Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours • Hacker News Board

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#191

Post by cocktailpeanuts » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

camelNotation wrote: post #179

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #144

They take a very constrained example and claim that "You should be a slacker too". This is at best an irresponsible piece of writing that's clearly targeting discussions like what's happening here. This is the 1000th time I've seen a post on this topic on HN, and every time it's posted here it's like groundhog day, same comments. Well this is what publications like these want, they want more traffic. There are many f…

>That said, if your life goal is NOT about being successful but more about living a balanced life with happiness, then go live your life whatever way you want. In fact that's how 99% of the world live their lives. Human beings have struggled for thousands of years to define what it means to live a good life and be "successful." Few (if any) ever associated success with the acquisition of wealth. Even the rich ones, l…

No. you define your own success. For most people it's a social thing so you look at people around you and define your success. That's why people buy home, buy cars, etc.

That's fine but you should really have control over what you consider as "success".

When I say success I mean having a clear goal of where you want to go and achieving it.

If you want to be "cool" and just enjoy your life AND achieve what you want outside of your cool life, feel free to do so, and good luck. I'm just saying you can't win against people who have the same ability who decide to go all in.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#192

Post by jedmeyers » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

differentView wrote: post #82

YCode wrote: post #7

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified. You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day…

Ah, the old "What do they call the person who graduates last in medical school?"

And what do they call a soldier who graduates last in BUD/S class? Graduating is itself a big feat.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#193

Post by paganel » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 6:16 PM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #144

They take a very constrained example and claim that "You should be a slacker too". This is at best an irresponsible piece of writing that's clearly targeting discussions like what's happening here. This is the 1000th time I've seen a post on this topic on HN, and every time it's posted here it's like groundhog day, same comments. Well this is what publications like these want, they want more traffic. There are many f…

> That said, if your life goal is NOT about being successful but more about living a balanced life with happiness, then go live your life whatever way you want. In fact that's how 99% of the world live their lives.

Maybe you should re-phrase that as "about being financial successful". I for myself find a "balanced life with happiness" as very close to what being successful in life really means, for the simple fact that I've gone through periods when I would have given half of the world just not to be miserable anymore. The black hole of depression cannot be filled no matter how much money you have, and it can reach you even you're the most financially successful person in the world.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#194

Post by cocktailpeanuts » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 6:17 PM UTC

gregmac wrote: post #176

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #144

They take a very constrained example and claim that "You should be a slacker too". This is at best an irresponsible piece of writing that's clearly targeting discussions like what's happening here. This is the 1000th time I've seen a post on this topic on HN, and every time it's posted here it's like groundhog day, same comments. Well this is what publications like these want, they want more traffic. There are many f…

> if your life goal is NOT about being successful but more about living a balanced life with happiness What good is (your definition of) success if you do nothing but work and are unhappy? Or did you mean something else by this?

Why would you not be happy if you achieve what you want in life?

Sure it's a stressful journey, but if you ask me if i would pick between a life that actually served a purpose vs. a life I just lived because I lived, I would pick one that aimed to serve a purpose any day, no matter how stressful it is. You may think living a balanced "happy" life is happiness, but when you're at your deathbed and think back at your life, you will regret not having done all you could have done.

Speaking of, check out Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I didn't believe in it when I was very young because I was down there in the pyramid, but now I realize that's not the case. You may say this is luxury for most people, and that is true. Most human population are not in a situation where they have the resources and ability to climb up all the way to the top of the hierarchy of needs, but I think anyone from HN community should be able to.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#195

Post by pebblexe » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 6:17 PM UTC

The best book I know about research is "Apprentice to Genius: The Making of a Scientific Dynasty":

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801847575

It's a fantastic book.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#196

Post by collyw » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 6:18 PM UTC

ythn wrote: post #171

collyw wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am willing to bet that starting with a million in the bank will make you more likely to succeed that working hard. Didn't Thomas Piketty's book come to a similar conclusion?

All things equal, the person who works harder will usually come out on top (of course, there's always some RNG). Applies to all areas of life. Scenarios where you have an unfair advantage (money in the bank) are irrelevant here.

Sure I am not denying that (though a bit of good luck doesn't go wrong). It was mainly a response to the line:

>In fact, you know what? MOST successful people work very hard. Surprising right? Duh.

There is even a link on HN today to this article "Untalented rich still earn more, says Greening": http://www.bbc.com/news/education-39444993

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#197

Post by Florin_Andrei » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

TheCowboy wrote: post #152

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #144

They take a very constrained example and claim that "You should be a slacker too". This is at best an irresponsible piece of writing that's clearly targeting discussions like what's happening here. This is the 1000th time I've seen a post on this topic on HN, and every time it's posted here it's like groundhog day, same comments. Well this is what publications like these want, they want more traffic. There are many f…

There is so much aggression here. Relax. Working longer hours isn't equivalent to working harder. Plenty of unsuccessful entrepreneurs worked long hours and worked hard, and there are examples of people/businesses doing productive work with more balanced workdays. 99% of the people in the world live in a way to not be successful, but to have a balanced life with happiness? It should be obvious that for 99% of people,…

It's pretty clear that doing the 80 hour week is something that works well if you're, say, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. A difficult job, to be sure, but not top-notch in the grand scheme of things. You're not inventing quantum mechanics, you're figuring out ways for people to share more cat pictures.

But if you are operating at the top of the pyramid of knowledge, like some of the people mentioned in the article, that's a different kind of effort. The 4 hours a day schedule, with plenty of breaks, seems to work best.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#198

Post by merraksh » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

I wonder if the maximum aspiration of any scientist is to be famous, or even "successful", for whatever definition of success is out there.

I would imagine a scientist as someone who wants to make a positive impact on the life of his fellow human beings by investigating a field of science, or maybe is just curious about said field and just works to find out what intrigues her.

Whether she becomes famous in the act is only a side effect, and maybe not even a necessary condition to fulfill her desire. I have the impression that just aspiring to fame is not conducive to "good" science.

This said, I'd like to see articles comparing the working days of people who accomplish something important in science, regardless of their fame (or lack thereof).

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#199

Post by linkmotif » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #191

camelNotation wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That said, if your life goal is NOT about being successful but more about living a balanced life with happiness, then go live your life whatever way you want. In fact that's how 99% of the world live their lives. Human beings have struggled for thousands of years to define what it means to live a good life and be "successful." Few (if any) ever associated success with the acquisition of wealth. Even the rich ones, l…

No. you define your own success. For most people it's a social thing so you look at people around you and define your success. That's why people buy home, buy cars, etc. That's fine but you should really have control over what you consider as "success". When I say success I mean having a clear goal of where you want to go and achieving it. If you want to be "cool" and just enjoy your life AND achieve what you want ou…

> I'm just saying you can't win against people who have the same ability who decide to go all in.

You're really killing it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10882202) they choose to parrot these articles by random people who've never done anything except produce clickbait.

Also I like people who say: "don't you need to exercise, go for walks, relax?" Of course! But these things must be deployed as part of your effort to achieve your goals. The odds are stacked so hard against you. You need stable finances and health, for one thing, to accomplish anything. Then you need patience, support from your friends and family, vision, a good idea... not to mention some talent, too. It's really hard. If you're not all in, you're not going anywhere in terms of producing something new and interesting. Which is fine, just don't try to sell people on the opposite.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#200

Post by dasil003 » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 6:24 PM UTC

moftz wrote: post #153

dasil003 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mm, you're talking about a microcosm of the buy-vs-build question. Only junior developers would obliquely state that using a library is always "working smarter". A much bigger aspect of working smarter is deciding that you don't need to build something at all because it's the wrong approach to solve a business problem.

At my job, we have a mix of stuff we do in house and stuff we contract out. We could have our in-house subject matter expert spend all of his time developing a component or we could hire a company that already makes the component and has a great track record. Sometimes things are cheaper to do in house, especially when a one-off just needs to get built and quality control isn't a major issue. But in my line of work,…

Sure, me too. These are huge decisions. At my previous company I greenlit building our own CDN on bare metal. Sounds crazy right? But factor in limited content library, on-the-fly DRM and packaging, and long tail of global users all of a suddent it is not so crazy.

The fact is whether to use some random NPM library is a strawman, in the case of left-pad it's trivial either way. The more interesting question is how you assess the stability risk of NPM.