Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

So what you're saying is, you need to post great comments like this on every article so my addiction can be broken?

Man, why are you holding out me? You're ruining my life!

Asking as an adult that increasingly suspects he may be undiagnosed ADHD: Did the diagnosis result in being prescribed a treatment? If so, what, and has it helped?

I'm conscious that each case must be handled individually, and whatever happened with your diagnosis/treatment would not be the same with me, but I'm interested to hear nonetheless from anyone that's willing to share.

Interesting post, it inspired me to think about why I do similar.

Conclusion I came to, is that my brain doesn't want to expend a lot of effort and energy on optional things.

If I've got a deadline coming up on something that's hard it goes into brute force mode in order to get it done, irrespective of the energy cost, because it has to be done.

If I've decided to learn chess, it rebels against brute forcing it because the energy expenditure is not worth it on something that's optional. In that case subconsciously I want to find a better way to learn chess than whatever approach I'm currently taking because the current approach isn't worth the effort.

As for reddit and HN, I think it's the brains default goto way of getting you off the thing you're spending too much energy on (without a good enough plan to accomplish it) to something low energy but interesting enough to distract you.

This rings true to me. Most of the best things in my life are the same. No big plan and then engineering the small pieces to build it. I've mostly followed the small pieces that drew me at the time. I'm aware that this approach could just as likely lead you to wasting your life on whimsy and end up with nothing, but I have to say I'm surprised with how well all the parts fit together for a pleasing whole. Looking back it's amazing to see how many decisions were "just in time," even though I never had any kind of prediction about the future. Signal is baked into everything and making localized decisions doesn't have to paint you into a corner in life as it can in engineering.

I got into CS completely by accident because of my fascination with computers as a pre-teen. I would spend most of my free time tinkering with HTML, exploring IRC networks, chatting with strangers on AIM. All of it was idle, wasted time. I never even considered that it was a job option until my twenties. I spent my would-be-college years alternating between working crummy hourly jobs and traveling. Instead of going to school, I went hitchhiking around Europe, backpacking in South America, waiting tables, washing cars, working in a carpet factory, you name it. Again, because I was following some whims. I loved learning languages and exploring foreign cultures. At 23, broke, and desperate to get out of the pizza delivery business for good, I dusted off my old teenage hobby and got a job doing web dev around the same time that other people my age were graduating and doing the same. A few years later the gig economy arrived, and I am glad I exited delivery before that happened.

Sometimes I briefly have anxiety about the future. Am I learning the right skills to remain employable as I get older? What about agism in tech? Did it make any sense for me to move out of the US where career development is best? Is some black swan going to come along and completely obviate my profession? The confident side of me shows up and says "you didn't make a plan to get where you are right now either. Keep following what you enjoy and the future will turn out alright. You've only got a few more decades to avoid disaster anyway."

A great HN post beats an average book any day!

(And this is a book lover with a large personal library saying this.)