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

This is at best an irresponsible piece of writing that's clearly targeting discussions like what's happening here. This is the 1000th time I've seen a post on this topic on HN, and every time it's posted here it's like groundhog day, same comments. Well this is what publications like these want, they want more traffic.

There are many famous athletes who worked long hours. Ask Michael Jordan.

There are many famous entrepreneurs (actually I don't know of a single extremely successful entrepreneur who didn't work extremely hard) who worked long hours. Ask Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and really any successful entrepreneur who's changed how the world works.

Just don't ask some nobody writer who writes for a blog who just needs to get more page views. They don't know what they are talking about.

In fact, you know what? MOST successful people work very hard. Surprising right? Duh.

It's your freedom to choose how to live your life, but don't tell others what to do based on your idiotic research clearly aimed at generating page views. That's irresponsible.

Also, if you want to succeed, don't listen to these idiots. Statistically those who work harder succeed more. Period.

That said, if your life goal is NOT about being successful but more about living a balanced life with happiness, then go live your life whatever way you want. In fact that's how 99% of the world live their lives.

But again, if you want to have huge success and achieve more than you ever wanted in life, work hard. Don't let these people ruin your life. You will really regret later.

I switched from a Computer Science Engineering major to just Computer Science. It saved me 100 more credits of work and gave me the chance to take great courses like beer brewing, samba drumming, plant identification, and history of rock'n'roll. Not to mention all the time I had to spend with friends and enjoy my hobbies.

Graduated with the bare minimum GPA (to a 0.01) required for Honors, and got a great job. Life is definitely more important than the 4.0, and the fancier degree.

The best (most time efficient) way to learn factual knowledge is using some kind of spaced repetition.

The best (most time efficient for the student) way to learn mechanical or conceptual tools to mastery is to be presented with a problem which needs the tool, struggle with it for a while and develop some personal familiarity with the problem and personal ad-hoc methods; then have the standard tool presented, then go back and struggle some more using the standard tool to solve various types of problems and combinatorially trying the new tool out with various old tools to see what it can do and how they all relate. Then after basic competence is achieved, continuing to occasionally apply the tool to new problems over the course of months or years, including problems which require unusual uses of the tool or unexpected combinations with other tools, generalizations of the tool, etc. This is all generally much faster and more effective with some amount of 1-on-1 tutoring/mentorship between the student and a subject expert than with any other known arrangement, whether the tool in question is a pair of scissors, argument analysis, google search, rhetoric, regular expressions, or complex multiplication.

The best way to learn methods of inquiry or creative work which characterize various human endeavors (history, journalism, physics, graphic design, ethnography, mechanical engineering, pure mathematics, philosophy, literary criticism, acting, technical illustration, sales, ....) is to spend time actually doing real or realistic work, watching experts do real work, and looking at lots of finished work.

Unfortunately it’s hard to make 1-on-1 tutoring or research project mentorship scale to a classroom. Strategies like putting the students into groups to solve project-type problems of a variety of scopes, “flipping” the classroom by presenting lectures via video outside of class, mixing up assignments to include a mix of easy small-scope problems of the new material combined with harder problems highlighting past material, and so on can help, but there is a huge gap still between (even average quality) 1-on-1 tutoring and the best alternative method, which educators and education researchers would love to know how to fill.

So, when you look objectively you find the most highly paid author has zero relevant accolades. in academic terms, gave the appearance of doing what was necessary".[18] Rowling recalls doing little work, preferring to listen to The Smiths and read Dickens and Tolkien