HOW TO LOSE TIME AND MONEY

📆 Published on: 2/28/2026

Original link: How to Lose Time and Money

After selling his startup in 1998, Paul Graham began pondering how to avoid going from rich to poor—because in the years before that, his thoughts had been focused on how to go from poor to rich.

Money

Spending all your money on luxury goods sets off an alarm in your mind. But when it comes to investing, the price you pay may be much, much higher—and there may be no alarm at all.

On Douyin, there's a streamer called "勇哥讲餐饮" (Brother Yong Talks Catering) who often connects with people who have bet their entire life savings on starting a business. Hoping to improve their lives, they choose to open a shop: spend over a hundred thousand on renovations, over a hundred thousand on signing a franchise, over a hundred thousand on rent—a single shop can cost several hundred thousand. They don't do hands-on research, like staking out the location to count foot traffic or estimating the revenue of nearby stores. They just listen to the marketing spiel from fast-moving consumer goods companies and jump in rashly. Occasionally, a rare genius appears: a veteran's son who, after days of scoping out the area and figuring out the business performance of every nearby store, remains extremely cautious and unwilling to invest too much; or a mother with a baby who sets up her shop for just a few thousand yuan, skipping renovations and simply bringing over the equipment from her previous business.

The first type is a newbie who, without certainty, makes minimal investment and tries an MVP. The second is an experienced veteran who focuses on cutting costs and increasing revenue.

I haven't invested or bought luxury goods yet—my biggest expenses have been consumer goods:

• First and foremost, subscriptions to various services: Volcano Engine, Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Zhipu, Kimi, ChatGPT, Manus…
• Electronics: phones, computers, monitors, speakers, gaming consoles
• Games

I had planned to learn about investing and give it a try, but after reading Brother Sun's book The World Is Cruel Yet Gentle, I took his advice and decided to invest in improving myself first.

Time

Clear entertainment, like playing games all day, will set off alarms: "Today was wasted!"

But even watching video courses all day might not mean you've learned much. Some courses are lengthy—starting at two hours. I'll put them on 2x speed, but it's hard to keep my attention on the lesson. I'll open Douyin in my browser, then open Zhihu…

I once found Cron syntax hard to understand and tried to optimize it using YAML. The result? The project schedule took a huge hit.

These actions may seem like a lot of time invested in work or study, but in reality, time slips away in distraction.

Summary

Paul's article presents a kind of trap, discussing it in the context of two resources: money and time. I think the essence of this trap is the lack of a reliable and accurate feedback mechanism. When you do something this way without a proper feedback mechanism, it's hard to tell whether the outcome is positive or negative.

One should set up a clear evaluation system that includes milestones, deliverables, and so on.