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Hard work vs. Long work (2011)

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Re: Hard work vs. Long work (2011)

#41

Post by hinkley »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #22

there are two other salient differences between hard work and long work - hard work when the person is skillful enough to do it is energizing, long work is always draining.

Only if you're using someone else's definition of hard instead of your own.

If by 'energizing' you mean morale-boosting, yes. But hard work is generally taxing. You are paying for long-term happiness with short term pain. Having slain a dragon on Thursday, you are likely to be in high spirits on Tuesday. But for the rest of the day and possibly tomorrow, you're may be sitting here doing menial tasks or reading documentation.

Re: Hard work vs. Long work (2011)

#42

Post by hinkley »

watertom wrote: post #10

Using his definitions, I hate long work. I avoid long work, I'll take hard work always.

Our jobs revolve around convincing machines to do the long work for us.

I don't think I'll ever understand why so many of us are perfectly content doing the same long work over and over again. Do you know what computers are for?

Re: Hard work vs. Long work (2011)

#43

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

svachalek wrote: post #34
devmunchies wrote: post #19

This makes me think of war time vs peace time. During a war, the govt will put engineers and architects into an R&D incubator with all the resources they need. To the engineers, the fact that there is a war is irrelevant, they aren't paying attention to that, they're just focussing on innovation because it's their job. Couldn't this scenario be simulated, even without war? I think of bell labs. It strange that innova…

If a department is doing well, or even just fair, it will do everything it possibly can to prevent any sort of innovation. When innovation happens, new rules and safeguards are put into place to make sure it doesn't happen again. Of course they'll keep talking about how innovation is very important and rewarded all the while they're stamping it out. Innovation is a rebellious act which is why it typically only happen…

This is a remarkably myopic view of innovation that completely ignores the roles of government, research institutions and yes, large companies, in a huge chunk of all the innovations of the last 120 years.

Re: Hard work vs. Long work (2011)

#45

Post by dougmany »

GCA10 wrote: post #20

This is a useful distinction, but it this misses what's actually hard about "hard work." The risk of failure is only 20% of the issue. What's central is the fact that do hard work well, you need to temporarily tear apart the solution-forming systems that have served you adequately so far -- and put them back together in a different way. In the midst of this, there's genuine discomfort and nausea. Even if you know you…

It is hard. After a few times around, you start to recognize the dreaded feeling. But then you realize you are closer to the other side than the way back and press on.

Re: Hard work vs. Long work (2011)

#47

Post by underbluewaters »

war1025 wrote: post #15

I like this, but also on some level I feel like it's nothing more than inspirational "rah-rah" garbage. I wish he would have expanded on it. A great example of the distinction from my younger days: We had the game GranTurismo2 back when I was 12 or so. We wanted the really fancy "best" car in the game. The right way to get the good cars is to improve your skill and gain access to the higher level races that have bigg…

On one of the circular courses you could literally duct-tape the controller into the appropriate positions to grind out wins with one of the faster cars. Not a lot of points for these races but if you could set it and forget it. Is that hard-work or long-work? :)

Re: Hard work vs. Long work (2011)

#48

Post by CarbyAu »

war1025 wrote: post #15

I like this, but also on some level I feel like it's nothing more than inspirational "rah-rah" garbage. I wish he would have expanded on it. A great example of the distinction from my younger days: We had the game GranTurismo2 back when I was 12 or so. We wanted the really fancy "best" car in the game. The right way to get the good cars is to improve your skill and gain access to the higher level races that have bigg…

Oblivion. Characters get better at a skill when they "use" that skill.

Coming from UnrealTournament I hated the sluggish movement and jumping. I created a keyboard macro to run in a circle, jump a few times. I edited the macro script to do this for hours.

After a night of sleep I came back to a character that had leveled up a few times! Cool!

And now all the creatures had leveled up.

And all I could do was run away and jump because my combat skills were useless...

Re: Hard work vs. Long work (2011)

#49

Post by NikolaeVarius »

CarbyAu wrote: post #48
war1025 wrote: post #15

I like this, but also on some level I feel like it's nothing more than inspirational "rah-rah" garbage. I wish he would have expanded on it. A great example of the distinction from my younger days: We had the game GranTurismo2 back when I was 12 or so. We wanted the really fancy "best" car in the game. The right way to get the good cars is to improve your skill and gain access to the higher level races that have bigg…

Oblivion. Characters get better at a skill when they "use" that skill. Coming from UnrealTournament I hated the sluggish movement and jumping. I created a keyboard macro to run in a circle, jump a few times. I edited the macro script to do this for hours. After a night of sleep I came back to a character that had leveled up a few times! Cool! And now all the creatures had leveled up. And all I could do was run away a…

Sneak. Start the Dark Brotherhood quest and sneak in a corner in the house. The NPC spends most of its time sleeping and will still give you points so just run that overnight and max it out

Re: Hard work vs. Long work (2011)

#50

Post by ian0 »

underbluewaters wrote: post #47
war1025 wrote: post #15

I like this, but also on some level I feel like it's nothing more than inspirational "rah-rah" garbage. I wish he would have expanded on it. A great example of the distinction from my younger days: We had the game GranTurismo2 back when I was 12 or so. We wanted the really fancy "best" car in the game. The right way to get the good cars is to improve your skill and gain access to the higher level races that have bigg…

On one of the circular courses you could literally duct-tape the controller into the appropriate positions to grind out wins with one of the faster cars. Not a lot of points for these races but if you could set it and forget it. Is that hard-work or long-work? :)

You bet me to it. Suzuki Esceudo Pikes peak edition tuned to >1000bhp. Point it into the wall on the speedway and selotape the controller in place. You had a one in n chance of winning a formula one car. I think this is "lazy work" :P
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