31–40 of 203 posts
Trying to motivate a cleaner, assembly operative, driver, cashier, warehouse operative, packer and other low level workers with it is like telling them to go fuck themselves.
It sounds like bullshit. It is bullshit. No one fucking loves these jobs. There's nothing to aspire to. Working hard means just killing yourself faster (but not fast enough).
I've held for a long time that you must know the rules quite well before you're "allowed" to break them, and I think this reinforces my opinion on that. Additionally, I think the obsession over "intelligence" and "natural ability" is vastly overstated, in general. It absolutely helps, and it compounds, to be smart, but a person who "works hard" is infinitely more valuable to their colleagues than a smart person who d…
It's probably good advice, and maybe my dissent is just due to my burn out, but... I'm tired of hearing "work hard". Very often, working hard does not lead to success. It sure as shit didn't work out that way for me. There are many people who do not work hard and make tons of money in things like NFT, crypto, securities, office politics, scams, etc. It seems like luck is the shared variable... of which I have none.
His advice isn’t for how to get rich in crypto, it’s for how to succeed in academic mathematics. I can’t imagine that anyone has ever “lucked” their way into that.
It's probably good advice, and maybe my dissent is just due to my burn out, but... I'm tired of hearing "work hard". Very often, working hard does not lead to success. It sure as shit didn't work out that way for me. There are many people who do not work hard and make tons of money in things like NFT, crypto, securities, office politics, scams, etc. It seems like luck is the shared variable... of which I have none.
So if you can't load the dice what can you do to get those high rolls? Well, maybe you can roll the dice more often (try more avenues, work harder), maybe the dice aren't all equal and you can observe many dice and pick the ones that happen to be paying out higher than you would expect if they were truly fair (market research), or something else.. I think people write about all those things not to claim that the dice rolls don't matter but because there are things that are both controllable and matter.
I agree with the burnout though, it can be hard to keep playing when you feel like a high roll is "due" but can't get one. I feel like some part of this is how we are wired, to solve the multi-armed bandit problems that life present us.
But what do I know, my rolls haven't been very high. I wish you luck in beating the burnout.
I've held for a long time that you must know the rules quite well before you're "allowed" to break them, and I think this reinforces my opinion on that. Additionally, I think the obsession over "intelligence" and "natural ability" is vastly overstated, in general. It absolutely helps, and it compounds, to be smart, but a person who "works hard" is infinitely more valuable to their colleagues than a smart person who d…
I'm being a bit hyperbolic here, but the gist of my point is: not everyone who works hard is worth keeping around, especially if their hard work leads to an un-managable mess in the future.
> there is an important distinction between “working hard” and “maximising the number of hours during which one works”. In particular, forcing oneself to work even when one is tired, unmotivated, unprepared, or distracted with other tasks can end up being counterproductive to one’s long-term work productivity, and there is a saturation point beyond which pushing oneself to work even longer will actually reduce the to…
I think there's an important point here too that cuts against a lot of memes: it's important to keep working hard right up until this point. A lot of people presume that if they put in a solid day's work they're going to do just as well as someone who is a "work-a-holic." That's not a great mental model, if the work-a-holic is working more but not so much they are hitting these problems mentioned. There's a fairly wi…
There are two kinds of workaholics - the ones who enjoy work and those who suffer from their work.
The article hits on the first kind in the passing
>> Of course, to work hard, it really helps if you enjoy your work.
Working hard when you enjoy your work is easier and might look like workaholism to someone who is definitely not. If work is play, you might play longer & that gets a lot done, because mistakes you throw away don't feel like wasted time.
The workaholic that people knock are the ones who work because it gives them positive feedback they lack in the rest of their lives - from an inattentive parent, disrespectful spouse or demanding children.
My work environment is extremely gamified and well designed to give me great feedback to improve, excellent rewards for performance and throw in some respect of my peers. The home life is Sisyphean in comparison - cook dinner today and it doesn't lie on a progression towards cooking less tomorrow.
It's easy to get sucked into that and work on a death-march, because it feels like progress on a daily basis. That "How we built Internet Explorer" tweet felt very familiar to me, because I would definitely get sucked into a mission like that.
> there is an important distinction between “working hard” and “maximising the number of hours during which one works”. In particular, forcing oneself to work even when one is tired, unmotivated, unprepared, or distracted with other tasks can end up being counterproductive to one’s long-term work productivity, and there is a saturation point beyond which pushing oneself to work even longer will actually reduce the to…
It does also apply to companies who demand that their workers have bums on seats in an office 8-9 hours a day...
Companies often don't seem to understand that loading employees with meetings and bureaucracy, then wondering why productivity isn't higher, is fairly foolish.
I don't define myself or my self worth solely via the work I do.
Always. But then again, in my culture it's not as extreme as in other parts of the world.
I've held for a long time that you must know the rules quite well before you're "allowed" to break them, and I think this reinforces my opinion on that. Additionally, I think the obsession over "intelligence" and "natural ability" is vastly overstated, in general. It absolutely helps, and it compounds, to be smart, but a person who "works hard" is infinitely more valuable to their colleagues than a smart person who d…
That may be true for something like digging a ditch, but IQ is needed to make those necessary logical leaps for more abstract matters. Only hard work is like adding 1+2+3....n. Having a high IQ is knowing the shortcut to sum it instantly.