses (in ICD-11).
Which is a long way from 'throwing some disposable income at a hobby'.
If your 'gear acquisition' is getting you in debt, or excessively cluttering your home, you may have a problem. But otherwise, if you can afford it, and it's giving you some satisfaction to collect and fiddle with it, then why not?
Spending, say, $25k on hobby gear might seem excessive. But people don't get shamed for spending far more than that replacing/upgrading cars when they've got a perfectly decent one already.
And if you're buying quality gear, whether it's tools or musical instruments/equipment, it's likely to have a lifetime of several decades, it's not like you're buying junk that'll end up on a mountain of e-waste in a couple of years time.
People are treated when they or the people around them can no longer turn a blind eye to the problem. But it can have a very negative impact on people's lives long before it becomes clinically relevant. Just alone considering the vast amounts of time and money that go down the drain.
Similar to how it has long been recognized that modern lifestyle has a negative impact on our physical health if we are not mindful of it, we should start paying attention to mental health. The COVID Lockdowns were a wakeup call for many people.
> But people don't get shamed for spending far more than that replacing/upgrading cars when they've got a perfectly decent one already.
They should, considering the personal and external costs. Car lust keeps people on treadmills of debt. Manufacturing big metal blocks on wheels is not friendly for the physical and social environment either.
The wrong way to do a hobby is if it doesn't actually bring you or anyone else any happiness, which in extremely GAS/GFS cases seems to be possible.
An Oscilloscope is a pretty reasonable thing even for a beginner, it's totally unnecessary but it does make things easier, it's something you'll probably actually use.
I had GAS/GFS pretty bad when I first got into electronics. Most of the stuff I regret buying was all pretty simple though. Cables can be a real big offender. I hate nonstandard cables with obscure connectors because they take up so much space for one function!
Digital electronics is far easier and requires less parts, but analog can still be really light on parts.
Electronics GAS seems to come in the form of "Big ideas" driven by bulk discounts. It's easy to imagine yourself doing ten projects over the next few years, all using some common set of parts.
But then some new and better thing comes out, and your pile of XT60 extension cords you made is forgotten.
The problem got so bad for me that I pretty much just chose to stop messing with random parts and instead explore the limits of what can be done with extremely common stuff.
Like, one time I bought some RCA jacks because it seemed like a good idea to use for switch inputs and the like.
But 2.1mm power jacks are even more common, and I can use resistors to protect against accidentally plugging in a wall wart to a sensor port.
Everyone likes lab power supplies, but can I redesign my circuit to run on a USB-C breakout trigger module? I've already got phone chargers laying around.
0.1" headers aren't perfect. It's easy to mis-connect something. It's easy to come up with some new unified standard for using JST connectors that will make all your stuff compatible... but then you have a project that doesn't work well with it...
When I first saw a commercial install made of random Amazon modules, I thought "They shoulda made a PCB" and I had all these ideas.... but then I realized that when the random Amazon modules breaks, I can swap it in a few minutes, and fix it later if I want.
With a custom board, I can't fix it at all until I've first discovered how it works, which will probably take an hour just to find out what pin does what when the documentation is gone....
Now I mostly start every project with an ESP32 module and go from there!
I relate a lot with this. Especially cables--what an absolute nightmare, especially when you need to interface with commercial devices that have standardized on a different cabling standard!
> When I first saw a commercial install made of random Amazon modules, I thought "They shoulda made a PCB" and I had all these ideas.... but then I realized that when the random Amazon modules breaks, I can swap it in a few minutes, and fix it later if I want.
I can see this, and I've definitely created custom circuit boards for devices that I only need one of & would be straightforward to build with random modules.
But at the same time, for a commercial product or a product where quantities of > 10 exist, making a circuit board makes a lot of sense, introduces a lot of reliability and saves significant cost. It's really not hard anymore to make a PCB, and there's so much opportunity for error & poor connections when assembling things from Amazon crap.
Once you get to 10, or even 1 if it's a handheld (a pocket is a very rough environment) a PCB makes sense.
PCBs easy to make, and probably worth it a lot of the time, but there's also some pretty nice module options. Seems like going straight for PLCs is pretty common these days.
Mini-PV looks really nice! I'll have to check that out!
For dealing with commercial stuff on random cable standards, a lot of the time I'll get a pigtail and use Wago lever nuts to connect it to a longer cable, so it's easy to swap out stuff and make up whatever cable I need at the moment.
I've ever wagoed an 0.1" pigtail before, it works fine as long you keep the big heavy thing you're wagoing it to from pulling too hard.
Some people seem to like bananas for quick connections in the lab... but they are so easy to get wrong. A cheap banana plug last I checked was kind of bad.
I've still not used my oscilloscope (properly - measuriung some DC value when I couldn't find my multimeter doesn't count??)
I find a good circuit simulator helps in speeding up the hassle in 'probing' electronics - there's many out there, I do like this one though https://www.falstad.com/circuit/
I feel almost the same about my oscilloscope but it did help me debug an i2c implementation that would have been very painful to debug otherwise. I could have done that with a much cheaper logic analyzer though. Most of the time the oscilloscope sits unused but sometimes I'm happy to have it when I want to very something simple like a clock signal on an old 8 bit computer. I'm really only scratching the surface of what it can do though with these simple use cases.
I felt called out by the title since I spent all my hobby time in the last few weeks to fabricate brass gears for an orrery I’m working on. :) Luckily it is not about that kind of gear fabrication syndrome.
> please tell us more about this orrery you're building!
Oh, thank you for asking. It is a fantasy planet system from the role playing world of Critical Role. It has a tiny brass cold cast planet with continents in the center of it. Two moons “orbit” around that on slanted orbits. A smaller red one and a bigger greyish one, these are realised as two semi-precious stone beads. The mechanism has two pairs of brass bevel gears and three pairs of brass reducing gears to achieve the cannonical 1:6 speed ratio between the moons.
Oh thank you. Not much of a progress is expected anymore. I have finished it yesterday, boxed it up and now I am on my way to the london comiccon to gift it away.
The next project is going to be a real world orrery of the Gallilean moons if I can manage it. Will try to get better at uploading progress reports periodically. I guess that youtube channel is the best one to follow if this is of interest to anyone.
Happy to! I use a woodworking CNC router (a stock xcarve) to cut the gears out of brass sheets. It is absolutely not the “right tool” for the job, but already had access to one and it seems to work.
The gears are mod0.8. 40, 20, 12, 10 and 8 teeth. I cut the bevel gears and the pinions out of 3mm brass sheet stock while the larger wheels are cut out of 0.7mm brass stock. (Why this modulo? That was the smallest gear family my prusa 3d printer could print reliably, and i guess i just stuck with it as i transfered to cutting brass) (Why this stock thicknesses? That is what amazon had in next day delivery :))
I design the mechanism and create the cutting toolpaths in fusion 360. The paths are 2d profile cuts for the straight pinnions and wheels, and 3d profile cuts for the bevel gears. For the bevel gears I have a “roughing pass” with a 1.7mm bit followed by two passes with a 0.8mm bit. This seems to be needed otherwise as the tiny bit steps “down and out” it encounters too much depth on the “outside” of the cut. At least that is how I explain it. What is certain that when i tried to cut the bevel gears with a single pass the 0.8mm bit broke all the time, and with this strategy I can cut all four of my bevel gears with the same two cutters. :) The pinions and wheels with straight walls I cut with a single pass.
I take 0.1mm deep cuts with 45mm/min feed, altough truth to be told I have tried 250mm/min feeds also and that seemed to be fine too. 350mm/min broke the bit too often.
I run the spindle at a constant max speed, which I have measured to be 27000rpm unloaded. Haven’t measured during cutting but somehow I doubt the dewalt with all its 900W slows down at allwith these tiny bits and cuts.
For work holding I use the following “sandwitch”: a 6mm thick aluminum plate is toe clamped to the bed of the CNC. There is blue painters masking tape glued on the aluminium waste board, super glue on that and the brass stock is held on by that super glue.
I start the cuts 0.3mm above the stock and finish it 0.3mm bellow. I probe the stock’s surface, back the bit up until it breaks the contact and zero it there. The gears I cut are small enough that i don’t seem to benefit much from z-scanning the surface of the stock. I use Universal GCode Sender to send the gcode generated by fusion.
Sorry for the lot of detail, just wrote what I wished have known a few months ago. Let me know if there is anything else you are currious about.
That's super interesting, thank you! I build furniture, mostly more traditionally, but sometimes use a CNC for making jigs. I have access to a 1200mm x 2400mm ShopBot, which has the worst software I've ever used that I didn't write myself. But with care and enough test cuts it gets the job done.
It's fun reading what other people are using these for in practice, and not just the sunny days version. If I ever try cutting brass with this level of detail and scale, this is exactly the kind of thing I'd want to read first.
I look forward to seeing your next project come to life!
Incidentally, your workholding is called a paper joint in woodworking, and is used to make split turnings and sometimes to attach clamping cauls :-)
looks guiltily at the ventilation system he's building, to ventilate the workroom he's made, to contain the jigs he's constructed, to make the guitars he only needed one of, but has now somehow ordered enough wood for about 7
A 3D printing hobby is basically GAS/GFS-as-a-hobby. You buy the cheapest printer, then print better parts for it, then you buy a second printer to print faster and with more quality, then you go on an ebay spree and buy a VORON kit to make your own, then you build a "mostly-printed CNC", lathe, plotter, laser cutter, and then you run out of room in your garage and start looking for a bigger house.
It's a huge money drain, but fun even if it doesn't ultimately get you anywhere ;)
I just bought the prusa mk4 kit+enclosure, spent 20+ hours building it, and now I can’t stop printing upgrades for it(mostly the enclosure). I sealed the enclosure a bit, did the squash ball feet mod for the printer(it’s silent now), and I’m currently printing this: https://www.printables.com/model/588524-prusa-mk4-improved-f...
I actually have less GAS/GFS with printing than anything else. I'd like a Klipper Pad and a camera... but it's not essential.
I think it might be the fact that anything decorative or artistic needs post processing anyway, so a few layer lines aren't a big deal, and that I enjoy CAD design and trying to make functions parts work without relying on precision.
I would like to quiet the fan and steppers a bit though!
From the title I thought this was going to be targeted at 3D printing hobbyists that fabricate things like gears instead of buying cheap, reliable metal ones.
To steal an old meme: Men will literally come up with new "syndromes" instead of going to therapy.
GAS/GFS sounds like a regular Tuesday on ADHD. I want to play a racing sim. Better learn intricate details of electronics, physics and car mechanics so I can build my own brake pedal. Is the brake pedal working? No. Have I spent even a single minute playing a racing sim since starting this project? Also no. But I have taught myself how to build my own 3D printer from scratch and I also never will do that ever again.
I have ADHD and it is bothering me to no end that when people ask me what my hobby is, I find out I have a huge list of half-finished stuff instead.
For example I like blacksmithing. Built a simple sword just grinding the metal, then decided to study how to get a proper forge and whatnot. Studied a lot, learning the chemistry of steel, found where to buy the stuff. Never bought it, never made any forged item.
Then I decided to go for armor making, using rings. Started making one, got stuck because the rings were too rigid and I wasn't strong enough... and that is it, it ended there.
So music then? Spent years learning how to compose music with a teacher that actually taught famous musicians, made my own cables to attach a keyboard to my computer, bought software, learned how to use trackers, became "friends" (as in... I don't talk much to them, but when I do they actually listen and give me small favors) Siren (musician from Unreal series) and Virt (musician from a lot of newer indie games, like Shovel Knight). How much music I made? 0. People at the church asked me if I can play my keyboard in public while people sing hymns. I replied I actually, never tried that.
Dumped a ton of money in magic the gathering cards. Made a point when moving country, of bringing them with me, half of my airplane baggage limit was MTG cards. Last time I played? Several months ago, almost a year I suppose.
The list keeps going and it is driving me nuts, I feel like I am wasting my life. I am not studying hard enough to improve my job performance, I am not studying the bible as I should either, I keep promising myself I will do it and then I don't. And again keeping with the theme of GAS, I actually spent a lot of money buying access to theology online classes and seminars, and didn't watch any of it.
You shouldn't do anything. It's your life and you live it like you want. All morals, shoulds and shouldn'ts and musts and mustn'ts are a pile of horseshit. You are only responsible to yourself and you are going to be the person judging yourself in the end. When somebody tells you you should go to church, it's about the same importance as if they asked you to play CoD with them.
And if you are bothered that you did not finish something... circle back to it. You have decades of life to purse your happiness. Relax, enjoy the detour and circle back with more knowledge and savings.
I have no ADHD but my wife, I know.., keeps me in check in ways I was unable to myself.
It's not that she hates what I'm doing or nags about it, it's just that she'll ask the hard questions. The ones I avoid like the plague.
"What are you going to use it for? .. Ok, cool, so how long will you need? .. So, have you been making progress? Why not? Why are doing something else and wasting time while there is still work to do? .. You are switching around a lot and it seems you are avoiding finishing what you started.. Have you considered therapy?" At this point I'm like, damn girl, you're right. What am I doing.
After a while I learned to ask myself those questions and get some discipline into my (hobby) life.
When you get bored, continue working on some of the half finished stuff.
I have a project that I worked on for a few months, then one and a half years later I worked on it during a national holiday, noticed a pretty big flaw, threw 25% of the code out to rewrite it and then suddenly it was usable!
My brother has a pretty intense case of ADHD and is nothing like this. Some of my in-laws too and they also have no problems with weird hobbies and collecting random stuff. They certainly are no "makers".
They do have trouble holding down jobs and not hyper-focusing on their leaky faucets for two weeks straight without eating or sleeping much and talking about it non-stop while somehow not fixing it.
Yet, myself, no ADHD in sight. Other things, sure, but no ADHD and I have a knack of disappearing into black holes and emerging with "stuff"/"knowledge". I dislike synth music, but have programmed a modular software synth because I wanted to know how it works. Never touched it again. I know it now, there is no pay off in using it. That's boring and I'm no musician.
I'm not completely convinced this is an "ADHD" thing. I think this is a personality thing. INTP or something like that? You are just a "tinkerer". Getting stuff done is boring. Learning how stuff works is where the fun is at.
For me a large part of that is writing software and then libraries for that software, and so on. I've been trying (with partial success) to have one large project and inbetween do small tools etc that can be finished in a weekend. Also helps to have a todo list for even the smallest stuff in the main project so that it's easy to start picking up where I left off even if it's been a while.
So, you're not supposed to buy stuff for your hobby nor build stuff for your hobby? I think it depends on how you define "the hobby" - is it really just the part where you use your equipment? I find that too narrow. A good counter example could perhaps be table top wargaming, e.g. Warhammer and the likes. Surely, people who call that their hobby like to play the (various different) games. But a lot of people love building and painting their miniature armies just as much. And some people hate it. So what's the scoop? If you enjoy the building and painting of new minis more than actually playing the game they're made for, you're doing it wrong?
Look, hobbies are for your enjoyment. If buying gear or trying to build it yourself gives you joy, more power to you.
I for one like to buy power tools just as much as the next guy. And often times it's hard to justify falling for a good sales offer when you don't really have a specific need for that tool at that point in time. But on the flip side, there have been quite a few moments where I was tinkinering about with some home improvement projects and a tool I might have bought a long time ago and never really needed since came in handy just at that very moment. And so I was glad I had it. Especially since I don't live very close to the next DIY store. So, yeah, is that a good justification for spending money on power tools? Probably not - but it's what I like, and so I do it.
The acquisition of gear (be it buying or building) is not a means to an end - it is part of the hobby.
> A good counter example could perhaps be table top wargaming, e.g. Warhammer and the likes. Surely, people who call that their hobby like to play the (various different) games. But a lot of people love building and painting their miniature armies just as much. And some people hate it. So what's the scoop? If you enjoy the building and painting of new minis more than actually playing the game they're made for, you're doing it wrong?
If you enjoy building and painting miniatures then it's not wrong. It's a different hobby from wargaming though.
> Look, hobbies are for your enjoyment. If buying gear or trying to build it yourself gives you joy, more power to you.
Sure. But a lot of people find themselves accumulating a closet full of junk that was supposed to help with a fun part that they never actually get around to. Which is really just another form of consumerism; while I'm open to the idea that some kinds of collecting can be good hobbies, there's definitely a kind of pseudo-hobby of buying things that all too often ends up as an addiction-like behaviour that doesn't actually bring people much joy or satisfaction.
> The acquisition of gear (be it buying or building) is not a means to an end - it is part of the hobby.
If it brings you joy, yes. If it just quiets the cravings for a while, no.
> See, and here I disagree, and I think at least a non-trivial number of players would too.
Good for them! They are not the ones we should be concerned about.
> Too hard to reliably distinguish between the two.
It's probably hard to distinguish from the outside, but it's important to cultivate that skill [edit: to evaluate one's own habits] if living in a consumerist society where most cravings can be satisfied by going to a shopping mall or to an online store.
> there's definitely a kind of pseudo-hobby of buying things that all too often ends up as an addiction-like behaviour
For Warhammer, specifically, that's maybe why I've heard the term 'plastic crack' ... That is, buying large amounts of miniatures that never get painted.
> So, you're not supposed to buy stuff for your hobby nor build stuff for your hobby?
I'm not sure that anyone is proposing that.
> A good counter example could perhaps be table top wargaming, e.g. Warhammer and the likes. Surely, people who call that their hobby like to play the (various different) games. But a lot of people love building and painting their miniature armies just as much.
That sounds perfectly reasonable if the split between crafting and playing is somewhere near the middle. However, in the case that they hardly ever actually engage in a game, I'd maintain that their hobby is not 'wargaming' and is actually model making.
... and then you start wondering about the calibration of the gear you fabricated, so you buy some high-quality parts with NIST traceable calibrations, and make some test equipment using them, and then.... then you go down the metrology rabbit hole.
All that design and fabrication work, and the pedals swing the wrong way? And has no rigid frame connection to a seat?
If you're going to bother, then one of the biggest things is to rigidly attach the pedals to the seat so that they cannot move in relation to the seat even against the full power of legs.
And of course car pedals swing on a pivot that is above the pedals not below, although the gas pedal has an extra linkage so that IT does pivot on the bottom.
Clutch and brake (not break) require full leg power and knee bend, only gas is purely ankle bend, calf power.
And if such details don't matter, then you're right back to the off the shelf one.
You're dead on about rigid mounts for the pedals. One of the first issues many sim racers run into with regular cheap pedals and a desk mounted wheel is that they pedals slide once you start braking hard. And with load cell pedals the expectation is that you'll be using even more force, so that problem will just get worse.
As for pedal mounting location, many pedals can be top or bottom mounted if your racing chassis allows for it. However, floor mounted pedals offer the same performance as top mounted, match the majority of purpose built racing cars, and are simpler to mount in a sim racing chassis.
Why not include a third pedal type, then have all three at once? In a Citroen DS, the clutch pivots above, the accelerator pivots below, and the brake is a button that engages the hydraulic system.
Granted, the DS is perhaps the weirdest production car ever made in large numbers.
I have GFS, to a degree that's probably way worse than the article's author.
I'm also old enough (40+ years experience as a dev) to actually objectively measure the impact this trait has had on my career.
I'll summarize in one simple sentence: any negative feeling / worry /guilt you may have because you discover you have that "penchant": discard it with utmost prejudice.
I have had an amazing career in tech. (not over yet). Most of it has been self-propelled by the things I've learnt because of GFS-type propensities.
I don't have near as much experience but things like that indirectly got me my current job. I worried a ton in the past because I almost never finished a project, until the feedback I got from others made me realize how much I learned in the process. I could have done some things in a more time efficient manner but in the end I do it because it's fun, and ultimately "reinventing the wheel" (a phrase I could rant about all day) helped me overcome/replace bad habits.
I have pretty severe GFS and one part of it is that once you understand what you are building, you don't really wish to finish it and continue on a more stimulating tangent.
On the other hand, teaching others stuff that doesn't (by itself) stimulate you anymore gives you an opportunity to check the quality of your understanding and is also fun in itself.
Another way to finish is to build a birthday gift and thus impose a deadline on yourself.
This is such a major problem! I have so many half finished projects because I got to the understanding portion and moved onto something more interesting.
Or perhaps I’m just coping and telling myself that to deny that I have really bad attention and impulsivity issues
I wonder if note taking apps qualify for Gear Acquisition Syndrome. I certainly used to have it where I tried every note taking app imaginable, and created a few of my own. In the end, I found that the best way to focus on actually taking notes is to rely on pen-and-paper or simple text files.
Me too. This is somehow an interest many hobby machinists converge on as a far away goal. It is hard to do, needs extra equipment and is mostly avoidable. Still, the allure is there...
Never heard of Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) or Gear Fabrication Syndrome (GFS), but I think it would be better to replace Gear with Gadget. From I saw with a quick search, GAS is heavily related to musicians, but I think this applies to all areas (photography, computing, astronomy...).
A little bit off topic... Is it only me that finds the scrolling area of this page annoying? What's the point of having all this screen estate and allowing scrolling only if the mouse is over the middle section?
GFS could lead to a better appreciation of the quality of consumer goods.
I think you can compare most collections to fashion. Some people collect based on color or fabric. Others on quality of manufacture. Or on quality of fit. Then we have brands and finally pure hysteria—something you won’t wear, but only desire to own.
This explains keb collectors and someone who owns Jimi’s actual fx pedal. The DIYer could just be an aficionado of manufacture or perfect fit.
It’s interesting how open source kind of short-circuits a lot of this; you can’t “acquire” it all because you already have it all. You can acquire experience in a lot of tools, but that’s actually acquiring practical knowledge, not just acquisition of things as things.
Well, it short-circuits the licensing cost argument for rolling your own frameworks, but I don’t think that was ever the real reason why devs love reinventing the wheel.
I think that building frameworks is just a lot more fun than doing what you’re supposed to be doing, which is usually a soul-sucking grind of boring enterprise tickets.
Maybe that’s exactly why they do it. Building frameworks is as customer facing as it gets, because the customers are your coworkers that you can just walk over to and speak directly with.
If one is so insulated from the actual business problem by corporate bureaucracy it may be the only way for developers to do something that matters to someone, no matter how frivolous it is in the grand scheme.
I feel like one equivalent of problematic hoarding in software is adding feature after feature by stacking complex dependencies until nobody can maintain it without tripping over the jenga piles.
When I was younger, I used to participate in the local radio club's "foxhunts" on 2 meters. Every month I'd be trying out some new cobbled together antenna, or home made doppler gear. It was a lot of fun. I never did settle on an optimum setup. The joy of just trying things out was the reward.
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As for actual gear fabrication, I used to make gears, mostly bevel gears, but also some spur and helical gears, as well as gear like objects. Since bouncing out of the field (due to long covid) it is only lack of budget that has kept me from trying to build/acquire gear to be able to make gears myself at home. I really want a pocketNC.
I'm convinced I could find a way to Power Skiving[1] straight bevel gears, which should be impossible(because the pitch of the gear teeth varies continuously across the distance from the central axis), with sufficient budget and time.
It's fun to tinker, and that's the reward in itself.
As someone who designs analog and digital circuits and a live long musician I often find that building your own shit is the way™, because even if you are not 100% happy with the results it is A) often possible to adjust the result till you like it and more importantly B) it is often all about the friends you made along the way (aka learning).
That being said traditional GAS, as in people that buy a ton of stuff in the hunt for the perfect tone falls often into two categories (or any mix of the two):
1. People whose motivation for the hobby is coupled to these purchases
2. People who don't completely understand all the contributing factors
A good example is Hifi-Heads who will spend upwards of 400 Euros for a simple cable and tell you they can hear what the best measuring equipment known to humanity can't measure, yet they fail to do even the most basic acoustic treatment to their listening space.
Guitar players can be similar, only there one big variable are the players themselves. Also they often fail to understand that every guitar tone they want to imitate is typically a recording of a guitar tone. That means the whole microfone/mixing desk/effects/recording media/mastering chain is part of that sound. So even if you you traveled back in time and had the possibility to sit with Hendrix in the studio, it probably wouldn't sound like it did on the record. And if he gave you the chance to play his guitar and his amp it would still not sound like him, because the magic (or the lack thereof) is in the fingers.
That being said, it is good and useful to have goals for certain sounds, but the way to achive them rarely is a very specific set of (typically obscenely expensive) gear — the trick is to understand your instrument, yourself and the whole signal chain intricately, or on the recording side of things: To work with people who have both that understanding and an appreciation for the sound you are aiming for (just like Hendrix obviously did).
On the Synth end of things I know people who are more into "collecting" these things than using them. These are the people who spend more time researching their next synth or module than they spend on actually learning how to use what they got.
I don't want to judge, it is all about the dopamine in the end, but as someone who enjoys the act of making music — a hobby that arguably needs a ton of stuff, depending on what you do — I always think a too crazy focus on gear takes away from that. And I say that as someone who constructs some of these circuits.
I can relate, I view myself as a hobby game developer, but I never actually make any games, because I end up having way more fun making the tools to make the games, than making the actual games themselves.
For sure there are gains to be made by having proper material as opposed to entry level, but those quickly become marginal.
The biggest gains by far are usually found in working on your driving style. Have a look at telemetry of someone who's slightly faster and work out the differences methodologically.
Shameless self-promotion: if you're racing in iRacing, have a look at https://garage61.net, we have over 125 million laps of telemetry to learn from.
Everyone needs to have a list for for their hobby of useful things they will buy if cheap enough, and a budget to spend one it. Then when a deal comes they will know if they buy or not. Of course some people think nothing of dropping $150,000 on their hobby, while others only have $5 to spend. The important part is it keeps you from filling up space with good deals on things that don't actually apply or you already have one of (unless your hobby benefits from more than one)
I guess I have something similar when it comes to productivity and my workstations.
In the last two years I have completely moved my desktop configuration into Ansible making it near perfectly reproducible on another machine. My thinking was it would make me more productive in the long run.
But rather then spending some of my free time working on some of the other actual software ideas I have accumulated over the years, instead that time goes into endless tinkering with the playbook and trying to add even more to it.
I stopped doing that. I realized that in half a day to a day I can set everything up again manually from simple backups. And I spent more than that on Ansible and the maintenance costs are not negligible, plus the fact that the day you need it something broke and you need to fix it.
There's nothing wrong with GAS or GFS if done from the standpoint of learning. The joy of learning can itself be the product. Maybe your ok at working UHF/VHF with a handie baofeng and you just found a great deal on an IC-821 that could allow you to learn how to work satellites and other modes in the future...
For GFS, making gear instead of music etc can still be the product. Additionally, if one understands how something works, it could make them better at applying that gear.
I last made a Throttle for a HOTAS setup. Key was I had a functional end to end prototype using Arduino, ultrasonic sensor, and drawer slide in 3 hours and started using it immediately.
Every piece of the prototype was eventually replaced and my "final" version is a mess of wires and incomplete, but I got use out of the early versions as a proof of concept early and never bought the off the shelf alternative.
I've built my own pedals, amp, and guitar. I managed to do all of them in a reasonable amount of time without neglecting the playing aspect.
But I've got all the parts for Mu-Tron III clone that have been sitting in the boxes they came in for a year now and haven't had the time to start. I could have had a commercial one to play through in that amount of time.
GAS can be very economical if you buy used high end gear. If like me you change hobbies every 2-3 years you can sell the high end gear for what you bought it for. GFS is much more expensive as your custom built stuff has very little resale value, even if acquisition costs originally were cheaper the resale is Usally a fraction of cost.
That's true for many behavior patterns. For me, collecting physical books, ebooks, electronics, tools, etc., before I was so burnt out I also try to learn a lot of different languages. Goal-less life leads me astray. I'm still goal-less though, just not doing that anymore. I have collected too much and burnt out.
I play flight sim games and GFS is a major factor in my hobbies now. I’m over a year into converting a real F-16 throttle grip into a video game controller, and there’s no end in sight. I’ve become immersed in 3d printing, CAD and PCB design.
I hear it’s also big in outdoor hobbies—backpackers often make their own tents and packs too.
> It’s driven in part by the belief that new gear will improve one’s art or performance, e.g. I don’t sound like Jimi Hendrix because I don’t have the same effects pedal he used.
Bit tangent, but I think one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is collecting guitar gear, and my niche is things that Jimi Hendrix used or things that make sounds like he did”
There’s no shame in a hobby collecting and being honest with yourself might bring some clarity to your life.