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If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)

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Re: If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)

#121

Post by aglavine »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #64
caseymarquis wrote: post #9

Seems like a bit of a tail wagging the dog situation. How do we know the more relaxed/organized schedule leads to success, and not that success leads to a more relaxed/organized schedule? This reminds me of some other advice I remember reading: No level of hard work or organization will substitute for talent and opportunity, and nearly all success stories to the contrary are missing key facts. ie Myth: Michael Jordan…

There is a false dichotomy here. Talented people who have seized the right opportunity can get overwhelmed or disorganized like everyone else. I've always assumed that all those tips for getting organized, getting this done, etc., are primarily intended for talented people who otherwise already know what they're doing. > No level of hard work or organization will substitute for talent and opportunity I find that very…

Leonardo Da Vinci is a good counter example. He wasn't organized at all and neither were his collaborators. A lot of his science breakthroughs went on unknown until somebody else totally unrelated did the same.

Re: If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)

#122

Post by cabaalis »

hanoz wrote: post #30

Good job the violinist works in the music industry not the software industry, or he might find after all his sessions of focused deliberate practice that now no-one wants to hear the violin anymore, and he must in future focus his efforts on the upcoming disciplines of both xylophone and clarinet.

(1) All of the notes written on the sheets will periodically be replaced with complicated names that mean the same thing but sound more modern.

(2) The musicians will start to charge fractions of a cent per note, with some sections playing certain notes while other sections play the rest of them. Incentivizing short bursts of music, and "interoperability"

Re: If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)

#123

Post by _jal »

aglavine wrote: post #121
jonathanstrange wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a false dichotomy here. Talented people who have seized the right opportunity can get overwhelmed or disorganized like everyone else. I've always assumed that all those tips for getting organized, getting this done, etc., are primarily intended for talented people who otherwise already know what they're doing. > No level of hard work or organization will substitute for talent and opportunity I find that very…

Leonardo Da Vinci is a good counter example. He wasn't organized at all and neither were his collaborators. A lot of his science breakthroughs went on unknown until somebody else totally unrelated did the same.

Counter example of what?

> A lot of his science breakthroughs went on unknown

I suppose if one's goal is solipsistic research, that would be fine. (We know that wasn't Da Vinci's goal, though.)

To put it a different way, suppose I have solved AGI and never told anyone.

... What good have I done?

Re: If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)

#124

Post by criddell »

qzx_pierri wrote: post #120

This article spoke directly to me! I’m in college right now completing a fairly difficult class, or so I was told.. A lot of my classmates tell me the class is so hard, but I think it’s easy so far. I asked most of them how they study, and they all tell me the same thing: They skim through the textbook AFTER hearing the lecture, and cram hard before the test. I do the opposite. As soon as I wake up in the morning I r…

If you were trying to learn something on your and not attending a class, how would you modify your method?

Re: If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)

#125

Post by chrisdhoover »

imgabe wrote: post #97
caseymarquis wrote: post #9

Seems like a bit of a tail wagging the dog situation. How do we know the more relaxed/organized schedule leads to success, and not that success leads to a more relaxed/organized schedule? This reminds me of some other advice I remember reading: No level of hard work or organization will substitute for talent and opportunity, and nearly all success stories to the contrary are missing key facts. ie Myth: Michael Jordan…

> The lesson is that you need to figure out what you're good at and where you have opportunity, and then work hard in those areas. Just working hard is a recipe for failure for most people. You are right, but too often what people take from this is that the hard work doesn't matter and the people who succeed only did so because of random talent and/or opportunity. No, if you have talent and opportunity but don't work…

Life is so much more complicated. One could be born into success. Luck is a factor. Understanding and exploiting risk is a factor. Persistence is a factor - you could continue to fail until succeed, or you could continue to fail until you teach yourself what is needed to succeed. You could have brilliant ideas but no capital and still fail even though you work hard and are talented. Reducing to success to two or three factors may be true in some cases but those two or three factors may be different in the larger set of successful cases.

Re: If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)

#126

Post by bsanr2 »

darawk wrote: post #46
MaximumYComb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lots" is an ambiguous term to use for how many people had access to computers in 1975, especially the type of access that you would let you become proficient at software development. I think you'll find an unusually high number of rich people in that list.

I'm not saying he didn't have advantages. He certainly did. That does not mean he didn't succeed by merit, though. Though certainly in percentage terms there weren't a lot of other kids with the access he had, the absolute numbers involved were still quite large. Most of those kids did not become Bill Gates.

That raises the question of how many in the other side of that percentage (an overwhelmingly higher absolute number) had similar "merit" but not access as Bill Gates.

Because, look, the reason we're talking about him is because he is an exceptional story of a man completely trashing his competition, standing head and shoulders and bottom-hem-of-dad-sweater above anyone stepping toe-to-toe with him. But then, how impressive does that become when you realize that his "competition" was essentially a small subsection of the in-the-know low-tier-wealthy-and-up? In launching an industry-leading, cutting-edge tech company, his strengths were revealed to be in how quickly and differently he thought and how tenaciously he acted, compared to the relatively comfortable people in his extended network (the caveat of a network being that its members must be sufficiently similar enough to engage with one another). Outside that bubble, it probably becomes much easier to find someone who thinks differently and somewhat easier to find someone who is very tenacious. So... do the bell curves of intelligence for affluent West Coasters and everyone else not overlap at all, or what?

Re: If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)

#127

Post by criddell »

hanoz wrote: post #30

Good job the violinist works in the music industry not the software industry, or he might find after all his sessions of focused deliberate practice that now no-one wants to hear the violin anymore, and he must in future focus his efforts on the upcoming disciplines of both xylophone and clarinet.

Would you really want to work in a static industry? The constant change and opportunities for lifelong learning is something that makes me love being a software developer and not get bored (I've been doing it for almost 40 years).

Re: If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)

#129

Post by techopoly »

qzx_pierri wrote: post #120

This article spoke directly to me! I’m in college right now completing a fairly difficult class, or so I was told.. A lot of my classmates tell me the class is so hard, but I think it’s easy so far. I asked most of them how they study, and they all tell me the same thing: They skim through the textbook AFTER hearing the lecture, and cram hard before the test. I do the opposite. As soon as I wake up in the morning I r…

I had a similar experience in college. In the classes I did best in, I studied for consistently throughout the week, working out problems and reading the book on my own. Then, when test time came, I still studied, but I largely understood the material already.

After a calculus class ended for the semester, I had the professor tell me that I was the only student that understood a certain basic concept of the class. I don't attribute that to me having a masterful intelligence, just that I happened to be diligent in the class and figured out a system based on seeking to really understand the material instead of just pass the tests.

The classes where I heavily procrastinated, I had more trouble with, or at least much more stress. There was one class where I procrastinated and then speed-read 300-400 pages in the textbook the days before the midterm, and aced the midterm...but that was really a freak exception to the rule. It probably did me a disservice, thinking I could do the same for other classes and still succeed.

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