Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Work Hard

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 1001 posts

Re: How to Work Hard

#511

Post by tylerscott »

helen___keller wrote: post #162

When 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…

> Years later, having tackled anxiety problems that had plagued me most of my life, I came to recognize that my relationship with hard work during my college years was not healthy and that this deep seated desire to do more work is not a positive thing, at least not for me.

This resonates with me.

I would often try to outwork depression, anxiety, grief...basically any difficult emotion. Work was my coping mechanism and all external signals were positive about that--i.e., "he's a real go-getter." The pathology of all this became apparent after, well, becoming a parent.

Fast forward to now, I still sometimes struggle with those "alarm bells" but for the most part I can solidly state that I am not defined solely by my productivity. Contentment is an active practice, I suppose.

Re: How to Work Hard

#512

Post by Joeri »

pydry wrote: post #438
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…

Bill Gates wants to be the hero of his own story. He's not going to claim that his success was the result of a few bets that paid off in spectacular fashion, strongarming OEMs and mommy being buddies with the CEO of IBM. It's going to be hard work, spectacular insight, old fashioned grit, persistence in the face of adversity, etc. - all the things Hollywood slavishly worships with either a clichéd montage or a poigna…

Well, who doesn’t want to be seen as the hero in their own story?

What I suspect is that it’s a case of “all of the above”. Yes, gates got lucky, but he was also talented, and he worked hard. To be an outlier you have to defy the odds, and luck, talent and grit are different ways of defying.

Re: How to Work Hard

#513

Post by didibus »

I hate this obsession with "hard work".

"hard" is a weasel word, it means nothing concrete, it's not quantifiable, and even as a quality it's unclear, what is the emotional feeling attached to it?

"work" has two meanings:

1. activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result

2. a task or tasks to be undertaken; something a person or thing has to do

So what are we even talking about when we say "hard work"?

If you take the first definition, adding the "hard" qualifier makes no difference, because what makes an activity "hard" is that it requires mental and/or physical effort to accomplish. So in that sense, work is inherently effortful, and thus "hard". Maybe what people mean when they say "hard work" is sustained effort exertion?

If you take the second it makes more sense, but then it would imply that "hard work" is about the choice of task you undertake. If you choose to do harder tasks, you'd be "hard working". The issue here though is that it's not clear what makes a task "hard". I think the risk of failure is possibly the best way to qualify it here. If you're likely to fail the task, it is thus "hard" to you. But is that really what people mean when they evangelize "hard work"? To always work on tasks you are likely to fail at?

Since PG's example was how Bill Gates took no vacation in 10 years, I'll conclude that he's trying to suggests that "hard work" means have a "high rate of work per week".

So he seem to imply "hard work" is when most of your week is spent exerting mental or physical effort towards a result or purpose.

And that's where I hate the framing of "hard work", it's just "work", adding "hard" is just a pretentious qualifier.

P.S.: I really doubt Bill Gates success is attributable to not taking 15 days of time off per year for 10 years. That is not a lot of time, maybe if he worked 80 hours week, but as research shows, real physical and mental effort is unsustainable beyond some level, and rest is needed.

Re: How to Work Hard

#514

Post by dimitrios1 »

> how to work toward goals that are neither clearly defined nor externally imposed.

This is the crux of the entire article, in my opinion. Still haven't figured this out after all these years.

How?

Re: How to Work Hard

#515

Post by tylerscott »

iancmceachern wrote: post #486
nonbirithm wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same. I can hardly sit through an entire two-hour movie or play a video game without feeling like I should be doing something else. I cannot feel good about myself if I cannot sense that I'm making progress learning a skill, and am stuck for hours looking down at a blank page as a result. But what's dangerous for me is that this alarm system does not trigger consistently. I might spend too much time on HN,…

Me too. I've been actively working to do the opposite. To build my outside of work life, give it priority and give myself the permission to have it be the main focus of life and stop running from the bear all the time.

Same. I love the phrase "give myself the permission." That's probably the best way I've ever read to express that feeling.

Re: How to Work Hard

#516

Post by bradlys »

csomar wrote: post #484
bradlys wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can do both. The thing is, you can backpack 1 month per year and still work really HARD for 11 months of the year. 1 month is enough to visit 3-4 countries, and have 20 something night out. Over 15 years, that's over 300 night out. Way too much. And you still worked very hard for most of your youth. Wat. 300 nights over 15 years is way too much ? That is utterly insane to me. That means on average, you only wen…

> Wat. 300 nights over 15 years is way too much? That is utterly insane to me. That means on average, you only went out 1 night every 2 weeks. If you had kids, I'd understand but for someone in their youth - that is nearly shut-in status. I think we need to agree on what's a night out. If you come back at home around 3AM and sleep at 5AM; I find it hard that you can work the next morning and keep at it everyday. It's…

This might be a bit of a niche version of a night out that might only fit well with Berlin. I was usually out for 3-6 hours/day (go out around 7-9PM, come home 12-2AM). Varied on how much I enjoyed what I was doing wildly. Not every night out was great but neither was every night out when I'm traveling either. (Nor is every night memorable)

If you do things enough - the memories aren't likely to last. Things that are novel are what create memories. For you - you were visiting countries and seeing things you'd never seen. Unrealistic for regular 9-5 life. Doesn't mean that you still can't have a good time in a non-novel thing though. I had plenty of good nights that I don't really remember but I enjoyed them still.

Travel enough - and you might find out... the novelty wears off there too.

But novelty shouldn't be the only pursuit in life.

Re: How to Work Hard

#518

Post by rustyboy »

nonbirithm wrote: post #414
helen___keller wrote: post #162

When 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…

I feel the same. I can hardly sit through an entire two-hour movie or play a video game without feeling like I should be doing something else. I cannot feel good about myself if I cannot sense that I'm making progress learning a skill, and am stuck for hours looking down at a blank page as a result. But what's dangerous for me is that this alarm system does not trigger consistently. I might spend too much time on HN,…

Your description here, and others, eerily match my own angst with 'being productive'. As someone who has spent covid traveling the States in an RV i've come to realize that I don't know what I really like doing that's not work (for example I enjoy, but have no deep passion for, outdoors recreation). Instead I spend hours aggressively reading and writing reviews on books because that feeling, 'being productive' is the only somewhat satisfying feeling in my life.

Have you had any luck adjusting your thinking or finding other joys in life?

Re: How to Work Hard

#519

Post by coldtea »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #84
giantg2 wrote: post #44

Hard 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…

> If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in their 20s that they would be millionaires or billionaires Billionaire isn’t a realistic goal, but millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now. It doesn’t even require a FAANG job or living in a super expensive city any more, just wise job selection, a reasonable amount of financial savvy and budget adhere…

>Billionaire isn’t a realistic goal, but millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now.

In some bubble yes. There are 10s of millions of software developers in the world, and hardly 1% of them is any kind of millionaire...

Re: How to Work Hard

#520

Post by eloff »

dang wrote: post #452
pornel wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg runs a business that depends on young people wanting to work their asses off for startups. IMHO the real "why" of this article is attracting the right people for Y Combinator.

pg hasn't been running Y Combinator for over 7 years! You've got your causality reversed. It's not that this essay exists because of YC, it's that YC exists because PG is obsessed with the idea of doing great work. (There are other reasons too, of course, but that was one vector.) He was that way long before YC.

This is clearly true looking from the outside, but people seem so eager to attribute motivations to greed or self interest, and success to luck, inherited wealth, and connections for any famous and successful person.

Is it just jealously and pettiness? Do people downplay the achievements of others to make themselves feel better about achieving nothing remarkable?

There is a rarely used English word I learned for the first time the other day - compersion - which is the opposite of jealousy. When you take joy in other people's success. Let's do more of that as a community and as human beings.

Post reply on HN