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Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

nautil.us

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Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#61

Post by hospes »

amelius wrote: post #37
whistlerbrk wrote: post #26

And then on the flipside there is Musk, Jobs, Gates and countless others who work(ed) all the time. All I'm saying is I see a lot of emulation-of-success articles posted here...

Those people are not scientists. Lookup Musk on Wikipedia and you'll find that he has a BSc. only, and he started a PhD only to quit after a few weeks to pursue his business endeavors. Jobs dropped out of University. And Gates is probably closest to a scientist, although I'm not aware of any research by him.

>> he started a PhD only to quit after a few weeks to pursue his business endeavors

Having PhD or working on it is not a prerequisite for being a scientist. Musk is not in academics, but he is a CTO of a SpaceX, so he is in charge of scientific and technological issues within an aerospace company. He does more applied science than vast majority of scientists that I can think of.

Edit: Typo

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#62

Post by pjc50 »

smokeyj wrote: post #46
YCode wrote: post #7

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified. You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day…

> I suppose because it's so easily quantified. I wonder what's being quantified.. intelligence or obedience. This would be like rating a strong-man competition by how much time was spent in the gym and how much unnecessary pain was self-inflicted. It's like there's a culture of "pain enthusiasts". They do things like talk about running until it hurts, they tend to get injured often, and of course they have nothing to…

The dark side of the "protestant work ethic".

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#63

Post by erkkie »

Cyph0n wrote: post #53
smokeyj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But cheating is a valid strategy.. Colluding when everyone else is competing is exactly what intelligent people do. Not following the rules because they're stupid is what intelligent people do. It's not mutually exclusive to understand the fundamentals and cheat. The idea that we should compete with our peers for a chance at higher education is like a dystopian hunger games novel.

It is a valid strategy when you end up learning as much as a person not cheating. But in general, this is not the case because students see cheating as an alternative to hard work.

You can also learn a ton about how to bend rules when cheating, something that's often useful out in the real world. I feel like half of what I learned in school was how to be better at avoiding doing things (including cheating, when applicable).

There's various ways to go about morals in general but "following the rules" in itself is not a good basis for morality.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#64

Post by jorasta »

Darwin was thinking during his walks. During his writing tasks much of the activity was mechanical or the consolidation of notions arrived at during leisure. What society regards as 'work' largely comprises the application of existing knowledge and the running of errands.

>He was passionate and driven, so much so that he was given to anxiety attacks over his ideas and their implications.

Emotions driving emotions? No, he was right to be anxious about the consequences of his work. Though marvellous and important and interesting, not to mention true, it set up a huge conflict in the psyche of the West due to the competing claims of science and religion. Which still hasn't been resolved.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#65

Post by inputcoffee »

wainstead wrote: post #38
inputcoffee wrote: post #11

I am as happy as the next person to accept that you can work less and achieve more. Ordinarily, I would protest that there is no data here, just some anecdotes. But in this case, I say, let's just accept this claim at face value.

For some data I suggest the following books, if the subject interests you: "Peak: Secrets From The New Science of Expertise" "Deep Work" "A Mind for Numbers" All are pretty engaging reads!

Okay, before I read them, are you saying that these books contain evidence for the rather startling thesis that hours of labor are not required for achievement?

Because if they are just laying out what you need to succeed (focused practice, immediate feedback, elemental skills or whatever the current theory might be) then, although valuable, it doesn't speak to the matter at hand.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#66

Post by surrey-fringe »

gammarator wrote: post #55
xiaoma wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Lookup Musk on Wikipedia and you'll find that he has a BSc. only, and he started a PhD only to quit after a few weeks to pursue his business endeavors." Three of the most important scientific papers in modern history—uncovering the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion and the special theory of relativity—were written about a hundred years ago by a man who could only sign them "Mr." when first writing them. About…

A hundred years ago you could reach the frontier in theoretical physics without a decade of intensive study. That's no longer true.

Yeah, science is just so hard these days.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#67

Post by cgriswald »

willholloway wrote: post #52
YCode wrote: post #7

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified. You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day…

Yes but in the universe of knowledge work, what is work and what is not-work? Do we count work as "being in the office/lab"? Or do we count work as thinking about the problem? If one were building a company like Tesla for example, I would count going to the gym and thinking of the problem domain while running on a treadmill as work. I would also count thinking of the problem while going for a walk as work. If one has…

> If one has a good sit/stand desk and spends a lot of time coding while standing, 10 minutes lying on a bed is incredibly replenishing for example.

Pomodoros[0] are life changing. While writing a paper/fiction/code/anything, I force myself to take that break; even if I'm on a roll. Sometimes I leave myself a note "When you get back, solve this particular problem/write this particular part" or I'll scrawl some shorthand solution for the problem on my whiteboard. I'm way way more productive if I do anything else for 10 minutes, whether it's laundry, video games, lying down, reading fiction... doesn't matter. It's almost like my brain is working while I'm relaxing.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#68

Post by andruby »

whistlerbrk wrote: post #26

And then on the flipside there is Musk, Jobs, Gates and countless others who work(ed) all the time. All I'm saying is I see a lot of emulation-of-success articles posted here...

Scientists and Entrepreneurs are two very different kinds of people. Creative thinkers vs Executers.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#69

Post by intrasight »

DannyB2 wrote: post #17

If their job was, say, picking cotton, then the hours they spent at work would directly correlate to their work output. So what is the difference? Maybe scientists are still thinking about difficult problems when they are away from work. Like when they are sitting in their porch swing with nobody else around to distract.

Or when they are brushing the teeth

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170328-statistician-proves-...

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