No effort (or connection) is wasted

A couple weeks ago I listened to the new "Humans" podcast from Hank Green, and a line from that stuck out to me. Wyna Liu, editor of the NYT Connections game, said this:I sort of believe that... the number of hours you spend doing something or thinking about something, ... that no effort's wasted. I like being interested in things, and learning how to make stuff... I think if it's something you really enjoy, it'll come out somewhere, you know?That line resonated with the host (enough that he made a whole separate video about it), and it resonated with me, too. I often worry about the ways that I spend my time, and certainly not all of them are going to "come out somewhere." But I do think that life is very complex, and each person is very complex, and that complexity manifests.In his video, Hank makes the comparison of each person as a junk drawer. Our lives are full of little things, experiences, weirdnesses, hidden talents, random tidbits of knowledge. Those things shape who we are,…