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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)

#161

Post by jt0 »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #37
war1025 wrote: post #3

I think this might be somewhat tangential to what the article has to say, but I think there is a fair amount of mindset to the "busyness" thing. Some people seem to think that "busyness is next to godliness", so they make sure never to let anyone see them idle. They don't so much focus on what they are doing, just that they are doing something . I've always taken the opposite approach. I go out of my way to make it l…

You are the embodiment of one of my favorite words. Sprezzatura "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it" and also more briefly "studied carelessness". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura

Originally from the very readable Book of the Courtier

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_Courtier

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

#162

Post by rusk »

Loughla wrote: post #142
rusk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think you and a few other people read me wrong. You see these people going around in a flap, all heat, little light. Meanwhile there's other people in the office quietly getting on with things. The noisy one is compensating for inability with visibility.

Ah! Then I would argue that your original sentiment is too vague to be understood that way. How I read it was that the poster who doesn't look disheveled doesn't look like s/he cares about his job. For what it's worth now, I agree with you 100%. The loudest person to talk about how useful they are, generally are the least useful.

Yeah sorry I might have made some mistakes with my emphasis. A sense of grammar shaped by years at the codeface ...

Empty vessels make the most noise, or so the saying goes ...

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

#163

Post by csallen »

bigred100 wrote: post #81
csallen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't seem to match what the article says. It's not saying that the elite players feel relaxed, nor is it saying that they don't need to force themselves to study. Rather, it's saying that they studied exactly as much as the lesser players, and that they did so with more discipline, both by spending more time on deliberate/hard practice, and by strictly scheduling their practice sessions.

I’m not sure thatvthe same principal doesn’t apply. For example, by the time I take advanced calculus in college, if I already know a huge chunk of the material and have strong mathematical maturity, I can spend more of my time on “the hard parts” without it stressing me as much as if they were harder for me.

That's true, but I'm not sure it's analogous. In sounds like in the study, by "hard parts" they meant the parts that were hard for the students. So it's relative. There were no universal "hard parts" that were actually easy for some.

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

#164

Post by jazzdev »

bsanr2 wrote: post #119
eagerToLearn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered. Do you think someone studying Medicine or Mech. Eng. at Harvard wouldn't get a higher quality education than what many public colleges provide ?

IIRC the consensus is that a Harvard undergrad education is high-quality, but not exceptional. The experience (including the networking, and the access to people and opportunities it grants) is what drives people to its gates. If you want an exceptional education, with access to the hardest courses available, you go to MIT.

Yes, MIT is a level above. I have an M.S. from a good state school and took a graduate course where the text was SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming). At MIT that's the freshman course text book!

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

#165

Post by CM30 »

Swizec wrote: post #146
CM30 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I'd say in quite a few fields, talent and hard work aren't even the cost of entry, they're semi irrelevant to how well someone does there. Sports is one of those cases where being extremely good at something is directly correlated to success, and there's no way around that. And even that's got a certain element of opportunity in terms of the era you were born in. Tons of good athletes could have revolutioni…

Spotting opportunities and trends is a skill. Building a network is a skill. Seizing opportunities is a talent I’d say. You’re falling for the fallacy that technical brilliance/execution is what matters. It doesn’t. It just needs to be good enough.

No, I agree with that. Being good at marketing, networking and seeking opportunities and trends are skills. And I don't think that technical brilliance/execution is what matters. As you say, if you're good enough at selling yourself, you can be pretty mediocre/genetically NOT gifted at what you succeed in and do really well off it.

But at the same time, there are definitely success stories who just kinda stumbled into it too. Hell, I'd count myself in that camp too, at least at a certain level based on past experiences. I look at some of my past sites, and genuinely wonder how some of them took off. I was terrible at design, mediocre at best at coding, had little idea about marketing and had no network to speak of... and was beating out people who by all means should have done much better.

Even now, I've had people I admire complain that their years of effort on YouTube haven't paid off, while I somehow got three times the subscribers without knowing how to properly edit a video.

I know tons of people who stumbled to undeserving success, and tons of others who should have done well but didn't.

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

#166

Post by mikojan »

amw wrote: post #139
mikojan wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making this out to be a conspiracy. It's perfectly possible people are just unconsciously working together towards this end. Let's say I grow up in a poor working-class environment. Years later I find myself CEO of a multi-national corporation and the people working for me are poor working-class people. - And most companies are set up like this. There's very few people at the top and they have all the power w…

There's a difference between "conspiracy" and "class solidarity among the wealthy". You're totally right that it's probably silly to attribute this to all management/ownership explicitly collaborating together on a scheme they're keeping secret from the workers, but I'd argue that the comment you're responding to is also totally right to point out that things can structurally support each other in a way that ultimate…

I agree!

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

#167

Post by ramblerman »

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…

> it seems to me that focus and continuous dedication (aka, hard work)

Some might say the ability to focus to that extent is a talent too.

I personally think it's all a mix of nature and nurture, and you can't put anything 100% in one category or the other.

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

#168

Post by ajslater »

eloff wrote: post #106
babygoat wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doubtful? Bill Gates is incredibly talented, and being in the right place at the right time is more or less the definition of opportunity.

To be such an extreme outlier success as Bill Gates took extreme talent, extreme, all-consuming hard work, and extreme privilege and opportunity (luck) all combined in a perfect storm. He still would have been successful without all of those things together, but not at the same level.

This is approximately the correct breakdown. Its interesting that ⅔ of the combo could be lumped into different kinds of luck.

You can't do much about your inherited or birth situation, but the extremely successful people I know usually have a very fortunate background and also worked hard to expand their future luck surface so that when outrageous opportunity lightning was looking to strike somewhere, they had an outsized chance to be the spot.

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

#169

Post by screye »

varrock wrote: post #160
screye wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is this is a great habit to get into early in life. I will however recommend one thing. Find out what internal representation of information works for you. I am an extremely visual thinker to whom things click the second they are put into context or situated in a flow chart / graph of concepts. Since I have started started fitting every new thing into that mental model, I have started found memorizing si…

How do you translate textbook literature into those visualizations if they aren't provided for you? I struggle with this, even reading news articles at times. It's funny how a simple infographic on a video can really make things click for me.

It is more of a relation graph.

You identify the root variables/ideas on which the whole premise hinges. These ideas are absolute, assumed true without rationale and independent.

Then you establish dependent ideas and variables which are connected to these base variables along with a few minor isolated assumptions needed to support the structure. ( I mean it is not perfect, so the minor assumptions keep the whole thing form falling apart)

Once you have all the nodes, you connect new ideas as they come and as they fit into this view.

It is almost like a clustering task or think word2ve tsne visualization (https://miro.medium.com/max/3200/0*quUwP6EqEhFmNAqX)

Now you have a visualization, from something that never had any images to begin with. The distance between nodes can indicate how strong the relation is and colors can indicate positivity/negativity.

Once you have that, it becomes incredibly easy to hold very complex ideas in your head and it makes it a breeze to explain something. Just start from the root node and work your way up to the leaf, and the thing explains itself.

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