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How to Work Hard

paulgraham.com

391–400 of 1001 posts

Re: How to Work Hard

#391

I find the mentions of Messi, Newton, Mozart and Wodehouse bizarre. The essay is similar to Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour theory, whether you agree or not, at worst Gladwell is writing a journalistic think piece. Here though, is Graham credibly putting himself in the same category as Mozart? Dropping a reference to Patrick Collison, who no one outside of tech would have a clue who that is in the same breath as you n…

The better interpretation is: “I’m a successful businessman. This is how I acted. So did these other successful business people. And as a matter of fact, some of the greats of history in other fields also acted like this. Put together, I think that this behavior is conducive to success (in the way I define it).” Personally, I find it much more useful to go into each of these reads to find some piece of something I ca…

> There’s also a meta-discussion here. In human speech a common technique is to use X_j (j=1..n) diverse objects that each have k (k=1..m) characteristics Y={Y_jk} where for each j, there exists some k such that you can form a subset Z of Y which has the property that for any y_1, y_2 in Z, |m(y_1)-m(y_2)|> Usually, the idea is that the diversity in X_j resulting in this form of Z points to some commonality among the elements of Z. The idea is usually not that all Y_jk are in an equivalence class but that the subset Z is in a single equivalence class.

Never change, HN. Lol.

Re: How to Work Hard

#392
post #325

One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation, I never traveled outside the UI, I took days off reluctantly with a vague feeling that I was letting someone down. "Later", I told myself. When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostel…

> Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out. Isn't there an in-between? My wife and I both delay a little bit of gratification with the expectation that we'll have a better life in our mid-30's or early 40's. In other words, we're choosing not to live the life we want to have right now , because we're trading that off for a potentially…

If you get used to looking 5-10 years ahead are you sure you'll stop and starting living that better life? Or will there just be more goals another 5-10 years ahead?

I lost a whole bunch of friends in my 30s and nearly died myself a few weeks ago. Later on doesn't arrive for everyone.

I don't think that means you should never delay gratification but just don't put all your eggs in the future basket.

Re: How to Work Hard

#393
post #381
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traveling the world is a life goal for shallow people. It is a shallow experience.

Probably not as shallow as not taking vacations so your boss can get some marginal % richer.

The idea that there are only two options in life- world travel or being a corporate slave, is exactly the mindset of a shallow person.

Re: How to Work Hard

#394

One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation, I never traveled outside the UI, I took days off reluctantly with a vague feeling that I was letting someone down. "Later", I told myself. When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostel…

I'd love to, but... All my friends are like this too. Time off from work is no fun when all your friends have glued themselves to a monitor. It's impossible to even convince my most sun-loving friends with secure jobs to take a beach day. I don't find meaning in traveling alone so... drown myself in work it is.

> drown myself in work it is.

This is physically unsustainable. Our bodies and our minds are not built to sit at a desk and work 60 ours a week.

Ignore that and you'll get all sort of issue ranging from back pain to mental illness.

We don't need lavish vacations in fancy places. We need to stretch every hour, go for a walk in the park every other day, some hours for cultural and social life every day.

Re: How to Work Hard

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t think 99.9% of people want to pay 1K /month for health insurance or be a missed paycheck away from living on the street. Americans make a lot of money but the cost of living is through the roof and there is practically no safety net. That’s not even touching on our complete lack of social and family support structures.

Again with the wild hyperbole. The American safety net may not be the absolute best in the world but it is still far better than what is available to the overwhelming majority of people. Indeed, a huge swath of the world is far below the American poverty line. Why do you suppose so many millions of people risk their lives to get into America in the first place? Come on. We can advocate for better healthcare and socia…

It’s not hyperbole it’s reality. The US has the largest prison population in the world. It has massive problems with homelessness and violent crime. It has extreme wealth inequality. We have the most expensive healthcare and education in the world.

The reality is that the US is a harsh place to live. Yes there are upsides but the hyperbole is that there aren’t significant downsides.

Re: How to Work Hard

#396
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out. Isn't there an in-between? My wife and I both delay a little bit of gratification with the expectation that we'll have a better life in our mid-30's or early 40's. In other words, we're choosing not to live the life we want to have right now , because we're trading that off for a potentially…

If you get used to looking 5-10 years ahead are you sure you'll stop and starting living that better life? Or will there just be more goals another 5-10 years ahead? I lost a whole bunch of friends in my 30s and nearly died myself a few weeks ago. Later on doesn't arrive for everyone. I don't think that means you should never delay gratification but just don't put all your eggs in the future basket.

Yeah, we don't disagree. Like I said, there's an "in-between".

Always "living in the moment" can be bad, depending on what you want out of life. Always "living in the future" can also be bad, depending on what you want out of life.

Ultimately, they both depend on the same thing: what you want out of life. The key is for everyone to define that goal for themselves; an exercise which is possibly the single hardest part of the human condition.

Re: How to Work Hard

#397
I think "natural talent" is sort of a false concept. After time, hard work and practice often turn into talent. When you train hard at something and improve your skills enough, an outside observer will label you as talented. The better your skills, the more talented. You are the only one that knows you didn't start with those skills.

I wrestled competitively for 20 years. By the end of my career, people would talk about how naturally talented I was. But I knew that everything they were talking about came about through two decades of practice. People talked about how fast I was. But I spent years doing plyometrics. I was slow before that. People talked about how strong I was; I was doing pushups and pull ups every day with my dad starting at 8 years old. People just saw the results of 20 years of practice, and didn't see where I started out, so they called it talent.

I think to be extremely successful at something, you don't need talent. You can build talent in yourself. There is something to be said about people who are naturally very bad at something. Those people might never appear talented at something they are naturally very bad at. But then again, given enough practice over time, they might.

If you look at anyone who is a true master of a skill, their mastery lies not in their natural talent, but through their years of practice, their drive and their passion for what they are doing. Talent plays a small role over time. It mostly plays a role in the beginning.

For something like sprinting or weight lifting, I will give that natural ability is important. There are only so many people that can be as fast as Usain Bolt. But for sports that are more skills based, like martial arts, or other activities that are skills based, like coding, talent only takes you so far. After a certain point, talent becomes insignificant compared to all of your hard work.

Re: How to Work Hard

#398
The attitude of feeling guilty when you're not working can be useful to motivate yourself, but I think it s also something to be careful of.

Indeed, sometimes this time of pressure can grow so pervasive it becomes impossible for you to relax, and humans aren't endlessly working robots: we need to also have time where we calm down, which PG explained.

However, he didn't warn of developing too much of a work ethic to the point relaxation itself is something you don't enjoy.

Re: How to Work Hard

#399

It's very shocking to read this and not even mention how supportive the privilege of starting out wealthy is. Hard work looks different if there's no where to go up or out.

> Hard work looks different if there's no where to go

The essay assumes a lot about who the reader is and the type of work they're doing. This perspective on work is obviously utterly alien to a single parent who's a dental assistant, part-time wait staff, has two young kids, and is barely making ends meet. But that person works a hell of a lot harder than any startup founder I've ever met. For them, the answer to "how to do hard work" is simpler: remember your kids starve and go homeless if you don't. Then, get up, go to work, and do what you're told. Continue until you have enough to pay the rent, buy food, and pay the baby sitters. Remember how lucky you are to have a roof and food. Repeat.

On one hand, I understand exactly what PG is saying -- the sort of work that requires high productivity without anyone telling you to work feels way harder than straight forward wage labor. There's a reason people drop out of phd programs and intentionally seek out specifically boring & predictable engineering/sales jobs (see: the post from the cmu undergrad).

On the other hand, I completely understand how the idea that autonomy and ownership over your own labor makes work harder -- and bragging about working 7 days a week for two whole years -- must seem incredibly tone-deaf to someone who has no choice but to do long days for 7 days a week under abusive management for 18+ years, only to get a reprieve of merely working 8-10 hour days for the 25-30 years after the kids are grown up and move away.

But PG isn't writing to that audience. The primary audience for many of his essays are people like him: guys who grew up geeky in upper middle class suburbs. There's nothing wrong with writing for the audience, but he does a kind-of bad job at signposting the fact that his advice is utterly irrelevant to the 50+% of the population that never have the opportunity to invest in themselves.

Re: How to Work Hard

#400
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out. Isn't there an in-between? My wife and I both delay a little bit of gratification with the expectation that we'll have a better life in our mid-30's or early 40's. In other words, we're choosing not to live the life we want to have right now , because we're trading that off for a potentially…

Having children means sharing your marshmallows. It’s also a lot easier to chase a kid in your 20s than your 30s. It’s also maturing, enjoyable, and spending time with them is the best part of the day. Not something many people say about work! Maybe when the work is truly meaningful (I wouldn’t know). The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful. Spending t…

I worked very hard in my 20s and I'm extremely glad I did. The work was interesting, engaging, maturing, and super valuable for society. It also set me up with an extremely valuable skill set, of hard and soft skills, that are useful in both my professional and personal lives.

This trend of saying you enjoyed your life and therefore yours was the only correct choice is extremely closed-minded, and tends to come from parents in particular a lot. What if instead you solicited the opinions of people whose life you clearly don't understand? Are you so scared of the idea that other choices made other people happy?

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