When Is Time Wasted… Well Spent?

At first glance, this may sound like a ridiculous question.

But if you’ve followed my studio redesign from start to finish, it might make a little more sense.

Over the course of this project, I:

• Built multiple rack units—only to take them apart
  
• Constructed stands, lived with them for a while, then dismantled them
  
• Devised workflows that made sense in theory but fell apart in practice
  
• Connected cables, disconnected them, reconnected them differently
  
• Moved entire sections of the studio around—sometimes only to put them right back where they started
  

From the outside, it looks like wasted time.

And to be fair, in some of my earlier posts, I even described it that way myself.

But that’s not the full story.

The Deadline That Framed Everything

Part of the frustration came from the pressure I put on myself.

I was trying to redesign an ever-changing studio in roughly two months—a timeline that, in hindsight, was unrealistic.

If I had done certain tasks once instead of three or four times, I could have shaved:

• Days
  
• Maybe even weeks
  

off the project.

But speed wasn’t the only goal.

What Repetition Actually Taught Me

Each time I rebuilt a rack, I learned something new:

• About spacing
  
• About weight
  
• About airflow
  
• About cable access
  
• Or about what I simply didn’t like
  

Every time I rewired the studio, the audio improved.

Each misstep exposed a limitation.
Each limitation pointed toward a better idea.

None of that learning would have happened if everything had worked perfectly the first time.

Iteration as Education

What looked like repetition was actually iteration.

• Every rack rebuild taught me something I applied to the next version
  
• Every cable reroute reduced noise or improved usability
  
• Every failed workflow clarified how I actually work—not how I imagined I would
  
• Every “wrong” decision narrowed the field toward the right one
  

Without those detours, my studio would not be what it is today.

Why I Wouldn’t Change the Process

Even now, in 2026, while there are still a few refinements I’d like to make, the studio is essentially finished—at least as finished as a studio ever truly is.

And I can say honestly:
If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t change the process.

Because changing the mistakes would almost certainly change the outcome.

Rethinking “Wasted” Time

This experience forced me to reconsider what wasted time really means.

Yes—purely from an efficiency standpoint—some of what I did was redundant.

But efficiency isn’t the only metric that matters, especially in a creative, exploratory project.

Sometimes what feels like wasted time is actually time spent learning something that only becomes valuable later.

The lesson might not be obvious in the moment—but it reveals itself as the project evolves.

A Better Question

So maybe the real question isn’t:

“Was time wasted?”

Maybe it’s:

“What did I learn while I was wasting it?”

More often than not, the answer is:
Something important.