Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

Time very well spent.

A certain component of wisdom is the mix of pride and regret that gives you carefully considered perspectives to pass on.

It's not fashionable to "respect your elders" for what they may know. And of course what works for one may not work for others. But speaking to the OP, generally it pays to listen to wiser people who are generous with their sincere advice of the "Sunscreen" kind, by Mary Schmich, and you don;t have to be old to pass on that advice.

Looking back I really value those people who had the courage to put me straight about my behaviour when I was a kid. They saved me from wasting some life and opportunities, or taking bad roads.

One good reason to heed it is that it cost those people to learn it.

What you see as "wasted" time might better be called "accumulated wisdom".

Remember it may be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others :)

Do you genuinely regret the time you wasted on social media?

Then for a start, well done for saying it.

Even at the age of 23 it really doesn't make you a bad person, or "judgemental", or some kind of throwback who "shouts at clouds" to actively say to younger people and to your peers - "FFS get off social media".

You never know who is the person who listens to you, whose life you can help. I often say to young people, you should get rid of your smartphone while you still can. Most give me the roll-eyes shrug. But maybe one in twenty look me back in the eye, and I can see the cogs turning and know I just shifted the needle imperceptibly.

I learned a few things about how to be a manager by playing World of Warcraft and EverQuest so it’s not all bad. You have to find the unexpected and unintuitive skills being taught by “wastes of time”. Leading raids way back and organizing guilds is surprisingly similar to corporate org structures.

Look past your initial categorization to figure out what you were doing beneath the surface. You might find something valuable.

But more important is to just do stuff. Don’t worry about what the best allocation of your time is right now. Have faith that you will find the right path.

After the life-and-death struggle, we just put the game pieces back in the box, neither having gained nor lost anything in the end - except some joy, sorrow, love and friendship in between.

I have been programming since I was a kid. I was fortunate to grow up in a time before social media took over and internet was still for weird people. Viewed externally I wasted a lot of time on the internet. I played a LOT of video games, which was my primary impetus for learning to program. I wanted to build trainers and tools someday because I looked up to the crews who were so popular when I was young.

I got into to school and it took me 6 full years to graduate. I programmed and gamed (and when I wasn't doing this I was working) so much I did terrible academically in high school. I started from the bottom. I ended up graduating at 25 with a degree in computer science years behind everyone else. For a long time I regretted this because everyone I worked for was far younger than me (18-22). I then wasted several years in graduate school, which I didn't finish because it wasn't my thing, and then wasted several more years drinking at bars for no reason other than boredom. I regretted everything for a long time wondering who I'd be if I was a social person, better in high school, did more things, was more popular, etc. I still have these regrets. They never go away, you just learn to deal with them because you don't get any redos.

You will make it. You're having a quarter-life crisis. Carmack is an incredible programmer but it helps to remember he was just in the right place at the right time and success builds success. How many failures did he have? Tons. It also helps he was a programmer in a time when there wasn't millions of them. These days it's far harder to get recognized. Perhaps comparing yourself to him is not worth the trouble.

What you should focus on now is simply deciding something to do and going with it. You're young with plenty of screw-up room in front of you. Keep focused on your education and don't force anything else. Meet people outside of programming that are more difficult to make a direct comparison to. Go be a young person - after all youth is wasted on the young. As it turns out the more I talk to people outside of my field, the more I realize they look at me and have the same regrets about themselves. It's okay to have regrets. Don't let them keep you tied to the bed wallowing in your own self pity.

Oh...if you're going to dump anything in order to change your life it should be social media. All social media in any quantity is the most lethal poison you will ever take. It creates the exact kind of comparison you are doing now to other people but scaled infinitely.