If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong

I wrote up a long critical response and then deleted it. The bottom line is that this is a valid point for studying, which is what the blog is about. Studying 10 hours a day is not productive. Shorter bursts of intense study is indeed very useful.

However, it's important to note that this doesn't extrapolate to the general world. A lot of jobs simply involve doing a lot of stuff. Efficient study of storage technologies might make you an elite expert, but it won't make you the founder of DropBox. That takes a lot of "hard to do" work, and you most definitely will be busy. Most jobs are closer to this than they are to the violinist in a university.

I like the hypothesis the article presents: focusing on working intently hard, followed by relaxation and you will perform better. It's something I would want to beleive.

But, I find his analysis a little suspect. It appears to confuse corellation and causation. It notices a difference in behavior between the "great" and the "average" and assumes those differences to cause the difference in ability.

It completely ignores the possibility that the behavioral difference might be caused by a difference in ability, rather than the behavior changing the ability.

Also, another problem is that student classification is based on faculty opinion. The fact that students with a class of behavior tend to be liked more by their instructors implies something about the instructors, not the students. It does not measure music ability. It measures the ability to be perceived positively by music professors.

I would be interested to see a study that actually measures music ability, using set learning time frames with unfamiliar pieces and double blind assessment of music samples.

If that was correlated with behavior, then it might mean something.

The best the study can say is "if you want music teachers in Berlin to rate you highly, then behave this way".

Epic fail. 503 status.

Actually, as a farmer myself, I'm not so sure. I spend about 2-3 weeks each year on my farm (small acre cash crop). Given the amount of time spent, I'm pretty proud of where my business is. I see others spending all day, every day, on their farm and are not making much more at it than I am. Granted, grains are a good business to be in right now.

However, just because there is always something to do doesn't necessarily mean it is smart to be doing it. Are the farmers who are always working on something better off for it? I unfortunately do not have sufficient data, but I wonder if working less could actually lead to increased profitability? Based on my anecdotal experience of observing neighbours, I think there could very well be some truth to it.

This is why I focus my efforts on reaching certain goals effectively rather than efficiently accomplishing as much as possible.