From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. -Epictetus
Doesn’t matter when you start, only matters if you ever start.
Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
71–80 of 277 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#72Try not to think about that too much, you can't change the past and you only have the present. Once you realize that you can start enjoying the present moment doing whatever you like and can.
If you start coding everyday now in a few years these worries will seem silly to you and you will have new worries to think about.
In the end it doesn't matter, whether you are the most productive person even or a drunk homeless outcast, your time will run out one day and you will be gone. If you can accept this you can free yourself of regrets.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#73I guess the first thing to note is that in a hundred and fifty years, you'll be dead and unless you're one in a million or maybe ten million, nobody alive will know you existed. So it's not a competition, there's no prize ceremony at the end for the guy who did the most stuff, there's no one way you should be living your life. The second thing is, the past is dead and gone. You can't do anything about it. You can lea…
Dwelling on the past also smacks against the sunk cost fallacy from economics.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#74Think about what you want to do in the next 5 years, then do it.
After that, you will learn that those other 5 years playing were just 1/16 (or more) from your life.
So, focus on the next 5 years learning from the last 5.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#75I guess the first thing to note is that in a hundred and fifty years, you'll be dead and unless you're one in a million or maybe ten million, nobody alive will know you existed. So it's not a competition, there's no prize ceremony at the end for the guy who did the most stuff, there's no one way you should be living your life. The second thing is, the past is dead and gone. You can't do anything about it. You can lea…
I use a somewhat similar perspective when I feel guilty about certain things in life which I have been unable to pass on to my children. I barely know the cultural lineage of my ancestors up to a generation; in a generation or two, my descendants most probably won't know anything about me. We attach way too much importance to things that are emotionally important to us; in the flow of time, very few things are really important.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#76"Comparison is the thief of joy." - Theodore Roosevelt You're very lucky that at the tender age of 23 you know what it is you want to do! At 23 you learn much faster and have much more stamina than a child. You can achieve a lot in this world if you decide to.
Exactly! You can learn a lot more from computer science undergraduate courses as someone motivated to be there, versus someone going through the motions because they just want a stable job (nothing wrong at all with doing so, but the upside is that the original poster actually has an advantage here).
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#77You’re 23 - I used to have similar thoughts and beat myself up about it, general anxiety.
The right framing (imo) is that your previous behavior is a learning experience that enables you to make the decisions you want now. It’s okay it wasn’t optimal because you’re able to have learned from it and can grow.
Ruminating on it is not useful and ignores the growth that came from it.
This framing is both true, and generally strategically helpful for not being afraid of failure and trying new things. It also helps coming to peace with “wasted years”.
Don’t worry about it basically, focused time will let you catch up and surpass nearly everyone if it’s a goal.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#78You are 23. Knowing what you know live your life in such way that in the age of 40 you regret nothing. That's what I did, though my wake-up age was 26 and before reaching that age I was wasting my life on, well, worse things in many ways than you.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#79You cannot change the past, start now. I know, once out of school, you get the first feeling of "I'm not young anymore" - but you're still are! You can still read books, acquire skills, take part in activities, get to know people, etc. Just do it now.
Also, I wouldn't reduce wasting time on games/social media to your personal problem. Of course you have influence about that stuff (especially now that you know about it), but this is something that is literally affecting generations. It's a much wider problem and one our industry is actively trying to worsen. The solution to that is not in promoting "personal responsibility".
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#80Google: "Ignore sunk costs"
Viewing your lost time this way is both rational and liberating!