Hehe, I have often likened it to gambling.
I quite enjoy it now, I lost stacks when I first started. but I tend to do what you mention and buy something that looks like it has a bit of potential then lock it away off exchange for the long term. Makes me a bit happier than I was before :0)
Definitely, the best thing to do is look at this like a guessing game as opposed to something you can seriously predict. Only use disposable income and have fun with it, staring at charts all day or even once a week trying to predict this crazy market can seriously affect you and cause you to make some rash decisions (which will end up losing you money). At most I check every day to see if there's some huge dip so I can maybe buy into more coins I am interested in, but I don't really think about anything else or get too worried about my current investments.
Yeah, I am bad at checking several times a day. I just can't seem to stop myself. I am fortunate that I have mostly used steem to buy coins. Perhaps I might not have bought soon many of it was fiat lol.
There are some good tips occasionally on here from folk who have really done some good legwork on investigating new coins which had helped me before too