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Work Hard (2007)

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Re: Work Hard (2007)

#91

Post by sankumsek »

selestify wrote: post #73
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point. I like to compare work capacity to exercise capacity. Too much exercise will actually harm your fitness rather than improve it. However, reasonable exertions, combined with appropriate rest, will improve your fitness over time. Like exercise capacity, one's ability to work hard can also be improved through practice. This doesn't mean pulling all-nighters and chugging caffeine to override the sleepiness,…

Are there any such tracking software that you’d recommend?

Not OP, but I've found a reasonable amount of success with the free version of RescueTime.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#92

Post by mym1990 »

didibus wrote: post #54
gopalv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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." 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 w…

> >> 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. Exactly, and it's a misnomer to call that hard work. When someone enjoys their work, the work is easy. They ar…

I would disagree with this. Many professional athletes love their work, but that doesn't make training, recovery, and competition a walk in the park...professional athletes are the pinnacle of hard work because many of them have to utilize the 24 hours in near perfection to stay at the top.

Also, often the reason that someone enjoys their work is directly because it IS difficult. And the payoff from solving hard problems can be amazing and worth it. Alternatively, people who are pigeon holed into mundane or uninteresting work in their career will find dissatisfaction, even if the tasks are incredibly easy.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#93

Post by ZephyrBlu »

TameAntelope wrote: post #86
paulpauper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 doesn't, and tries to rely on raw intellect. That may be true for something like digging a ditch, but IQ is needed to make those necessary logical leaps f…

The whole point of the submission is that even when high IQ is required, you also need to "work hard" to do anything substantial. The common thread is "work hard", not "be smart", but people obsess over intelligence/natural gifts, and consistently underestimate the "ditch diggers". Jobs was a ditch digger. Gates was a ditch digger. Musk is a ditch digger. PG is a ditch digger. Tao is a ditch digger. Jordan was a ditc…

You do need both, and therein lies the problem.

If you don't have the IQ, your hard work is meaningless.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#94

Post by mym1990 »

didibus wrote: post #47

I don't really know if I believe in hard work. I feel more inclined to see things from the motivation school of thought. When you're motivated, all work is easy. The "hard" feeling comes from pushing through doing something you are not motivated to do. And the thing is, I don't know if anyone is successful at that. I feel most success comes from people who had the motivation for it. Can you force yourself or others t…

I actually believe the complete opposite. People who rely on motivation to get them through to the finish line in long term situations probably never make it there. Motivation is a very fleeting feeling unless you find something that utterly sets your soul on fire, and I would almost say it is a crutch for many. Sometimes you're going to get up in the morning and you're just going to have to push through. And there will almost always be small/medium/large pieces of work that are simply not fun(and you can't always delegate). The people who succeed will be the ones that have developed a mindset of resilience and just doing what needs to get done.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#95

Post by spenczar5 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #80
cushychicken wrote: post #19

If there's anyone I'll listen respectfully to about the value of hard, diligent work, it's Terence Tao. Reminds me of Richard Hamming talking about his professional envy of John Tukey: One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as…

TIL Bode, Hamming, Shannon, Tukey, et. al all worked at Bell Labs around the same time. Wonder what the culture must've been like, those are all household names in signal processing, control, information theory.

Richard Hamming wrote a book, "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering", which - despite its name - is more or less a memoir of his own scientific career. It's a fun read if you're interested in that culture.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#96

Post by PartiallyTyped »

paulpauper wrote: post #40
TameAntelope wrote: post #24

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…

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 doesn't, and tries to rely on raw intellect. That may be true for something like digging a ditch, but IQ is needed to make those necessary logical leaps f…

Having high IQ is not knowing the shortcuts but being able to identify them.

Fact of the matter is that we make progress when collective effort is put onto something. Not everyone of us is a Terry Tao, or John von Neumann, but we can at least exploit our comparable advantage and help those better than us. Sucking your ego sucks but coming to terms with our inherent limits is freeing.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#97

Post by ZephyrBlu »

cushychicken wrote: post #19

If there's anyone I'll listen respectfully to about the value of hard, diligent work, it's Terence Tao. Reminds me of Richard Hamming talking about his professional envy of John Tukey: One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as…

> If there's anyone I'll listen respectfully to about the value of hard, diligent work, it's Terence Tao.

Why? He is a genius, and most of us aren't geniuses.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#98

Post by cushychicken »

TrackerFF wrote: post #80
cushychicken wrote: post #19

If there's anyone I'll listen respectfully to about the value of hard, diligent work, it's Terence Tao. Reminds me of Richard Hamming talking about his professional envy of John Tukey: One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as…

TIL Bode, Hamming, Shannon, Tukey, et. al all worked at Bell Labs around the same time. Wonder what the culture must've been like, those are all household names in signal processing, control, information theory.

I did a double take the first time I read that passage from YAYR because I'd never properly realized that:

1. Bode was a person

2. He was alive in the past 100 years

Tukey was a legit fucking genius.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#99

Post by PartiallyTyped »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #93
TameAntelope wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of the submission is that even when high IQ is required, you also need to "work hard" to do anything substantial. The common thread is "work hard", not "be smart", but people obsess over intelligence/natural gifts, and consistently underestimate the "ditch diggers". Jobs was a ditch digger. Gates was a ditch digger. Musk is a ditch digger. PG is a ditch digger. Tao is a ditch digger. Jordan was a ditc…

You do need both, and therein lies the problem. If you don't have the IQ, your hard work is meaningless.

That’s absurd. Discoveries are rarely made by lone scientists, progress is made by tens or hundreds of people, each exploiting their comparable advantage, even if that is digging ditches.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#100

Post by drenvuk »

paulpauper wrote: post #18
drenvuk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You put etc. which leads me to believe you know of more good blogs. Can you please list them?

look at the blogrolls. they all link to each other. that's hwo to find related blogs. (or as Terrance Tao would probably call, a complete graph)

thanks.
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