Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 277 posts

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

#91

Post by raunak »

Xeoncross wrote: post #62
fnordpiglet wrote: post #41

Everything you do is ultimately pointless. You feel that becoming a particular type of engineer you aspire to is meaningful, but once you get there you’ll realize you’re still yourself and you didn’t ascend to some higher level of being. Probably the most meaningful thing we can do is through social interactions. Your time in WoW must have incorporated social interactions. Be proud of those experiences - they’re in n…

> Everything you do is ultimately pointless > the most meaningful thing we can do is through social interactions Clearly you can see the contrast here. I agree that people are far more important than anything else. I am also among the majority of worldviews on earth who do not consider 'everything is pointless'.

I don’t think the point is “everything is pointless”, insomuch as “everything is more pointless seeming than social interactions”.

Social interactions seem to be at least part of the “human motive” for most people I’d guess.

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

#93

Post by hprotagonist »

To see what I mean, imagine the following scenario: Joe Haskeller is trying to learn about monads. After struggling to understand them for a week, looking at examples, writing code, reading things other people have written, he finally has an “aha!” moment: everything is suddenly clear, and Joe Understands Monads! What has really happened, of course, is that Joe’s brain has fit all the details together into a higher-level abstraction, a metaphor which Joe can use to get an intuitive grasp of monads; let us suppose that Joe’s metaphor is that Monads are Like Burritos. Here is where Joe badly misinterprets his own thought process: “Of course!” Joe thinks.

“It’s all so simple now. The key to understanding monads is that they are Like Burritos. If only I had thought of this before!” The problem, of course, is that if Joe HAD thought of this before, it wouldn’t have helped: the week of struggling through details was a necessary and integral part of forming Joe’s Burrito intuition, not a sad consequence of his failure to hit upon the idea sooner.

our growth occurs in curious ways.

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

#94

Post by DeWilde »

Xeoncross wrote: post #62
fnordpiglet wrote: post #41

Everything you do is ultimately pointless. You feel that becoming a particular type of engineer you aspire to is meaningful, but once you get there you’ll realize you’re still yourself and you didn’t ascend to some higher level of being. Probably the most meaningful thing we can do is through social interactions. Your time in WoW must have incorporated social interactions. Be proud of those experiences - they’re in n…

> Everything you do is ultimately pointless > the most meaningful thing we can do is through social interactions Clearly you can see the contrast here. I agree that people are far more important than anything else. I am also among the majority of worldviews on earth who do not consider 'everything is pointless'.

I don't mean to be depressing, but what is the point of life? Like an ultimate goal or something that you must achieve?

It doesn't seem to be a one, except for the ones that we set for ourselves, which is usually trying to live as better as possible for as long as you can. And this seems fine to me, thinking too much about this can get depressing unless you can be comfortable with the fact that whatever we do in life the end outcome is always death.

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

#95

Post by francisofascii »

Asking the question is a step in the right direction. I would try to examine your short term and long term goals and strive to make a positive contribution to the world. But those goals can be incremental. Like today you inspired me to go visit my mom. You don’t have to cure cancer to make a positive impact. And also don’t beat yourself up about video games or screen time. People need down time and pleasures to look forward to. The video game creator gets credit and satisfaction for creating a game you enjoy.

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

#96

Post by readingnews »

Consider the following: You are 23 and realizing this. You can totally "make up" for it if you want to.

Better now than to wake up much later and go "dang, now that was wasted years".

How do you make peace with it? Start doing the things that seem important to you now.

Here is one problem to remember... do not be mad at yourself if you wake up when you are 46 and say "you know, I feel like I wish I had worked hard on this OTHER / DIFFERENT thing than the one I choose when I was 23". Just... do it again. :)

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

#97

Post by thenerdhead »

I'm 30 and recently wrote a book(in bio) about how I found peace with wasting my teenage & young adult years on technology and internet addiction.

While you can think all you want about how if you spent your time doing something differently, it won't change the now. Don't ask "what ifs", be pragmatic by removing these things from your life to add more back to it that feels more meaningful.

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

#99

Post by mrg3_2013 »

At 23 you are thinking this. Kudos for that first! You have all the time rest of your life! You should pluck "regret" at its root and resolve that. Regret would always exist. Even if you had spent time coding/OS etc, regret would've shown in different form. And regret will always be your shadow and you need to make peace with it. Someday, one these regrets will propel you to do something radical and THAT will be the thing that will resolve this truly. Until then make peace with the fact that you are now self-aware and still got so much time left!

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

#100

Post by timpark »

You might find the book "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals" by Oliver Burkeman helpful. It's not all about productivity, but also how we relate to time. (we didn't always worry about it so much)

Here are a couple of the more detailed summaries I've found:

https://www.sloww.co/four-thousand-weeks/

https://youcanflymate.org/four-thousand-weeks-by-oliver-burk...

Post reply on HN