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Work Hard (2007)

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121–130 of 203 posts

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I use Timing for macOS, pretty good: https://timingapp.com/ (available also from Setapp)

I've had it pretty negatively affect my experience of using macOS due to hyperlinks taking seconds to open throughout the OS. Uninstalling it fixed the issue. I still haven't found a good alternative and am a bit sad about it.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can certainly understand how one can derive meaning from a trade or profession, but I would find it difficult to believe that anyone could really do that for menial jobs like a cashier or warehouse packer. These jobs are dead ends, they don't have a meaningful spectrum of quality and you're little more than a warm body. A comedian (David Mitchell) once joked that he's proud of the UK's terrible service reputation.…

> A comedian (David Mitchell) once joked that he's proud of the UK's terrible service reputation. It doesn't seem honest or appropriate for service staff to be so happy and enthusiastic, why would they be? There's very little to be happy about. I remember watching this episode on TV but I haven't the faintest idea what the show was called... though it was incredibly funny

He said this particular thing on QI, a British panel show: https://youtu.be/E9PSg0sQyfs

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of a double edged sword- I've worked with a few people that "work hard" and "get things done", only to find out once they leave (or go on vacation) that now we have to untangle a 600 line bash script that's integral to production. 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 t…

How is that hyperbolic? 600 lines is pretty short for a (longest-involved-in-this-project) un-managable mess of a production-critical bash script. I've seen several well upwards of 6000 lines.

and in hardcore level Perl

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#125
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that hyperbolic? 600 lines is pretty short for a (longest-involved-in-this-project) un-managable mess of a production-critical bash script. I've seen several well upwards of 6000 lines.

and in hardcore level Perl

Well, I was talking about 6000-line bash scripts, but yes, perl does come up fairly often as well.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#126
post #92
post #54

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> >> 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 prob…

I feel in general by "hard work" people imply "putting in the time and effort". And I still contend, people who do put the time and effort into something probably find it easier to do so than those who don't.

Let's say that "putting in time and effort" is the key to success, aka, "hard work" is the key to success. Alright, now what if you're finding it hard to "put in the time and effort"?

I would say if you find it hard to put in the time and effort, you need to either find ways to make it easier, or find something else which you find easier to put in time and effort into.

I'm not sure if my point will land, but see, for me, the real trick to success is to find something that is easy for you to put in time and effort into. And I think a lot of successes are attributable to that, yes successful people did put in time and effort, but it was easier for them to do so, and that's why they are successful at it.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you, when shit is broken in production and customers are knocking at the door threatening to cancel it is not a luxury to find out these types of things...let alone start untangling the web.

You can always leave if you're not happy. Parent's point is that without that 600 line bash script person, your company/job might not even exist. I'll remind you that, for every failing 600 line bash script you debug, there are probably 20 others that are sitting there, just working.

Yes because those other 20 have been debugged...

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#128
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'm fairly confident that when the article says "hard work", it just means "a lot of work". The article later mentions that more motivation will help you work harder. The point is that motivated or not, high quality output requires a lot of work. Working a lot on a particular thing is still going to be easier for some and harder for others.

Ya, I agree with you 100%. But I think this is the problem with calling it "hard work". If working a lot on thing X is something I don't struggle with, and in fact I enjoy and find fun, and am really motivated to do, than it's actually pretty easy for me to put in a lot of time and effort into it. Isn't it weird then that I'd go and tell others I'm a "hard worker"?

I just find it a bit deceiving. Like people can hear that and think, damn, this person is able to work through something they hate doing, have no motivation to work on, and where there are other things they'd rather do, yet somehow they can power through using raw will and focus on putting tons of time and effort into it? Well damn, I must be a weak minded person then.

Personally, I think that second interpretation is common, and it does more harm than good in my opinion. Every time I have put a lot of time and effort into something, I either really enjoyed the thing, or I was really motivated by the outcome. In both cases, that made it pretty easy for me to put in a lot of work.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#129
post #94
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 w…

Might depend what you mean by motivation. I'm using it to mean both your enjoyment of the work and your desire for its outcome. So I see it as a function of that. Having more of one could offset the lack of the other, but ideally you'd have plenty of both.

If you really like doing something, you'll get good at it, and some stuff might not involve other work you might not like. For example, there's a game I really like playing, I'm quite good at it, I don't care for any outcome, just like doing the work, so putting in time and effort to get good was pretty easy.

Other things, I really want the outcome, I'll go out of my way, do things I don't really like doing, because I'm motivated by the result, still feels easy because of that.

Now, okay, sometimes there's some things you really hate doing, but it's needed for something you want. I think those are the tricky one, because you need to remind yourself of your goal, how much you want it, and all that, but what you're doing there is motivating yourself. So ya, in my view, motivation is key.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#130

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…

Hardwork exposes and primes you to the techniques needed to make those big creative,logical leaps. Nothing is ever discovered truly independently.
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