30 Various Hobbies That People Invested Hours And Hours In And Which They Now Regret, As Shared Online
Do you know what exactly some urbanists saw as almost the main environmental problem of big cities at the end of the 19th century? I'm willing to bet you're unlikely to guess! So, scientists seriously believed that in the future, that is, for example, at the beginning of the 21st century, humanity would have to urgently solve the problem of recycling... horse manure!
And it's true, these scientists argued - if the population of the Earth grew, then the number of horse-drawn carriages and cabs would increase - and numerous horses, of course, would pollute the city streets with manure. An example that clearly shows how far even the smartest of us can be from accurately predicting the future. So don't laugh too hard at the stories in this list of ours, which collects people's skills and hobbies that later turned out to be not even worth the time spent mastering them.
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In the 90s, my brother worked as fire watcher in Minnesota near the border. He lived in some remote location. Power but no phone. They cached his supplies for several months. Then nothing. Half-starved, he finally came out of the woods to see what was what.
He'd been laid off. No one told him. No money in his account. Everybody was laid off and gone. Office dark.
I took 2 years of French instead of Spanish in high school. I live in Texas.
Indigenous knotting.
I used to be able to make the most beautiful dresses, armors, and regalia using traditional knotting and beading techniques.
Broke my arm about a decade ago, got fat, and got arthritis. Now my hands don't even work well enough to teach the next generation how to do it.
Indeed, the progress of humanity has gained absolutely incredible momentum in recent decades, and it is almost impossible to manage with the baggage of old skills and remain relevant in the labor market for a relatively long time. It is all the more embarrassing, for example, for people who spent many years getting a college education, took out a student loan - only to discover with horror that their degree now does not give them any advantage in finding a job. Which, by the way, happens all the time.
Being a decent, hard working employee for a large multinational corporation
I built a customer service team from the ground up to support a client's new product. Became the highest rated customer service group in the entire business. One day our phones went dead, called to test the line, was routed to a different customer service team. We'd been outsourced and they didn't have the heart to tell us in advance.
Not hours per se, but lots and lots of money.
When I was a kid, CDs were king. This was also back when a typical cd was like $16 at Sam goody etc.
I’d mow lawns in my neighborhood - 4 houses on a weekend, and get $10 each, which was good for about a dozen albums a month.
My parents also gave me lunch money for school - $2 a day - which I pocketed for another album a week.
So basically I sacrificed nutrition and my weekends for the entirety of my middle school / early high school years to build up a massive album collection that was the envy of all my musician friends. It was glorious.
I thought for sure this would be the crown jewel of my adulthood and that I would pass them on to my kids someday.
….and then when the iPod / iTunes came out it was all pointless lol
I kept all my CDs and I still collect from my favorite artists. I don't care what the new technologies are it's still my favorite way to listen to music.
"Certainly, it is a sign of the times - the constant obsolescence of skills and knowledge, and the concept of endless education is now more relevant than ever," says Vladimir Nemertsalov, a school principal and teacher from Ukraine, whom Bored Panda asked for a comment. "And if for some reason you drop out of this continuous educational process for at least half a year, it can be incredibly difficult for you to return to your job or even just maintain the required level."
"But there is another problem. Very often we go to college, guided not by a sober calculation of our strengths, but by the advice of relatives, family traditions or erroneous ideas about the future demand for this profession. Thus, the position of educational counsellor now, as it seems to me, is becoming increasingly more important for many people. However, even the contemporary world is still changing so quickly that the skills and knowledge that you once considered useless may well come in handy in just a few years," Vladimir presumes.
I got an aviation degree because it used to be the only way you could qualify to become and air traffic controller. The age cut-off is 30 and I graduated when I was 29. Well, they decided to “restructure” the hiring process mere months after I graduated and cancelled all hiring panels for 2 years. I aged-out and now have a f*****g useless degree that I still pay students loans on.
EDIT: First, thank you for the huge response. This happened about 11 years ago. I am making a lot of money doing something I love in another industry so don’t worry about me. It was devastating at the time but I’m content in what I’m doing now. (Had to edit that again because of all the people who are negative about hearing “everything happens for a reason” and “living my best life”) I’m happy and successful and if you can’t live with that, go be negative somewhere else.
To answer the most common question on here:
Why is 30 the cutoff age?: This is a very high-stress job that requires you to have a sharp mind at all times. It’s like playing a mathematical puzzle that kills 300 people if you f**k up. They offer/encourage retirement with pension at 55, but you need 25 years of service to be eligible, hence the oldest you can be to start the job is 30 years old.
I played around 12k hours of soccer, got pretty good at it but it didn’t worked out so now I’m an engineer that secretly can play soccer at professional level
Gordon Ramsey transitioned from being a football player to world class chef. Likewise David Icke transitioned from being a football player to world class fruitcake
Photography. Everyone with a phone thinks they're photographers these days.
Amen to that! I still have my very old 35mm film camera. No bells, no whistles, I learned to compose in the camera.
As for our hobbies, here, as usual, there are two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, we really spend time and energy on what we are interested in - and then, when this hobby goes out of fashion, we begin to suffer because we "wasted time." But damn it, at one time it really brought us joy or pride in achievement - even if it was some kind of video game, hopelessly outdated today! And that's why it's only human of us to get carried away - even if these hobbies are sometimes completely irrational.
There is such a thing as "alternative possibilities," and we very often fall into their trap, thinking later on how we could have better used our time and resources. But after all, these thoughts come to us based on later experience, and then, earlier, everything was perceived from a completely different angle. For example, we now understand that picking Hakeem Olajuwon in the 1984 NBA draft over Michael Jordan was most likely a mistake. After all, it was one of the greatest players in his position against the greatest in history, two league titles against six.
But then, in 1984, picking Olajuwon first was quite reasonable. Moreover, already in his second year in the league, Hakeem brought his franchise to the finals, while Jordan didn't have a similar achievement until seven years later. So who was more right, based on the layouts for the summer of 1984? Houston managers or Chicago managers?
Asian parent piano lessons. Didn't make them happy, didn't make *myself* happy, never got any good at it, gained no useful skills whatsoever for the several hundred hours per year for multiple years spent practicing
Forcing your child into any musical training more than giving a little push to get it started is always a good way to waste their time. If they're talented, after a short time, say, 3-4 months tops, they'll take off and fly with it. So yes, push them a bit to give it a go, but if they don't start enjoying it, there's no career or even just an advantage in it for them. Their time would be better spent on something else. You can't be truly good at creative stuff without enjoyment. I'd even go so far to say it'll be a hindrance in sports too. You can become reasonably good at your work even if you don't exactly enjoy it, but for some things you need actual talent and that can't be forced onto people
I worked in high tech for 40ish years. Almost everything I learned became obsolete. It’s a treadmill.
Before I read the description, I thought that was some impressive embroidery with fiber optics going on.
I got a B.S. in biochemistry, then drove a forklift for 14 years. Now I'm an electrician.
I hope you are happy! There are many career opportunities for biochemists. Not sure it would be a bad decision for all.
And yet, we often forget that even those hobbies that we now consider a waste of time brought us a lot of happiness. For example, in my youth I had a collection of several thousand audio cassettes, which years later I sold for next to nothing - because they took up a lot of space, and just one iPod contained almost the entire collection. But then, in the '90s, I rejoiced at every new cassette, and now, decades later, I remember these emotions with warmth. Perhaps this is the main significance of such hobbies...
Well, we all probably have some similar story, so please feel free to tell your own tale in the comments to this collection, but not before scrolling it to the very end. At the end of the day, we bet that it's definitely worth your time to read all these stories!
I managed to accidentally wipe the drive that held all my work. I'm a semi-professional game dev, there was 10 years worth of meshes, materials and code.
It's been 10 days, I've just been in a sort of state of shock, having tried and failed to recover the lost files.
I know all the tricks to make a website look as good in Internet Explorer 6 as in Chrome, Safari or Opera.
I learned Flash when I was a teen, thinking it would be the wave of the future. Then the iPhone came out with no Flash support, effectively killing it.
WoW. I haven't talked to any of my old guildmates in years. I got server first kills and worked my a*s off to be the top of my game, and it means next to nothing.
I look back on the time I spent fondly and wouldn't trade the experience for anything. But it really does nothing for me.
This is the life of a geneticist.
The field moves quickly with the technology and techniques, but they are all very complex and difficult to learn. More than once in my life, I have poured myself into a specialized skill to be the best in the building, only to have that skill be obsolete the next year.
It never feels that bad, though, because the replacements are almost always faster, easier, and get you better results or else they don't really take off.
Do we need to send BP a link to the definition of “hobby”?
I am a professional fingerboarder.
e: some [footage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKZpk8ISwsM) lol
I almost didn't watch it because I thought fingerboarder sounded like something rude 😆
I spent half my Army career in various schools learning to repair nuclear missiles. Now I'm doing desktop support and teaching the new guys how to install printers remotely.
Flintknapping. It always was pointless(but not, eh? Get it?) but so much fun
I have a bachelor's degree in Astronomy from one of the world's best universities.
I now work as a software engineer.
My PhD. Its f*****g worthless and im done with academia. Now i work in a corp mindlessly filling excel spreadsheets for twice the money i was paid and i ve never been happier in my entire life.
EDIT: I ve got PhD in STEM, still its f*****g worthless cuz nobody is hiring out here and i dont have some crucial skills to move abroad and get a decent job. Im sick of working overtime for free, deans' stupid policies, falsyfing results. I got a notification on LinkedIn that a financial corp is opening new branch in my city, i applied for "Junior Data Analyst", but honestly all i do is filling excel spreadsheets, making bar charts and reporting anything unusuall.
Strange to see "Excel" and "never been happier" in the same sentence
I spent over a decade learning how to draw, studying design techniques, etc. Tried to work as a professional designer and illustrator and it was terrible and made no money. Now I'm a software developer. Every once in a blue moon it's useful for making graphics, but really just pointless.
I feel the same way with my many years of practicing to draw. I spent a lot of time drawing Archie characters, thinking I would become an illustrator for Archie comics. That never happened. Don't think it will ever. Most of the my artwork was never kept. The stuff I have is not presentable as professional stand point. Tried getting into oil painting and sell my artwork. Did a few commissions but didn't make enough to live off of it by a long shot. It felt icky to charge people for something I make for free for myself. Now, I hardly draw and barely have the energy to paint. I can't even use my creativity at jobs.
Self development books, psychology books, and biographies to find out what the f**k is wrong with me.
One 30second information video about ADHD changed my life. The clouds parted.
I'm now on medication, and living the life I wanted to create for myself by taking a simple pill every morning. It took 37 years, but I'm now the person I felt was locked in there since I was a child. I'm so happy I could cry. Well almost. I still haven't cracked the code on that one, but I'm pretty damned happy. Not to mention a better husband, father and worker.
EDIT:
The tik tok video in question just made me curious about ADHD. It basically said: "Hello you're probably seeing this because the algorithm thinks you have ADHD, look at my channel for more."
I scoffed, because I thought ADHD was something completely different, but I checked the channel out. There was this doctor (I think) listing signs and symptoms of ADHD. The videos made me curious enough to learn more about ADHD, so I took some online tests and read a little about it before contacting my doctor get a proper diagnosis.
I can't find the video itself, I deleted tik tok a long time ago.
Edit 2: If you suspect having ADHD, please get a medical professionals opinion. Do not self diagnose.
Tip: do a little research on your own beforehand, and make a list of the things you have problems with in life that you think can be traced to ADHD. It makes the doctor or psychologists job easier, and might speed up the process.
It could be things like;
not being able to hold a job, pay bills on time, stay in relationships, blowing money on new hobbies every month, not being able to study, lack of impulse control, and a lot more.
There is alot of different types of ADHD, it's a spectre. You can also have ADHD traits without having enough of them to get a diagnosis.
Thank you for stressing that people should not diagnose! I have OCD. I have been diagnosed with OCD. It has nothing to do with being a neat freak, and the next time I hear this, violence is likely to ensue.
Beta -> VHS -> DVD -> digital -> 4k
How many times?
When I was 20 I got a job at an up and coming tech company. 6 months later they went IPO in a big way, and I was worth $2M on paper.
6 months later the market crashed and the stock tanked. Before I was legally allowed to touch the shares
It took me 8 years to get my Chemical Engineering degree. I never worked a single day as a Chemical Engineer. I'm a Data Analyst now.
Sorting and organizing my mp3 collection
I still sort and organize Windows Media Player...I burn CDs and send my old friends a nostalgic mix with their Christmas cards. I love making burned cds. It's like a little window into what I was feeling that day.
moderated a subreddit
Note: this post originally had 40 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
A lot of these are good life experiences and contributed to what you do now or might do in the future so please don't think of them as wasteful.
I totally agree. I don’t think their definition of useless matches mine.
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As John Lennon is reputed to have said, time that you enjoyed wasting, wasn't wasted.
As I've often told people who've given me their unsolicited two cents worth, on the subject of whether or not I'm wasting my time, the only opinion that matters is mine.
Load More Replies... A lot of these are good life experiences and contributed to what you do now or might do in the future so please don't think of them as wasteful.
I totally agree. I don’t think their definition of useless matches mine.
Load More Replies... As John Lennon is reputed to have said, time that you enjoyed wasting, wasn't wasted.
As I've often told people who've given me their unsolicited two cents worth, on the subject of whether or not I'm wasting my time, the only opinion that matters is mine.
Load More Replies...