I work hard to be lazy. Put in the effort once and keep leveraging off of it.
Work Hard (2007)
131–140 of 203 posts
Re: Work Hard (2007)
#132> there is an important distinction between “working hard” and “maximising the number of hours during which one works”. In particular, forcing oneself to work even when one is tired, unmotivated, unprepared, or distracted with other tasks can end up being counterproductive to one’s long-term work productivity, and there is a saturation point beyond which pushing oneself to work even longer will actually reduce the to…
Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is take a nap in the middle of the day. On a daily basis, I do so more often than not.
I’ve found that a lot of my co workers have stated to do this. It’s turned into a disconnected, tech siesta.
Re: Work Hard (2007)
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great point. I like to compare work capacity to exercise capacity. Too much exercise will actually harm your fitness rather than improve it. However, reasonable exertions, combined with appropriate rest, will improve your fitness over time. Like exercise capacity, one's ability to work hard can also be improved through practice. This doesn't mean pulling all-nighters and chugging caffeine to override the sleepiness,…
Are there any such tracking software that you’d recommend?
Qbserve
Re: Work Hard (2007)
#134> there is an important distinction between “working hard” and “maximising the number of hours during which one works”. In particular, forcing oneself to work even when one is tired, unmotivated, unprepared, or distracted with other tasks can end up being counterproductive to one’s long-term work productivity, and there is a saturation point beyond which pushing oneself to work even longer will actually reduce the to…
This really is important. Exhortations to work hard seem a bit tone-deaf right now. I'm a person who's been self-employed and therefore self-motivated, driven, and devoted all hours of day and night to realizing ideas and products for the past 20+ years, organizing my own time in ways I've always noticed 9-5 friends find difficult to understand. Once I get into an idea or a big piece of code, I can get lost for days, forgetting to eat or shower. But that's always been balanced by an active social life, travel, exercise - things that help me maintain a psychological equilibrium while helping me structure my own time. Covid has upended the outlets I depend on for sanity to the point where it's very hard to get into the flow of work and research I need to commit myself to in order to accomplish long tasks. So I'm really trying to be gentle and easy on myself when I don't want to work up to the breaking point... or even of days where I don't want to do any serious work at all. Maybe this is a bad thing, but before lockdowns I never felt like I had to make myself work at all... I just wanted to, and nothing could take me away from it. Usually one big night out would be enough to motivate me to spend the next week happily locked indoors of my own volition. But without that balance... you just have too much time.
Re: Work Hard (2007)
#135So if you are already a child prodigy, born into a family of prodigies, specifically within Mathematics, and you want that PHD, gotta keep grinding.
It's also a lot easier to work hard when you are handed access to every academic resource on the planet before you hit puberty. His life story is the most blatant counterexample to this article imaginable. Sounds like a case of deep denial.
Re: Work Hard (2007)
#136Off-topic, but why is it that Terry Tao's blog attracts such low-quality comments? When I look at SSC/ACX, Shtetl-Optimized, Marginal Revolution, etc. the comments are mostly constructive, engaged, and well-informed. With Tao, it's a huge proportion of random people asking for generic life advice, or fanboy-ism. This seems counter-intuitive, because Tao's blog is by far the least accessible of those above 3 blogs on…
Because Terry Tao is a celebrity. People find his blog after watching him on Youtube.
This is true, his video on gaps between prime numbers had over 2 million views. People find his genius fascinating even if they don't understand his work.
Re: Work Hard (2007)
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outlier strengths in one area can make up for weaknesses in others. She had extreme focus, which pushed her past where her intelligence would normally go. Imagine if she had great focus and great intelligence.
I'd argue that 'focus' is at least part of what we consider as intelligence.
They're related, but you can isolate them. Raising stakes and immediacy will bring up focus more than intelligence. (but it also might bring up anxiety!)
Re: Work Hard (2007)
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do need both, and therein lies the problem. If you don't have the IQ, your hard work is meaningless.
Yes, you need both to be the best in the world in a given field, but why is that a problem?
That is not a problem. The problem I see is touting the value of hard work to people who may not have the requisite IQ to go along with it for their desired outcome (Best in the world in their field, for example).
You said, Additionally, I think the obsession over "intelligence" and "natural ability" is vastly overstated, in general".
I think it's actually understated in general. Telling people who don't have the mental horse power to, "work harder", is cruel.
Would you tell someone with an IQ of 100 to "work harder" if they wanted to be a Software Engineer/Lawyer/etc?
Re: Work Hard (2007)
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do need both, and therein lies the problem. If you don't have the IQ, your hard work is meaningless.
I see no reason to downvote, I agree, >You do need both This has been proven to me over and over. >therein lies the problem. But I see no problem. >If you don't have the IQ, your hard work is meaningless. I don't think meaningless if it's well guided, it can still get each person further if they do go there.
> I don't think meaningless if it's well guided, it can still get each person further if they do go there
Sure, I don't think hard work is a bad thing as long as people temper their expectations.
The issue I have is that hard work often seems to be touted as a magic pill for success.
Re: Work Hard (2007)
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's kind of a double edged sword- I've worked with a few people that "work hard" and "get things done", only to find out once they leave (or go on vacation) that now we have to untangle a 600 line bash script that's integral to production. I'm being a bit hyperbolic here, but the gist of my point is: not everyone who works hard is worth keeping around, especially if their hard work leads to an un-managable mess in t…
The obvious question is why this wasn’t caught and rectified in code review? This seems to be as much a failure due to lack of oversight as opposed to the failure of the person who created the mess.
Because code review is mostly a delusional fantasy?