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

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

#171

Post by throwawaypppu »

stavros wrote: post #155
eeeficus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point of life: you didn’t choose to be here but since you are, make something out of it. What is the pleasure or the meaning of just wasting it away?

The point is to enjoy every day, instead of trying to do things others consider meaningful. If you like playing games all day, do that. Whom are you living for?

I don’t think this is wise advice. Something can bring joy for a while but may ultimately bring negative emotions if it becomes too large a part of one’s life. e.g. if it excludes exercise, spending time outdoors, in person human interactions etc. It may also rewrite your dopamine and serotonin reward pathways which can be hard to reverse.

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

#173

Post by SuboptimalEng »

grog454 wrote: post #159
SuboptimalEng wrote: post #140

The thing to realize here is that these "legendary developers" grew up in a time where the MOST addicting thing to do was write programs on a screen or read books. There was LITERALLY nothing more exciting to do. No games, no good tv/phones, and no social media. And my theory was (essentially) confirmed when John Carmack tweeted[0] about how he avoids distractions in the present day. So it's safe to assume he would'v…

> The thing to realize here is that these "legendary developers" grew up in a time where the MOST addicting thing to do was write programs on a screen or read books. There was LITERALLY nothing more exciting to do. I think its also critical to realize that this is all about frame of mind. Yes, to a select few, there was nothing more exciting to do. To most others at that time, sports or the opposite gender would've b…

Sports and dating still exist today, but, both of these combined do not come close to the amount time a kid spends by themselves on a weekly basis.

I was a 12 season runner in high school (averaged 30-60 miles per week), but I still had 6-8 hours of free time once I got home from school every night.

Now imagine this same high school scenario in 2020 vs 1990. In 1990, no social media, no games, no decent phone (for texting), and no computer (for most people in the world). The only fun thing to do was to literally pick up a book and read it.

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

#174

Post by mutt2016 »

I started young with tech. Grinded my way through a tough systems career in my 20s. Spent every waking moment on call. Lucked out into a promotion, did some architecture and am now on a very senior role.

Here's some things I've learned: - age based promotions are real. Not intentionally, but people hire themselves. Most senior leaders are older. They don't trust somebody who doesn't share their world views. - my biggest regrets are when I was not a good person in life. As I age, what haunts me is the stuff I did that wronged people. That friend I lost. That girl I was meaner than I should have been. My failed marriage. Etc.

My advice.

Nobody really knows why the hell they are doing. We are all that teenager in some form. Just be honest. Reliable. Enthusiastic. And most importantly, it's a balance.. Say when you want a bigger role.

As a leader I can tell you when somebody says nothing and are good at their jobs, assumed happy. If somebody says, hey I'm thinking of my next step.. Any advice? Or I want to be X.. I'll do whatever I can to help. So will most people...IF you are deemed worth taking a chance on.

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

#175

Post by metadat »

Trasmatta wrote: post #169
CommieBobDole wrote: post #35

I 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…

> Carmack and Romero spent all their spare time writing code because that's what they loved to do. If that's what you loved to do, you'd have been doing the same thing. The problem is when you love programming, but your day job is programming and it begins to suck all the joy out of it, such that you can no longer enjoy doing in your free time anymore. It's not as cut and dried as "if you loved to do it, that's what…

Not necessarily true; just because day job programming isn't what you love, you can still do they type you enjoy in your free time if you want to.

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

#177

Post by stavros »

throwawaypppu wrote: post #171
stavros wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to enjoy every day, instead of trying to do things others consider meaningful. If you like playing games all day, do that. Whom are you living for?

I don’t think this is wise advice. Something can bring joy for a while but may ultimately bring negative emotions if it becomes too large a part of one’s life. e.g. if it excludes exercise, spending time outdoors, in person human interactions etc. It may also rewrite your dopamine and serotonin reward pathways which can be hard to reverse.

You're reading a lot into what I said, and yes, the things you read into it are not wise, I agree.

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

#178

Post by Groxx »

politelemon wrote: post #34

I have something of a counterpoint. I've been coding since I was 5 and I look back and wish I had spent time playing more games; I didn't and I missed out on some defining years which you probably had, and are probably taking for granted. I don't regret that however, instead it's something to learn from, and I now attempt to find a balance between all of them. Don't compare yourself to others, only that if you realiz…

Yeah. Extreme productivity (or at least the public perception of it) almost always comes at extreme cost. In particular social skills suffer, because it's almost always a sign of highly skewed time spent doing not-social stuff.

One of my bigger realizations as a kid was that a lot of the role-models held up as options for "who do you want to be like" were... not people I wanted to be anything like at all. They achieved things, but loads of them were pretty clearly struggling and/or terrible people in many ways. Sometimes fame destroys people and some other times it takes plowing through tons of other people to get what you want, and I don't want either of those.

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

#179

Post by Trasmatta »

metadat wrote: post #175
Trasmatta wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Carmack and Romero spent all their spare time writing code because that's what they loved to do. If that's what you loved to do, you'd have been doing the same thing. The problem is when you love programming, but your day job is programming and it begins to suck all the joy out of it, such that you can no longer enjoy doing in your free time anymore. It's not as cut and dried as "if you loved to do it, that's what…

Not necessarily true; just because day job programming isn't what you love, you can still do they type you enjoy in your free time if you want to .

Doesn't work for everyone. Burning out from programming in a draining day job can make people completely unable to do the type they would normally enjoy.

It's definitely a YMMV thing either way. I just take issue with the idea "oh, if you're not programming during your free time like Romero and Carmack, that must mean you don't actually love it".

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

#180

Post by metadat »

nvarsj wrote: post #120

I was browsing Carmack's twitter feed, and stumbled on some posts in there from his ex-wife of 20 odd years, saying he was an absentee dad and husband. Sort of opened my eyes a bit. He also famously took his work computer on his honeymoon. Yes, Carmack is a programming legend, and I respect him greatly (he is one of my personal coding heroes), but I think what we may see as outsiders doesn't always tell the whole sto…

Great insights, but want to clarify that the Zuck media appearances are pure manipulation and deception.

Don't be fooled by cheap words, look at the actions.

Zuckerberg's behavior makes his position clear: The billions of dollars and power he gets outweigh the minor, even trivial downsides of waking up to annoyances and most of humanity hating and resenting him.

The probability that he really gives a fuck is vanishingly low. Think of him like a lawnmower or a wild animal like a shark; they have a certain function and that's the end of it: consuming whatever is underneath them.

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