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How to Work Hard

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Work Hard

#471

Post by mapgrep »

> I had to learn what real work was before I could wholeheartedly desire to do it. That took a while, because even in college a lot of the work is pointless; there are entire departments that are pointless.

In other words, "the work I want to do is real but the work you want to do is trivial and pointless."

I really genuinely have enjoyed Paul Graham's writing over the years but moments like this seem arrogant and tend to spoil some of the enjoyment. I'd be genuinely curious to know what departments he finds pointless, and why, in the grand scheme of things, they have no "point" in comparison to computer science or whatever.

While it's true that computer science can be used to enable, for example, much cheaper air travel, or important forms of cancer diagnosis, it's also true that a great many computer scientists work on less crucial problems like optimizing ad targeting or enabling scams.

Similarly, while many English lit majors may end up contributing little most of us find valuable in that field, there are some who will become authors who genuinely help other humans find more meaning in life and feel less alone, and others who will shed new light on history and thiis contribute to the understanding of our present.

I'm not saying fields can't be compared. Maybe the average engineer's college studies help society "more" (for some definition) than the average humanities major's studies do. Fine. What I'm saying is - it takes a lot of arrogance to cast aside entire college departments as worthless.

Re: How to Work Hard

#472

Post by jeffbee »

janj wrote: post #456

I took extra classes and worked hard in college to get a CS degree because I loved it. I was so excited to start a career because the internships were fun and exciting. I graduated in 2001 right after everything dried up. The only place hiring was Raytheon, there was no way I'd step foot back in that place to work on weapons. I asked a friend what to do, "Why don't you move to MT and snowboard", so I did. Seven years…

Reminds me of my intern at Google. PhD CS, had been an intern at Google 9 summers in a row. Spent remainder of year skiing. Smart and contributed a lot, also seemed happy.

Re: How to Work Hard

#473

Post by DoreenMichele »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #282
bloqs wrote: post #180

No 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.

Among other things, bright kids are often not challenged in school. Many of them learn to coast and not be too troublesome and do what little they have to do to hit the check marks the adults around them require while secretly pursuing some means to quietly also meet their own needs.

They can end up feeling like school work is pointless and like "a monkey could do this."

Re: How to Work Hard

#474

Post by maigret »

matwood wrote: post #464
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…

> One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. In my 20s I was similar. A 'long' vacation was a long weekend in Vegas with friends. Fun, but not much of a vacation. I was fortunate to meet my wife in my early 30s who pushed me to slow down a bit and take at least 2 consecutive weeks off a year (sometimes even twice) in a time zone that made work near impossible. We've been to many…

In most countries in Europe everyone gets 5-6 weeks a year plus public holidays and often flexible days off. You don’t have to “work hard“, just work. I spent my twenties learning skills and working well but not too much. Could have gone a bit further in my career by working harder but not that much further. Looking back I think that was the right compromise. As developers we are fortunate to have a lot of choice for interesting and well paid jobs, so there should be space for an interesting life besides that.

Re: How to Work Hard

#475

Post by sharkweek »

tidydata wrote: post #347
bhupy wrote: 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 want to make it very clear that I do not expect everyone to want kids, and I'm never ever one to say "oh you'll love kids once you have your own!" to anyone, but...

I cannot understate for me personally how much having my own kids over the past few years has shifted my priorities. The best parts of my weeks are when I'm with my family all doing something fun together. Work is now only a means to provide and is not a source of personal fulfillment anymore (again, YMMV!!!!)

It's hard to stay "extra motivated" at work now, though. I went from being willing to put in the long hours and weekends to barely being able to get 30-40 hours a week.

But you know what? There are plenty of perfectly great jobs that allow for that. The place I'm currently working told me in the interview loop they can't compete with FAANG salary ranges, but they promised me total autonomy on when/where I work as well as great work-life balance, which has proven to be true.

Re: How to Work Hard

#476

Post by dahart »

SlapperKoala wrote: post #330
dahart wrote: post #103

This 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…

In my experience "working for yourself" means in practice "working for your clients." You still need an external party willing to give you money for your work. And they will have requirements about how it is done and when it is delivered that you won't necessarily like

Very true, being the boss is no panacea in terms of having to do work, it’s usually more work. But the intrinsic motivations really are very different when you are the one on the hook, when you decide which clients to take on, when you are building the company or deciding the dev or research directions, when you decide what happens with the revenue. I mean, for me anyway, but I know it’s true for at least some others too since many books have been written about this. It’s one of the reasons that a mentality of ownership is advocated even when you’re not the boss.

Re: How to Work Hard

#477

Post by chevill »

PG takes a lot of peoples' claims for granted when they are probably exaggerations.

Gates: >I didn't take a single day off in my 20s.

Most likely this is only technically true because its almost certain he took multiple days off in his 20s. We'd have to look at what Bill means here by working every single day. If he counts spending at least a couple minutes on something work related every day its far more believable than him spending approximately 3650 consecutive days working 8-12 hours or more.

Wodehouse: >with each new book of mine I have, as I say, the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature. A good thing, really, I suppose. Keeps one up on one's toes and makes one rewrite every sentence ten times. Or in many cases twenty times.

This claim is even more unbelievable. I'd bet the average sentence he wrote wasn't rewritten at all, let alone 10-20 times. I think what he actually means is that sometimes he would have to re-write a sentence 10-20 times.

Re: How to Work Hard

#478

Post by jthornquest »

There are a lot of very good notes in these comments about our relationship with "work" and excellence. I currently operate from the perspective of creating something I'm proud of for myself, and I'm relearning the joy of leisure. My own life isn't defined by my greatness, my productivity, or my output. I've learned to realize that the "alarm-bells" that clattered in my head were more of an anxious, awful self-perception that my value was tied to my output.

A few weeks ago, I found a bit of recent scientific learning that gave me a renewed context around passion and pursuit. It turns out that research is showing that bodies and brains don't typically begin to degrade in their capacity for training muscle-memory skills until our sixties. For someone like me, who is anxiously accounting for how to try a lot of different pursuits (music, illustration, and especially relevant here, a constantly tenuous relationship with computers) this is a comfort. I was so motivated by a rush to get my foundations down by the time I was thirty, because the capitalist culture I'm steeped in says that's my deadline.

I had it ingrained that my teenage or twenty-something years were the time to plant the seeds, and it's all downhill after that. Besides the wisdom shared on the contrary (both in these comments and elsewhere), dipping this wisdom in research I didn't know about before empowered me further.

I appreciate that Paul adds a bit about how our focus doesn't often become clear until we're older, that our childhoods tend to distill topics in ways that can initially bland them to our taste. Nevertheless, I want to stress that you've got a lot more time to do something to your best ability. Even as you age beyond sixty or seventy, I've seen so many folks brush off the bit of extra physical or mental challenge that they face, and do great things anyway.

Your twenties won't make or break you. You have so much more time.

Re: How to Work Hard

#479

Post by zz865 »

Does PG ever spend time with his children? I always feel I should be working harder which makes spending time with family difficult.

Re: How to Work Hard

#480

Post by mjfl »

RhodoGSA wrote: post #449
mjfl wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 trave…

“no one has the answers”

“Life is really easy in actuality”

“Yes, I do read a books first 10 pages and stop reading it.”

Yeah we know you do buddy.

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