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Time anxiety: is it too late?

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Re: Time anxiety: is it too late?

#151

Post by jerrre »

bildung wrote: post #145
Grzegrzolka wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, what other hobbies can one have?

All of programmerdudes examples are different modes of consumption . In my experience the most fulfilling hobbies are those where you create something. It really doesn't matter what specifically - the creative part is the source of a sense of fulfillment. In my neck of the woods it now is a good time to try to make wine by oneself, for example. Just harvest some fruits, order yeast and off you go. Woodworking is pret…

Great list! Creation, especially in the physical world is somehow easily overlooked

I'd also add social/multiplayer stuff (although many of these things might be improved by sharing) like team sports, a band, board games.

Re: Time anxiety: is it too late?

#152

Post by themarkn »

taneq wrote: post #86
scarejunba wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but it's deleterious to my societal productivity. Like I'm happier spending my time with my friends. But I have less of that burning desire to build. I think I might actually be content to live just happily on the beach with the wealth I have now, so long as everyone I love is nearby and we frequently meet. But obviously I don't want to be content with that.

Well what do you want, to be happy or to be productive? Happy people don't make great art.

> Happy people don't make great art.

This is kinda just a myth as far as I can tell. There is a often romanticized relationship between art and suffering, because sure, some art is created as a way to relieve suffering. But it's by no means mandatory, and at one point I've even been in the spot (like many many others) of being afraid to get help for mental health issues because of what it might do to the work I was creating. This is how the myth does harm. The longer people "trade" health for art, the more they put themselves at risk in service of this misguided idea. It's no exaggeration to say that people have died as a result of believing that treating their depression would diminish their art. A person in that situation has to win every day of their lives, while depression only has to win once.

Re: Time anxiety: is it too late?

#153

Post by mirimir »

This is something that I deal with every day. You never know when you're going to die. But even when I was in my 50s, barring surprise diseases and accidents, it was far off in the distant future.

Not so much now. Especially because time is subjectively faster. Months seem like weeks used to.

But there is an advantage. Now it's a convenient excuse to avoid doing whatever I don't want to. I'm far less constrained by what others expect of me.

Re: Time anxiety: is it too late?

#154

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ksdale wrote: post #16
hinkley wrote: post #3

I know there are some people disproving parts of Malcolm Gladwell's theories, but sometime in the last year or two it occurred to me that one of the consequences of the 10,000 hours theory is that you actually have time to get expert-level good at three or four things in your life even if you spent part of it 'fucking around'. I've expanded that into a philosophy about 'Software eats the world": the only way that doe…

I would take it even farther than that and say that people vastly overestimate the time it takes to get good at most things. It might take 10,000 hours (or more) to be considered an expert pianist, but you could spend a tenth that much time getting good enough to impress everyone you know with a few songs at parties, and with just 50 hours of practice, you'll be better at the piano than basically everyone you know (y…

>It might take 10,000 hours (or more) to be considered an expert pianist, but you could spend a tenth that much time getting good enough to impress everyone you know with a few songs at parties, and with just 50 hours of practice, you'll be better at the piano than basically everyone you know (you might not be "good", but a lot of people are also easily impressed, if impressing people is your thing.) //

I learnt piano for years (from relatively late, ~12-17yo), and could follow a piece of written music but never just play.

My son, who at 14 has just started lessons could already play and can work out a piece by ear with essential only a few hours. He can play something you'd recognise, I can't unless I have the music.

He has 'natural aptitude', IMO gained genetically from his mother and through environmental exposure to music. Your 1000 hours would work for him, with this skill, I feel; but not for me.

There are other simpler restrictions. In my middle ages I've started karate, no one has a hope of mistaking me for an expert karateka unless I also address general fitness.

Re: Time anxiety: is it too late?

#155

Post by ylem »

jimstr wrote: post #85
kevinguh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add on by saying from personal experience that the wider your breadth of experiences, the more you find that experiences in seemingly unrelated fields overlap and synergize to make it even easier to pick up new skills. Anecdotally I found my background in software + college coursework in signal processing gave me a huge boost with getting into music production, and in line with the ROI perspective I feel like…

The book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-range argues a lot for this as well, and goes on to discuss numerous examples where generalists have made the breakthroughs and/or excelled in some way, due to synergy, overlap and inspiration.

I will second this recommendation. It has some great stories about people such as Van Gogh and inspired some new thoughts on machine learning.

Re: Time anxiety: is it too late?

#156

Post by nothrabannosir »

bennyelv wrote: post #134
avinium wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember in my 20s I had this constant anxiety about running out of time. That if I didn't accomplish whatever I wanted to accomplish soon I'd never be able to do it. The emotion gradually disappeared during my 30s. I had the same feeling in my 20s. I'm now in my 30s, and the biggest regret I have in life is that I lost a relationship because I needed to "accomplish something before I ran out of time". Even thoug…

The feeling of regret about a past decision is an odd one to me. It's based on the premise that you know with some certainty what would have happened had you taken the opposite choice. That premise is false, you have no idea what would have happened if you had done things differently. Your life could be terrible, your life could be better. You have no way of knowing. I believe the best treatment for it is to make sur…

You never have no way of knowing anything. Cogito ergo sum and maybe we’re just a brain in a vat. But in the mean time we can make pretty good estimations, and saying “I expect a significantly better life with P above some threshold and error margin within some bounds” is a meaningful statement. Even in the face of nothing ever being certain.

You allude to it here:

> It's based on the premise that you know with some certainty what would have happened had you taken the opposite choice. That premise is false, you have no idea what would have happened if you had done things differently.

It isn’t false, note the “some”. You can have some certainty about hypotheticals. Experience and pattern matching are powerful tools.

But don’t let that get in the way of the exalted and commendable goal of accepting the past for what it is :)

Re: Time anxiety: is it too late?

#157

Post by penagwin »

phodo wrote: post #108
Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One hint I can give you is that joining groups seemed to be the thing that really turned my news feed into something else. I've joined groups related to game programming, music production, Arduino and a bunch of others related to local music gigs (plus some support groups that I feel I can contribute to) and now there's actually a lot of interesting (and pleasantly technical) stuff in my feed. The other effect this h…

On a related note : That’s also how I use Twitter - carefully curated. I’m more of an occasional user, a lurker more than a tweeter. And the resulting recommendations, ads, and tweets are relevant and useful to me in the topics I like. It’s not perfect but it makes general discovery - breadth and depth - meaningful to me, whenever I go thru my feed.

If you mostly consume twitter I recommend trying tweet deck (which might be owned by twitter now?).

Its UI makes far more sense for consumption IMO.

Re: Time anxiety: is it too late?

#158

Post by nothrabannosir »

x2f10 wrote: post #32
pier25 wrote: post #24

I remember in my 20s I had this constant anxiety about running out of time. That if I didn't accomplish whatever I wanted to accomplish soon I'd never be able to do it. The emotion gradually disappeared during my 30s. In a way I was right. I'm 40 now and the things that seemed of extreme importance in my 20s are mostly gone now. In retrospect it's not that I wouldn't be able to do those things, but maybe I feared tha…

I'm not in my early thirties and time anxiety is actually growing stronger. I worry about the big three: children, career, and personal health. My idea is that with kids... my finace and I are aging. Are we going to do this or not? We have to know within the next 2ish years. With career... what career path do I want to take? I need to focus on schooling or professional certificates ASAP so I can utilize those as I ag…

At least for the last one: I can’t recommend enough just going for it, not being afraid of getting it wrong. The health benefits of weight training are very well documented, it leads to a longer life and slower aging, which will give you more time for the other topics! And you’ll feel better to boot. Give it a go, treat it like a puzzle, you can do it. It’s a skill you continuously hone. After you’ve learned the basics it can be done under 1h per session, and 3 times per week is already huge. Even 1/week is good! :)

Good luck!

Re: Time anxiety: is it too late?

#159

Post by Lio »

Whenever I feel time anxiety I try to think of Ray Kroc[1]

He didn't get started on his version McDonalds until he was 64, an age that many people would be about to retire.

I'm not a great fan of McDonalds food but if you can start a company like that at 64 you can start anything at any age.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kroc

Re: Time anxiety: is it too late?

#160

Post by icoder »

Grzegrzolka wrote: post #18
programmerdude wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a software eng who has always had a lot of hobbies, it's almost alienating how so many people in the office are only into TV shows, super hero movies, sci fi books, video games... It's like, there's a whole world out there people!

Serious question, what other hobbies can one have?

Thanks for asking, it's fun to answer, plus the other answers are a treasure trove!

For me it currently is archery, underwater hockey, running, volunteering (as swimming instructor), keeping a (planted, tropical) fish tank, learning a new language (a local Filipino dialect), electronics (home automation).

In the (in some cases distant) past (yet could come make a come back): drums, guitar, drawing, writing, photography, origami, snowboarding, reading.

I work as a(n independent) software dev by day. So programming is my job, but it is also my all time (well, since 8) favourite hobby.

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