I kinda like the feeling of being sleep-deprived.
Step one is admitting you have a problem
31–40 of 71 posts
Re: Step one is admitting you have a problem
#32I often see startups and software development referred to as "creative professions." But the industry is lousy at practicing habits based on knowledge of creativity from psychology.
Take the four stages of creativity, for example: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Work habits like those discussed here all but destroy any potential for unconscious incubation of creative solutions.
Another oddity about this industry: perks like ping-pong tables, free food, and Rock Band tournaments. These seem to be attempts to lessen the psychological load, with the ulterior motive of getting longer hours from workers. If you believe in the psychological theories of creativity, such benefits should have no great effect.
Re: Step one is admitting you have a problem
#33Thank you for posting this :)
Re: Step one is admitting you have a problem
#34If you look at successful people - no matter if it's in business, sports of mathematics then one thing they have in common is hard and challenging work over longer periods of time. You won't get good at golf, programming or business by not practicing it a lot - and others that work harder than you will outperform you at some point, no matter what your initial talents are. Is hard work an addiction? It probably is, bu…
With sports, one of the critical aspects of success is adequate sleep and nutrition (and exercise, obviously). At the very least, sacrificing sleep, nutrition and exercise for "work" is obviously counter-productive, regardless of your personal values.
For the record I ran the last Berlin marathon - - and I think exercising, eating healthy and sleeping well can go well with working hard...
Re: Step one is admitting you have a problem
#35From the wikipedia article on Paul Erdős:
His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems", and Erdős drank copious quantities. (This quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erdős himself.)[6] After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[7] Erdős won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit.
Re: Step one is admitting you have a problem
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes and no. What if you were so excited about painting that you spent 16 hours a day painting. You produce the greatest masterpieces man has ever seen, you change the world of art forever... but yeah, you're an addict. So what? What's so bad about being addicted to something worthwhile? It's pretty usual to hear about musicians who will spend 20 hours a day in the studio getting their songs just right. Artists of all…
you spent 16 hours a day painting. You produce the greatest masterpieces man has ever seen... The cultural bias is staring at us right here: You've implicitly assumed that working 16 hours per day is the way to produce great work. Not necessarily true. There are, of course, artists who do their work in intense sleepless binges, because when the spirit moves them they forget everything else, even food and sleep. There…
I haven't stated that spending 16 hours a day painting is the only way to produce great work. But it certainly has worked for some people. How many geniuses do you know who were not insane by someone's definition?
The reality of the universe we exist in is that genius and insanity are not very far apart (and sometimes hard to tell apart). There are no doubt exceptions, but for most geniuses, insanity is part of the deal.
Your bias in this is also enormous, whether or not you're aware of it. You're assuming that your chosen life goals (to have a healthy balanced life) is valid for everyone. Perhaps Ramanujan didn't give a toss about having a healthy balanced life, he wanted to solve mathematical problems, and fuck the rest.
Do you honestly have the arrogance to walk up to a five-year-old Mozart and tell him he needs to chill out and go play in the kindergarten rather than compose symphonies? That he'll produce better work if he takes it easy?
You say:
But being a great artist is more about persistence than intensity. It is actually far better for your development as a musician, for example, to practice a few hours a day for a long series of days than to try to pack more practice into each day.
But being a genius artist is not about "developing as a musician". It's about something else - music is just the medium via which you convey it. Developing as a musician is just one of the early steps along the way. And being a great artist is not about craft, it's about that other thing - the intensity, the passion, the flame burning bright. Craft is necessary like the wick of a candle, but it's not the wick you look at, it's the flame.
Now, of course, most entrepreneurs (and artists) are hardly geniuses, let alone world-changing geniuses, and I can only agree that working yourself to the bone doesn't lead to a healthy life, but to then turn around and tell those who choose to live their life in a certain way that they've missed the point is incredibly arrogant. Not that that's very surprising coming from 37-signals. People (especially driven, passionate people) choose how they live their own life, and they don't need a DHH on a soap-box to lecture them.
Re: Step one is admitting you have a problem
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
data would actually be really interesting. take a survey of early startup employees and entrepreneurs. in the meantime, if you spend enough time around the industry culture, you know this is a problem.
We have some! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=330582 40-50 66 (25.00%) 50-60 52 (19.70%) 30-40 42 (15.91%) 60-70 35 (13.26%) 80+ 21 (7.95%) 70-80 16 (6.06%) 5-20 14 (5.30%) 20-30 11 (4.17%) 0-4 7 (2.65%) 264 points over 9 options
Here's the same table sorted by hours for easier reading:
hours count percent
0-4 7 3
5-20 14 5
20-30 11 4
30-40 42 16
40-50 66 25
50-60 52 20
60-70 35 13
70-80 16 6
80+ 21 8Re: Step one is admitting you have a problem
#38This is one of the supreme challenges of having a society with ample leisure time. Just like all animals we are survivors, and are built to struggle. Once you provide for the immediate survival needs, we are left on our own to define what we want to make of ourselves.
There's no right or wrong answer. Maybe some people really can squeeze the extra productivity out of working 100 hours (I know I can't). But to truly answer the question requires brutal honesty with yourself. Are you running to your goals or away from your fears?
Re: Step one is admitting you have a problem
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes and no. What if you were so excited about painting that you spent 16 hours a day painting. You produce the greatest masterpieces man has ever seen, you change the world of art forever... but yeah, you're an addict. So what? What's so bad about being addicted to something worthwhile? It's pretty usual to hear about musicians who will spend 20 hours a day in the studio getting their songs just right. Artists of all…
Sure. You're right. Unless you also want to have a social life, or fulfilling relationships with people. I won't say that it can't be done, or that it can't be done to some degree, but it's much harder to sustain other parts of your life if you're spending so much time on one thing. If you're spending 16 hours a day painting, then you might change the world of art. If you're spending 16 hours a day working on your bu…
As any Christmas movie will tell you, thinking only of yourself and your work is not going to make you fulfilled.
Oh well, if the Xmas movies, those eternal repositories of human wisdom, say it is so, the it must be! It couldn't possibly be that life is more complicated than Xmas movies would have you believe, and that some people are perfectly fulfilled without the relationships that you and I feel are important.
Re: Step one is admitting you have a problem
#40This couldn't come at a better / worse time for me. I finished college 3 years ago, and spent the last 3 years building a startup. It's an extremely stressful time at the moment, and we're in talks with our first "big fish" (> 1 million / year) clients. Basically, it either needs to work out in the next 6 months or the plug will be pulled. Lately, I've been feeling socially isolated big time. I've been neglecting a l…
> always feeling guilty when I'm not working
This I can relate to as a big problem when you start working on your own company. It took me a long time to realise how counter-productive this is, and to free myself to start saying "yes" more often to invitations/ideas. Now if I have the opportunity to do something outside of normal business hours I just weight it on its merits, and not against what work I could do. If I happen to be free on the weekend I might do some work, but I have no such expectation of myself.
For me this means I can sustain a lot higher productivity during the week, and overall.