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Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

nautil.us

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Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#71

Post by finid »

The rest of the time, they were hiking mountains, taking naps, going on walks with friends, or just sitting and thinking. Their creativity and productivity, in other words, were not the result of endless hours of toil. Their towering creative achievements result from modest “working” hours.

If Darwin spent most of his time "hiking mountains... or just sitting and thinking", guess what he was actually doing? Yep, he was studying, and working. Just because he was not hunched over a table or a microscope does not mean he was not studying.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#72

Post by Cyph0n »

erkkie wrote: post #63
Cyph0n wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a valid strategy when you end up learning as much as a person not cheating. But in general, this is not the case because students see cheating as an alternative to hard work.

You can also learn a ton about how to bend rules when cheating, something that's often useful out in the real world. I feel like half of what I learned in school was how to be better at avoiding doing things (including cheating, when applicable). There's various ways to go about morals in general but "following the rules" in itself is not a good basis for morality.

Not sure about you, but my university was very strict with cheaters because of how widespread cheating was. Gaining an extra 10 points on tough exam wasn't worth the risk of expulsion. I suppose that deciding whether to cheat or not is an optimization problem in and of itself. If no one else is cheating, the gains are huge, but if there are a lot of cheaters, it might not end up being worth the risk.

Actually, there never was a time where I felt that cheating was worth it. On the contrary, the amount of time I'd need to prepare a strategy (compile cheat sheet, figure out how to use it, where to sit, etc.) probably exceeded the time I'd take to just study for the exam!

I agree, always following the rules isn't beneficial to society, but I'd argue it's better than the case where no one is following the rules.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#73

Post by xiaoma »

gammarator wrote: post #55
xiaoma wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Lookup Musk on Wikipedia and you'll find that he has a BSc. only, and he started a PhD only to quit after a few weeks to pursue his business endeavors." Three of the most important scientific papers in modern history—uncovering the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion and the special theory of relativity—were written about a hundred years ago by a man who could only sign them "Mr." when first writing them. About…

A hundred years ago you could reach the frontier in theoretical physics without a decade of intensive study. That's no longer true.

Regardless of the century, the credential is not the defining characteristic of science.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#74

Post by CuriouslyC »

DannyB2 wrote: post #17

If their job was, say, picking cotton, then the hours they spent at work would directly correlate to their work output. So what is the difference? Maybe scientists are still thinking about difficult problems when they are away from work. Like when they are sitting in their porch swing with nobody else around to distract.

Being creative is like tending a garden. Ideas grow on their own, and all you can really do is prepare the environment to facilitate this growth. You do this by clearly defining the problem, fertilizing your mind with inspiration, and revisiting the problem periodically to keep it present. From there, you need to relax and let your brain do its thing. Actively thinking/concentrating actually inhibits brain activity in much of your brain to prevent interference, and the brain areas inhibited are usually the ones that make creative jumps. The rational networks of the brain should only be engaged to sanity check/refine creative ideas.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#75

Post by kamaal »

Teslas and Edisons did insane work hours most people would consider suicide these days.

In my experience these are largely a function of volume, quantity and relationship with your work. Most managers I know can get by even 2-3 hours of work/day. This is true because the work is largely meta- Delegating, tracking things et al.

If you are involved in your work at a lot more micro level, then the speed of the project is the function of your involvement with the project.

This fantasy of achieving extra ordinary things doing just 5 hours of work/day is largely a millennial thing. As a Indian millennial myself, I find this attitude sick. Our fathers used to largely look these things as 'opportunity'.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#76

Post by wainstead »

inputcoffee wrote: post #65
wainstead wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some data I suggest the following books, if the subject interests you: "Peak: Secrets From The New Science of Expertise" "Deep Work" "A Mind for Numbers" All are pretty engaging reads!

Okay, before I read them, are you saying that these books contain evidence for the rather startling thesis that hours of labor are not required for achievement? Because if they are just laying out what you need to succeed (focused practice, immediate feedback, elemental skills or whatever the current theory might be) then, although valuable, it doesn't speak to the matter at hand.

> hours of labor are not required for achievement?

Well, you need to put in something like 3-8 hours per day, certainly. But it's been documented over and over that 60+ hours a week does not increase your productivity.

Each book does contain evidence for its claims based on research. Perhaps "Deep Work" is more anecdotal than the others, but Cal is up-front about this.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#78

Post by arcanus »

finid wrote: post #71

The rest of the time, they were hiking mountains, taking naps, going on walks with friends, or just sitting and thinking. Their creativity and productivity, in other words, were not the result of endless hours of toil. Their towering creative achievements result from modest “working” hours. If Darwin spent most of his time "hiking mountains... or just sitting and thinking", guess what he was actually doing? Yep, he w…

^ this. My best cited paper came to me while summiting a 14er in Colorado.

Did actually generating the results take long hours and serious work? Of course. But the idea required freeform thought and subconscious mulling.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#79

Post by CuriouslyC »

xiaoma wrote: post #54
amelius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people are not scientists. Lookup Musk on Wikipedia and you'll find that he has a BSc. only, and he started a PhD only to quit after a few weeks to pursue his business endeavors. Jobs dropped out of University. And Gates is probably closest to a scientist, although I'm not aware of any research by him.

> "Lookup Musk on Wikipedia and you'll find that he has a BSc. only, and he started a PhD only to quit after a few weeks to pursue his business endeavors." Three of the most important scientific papers in modern history—uncovering the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion and the special theory of relativity—were written about a hundred years ago by a man who could only sign them "Mr." when first writing them. About…

Yep, over-reliance on rationality, overspecialization and dogmatic thinking are huge problems with the current academic landscape. Faraday and young Einstein thought about problems in a fundamentally different way. In fact, when Einstein became firmly entrenched in the establishment and started approaching everything from the math first perspective, he failed to make further progress.

Another interesting anecdote is that on the crowd sourcing platform innocentive, the majority of problems (which have stumped fortune 500 R&D departments) are solved by people outside the domain of the problem.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#80

Post by arcanus »

xiaoma wrote: post #73
gammarator wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hundred years ago you could reach the frontier in theoretical physics without a decade of intensive study. That's no longer true.

Regardless of the century, the credential is not the defining characteristic of science.

That's not why anyone gets a PhD. The training is designed to teach you research. Unlike any other schooling, the degree has little class work.

The PhD is essentially an apprenticeship to a practicing scientist.

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