I have noticed that “what I work on” is more significant than “how many hours I spend working”. You have to be pointing the right way, not just going fast.
How to Work Hard
281–290 of 1001 posts
Re: How to Work Hard
#282No PG you are presenting speculative opinion as fact. Conscientiousness is a measured and well documented personality trait, it is also formed around age six. It also happens to be social in its construction. Software engineers typically report lower than average Conscientiousness, because the more complex the task, the less it has an impact. It's also negatively correlated with IQ. Suggesting it is a choice is demon…
It's also negatively correlated with IQ.
That's surprising, I wonder why.
Re: How to Work Hard
#283When I was an undergrad at CMU, I learned how to work hard. Really hard. After having coasted through too-easy high school, I spent all day every day at CMU either programming, doing mathematics, or thinking about one of those things (to great effect: often the trick to prove a theorem would pop into my head while showering or while taking a walk). I would fall asleep while programming in the middle of the night, dre…
This was exactly my experience except Masters instead of Bachelors. I had this feeling that I mostly coasted during my bachelors, only putting any effort the week before Finals or Unit Tests. I did my Masters in EE from a university renowned for being a tough program. I was up for the challenge, doing exactly what you did: thinking math all the time, feeling like I was wasting time any moment I was not in front of my books.
I have the exact same problems you mentioned: not being able to just be, always anxious to be doing something productive, can't bring myself to watch a movie unless the movie was an all-time classic and "worth wasting time on".
The pandemic, weirdly enough, brought me back down to Earth. I faced some real mental lows but now I am able to relax more. Time management and deep work a few hours a day goes a lot further than just fretting about being productive all the time. I still have a lot of work to do, and I still don't think I've fulfilled my potential but posts like yours have definitely helped me re-calibrate my expectations.
Thank you very much.
Re: How to Work Hard
#284I feel like a big part missing from this essay is “Why should you work hard?”
It seems to assume that working hard is a good thing.
Are these essays implicitly aimed at startup founders?
Because for the average engineer working hard doesn’t have much of a benefit.
Optimizing for interviews is much more important than hard work.
Re: How to Work Hard
#285Hard 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…
I accepted a job at a startup not too long ago. They offered a pretty good salary, but no equity. Shame on me for not doing better research. As soon as I got in the role, they made it clear they expected 70 hours a week, oh and by the way, the CEO is really excited about the prospect of selling the company, and how rich he's going to get. He's going to mention potential valuations all the time, and he's also "really depending on me" to shape up core business functions to make the company sale-ready. LOL! Fuck that, I left within 3 months.
Re: How to Work Hard
#286This is the trait that I have found in successful people around me:
> The most basic level of which is simply to feel you should be working without anyone telling you to.
> Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful.
How does one cultivate this feeling?
Re: How to Work Hard
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what? Being able to comment on HN requires a certain amount of privilege too.
Personally, I just had to click on the "login" button then to fill a username and a password.
Yeah, but you have access to a computer and you are speaking english. Some may consider that privilege, like "Being able to decide what to work on requires a certain amount of privilege". I can decide what to work on like all of my friends and family but I don't think me or they are privileged. In current climate, anything beyond subsistence is considered privilege and used to belittle and shame those who have means to have life not lacking in neccessities. I'm flamebaiting, because original comment is not in any way insightful, but essentially means 'Oh look, he can choose what to work on, he is "privileged"' without any further meaning.
Re: How to Work Hard
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone making high 5 or low 6 figures will be a millionaire at the start retirement if they can save a modest amount from a reasonably early start, say 30 years old.
While technically correct, this doesn't square with most people's intuitive sense of what "being a millionaire" means. It's not having a solid retirement nest egg, it is being able to jet off to your yacht in St. Tropez on a private jet. I think this is largely due to inflation. A million dollars in the 50s or 60s would be around 10 million today, while at the turn of the 20th century when the term really became popu…
Who thinks being a millionaire means a yacht and a jet, other than children?
Re: How to Work Hard
#289Eh, I don't know. I came from a lower middle class background, but am now top 1% for my age and income + I probably have more wealth at this stage of my life than PG did.
I love idleness and leisure. I only work to get more of it in the future. I do have a drive to do a job well, but not for the sake of achievement itself shudder.
The idea of saying at age 13 "I hate leisure activities, its not productive" is really unsettling to me.
Re: How to Work Hard
#290This 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 m…
It's the old joke isn't it. A boss is out with one of his employees when they see a Ferrari drive past. The boss turns to his employee and says if you put in the hours and work really hard then one day I'll be able to afford one of those.