Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by abandonliberty » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

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…

In an environment with few opportunities, a B/A is not good enough. Highly recommend the Indian film "3 Idiots" for a great critique of the pressures that students face in other parts of the world. It's also one of the most accessible and enjoyable Indian films.

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

#152

Post by TheCowboy » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #144

They take a very constrained example and claim that "You should be a slacker too". 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 f…

There is so much aggression here. Relax.

Working longer hours isn't equivalent to working harder. Plenty of unsuccessful entrepreneurs worked long hours and worked hard, and there are examples of people/businesses doing productive work with more balanced workdays.

99% of the people in the world live in a way to not be successful, but to have a balanced life with happiness? It should be obvious that for 99% of people, that isn't a choice they get to make. It's also a grotesque separation of success from balance/happiness that shows a profound lack of insight.

The word "slacker" is only present in the title of the article itself. It's normal that the writer, who you railed against, doesn't get to pick their title. So it's important to read the actual content for the premise. The writer doesn't argue against putting in time. There is the idea that quality of working hours is also important.

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

#153

Post by moftz » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:29 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #110

ExcilSploft wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In tech/development culture, working smarter equates to something like "I did this in 3 lines of Node". God help the maintainer or ops person when left pad is pulled or the performance suffers.

Mm, you're talking about a microcosm of the buy-vs-build question. Only junior developers would obliquely state that using a library is always "working smarter". A much bigger aspect of working smarter is deciding that you don't need to build something at all because it's the wrong approach to solve a business problem.

At my job, we have a mix of stuff we do in house and stuff we contract out. We could have our in-house subject matter expert spend all of his time developing a component or we could hire a company that already makes the component and has a great track record. Sometimes things are cheaper to do in house, especially when a one-off just needs to get built and quality control isn't a major issue. But in my line of work, quality control can be a major thing sometimes. Sometimes it's cheaper to go with a component that's been fully tested and has the documentation to go with it. If we want to implement the component in our product line, we then develop it in-house after the first run is completed. A lot of our vendors are our competitors for certain components so there is always a discussion when we need to buy something from them.

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

#154

Post by linkmotif » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #144

They take a very constrained example and claim that "You should be a slacker too". 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 f…

Amen! I love all the nobodies who tell me how to be successful and accomplish my goals by straight chillin. I'm always thinking: "and you are...?"

Everyone who tells me to take it easy is a nobody anonymous person who hasn't done anything and never will. And as you said, that's up to them. Everyone picks their course and I try to remember everyone is different. But I always wonder why they choose to evangelize. I don't evangelize at them. I think Dylan said it best: they just want to get you down in the hole that they're in.

Most important thing in life is to love what you're doing. Work isn't work if you love it. But nothing valuable is easy. Eventually, usually very quickly, what you want to accomplish becomes very boring to accomplish. That feeling of reward may come very infrequently. It's very difficult to do anything new or different.

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

#155

Post by reitanqild » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

jartelt wrote: post #145

Qwertious wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're implying that grades are an objective metric of value. This is often false, because the metrics for grading are oriented around what's easily testable , rather than what's actually a sign of good work. Kind of like hours spent in a gym, actually.

No, I am just arguing that someone's grade on a test is directly linked to how well they do on the test and not necessarily on how much studying they did. If you don't like university tests, that is fine (I do not believe they are perfect either). But, they do a decent job of determining if a student knows a specific set of facts and can solve a specific set of problems. I have graded these tests before and no where…

One thing I really appreciated in higher education was to be graded based only on an exam where our name was unknown to the persons who graded us.

I skipped a lot of boring lessons, read the books (yes, practical and visual type) and got really good grades.

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

#156

Post by gaurav_v » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #144

They take a very constrained example and claim that "You should be a slacker too". 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 f…

I broadly agree with you, but I think the issue is more subtle. Ambitious people will always work very hard; the danger of working hard is that it necessitates a degree of path-dependent myopia that can lead one to miss huge opportunities.

The most ambitious people are quite concerned about this, and try to use leisure as a comparative advantage. The article is pretty fair in painting this portrait: the author admits that the scientists construct their lives around their work (Darwin worried about getting married, for instance), but points out that constructing their lives around their work involves the construction of leisure.

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

#157

Post by jjtheblunt » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

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…

This exact strategy is what some competitive athletes apply to win: be strong enough to stay alive and converve maximal energy to live another round. Rich Froning applied this for years in Crossfit competitions, for a very non HN example.

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

#158

Post by ahussain » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

asafira wrote: post #81

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…

As a PhD, I want to give a word of caution: Classes in school are really almost nothing like doing research (or taking on any large, difficult project). I still take some here and there personally, but the main idea in this article isn't about finding a optimum point on the grade vs. effort plot (I totally agree with your assessment though!). I'm not sure I buy the "you get diminishing returns for working harder" in…

I think also that there is something to be said for 'staying in the game'. The most important thing should be taking steps to make sure you are still around and working on the right problems in 4-5 years. Sometimes that requires taking it easy, sometimes that requires working harder.

If you are still around then there is a chance you will also be making progress.

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

#159

Post by collyw » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #144

They take a very constrained example and claim that "You should be a slacker too". 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 f…

I am willing to bet that starting with a million in the bank will make you more likely to succeed that working hard. Didn't Thomas Piketty's book come to a similar conclusion?

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

#160

Post by Lagged2Death » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

[Darwin] was passionate and driven, so much so that he was given to anxiety attacks over his ideas and their implications.

He many not have spent that many hours sitting at a desk, but he had to be directing a tremendous amount of mental effort and attention to his work to have this sort of reaction. The article describes his not-sitting-at-a-desk time as "downtime," and maybe that's half-defensible. But that "downtime" probably isn't something I'd recognize as leisure time, either.

Here's something else that many successful 19th/20th century artists, scholars, writers, and scientists turn out to have had in common, the other side of the same coin, perhaps: sufficient economic prosperity (often familial) to employ servants. They could devote great swaths of time and attention to their work, even when away from a desk, because they were not fretting about the grocery shopping, not wondering if they should be pushing the kids harder on their ABCs, etc.

The class structure and sexism that made such arrangements common also surely squandered enormous amounts of human potential.