If you are an experienced trader reading this, how did you know that you were not wasting your time trading at the time when you felt this way?
Truthfully, trading has been a waste of time to some people and to others it has not. A way to identify the category you will fall into is to assess your situation and know if you have profited or if you are on the road to profiting from trading. Personally anything I commit myself to that gives me money in small amount, I believe that with more commitment can give me more. Trading a few times, It has not just all been losses, I recorded a few gains so I knew I was not wasting my time. An indication of a waste of time would have been if I was losing more and found whatever I was given as a tip difficult to understand, that is a good indicator that trading is not for someone.
Whether some activity is a waste of time or not should be more in line with your expected utility. If I trade two hours one day and earn 200 USD, it might not have been a waste of time. The next day I trade for two hours and lose 200 USD, and out of a sudden the investment of two hours was a waste of time. Trading is a lot about luck because ultimately you are competing with bots and algorithms. Unless you have some meaningful advantage in information, making money from trading is more about luck I think.