I never considered the type of effort you're referring to as wasted.
It reminds me a bit of looking up coding solutions on StackOverflow back in the day. Yes, it was a slog and consumed valuable time. However, I always felt that I picked up all sorts of other valuable information reading a variety of possible solutions or spying a related but different problem and taking a moment to consider it.
It is similar to how I learned to play guitar. With no videos and very limited tablature, I had to learn songs by ear which was crazy inefficient. However, it trained my ear and kept me exploring the entire fretboard as I figured the song out. This ended up making me a much more complete guitarist.
It reminds me a bit of looking up coding solutions on StackOverflow back in the day. Yes, it was a slog and consumed valuable time. However, I always felt that I picked up all sorts of other valuable information reading a variety of possible solutions or spying a related but different problem and taking a moment to consider it.
It is similar to how I learned to play guitar. With no videos and very limited tablature, I had to learn songs by ear which was crazy inefficient. However, it trained my ear and kept me exploring the entire fretboard as I figured the song out. This ended up making me a much more complete guitarist.