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How to Work Hard

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Work Hard

#441

Post by tidydata »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #400
tidydata wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m definitely not scared. Are you okay?

I also totally understand being single, childless, and driven to a career. I’m happier now. Who is the one not listening to other’s opinions? You sure you understand?

Re: How to Work Hard

#442

Post by mmcgaha »

nineplay wrote: post #317

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…

There is room in the world for all kinds of people. If you love going to work every day, do that. If you love making something great happen, do that. If you love backpacking around the world, do that. Only two rules: don't let anyone tell you that your choice is wrong and don't second guess the decisions that you made in the past.

Re: How to Work Hard

#443

Post by ericmay »

bosie wrote: post #343
ericmay wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's common when compared to other industries, though maybe not generally common. Admittedly I have no data to back up this hunch. If I'm wrong, please correct me, but my interpretation of what the person you're replying to was trying to get at was that modest savings from a 23+ year old software engineer, to the tune of $800/month or $10,000/year (this could be 401k match and contributions) will get you pret…

In that time period the cost of your house went from 100k to 700k. You aren’t a millionaire anymore. You are poor. Getting to a million dollars with the same purchasing power (make sure your inflation basked is properly chosen) as of today outside of metro area (as a million in sf isn’t much)

Ok don’t save then. Idk what you want me to tell you.

Re: How to Work Hard

#444

Post by giantg2 »

xyzelement wrote: post #411
giantg2 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you don't believe good employer/employee relationship is possible, you won't do your part and it will be a self fulfilling prophecy." I agree that it can become self-fulfilling. However, there are some of us who started out believing the best and changed their minds after being repeatedly screwed over.

>> and changed their minds after being repeatedly screwed over. I both sympathize for you and still don't think the "changing your mind" is helpful here. My personal example here is in my dating life. I only got married at 38. Before that I had probably 15 semi serious or serious relationships that ultimately didn't work out. Each one of them would have been a good reason to say "oh, well, it's not for me to find lov…

"it's not a thing worth accepting because it will just kill you."

That would be ok too.

Re: How to Work Hard

#445

Post by markus_zhang »

borski wrote: post #120
markus_zhang wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah exactly. The trick is to not burn out early. I usually got burned out when I figured out the core (perhaps 20% of the work) and needed many days to grind out the final results, which I did not have the perserverance to complete. This is probably my worst shortcoming of life and I still can't get rid of it when I'm approaching 40. It seems that the only way for me to finish something is to have the task coming fr…

I resonate with this completely. For me, it’s largely a result of ADHD. My solution has always been to partner with “finishers.” I’m a spectacular starter, prototyper, and builder. But I cannot complete the damn project for the life of me. My best friend and first employee though? Thrives on that.

Thanks! Yeah it makes sense to partner with finishers :D

Re: How to Work Hard

#446

Post by jmrm »

magicloop wrote: post #230

"I never took a day off in my twenties" (Bill Gates) quote is a misnomer because what Bill Gates considers a day-off is something where you are just lying around doing nothing, such as lying on the beach. A two week sojourn into a set of books that interested him were not considered "days off". He did such activities yearly. Bill Gates wasn't in the office working a 7 day schedule for his entire 20s. So that is not t…

Every time we read or hear that quote, we have to remember that Gates also lose and win a lot of money playing poker in university, so there was also time for non-work related tasks :-)

Re: How to Work Hard

#447

Post by sbaildon »

csomar wrote: post #405
nineplay wrote: post #317

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…

> when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels I think that's where you went wrong. The backpacking at hostels is the best (as long as you pick hostels and fellow travelers that do not look like your typical backpacker haha). The thing is, now that I'm 30, I feel it's probably out of fashion. But these nights I spent in big-city hostels had the most fun, stories and affairs. >…

Certainly not out of fashion. I’m approaching 30, and I’ve spent 2 and a half years in and out of a hostel in London. Fantastic life experience

Re: How to Work Hard

#448

Post by shadofx »

s5300 wrote: post #222
jjice wrote: post #23

> ...because even in college a lot of the work is pointless; there are entire departments that are pointless. I loved all of my CS courses in college. They were my bread and butter. I also liked a lot of my math courses and even an English class or two. I just wish I didn't take 5 history courses (three as part of an elective set that had to be liberal arts), three unrelated sciences (bio 1+2, and astronomy - imaging…

You chose to go to this University/College though. For whatever reason, you chose to attend studies there, knowing this was how the institution operated. If you went not knowing how the institution operated, well, that's completely your issue. You could have chose to seek your studies at any institution that caters to the ideals you've stated in your post. Yet you didn't, and you have the audacity to complain, about…

He was told prior to entry that the history courses round out his education. At the time, he accepted that explanation (or did not really care). After experiencing it firsthand, he no longer accepts that explanation.

Re: How to Work Hard

#449

Post by RhodoGSA »

mjfl wrote: post #384
arbitrary_name wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you'd like to elaborate? I find the experience enormously enriching: learning new languages, making friends, gaining a new perspective. It's very valuable to me and I'd be curious to understand your position more, because right now it just comes across as sour grapes.

You don’t read a book by reading the first 10 pages. You don’t learn a culture by visiting a place for a week. You don’t make real friends in a weekend. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 4 years and I still feel like I don’t quite understand the culture here, feel like I haven’t quite experienced the city. I don’t understand how anyone could visit here on a vacation and think they’ve really “experienced” LA. This is even…

haha - I've visited LA and also thought it was a shallow experience ;) Also, sounds like you haven't traveled much.

And yes, I do read a books first 10 pages and stop reading it. Sometimes i read the first couple pages of each chapter and stop reading it. I never claim i read the whole book, or understand every nook and cranny of the rhetoric, but that book will still shape my subconscious going forward.

I feel travel is the same. As you go around the world you learn that no one has the answers, each place is entirely based on your experience of that city and everyone has different philosophies in life. It provides a sense of empathy to ideas. Meeting people who worked at hostels or people who bought a sailing boat, some fishing poles and some rice and traveled vastly changed the way i look at the world. Life is really easy in actuality, we as a species seem to complicate it.

Travel has brought me a vast amount of serenity and peacefulness in my normal life, because normal life can never be as hard as traveling.

Re: How to Work Hard

#450

Post by tempson »

Really happy to read that most readers are critical about this article. This article is extremely shortsighted! Kids don’t fall for this trap. Life is about people and relationships.

p.s. Steve Jobs is already forgotten. Bill Gates will be joining that list too. Now that we know his dirty secrets, fastet than expected.

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