36 Things Folks Spent Too Much Time Doing And Then Found Out They Were Just Useless

A few days ago, a thread appeared in the AskReddit community, which as of today boasts 5.6K upvotes and over 3K various comments. The thread's starter, the user u/FreshModeSP, asked readers: "What's the most pointless thing you've spent hours doing, only to realize it was completely useless?"

From video games to online feuds, and from various hobbies to failed startups - it turns out that people regret wasted time so much that they’re willing to spend even more time discussing other people's failures. However, discussing something like this has always been interesting, hasn't it?

In fact, people have always been interested in something other than their immediate work responsibilities, family and chores. This is, by and large, what makes us human, and what distinguishes us from animals. We’re capable of getting carried away by detached things, doing something extremely irrational - simply because we like it. We like it here and now.

How wrong is all this? Perhaps some kind of balance is important. Well, you can, for example, spend hundreds of hours on gaming, and never become a pro gamer, but if your hobby hasn’t seriously interfered with your life - why not? After all, you enjoyed it, and you considered it important at some point in your life.

You know, many years ago I myself spent several months creating a detailed mod of a sports simulator (EA Sports FIFA), making a complete copy of the 1982 World Cup. In the end, several hundred people played this mod, a couple of months later a new version of the game came out, and the mod became totally irrelevant... But you know, it was still one of the happiest moments in my entire memory!

Of course, arguing for hours with other anonymous users on the Internet looks completely pointless from a rational point of view - it would probably be better to read an interesting book, watch an educational video or a good movie. But, in the end, if it brings you pleasure, then why not?

We’ve lost much of this pleasure from “useless” hobbies in the endless pursuit of productivity. “For parents, free time has actually gone down quite significantly,” The Telegraph quotes Nick Srnicek, co-author of the book ‘After Work,’ which examines the erosion of free time.

“It’s particularly an affliction of the professional managerial classes - but it also gets into hustle culture. Like: are you spending your free time just sitting around doing nothing? Aren’t you trying to learn the next productivity hack?” Doesn’t that sound a lot like our lives?

Of course, there are things that are directly harmful to your health or the health and well-being of those around you, and that’s a completely different matter. But if we spent dozens of hours, for example, manually tagging a vast collection of mp3s in the early ‘00s – how pointless can that activity really be?

On the one hand, it now seems like a completely senseless thing. On the other hand, it definitely made sense back then, and you definitely felt the value and usefulness of your actions while organizing your music collection. After all, the mere fact that our lives will end sooner or later should, by the same logic, devalue literally everything we do.

Okay, and now I actually offer you something that you can later include in the list of senseless activities. Yes, I suggest you read all three dozen of these stories from different people, like the ones you enjoy the most, and maybe share your own tale in the comments. After all, why not - if you have time and inspiration?