It’s weird how much guilt we have about how we spend our free time. We are constantly measuring our activities against what society, our parents, our friends, and social media say are worthwhile pastimes. I care far less in my 30s what others think of my demeanour than I did as a teenager, but somehow I find myself difficult to admit to friends without guilt how I spend a few hours a day playing video games, despite how much I enjoy that time. It should be as simple as: “if you enjoy something then do it”. If it’s meaningless then you’ll eventually grow bored of it (or realise it’s an addiction). It should be as simple as that.
Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
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Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#42If you have such a hard time not reading reddit or hackernews maybe the correct conclusion is not that you're 'wasting' time but that there's something enjoyable about so called low quality or idle activities and that they're normal part of a healthy life. I think it's deeply ironic that people will judge videogames on that basis but then to proceed to gamify and min-max their entire life because of this rat race men…
Many of the highest impact decisions in my life, I made because of things I learned reading HN and reddit. And I've even been able to promote my own projects and other projects I like with some success. It's hard to tell whether I'm wasting this time or whether I'm learning about the next Tesla or Bitcoin or deep learning before it's big. Or learning the skills to communicate effectively and promote my work to a big…
Many of those I made were on weird dilletante times: I learned English because I wanted to read mangas earlier than their French translations, I learned CS because I just found it so fun I failed every other subjects in my first year of engineering school, I moved to Hong Kong because I fell in love with a girl here when in vacations, I joined an investment bank paying a lot because I had too much fun watching bloomberg and I wanted to understand the whole thing, etc.
None of this was planned or even rational, yet they are the few transformative milestones in my life. So I don't know if there's really an argument we should use time wisely: we should just jump around and do what drags us naturally and as long as we're happy, we'll find a way.
One could look at my progression from random nobody in Normandy to somewhat rich Hong Kong bank employee and think there s a story but in fact it's a disjointed set of irrational opportunities ... which I think is what life should be seen as.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#43If you have such a hard time not reading reddit or hackernews maybe the correct conclusion is not that you're 'wasting' time but that there's something enjoyable about so called low quality or idle activities and that they're normal part of a healthy life. I think it's deeply ironic that people will judge videogames on that basis but then to proceed to gamify and min-max their entire life because of this rat race men…
I spend on average[1] 4+ hours a day here, reddit or 4chan. I wish I had spent the time on other pursuits that I have consistently found more enjoyable and rewarding. 4chan in particular usually leaves me feeling some subtle mixture of mentally nauseous and despondent, although I laugh a lot and find interesting things I don't elsewhere. My over-browsing habit is absolutely an unhealthy and compulsive behavior.
I'm 30 now and started on SomethingAwful and StumbleUpon and videogame/software enthusiast forums I think when I was about 9 or 10. I wonder if I'm sort of like a person who started smoking cigarettes at that age. My relationship with compulsive browsing seems to be rooted in experiencing it differently than normal people[2]. They seem to lose interest after a period of time. I can (and do) browse for 9+ hours about 2-3x a month. Interestingly, when I travel, my relationship with browsing changes. The feeling of "magnetic attention" (present even right now) is entirely absent and I lose interest after 5 minutes, max.
[1] The 'wellness' screentime monitors have been a godsend. Assembling histograms of my usage stopped me regarding myself as entirely pathetic and got me to think that maybe I have a problem along the lines of nicotine, perhaps something not well understood by psychology yet. Still pathetic, but maybe less so.
[2]It seems that the issue I have is increasingly present in others, especially younger people who had connected devices even younger than I.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#44For a year I've been constantly thinking about this state and how there must be way way more people with the same experience. I recently managed to ask a few people about their current situation. And indeed, they too share this experience. Thank you for the short "Absence of more meaningful activities" paragraph. I was about to head down a rabbithole and procrastinate higher priority tasks but the text reminded me of…
A 2hr 16min video is not particularly ADHD friendly Well I'll give it a shot across my runs next week. Thanks for the recommendation
+1 on this video/podcast, I sent it to at least 5 friends after listening to it and they all loved it.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#45If you have such a hard time not reading reddit or hackernews maybe the correct conclusion is not that you're 'wasting' time but that there's something enjoyable about so called low quality or idle activities and that they're normal part of a healthy life. I think it's deeply ironic that people will judge videogames on that basis but then to proceed to gamify and min-max their entire life because of this rat race men…
Many of the highest impact decisions in my life, I made because of things I learned reading HN and reddit. And I've even been able to promote my own projects and other projects I like with some success. It's hard to tell whether I'm wasting this time or whether I'm learning about the next Tesla or Bitcoin or deep learning before it's big. Or learning the skills to communicate effectively and promote my work to a big…
You have to keen an open mind, when it comes to the next big thing. The first Bitcoin post of HN didn't get much discussion and, of the few comments that were present, they were neutral to negative. If you really want to find that next thing, you best be reading the 'new' tab above.
What's been tough for me was I had fantastic stock picks (but no capital, I was in high school) in the mid-naughts. Anybody who's bought-and-held blue chip tech stocks since then would tell you. Today I do diversified index funds with the fear that it's "too late" to have a tech-skewed portfolio. As we all know, the public perception of tech has waned, though that realization is a separate discussion from potential future values, but the bad public perception biases me too much (fear of buying "the peak").
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#46I really enjoyed this, op. It was like reading a diary of my own struggle with screen usage. I haven’t found a magic bullet, but it was comforting to read that you’ve gone through a lot of the same iterations. I once considered making a screen time + throw away the key app that would let you lock your pin and have a timer or a buddy unlock it for you.
One thing I have found, like you, is that the dissatisfaction is cyclical. When I was bike touring around Taiwan, I didn’t think twice about how much screen time I spent. When I was stuck inside for months during level 3 epidemic prevention measures, I thought about it constantly. Seek to grow the times that make you feel better and give yourself a break during the “wasteful” times. I don’t think there is a tool or practice that can long term take your ordinary life and tweak this one part where you feel like you aren’t wasting too much of the day on Reddit.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#47It seems we can all relate, so I'll share my version of this as well. I'm not concerned with social media or Hacker News or whatever mainly because I remember the even worse crap I used to waste time reading before I learned of HN.
My problem is control. I had a side project I started in May and I worked on it roughly 16 hours a day, every day for ~6 weeks with only one or two hour breaks to eat and exercise. When I finished the project, I went back to my 9-5 job like nothing happened. I've had similar "episodes" of grinding before, but not quite as extreme.
Since then I haven't had the motivation to spend more than a few hours on anything outside of my job. The thing I want most is to control this. It would be a superpower.
Instead I spend most of my free time reading random shit on hacker news or Twitter. And next time I binge on work, it will probably be something silly like mining crypto on a thermostat.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#48I find that time of day and amount of sleep received heavily influences time wasting behavior. If I catch my mind craving to watch a movie I know “100%” I need sleep - the movie my mind is craving are dreams. Same with social wasters. A good night of sleep and the brain feels perfectly engaged, focused and productive in the morning. Not getting sleep leads to anxiety and fear of missing out which leads to more social media - what if that next HN post solves all of your problems. Social and TV content is optimized for ads because they know they are consumed when people are tired from their day - personal willpower is exhausted, and you give in to suggestion very easily. There is a reason late night shows compete for the prime spots. So when tired or overly interested in distractions, I try to actually sleep/nap when possible and get more hours with my best brain than my worst. A nap gives you 2 productive days in 24 hrs, and that may be worth something if you value you brain.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#49I have felt this in my own life. The idea of wasting my time away mindlessly consuming internet content like social media, memes, news articles, etc, as well as the comments attached to them. It's in a way the boob-tube of the current year, even though the original boob-tube still exists.
I see a few other posters mention that time enjoyed is not time wasted. However, for me at least, there's an emptiness to those activities that makes me feel like after all that time, nothing of value has been gained. Like a time vampire sucking away your day. Maybe unlike the author, I don't think that I need to be doing something "productive" to feel like I'm not wasting time. I enjoy gaming for example, and getting sucked into one does not give the same sense of emptiness. I guess there's a satisfaction from experiencing it, that I can reminisce on. I don't regret it.
While I certainly don't know a silver bullet to making you manage your time better. I've found that sometimes I'll tolerate things up until a point, and then one day I just say "no more" and start making a change that sticks. In this way I've seemingly managed to break away from various social sites, deleting accounts and bookmarks, and generally avoiding the site. However I would point out that now instead I am on HN more often.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of the highest impact decisions in my life, I made because of things I learned reading HN and reddit. And I've even been able to promote my own projects and other projects I like with some success. It's hard to tell whether I'm wasting this time or whether I'm learning about the next Tesla or Bitcoin or deep learning before it's big. Or learning the skills to communicate effectively and promote my work to a big…
You have to keen an open mind, when it comes to the next big thing. The first Bitcoin post of HN didn't get much discussion and, of the few comments that were present, they were neutral to negative. If you really want to find that next thing, you best be reading the 'new' tab above. What's been tough for me was I had fantastic stock picks (but no capital, I was in high school) in the mid-naughts. Anybody who's bought…
Yeah, I frequently disagree with the prevailing sentiment on HN. But I find that even stuff HN hates, like Bitcoin, gets enough airtime that I can judge it for myself, even if I don't read new.
I had fantastic stock picks a few years ago as well, but didn't act on them (though I've heard from a friend that they made good money on my recommendation of Nvidia). I don't feel like I have any today, everything seems overvalued and I don't feel that I have insights others don't. Which worries me a bit. Maybe there are other forums I should be reading now instead of HN to get those insights in different fields. I kind of feel like we've reached peak HN and the most exciting future stuff may be elsewhere.