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How to lose time and money

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to lose time and money

#81

Post by brianmwang »

Swizec wrote: post #16
fferen wrote: post #5

I think this ties into the idea of MMORPGs. I used to play them a lot until I realized they were not fun, just addictive; they make you feel like you're accomplishing something by leveling and gaining skills, when really it's only your character that's improving - you're not getting better at anything.

Same story for me as far as MMORPG's, Farmville and similar go. I get super addicted for a week and play probably 8 hours a day, then I just get bored. The whole thing is vaguely addicting, but ultimately completely uninteresting. If I'm going to watch a character level up I'd much rather hit the gym. The increasing weights you can lift offer a nice chance for some nerdy analysis while you're also actually doing some…

I rarely engage in shameless self promotion, but this seems like an appropriate moment. My startup, Fitocracy, is built around the notion of loosely mapping the MMORPG experience to exercise and fitness. We've been getting fairly popular with the early adopter crowd and we've even been featured in XKCD and Penny-Arcade.

You can create a private beta account using this link: http://ftcy.co/jMSLsG

Re: How to lose time and money

#82

Post by zipdog »

jseliger wrote: post #30
zipdog wrote: post #9

Sometimes I think the feeling of getting "basically nothing" done by the end of the day is not the right timeframe - there are projects that have gone on for weeks that ultimately were a complete waste of time. But while working through those projects I felt something productive was happening, which made it difficult to think of them as "basically nothing". I'm not talking about failed ventures that could have turned…

Sometimes I think the feeling of getting "basically nothing" done by the end of the day is not the right timeframe - there are projects that have gone on for weeks that ultimately were a complete waste of time. I suspect pg means that he spent the day checking / responding to e-mails, reading HN, maybe paying some bills, noodling around the Internet, checking e-mail again, and then discovering that it's getting close…

Your suspicion is probably true, but the example in the essay was considering wasted time akin to poorly invested money. Losing a day to email/HN is like losing a few dollars on a horse race compared to sinking half your fortune into a diamond mine in Zaire. Obviously, those losses per day add up, but I think its probably just as wise to learn how to watch out for the large time investments that are going to simply absorb resource without return yield.
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