How to Work Hard • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Work Hard

#101

Post by minikites » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #44

Hard work can be good, but only if you own a substantial capital interest in the company/result. But if you can hire people to do it for you, then you can reap the benefits and live a life worth living. If you are just part of the labor and not the capital, then there really isn't an incentive to work harder than necessary to keep you job or earn a measly raise. If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in…

>The real world doesn't work that way and using statistical outliers like Gates is disingenuous to the discussion about hard work and how it applies to normal people.

Exactly. This is the central lie that sustains capitalism. Wealthy C-level executives get rich when the rest of us work hard, which is why they harp on "working hard" so much. There's no reason to work hard when all the benefits go to the already-wealthy above you, which is why they try to obscure that fact in as many ways as possible.

Re: How to Work Hard

#102

Post by nkotov » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

I started to work full time during the summers at 15 in IT - doing easy tasks like imaging laptops and setting up desktops for teachers my local school district. My friends would spend their time with video games, hanging out, etc. At the end of the summer, I asked if I could work part time after school for the district so that I don't have gaps on my resume. When I got out of high school, I technically already had several years of experience and I just started to apply for jobs instead of going to college. I hit over a decade of "professional" experience by the time I was 25.

Do I regret working hard during those early years? Definitely not. It shaped me to be what I am today. I believe you should live your life that way you want to live it. You can't achieve great things by doing mediocre amount of work. Figure out where you are content with life and live it without regret of "what could have been".

Re: How to Work Hard

#103

Post by dahart » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

This only barely glances the number one way I’ve found to work hard: to work for yourself. Working on things other people want is, for me, more difficult than working on things I want. Working at someone else’s company is more difficult than working at my company. With my own company, when things were going relatively well, it was easy to spend every waking minute working. At other companies, putting in overtime is more draining, especially if the reasons for it are because things are late or something broke. I’ve put in a lot of overtime in my life, I tend to work hard, but there’s really no comparison between hard work with a boss and hard work as the boss.

Re: How to Work Hard

#104

Post by steve76 » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #15

Being able to decide what to work on requires a certain amount of privilege, as opposed to needing to do whatever you can to pay for rent, bills, and groceries this month.

The ability for hard work is a luxury. Work three jobs, save, build a better future for yourself is a very nice thing. Take it away, such as spending your life caring for a disabled or addicted family member, and you will realize how nice self-determination is.

Re: How to Work Hard

#105

Post by unklefolk » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

Forge36 wrote: post #83

unklefolk wrote: post #55

Regarding the "work hard in your 20s" advice. I took the approach that in your 20s you are still forming, still growing, still malleable. The experiences you have in your 20s will have a disproportionate effect on the kind of person you end up being. Therefore, you have to think about what environment, what experiences you want to foster that growth in. I would suggest optimizing for variety and new experiences is a…

Work hard at learning?

Yes. And "learning" shouldn't just be measured in PhDs or being an expert at one thing. I think the "work hard" advice can be interpreted as "focussed, tunnel vision, excelling in one area to the exclusion of everything else" when there is great benefit of aiming for a wider range of experiences in your 20s.

Re: How to Work Hard

#106

Post by Alex3917 » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

> And since you can't really change how much natural talent you have, in practice doing great work, insofar as you can, reduces to working very hard.

Only a few people will have the right body type to be great at any given sport, but a lot will have the right body type to be great at at least one sport. E.g. if you don't have the right body type for basketball, you might have the perfect body type for ski jumping or whatever.

Re: How to Work Hard

#107

Post by papito » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

temp8964 wrote: post #85

giantg2 wrote: post #44

Hard work can be good, but only if you own a substantial capital interest in the company/result. But if you can hire people to do it for you, then you can reap the benefits and live a life worth living. If you are just part of the labor and not the capital, then there really isn't an incentive to work harder than necessary to keep you job or earn a measly raise. If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in…

What you said is simply not true. There are countless people work on different positions in different fields are enjoying hard work as part of their life. If you read the essay through, he never said "hard work == long hours of work". He explicitly wrote "Trying hard doesn't mean constantly pushing yourself to work, though."

Do they enjoy it or do they THINK they enjoy it? Many people realize that they wasted their lives on being in the office after they retire.

This TED talk can be a revelation: https://www.ted.com/talks/bj_miller_what_really_matters_at_t...

And the Bill Gates thing? PLEASE. Yeah, I agree with the previous comment. A horrible example.

Bill Gates was one of the most lucky sons of bitches in the history of the planet. Born to wealthy parents, he was impossible to deal with, so they took him to a therapist (again, a lucky pick) that advised them to set Gates free. They put him in this prep school with other privileged kids, and like a meteor made of pure gold, by luck, it had a computer. Almost no schools had a computer at the time.

Hard work is only part of the equation. You have to be at the right place, at the right time. Most people never are.

Might as well read the next article on "Ten morning habits of billionaires". Luck. Is. A. Factor.

Re: How to Work Hard

#108

Post by nobody0 » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #30

The true ah-ha moment comes when you finally realize how much bullshit this is. "Hard work" is the mantra that keeps you a slave. "Success stories" are the tasty carrots that keep you toiling away your best years enriching others in pursuit of the things you're supposed to seek in life: Power, success, status. "Life hacks" are little dopamine hits to keep your eye on the carrot. And the kicker is that those few who a…

It seems nowadays, or maybe not only in modern age. Being not doing anything is more painful than to be occupied and leaning toward burning out.

It kinds of reminds me of a published story on hn [0]

> "That is why we like noise and activity so much. That is why imprisonment is such a horrific punishment. That is why the pleasure of being alone is incomprehensible. That is, in fact, the main joy of the condition of kingship, because people are constantly trying to amuse kings and provide them with all sorts of distraction.—The king is surrounded by people whose only thought is to entertain him and prevent him from thinking about himself. King though he may be, he is unhappy if he thinks about it"

It seems that being in the passive mode or `flow` is a therapy itself, we can't seems to even stand non-productive ourselves to a certain extent. And modern convenient distractions only steer ourselves down this path even further.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25482927

Re: How to Work Hard

#109

Post by borski » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

rexreed wrote: post #37

Doesn't it all depend what you want out of life? And is the hard work even guaranteed to provide you what you want out of life? Hard work, desired outcomes, and goals are not in alignment. What's the point of this essay, to convince people who don't want to work hard to work hard? Is this meant to chastise people? Motivate? Demoralize? Self-congratulate?

To identify that for people who succeed, hard work is often required, and most people aren’t born with the ability to do really hard work. That takes conscious effort and an uncanny ability to stay on task.

ADHD makes this hard, fwiw, and PG is not saying this mode is right for everyone. But I would agree with that idea: working hard isn’t natural, at least for some people, but it is a requirement for attaining success. If you’re going to work hard, it makes sense to do it on something you love. And there are people who thrive on hard work.

There are a bunch of prerequisites, some of which he explicitly states (find something you love, eg) and some implicit (sometimes you have to take the job you don’t like, because circumstances dictate that; families, eg).

But it certainly isn’t for everyone.

Re: How to Work Hard

#110

Post by bumby » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

temp8964 wrote: post #65

leokennis wrote: post #19

> There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard. I'd like to add that it is more than fine to not do great work. If you like to spend a lot of time with your kids and tend to your vegetable patch, by all means only t…

PG never said you should maximize for great work. The essay is about "how to work hard", not "work hard is the only purpose of your life". You are missing the point here. In addition, you mistakenly exclude great work / achievement from happiness. Spending time with your kids is great, tending your vegetable patch is great, doing great work is also great. Life is not a single purpose process. Happiness is not a singl…

I wonder how much of the criticism is skewed by the Western notion of “work”. I.e., we tend to view a vocation as the most legitimate definition of work.

If we take a different perspective, I think the author is much less likely to be the target of ire.

>working hard means aiming toward the center — toward the most ambitious problems.

To those in a society hyper-focused on productivity, this can certainly rub people the wrong way because so few are able to dedicate themselves to super ambitious vocations. As the saying goes, the world needs ditch diggers too.

But if your ambition is to cultivate a meaningful, verdant life I don’t see why the author's statement is incompatible with the GP comment. Maybe we just need to broaden our definition about what is worthwhile “work”. It’s certainly possible to do great work cultivating relationships if that is your goal rather than, say, creating a new field of mathematics.