How to lose time and money
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderA corollary is when it feels like you've just wasted a bunch of time, when in fact you got a lot of work done. A common example of this is when you spend 18 hours trying a dozen solutions to a very hard problem, with none of them working. At the end of it all you tend to feel like a failure because nothing worked, but in reality you went through the very necessary process of narrowing your solution space…
"People fright at the concept of losing their money, yet they slave away their time without a second thought." -Seneca the Younger, from Letters from a Stoic (highly recommended) I think slaving away doing something you hate is far more harmful than "wasting" time having fun. I get more out of playing hacky sack and/or listening to podcasts than any homework or school work. So, in relation to this article, I think we should maybe consider "losing time" as doing…
wow
I submitted this because there seems to be a lot of interest in PG essays here, but I didn't really like this one... am curious what others will think. Parts of it didn't ring true: I wouldn't regret spending the whole day in front of the TV because I was having fun (as opposed to doing work), but because it _isn't_ much fun, it's just wasting time. And while it has been many years since I trained in anthropology, my…
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 696
- Total comments
- 258
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-07-06 | How to Lose Time and MoneyFirst breakout · Best thread | michael_nielsen | 467 | 175 |
| 2010-07-07 | How to Lose Time and Money | carusen | 3 | 0 |
| 2010-07-15 | How to Lose Time and Money | adamc | 2 | 2 |
| 2011-11-14 | How to lose time and moneyLatest 20+ point return | tyn | 213 | 80 |
| 2014-04-02 | How to Lose Time and Money | armansu | 3 | 0 |
| 2021-03-23 | How to lose time and money (2010) | filipeisho | 4 | 0 |
| 2023-01-25 | How to Lose Time and Money (2010) | tosh | 3 | 1 |
| 2023-12-19 | How to Lose Time and Money (2010) | yamrzou | 1 | 0 |