Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

calnewport.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 60 posts

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

#31

Post by steve-howard »

goblin89 wrote: post #30
steve-howard wrote: post #10

Cal 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 natur…

You raise an interesting point, and I agree that motivation is largely about what's important to me. This is likely an overgeneralization on my part, but I see life as full of things that I will have to do which don't really have a point. At least all the way through college it's been that way, always the hope that there's less bullshit at the next level and always the disappointment.

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

#32

Post by Alexandervn »

dpark wrote: post #11

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 technolog…

The founders of Dropbox seem like some very bright guys though. How relaxed were they in college? And also in reverse: when those top violinists will start performing their lives will also go from hotel to hotel, playing the same pieces every night..

Success is hard to do work. But that is something completely different than studying.

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

#33

Post by Alexandervn »

goblin89 wrote: post #30
steve-howard wrote: post #10

Cal 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 natur…

Leo Babauta has an interesting claim on this that discipline therefor is a myth: http://zenhabits.net/discipline/.

In the light of the article: those kids must at least get the organization and scheduling part of their lives from their parents.

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

#34

Post by csomar »

scottdw2 wrote: post #13

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 ign…

This is quite important. You'll probably have the brightest kids isolated from the group and practicing at their own pace with their own rules and thinking.

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

#35

Post by perlgeek »

scottdw2 wrote: post #13

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 ign…

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

And this is exactly what they should have done. Take two groups of average players, and tell one of them to change their training style to that of the top players, and then after half a year or a year, check if their scoring improved, relative to that of the control group.

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

#36

Post by daniel_iversen »

scottdw2 wrote: post #13

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 ign…

I do believe the results of the study is about right.. there's also an awesome book on the topic of deliberate practice called "talent is overrated".

Cheers, Daniel

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

#37

Post by zupatol »

scottdw2 wrote: post #13

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 ign…

Yes. You could also say that the study shows how students behave when you tell them they're average. I believe there was another study that showed how a good music student could be turned into a bad music student just by telling him he was bad.

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

#40

Post by Xylakant »

dpark wrote: post #11

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 technolog…

I think the issue revolves around the notion of "busy". The article notes that spreading your work in small chunks distributed around the day decreases your efficiency - something quite obvious if you step back a little from what you do. Still, most people (with myself being guilty) tend do get disrupted and spend time on hackernews, ... interrupting their workflow. So the argument boils down to "being elite is a matter of better focus, not a matter of more work hours."
Post reply on HN