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Work Hard (2007)

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Re: Work Hard (2007)

#61

Post by PragmaticPulp »

herodoturtle wrote: post #4

> there is an important distinction between “working hard” and “maximising the number of hours during which one works”. In particular, forcing oneself to work even when one is tired, unmotivated, unprepared, or distracted with other tasks can end up being counterproductive to one’s long-term work productivity, and there is a saturation point beyond which pushing oneself to work even longer will actually reduce the to…

Great point. I like to compare work capacity to exercise capacity. Too much exercise will actually harm your fitness rather than improve it. However, reasonable exertions, combined with appropriate rest, will improve your fitness over time.

Like exercise capacity, one's ability to work hard can also be improved through practice. This doesn't mean pulling all-nighters and chugging caffeine to override the sleepiness, though. It means setting incremental goals to try a little bit harder and then following up with proper rest and recovery.

For example, if you install time tracking software and measure that you spend 3 hours in your code editor every day (a reasonable amount for someone working an 8-hour day, due to time spent reading documentation, in meetings, and other activities), it would be a mistake to set a goal to spend 6 hours in your code editor. You'll get burned out and hate it.

However, if you set a goal to spend 3.5 hours in your code editor every day, you can likely find low-impact ways to make that happen. Maybe you're more efficient with transitioning from meetings back to coding. Or maybe you cut down time spent reading articles on HN or Twitter by 30 minutes and apply it to coding instead.

Over the course of a 5-day work week, that extra 30 minutes per day adds up to almost 3 hours extra work. If your starting point was 3 hours per day, you've basically added an extra work day to your week without giving up much.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#62

Post by didibus »

giantg2 wrote: post #25

It's probably good advice, and maybe my dissent is just due to my burn out, but... I'm tired of hearing "work hard". Very often, working hard does not lead to success. It sure as shit didn't work out that way for me. There are many people who do not work hard and make tons of money in things like NFT, crypto, securities, office politics, scams, etc. It seems like luck is the shared variable... of which I have none.

Bingo!

It's been a while since I looked into it, but last time I checked, I couldn't find any evidence behind "hard work".

This article kind of sums it up: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-success-come...

> If you wake up in the morning full of vim and vigor, bounding out the door and into the world to take your shot, you didn't choose to be that way

Your coworkers that come into work early ready to crush through the workload in anticipation, and when the day is over, can't find the will to stop working, because frankly there is nothing outside their work that they are more passionate and excited about so they keep working. Well they are not finding it hard to do so, it's the opposite in fact, they'll find it hard to not work and do other things.

In your case, I think the conclusion is important as well:

> What if you've been unlucky in life? There should be consolation in the fact that studies show that what is important in the long run is not success so much as living a meaningful life. And that is the result of having family and friends, setting long-range goals, meeting challenges with courage and conviction, and being true to yourself.

Success is overated, and I've known people where success actually hid a deeper loss of enjoying life without self-judgement and constant comparison to others.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#63

Post by zqna »

markus_zhang wrote: post #32
TameAntelope wrote: post #24

I've held for a long time that you must know the rules quite well before you're "allowed" to break them, and I think this reinforces my opinion on that. Additionally, I think the obsession over "intelligence" and "natural ability" is vastly overstated, in general. It absolutely helps, and it compounds, to be smart, but a person who "works hard" is infinitely more valuable to their colleagues than a smart person who d…

It really depends on what you define as natural abilities. The ability to work hard for 12 hours without break every day IMHO is as "natural" as having a good IQ.

One attribute of having "high IQ" is being able to understand the vanity of working "hard".

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#64

Post by hellbannedguy »

bserge wrote: post #31

On a related note, this always trickles down to low level managers who then proceed to tell it to the floor workers. Trying to motivate a cleaner, assembly operative, driver, cashier, warehouse operative, packer and other low level workers with it is like telling them to go fuck themselves. It sounds like bullshit. It is bullshit. No one fucking loves these jobs. There's nothing to aspire to. Working hard means just…

You would think the average HN'er wouldn't fall for it, but they do.

The rich have been telling the poor how to live their lives forever.

Jesus being the exception. (He wasen't rich)

I only get offended by wealthy boys giving their midlife, or old age, success speech

Or, thinking they can advise on art, philosophy, or writing, because they have a mouthpiece.

Every one of them leaves out the emphatic wealthy father who knows how difficult it is to make it big in a very competitstive system.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#65

Post by a9h74j »

albatross13 wrote: post #35
TameAntelope wrote: post #24

I've held for a long time that you must know the rules quite well before you're "allowed" to break them, and I think this reinforces my opinion on that. Additionally, I think the obsession over "intelligence" and "natural ability" is vastly overstated, in general. It absolutely helps, and it compounds, to be smart, but a person who "works hard" is infinitely more valuable to their colleagues than a smart person who d…

It's kind of a double edged sword- I've worked with a few people that "work hard" and "get things done", only to find out once they leave (or go on vacation) that now we have to untangle a 600 line bash script that's integral to production. I'm being a bit hyperbolic here, but the gist of my point is: not everyone who works hard is worth keeping around, especially if their hard work leads to an un-managable mess in t…

Why not rotate their assignments as a matter of policy. They might do a deep dive and fix something no one bothers to fix on a similar assignment. But then it is due dilligence to have another look at their work. I know this sounds theoretical compared to practice, but it seems to be on the level of separating conceptual or design breakthoughs from production-izing code.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#66

Post by travisjungroth »

542458 wrote: post #43
paulpauper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, I think the obsession over "intelligence" and "natural ability" is vastly overstated, in general. It absolutely helps, and it compounds, to be smart, but a person who "works hard" is infinitely more valuable to their colleagues than a smart person who doesn't, and tries to rely on raw intellect. That may be true for something like digging a ditch, but IQ is needed to make those necessary logical leaps f…

So, so little of most people’s work is deep abstract thought like that. I used to have this research assistant - she was from an entirely unrelated arts major, and was a bit… well, let’s say not terribly book-smart (which she was very upfront about). We ended up with her due to some last minute issues with other candidates. But holy smokes could she ever focus. She could sit down for hours and hours and process way m…

Outlier strengths in one area can make up for weaknesses in others. She had extreme focus, which pushed her past where her intelligence would normally go. Imagine if she had great focus and great intelligence.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#67

Post by didibus »

spoonjim wrote: post #30
giantg2 wrote: post #25

It's probably good advice, and maybe my dissent is just due to my burn out, but... I'm tired of hearing "work hard". Very often, working hard does not lead to success. It sure as shit didn't work out that way for me. There are many people who do not work hard and make tons of money in things like NFT, crypto, securities, office politics, scams, etc. It seems like luck is the shared variable... of which I have none.

His advice isn’t for how to get rich in crypto, it’s for how to succeed in academic mathematics. I can’t imagine that anyone has ever “lucked” their way into that.

Nowadays people extend luck to include:

- Your genetics - Your intrinsic abilities - Your intrinsic tastes - Your parents - The teachers you had - The time you were born in - The environment you were born in - Etc.

So for example for mathematics you'd assume you need some predisposed genetics, you need some good education towards it, access to books and material, you need to be someone who loves doing math, you need to be in a position to have the time to dedicate to math (so access to food, shelter, etc.)

Since all these things are out of your control, the question becomes, what if you bad lucked in all of them, can you still, through sheer hard work, make a valuable contributions to the field of mathematics (and not by luck of hitting your head, or stumbling randomly on a key fact), but simply from your constant effort towards it?

But I'd say I think the author presupposes you've been mostly lucky already, and is talking about how to go beyond that luck, and achieve even more gains with what you do have control over.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#68

Post by jonas21 »

snakeboy wrote: post #5

Off-topic, but why is it that Terry Tao's blog attracts such low-quality comments? When I look at SSC/ACX, Shtetl-Optimized, Marginal Revolution, etc. the comments are mostly constructive, engaged, and well-informed. With Tao, it's a huge proportion of random people asking for generic life advice, or fanboy-ism. This seems counter-intuitive, because Tao's blog is by far the least accessible of those above 3 blogs on…

All blogs attract low-quality comments. Whether you see them is a function of how much effort is put into moderation. I'm just speculating, but Terry Tao probably has better things to do with his time.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#69

Post by toomuchtodo »

zqna wrote: post #63
markus_zhang wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on what you define as natural abilities. The ability to work hard for 12 hours without break every day IMHO is as "natural" as having a good IQ.

One attribute of having "high IQ" is being able to understand the vanity of working "hard".

There is a line between IQ and wisdom, and wisdom is learned through experience and time.

Re: Work Hard (2007)

#70

Post by golemiprague »

giantg2 wrote: post #25

It's probably good advice, and maybe my dissent is just due to my burn out, but... I'm tired of hearing "work hard". Very often, working hard does not lead to success. It sure as shit didn't work out that way for me. There are many people who do not work hard and make tons of money in things like NFT, crypto, securities, office politics, scams, etc. It seems like luck is the shared variable... of which I have none.

It is luck but also having high IQ or high level of conscientiousness. Those people usually have other capabilities, ability to act fast, good social skills, risk taking or whatever else that cause them to succeed. Some of those factors can be learned and improved.
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