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How to Work Hard
61–70 of 1001 posts
Re: How to Work Hard
#62The true ah-ha moment comes when you finally realize how much bullshit this is. "Hard work" is the mantra that keeps you a slave. "Success stories" are the tasty carrots that keep you toiling away your best years enriching others in pursuit of the things you're supposed to seek in life: Power, success, status. "Life hacks" are little dopamine hits to keep your eye on the carrot. And the kicker is that those few who a…
The thing he doesn't mention is all the people burned out by 35, with the best years of their life behind them, coping with deep and lasting psychological damage that will affect them for the rest of their lives, and nothing to show for it (except, if you're lucky, a bit more money).
well clearly they just didn't work hard enough!
Re: How to Work Hard
#63The true ah-ha moment comes when you finally realize how much bullshit this is. "Hard work" is the mantra that keeps you a slave. "Success stories" are the tasty carrots that keep you toiling away your best years enriching others in pursuit of the things you're supposed to seek in life: Power, success, status. "Life hacks" are little dopamine hits to keep your eye on the carrot. And the kicker is that those few who a…
I wholeheartedly agree with this.
Re: How to Work Hard
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing he doesn't mention is all the people burned out by 35, with the best years of their life behind them, coping with deep and lasting psychological damage that will affect them for the rest of their lives, and nothing to show for it (except, if you're lucky, a bit more money).
well clearly they just didn't work hard enough!
The fetishisation of work does seem to largely come from people with enough money that they and at least several generations of their progeny will never need to do it.
Re: How to Work Hard
#65> There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard. I'd like to add that it is more than fine to not do great work. If you like to spend a lot of time with your kids and tend to your vegetable patch, by all means only t…
PG never said you should maximize for great work. The essay is about "how to work hard", not "work hard is the only purpose of your life". You are missing the point here.
In addition, you mistakenly exclude great work / achievement from happiness. Spending time with your kids is great, tending your vegetable patch is great, doing great work is also great. Life is not a single purpose process. Happiness is not a single threat process either.
Currently all the critics on the essay are terrible, but you are better at least know to keep it civil.
Re: How to Work Hard
#66>>There wasn't a single point when I learned this. Like most little kids, I enjoyed the feeling of achievement when I learned or did something new. As I grew older, this morphed into a feeling of disgust when I wasn't achieving anything. The one precisely dateable landmark I have is when I stopped watching TV, at age 13. I wouldn’t dare question Paul Graham’s accomplishments, but I’ve always found it odd that some pe…
It's an empirical regularity, dude.
It's probably due to hidden third causes (the kind of personality + circumstance + challenges that cause people to abstain from TV are the same that cause this and that positive outcome), but it's there, at least according to lots of anecdata in this very same thread.
Re: How to Work Hard
#67The true ah-ha moment comes when you finally realize how much bullshit this is. "Hard work" is the mantra that keeps you a slave. "Success stories" are the tasty carrots that keep you toiling away your best years enriching others in pursuit of the things you're supposed to seek in life: Power, success, status. "Life hacks" are little dopamine hits to keep your eye on the carrot. And the kicker is that those few who a…
Everyone around me that has wealth built it up from simply talking and connecting with people. Going out for golf and drinks where people tend to let their guard down and just enjoy themselves allows people to build trust. This would, in my opinion, truly define their success as luck. I will outwork them, out hustle them, learn things and do things yet I am a whole Everest beneath them with wealth. But they will stri…
Imagine knowing someone in 2009 who could get you in early on uber or airbnb. or in 2006 get you in on Facebook. you need to know the right people, combined with luck (choosing to invest in uber isntead of quora) and some risk taking.
Re: How to Work Hard
#68Doesn't this sound shit though? If Bill Gates is so smart why did he have to work so much? Did he like coding and management more than days off? If a life of hard work is needed to get you into heaven that's fine. Or if anything less would mean you and your dependants going hungry. But once your basic needs are met then it's irrational not to start spending time on all of the other things that life has to offer. I fe…
He probably didn't treat those as "work" as we laymen understand. We just work for bread and butter and most of the time workis kind of boring. But if you happen to work for yourself or enjoy your work for whatever the reason, you don't treat it as "work" and it's all about achieving the maximum happiness as you can. I expereinced this a few times in my life and I never regretted about working hard on it. Why would I…
This is it. When you’re working on things you love, it’s hard, and can be lots of hours, but it doesn’t feel like work.
Speaking from my own experience of founding a startup. There are also times it was absolutely miserable. But it’s true: I wasn’t beholden to my VCs or angels. I could have quit. I just enjoyed the work so much, so deeply, that I didn’t want to quit.
The challenge was not burning out: I needed to take more vacation, because it not feeling like work didn’t mean it wasn’t, still, hard work which people need a respite from.
Re: How to Work Hard
#69The true ah-ha moment comes when you finally realize how much bullshit this is. "Hard work" is the mantra that keeps you a slave. "Success stories" are the tasty carrots that keep you toiling away your best years enriching others in pursuit of the things you're supposed to seek in life: Power, success, status. "Life hacks" are little dopamine hits to keep your eye on the carrot. And the kicker is that those few who a…
The thing he doesn't mention is all the people burned out by 35, with the best years of their life behind them, coping with deep and lasting psychological damage that will affect them for the rest of their lives, and nothing to show for it (except, if you're lucky, a bit more money).
The thing he doesn't mention is all the people burned out by 35
The business model of his company is built on the backs of those people. The more of those people he can attract, the richer he becomes (to a first approximation)
Re: How to Work Hard
#70Working hard is relatively easier if you care about the work.