I think there's a bigger lesson in all of this.. If you want to excel.. Drop the social media and other distractions during work.. Be amazed as work levels peak.. Laugh at how easy it was to achieve that.. And realise that when it comes to news you receive via your twitter and reader and and whatever other things you use, whether you check it every 2 minutes or 8 hours, the echo chambers of the internet ensure you really won't miss much.
If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong
21–30 of 60 posts
Re: If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong
#22Re: If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong
#23I think the title is highly misleading. It's not about busy vs not busy, it's about doing the right thing vs doing something that doesn't matter. The A-group was doing three times more work that matters. And work that doesn't matter doesn't count.
In other words, how is that different from 80/20 principle? Looks like the research is just another confirmation of it.
Re: If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong
#24I 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 ign…
"It completely ignores the possibility that the behavioral difference might be caused by a difference in ability, rather than the behavior changing the ability."
Exactly why I clicked the comment link. The differences in behavior could also be caused by a difference in psychology between students. e.g. the elite group love what they do and the other group don't. Which could indicate why the other group spread their practice throughout the day - because they're procrastinating all day long.
Re: If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong
#25The hardest thing is to take this learning (and the concept of deliberate practice) and hack it to your startup founder role and your chaotic day. Its easy to say that this concept it not applicable there but I believe it is. I have tried to apply it by splitting my day for new sales calls, existing account management, product dev management and operational issues and it does work well on the days that I can be disciplined enough to not get distracted. There is also a tremendous sense of achievement when it works. So that is my take away from this article - take the core concept and make an attempt to apply it to whatever it is that you are doing - so you can do it better, faster and cheaper ( in terms of energy spent!).
Re: If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong
#26I see no proof of causality in the article. My assumption is that a teacher needs to be an expert in not only her subject but also in pedagogics. Why wouldn't this multidisciplinary expertise require harder work to attain, resulting in less sleep and a longer work schedule containing tasks not directly related to music?
I also resent the inherent bias in labelling someone with the ambition of becoming a teacher of the arts as average based on this ambition alone. As earlier HN posts have informed us, in Finland it is the top 10% students of a class that go on to become teachers.
Re: If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still worth pointing out, since it's easy to take an aphorism like this and assume it covers everything.
It's also pretty easy not to.
Well, let's use that excuse for everything then. Never advise anyone on anything one person might find 'easy'. It's easy not to fall prey to the constant crap that the news media throws out - but hey, it's 'easy', so let's not remind people that news media has an agenda. It's easy to find flaws in creationist arguments, so screw it, don't oppose the bad science there. It's easy to remember where the assembly point is for the fire drill, so no need to put up signs. Hell, it's easy to remember to brush your teeth, so let's not remind people about the importance of brushing teeth.
What you say is the worst excuse I have heard in a long time, and betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of human psychology.
Re: If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong
#28The author has never worked on a farm; there is always something to do.
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 necessaril…
I'm not a farmer myself, but spent summer on a farm as a kid. It left me with the impression that there's always stuff to do. I certainly can't argue with your experience, and there's probably more truth to it now with modern tools and methods than there was when I was growing up. I work for a company that provides such tools - one of the things we're able to eliminate is the labour involved in simply driving around and making sure all the bores are drawing water for livestock - on a large farm this can nearly be a full-time job in itself.
It sounds like you've got a hobby farm. I could be way off kilter, but if that's the case, perhaps you're not as financially dependent on every crop, and can afford increasing the risk of disaster? I freely admit to not having any direct on-farm experience for 20+ years, so it's fair to say I'm a bit distanced from the devil in the details now.
Re: If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong
#29I 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 ign…
how do you measure musical ability other than by expert assessment ? don't say "can play X notes per second".
Re: If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong
#30Cal Newport's articles are always interesting to read, but I find them to be less than encouraging. It's not that the advice isn't sound -- it's just that his recommendations generally require the reader to be extremely self-disciplined. I am constantly trying to practice this, but in truth I'm still all over the map. I do poorly in courses where I'm expected to be constantly involved in little incremental pieces (li…
Being in similar situation myself, I think it's not self-discipline. It's just that deep inside you don't see the point. Although sometimes extrinsic motivation becomes strong enough that you hammer things out, you're not generally interested in doing these.
What is needed here IMO is somewhat opposite of self-discipline.
You don't make something important or interesting by thinking that it's important. It must naturally be important for you, you need to be intrinsically interested in this. That state of affairs we normally don't verbalise or contemplate on.
I doubt that you can come to that with self-discipline. It must be something else. You need to trick yourself.
Possible ways might be introducing some short-term psychological reward, or—better—learning to enjoy the process. My opinion is that some high-achieving people might actually use some psychological tricks like these without knowing about it.