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

711–720 of 1001 posts

Re: How to Work Hard

#711

Post by sjg007 »

rustyboy wrote: post #518
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,…

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…

Have you tried volunteering?

Re: How to Work Hard

#712

Post by moosey »

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…

There is widespread statistical evidence that wealth is gained through luck. I imagine though that every billionaire thinks they are the one that got there through hard work.

Re: How to Work Hard

#713

Post by CheezeIt »

rgifford wrote: post #690

I worked my way through college as a mover (and came out the other side with high 5-figure debt). Many of the older guys I worked with had drug habits. I worked 16-hour days with those guys. They'd get on me for not running up stairs, for packing with too little paper around glass, for setting things down more than once. None wrote articles entitled "How to Work Hard." None knew Warren Buffet as a child (see Gates).…

It isn’t, obviously, because look at the example of Bill Gates: starting a business as a 20-year-old college dropout puts you at a big disadvantage compared to people with more life experience.

Re: How to Work Hard

#714

Post by Aerroon »

Is the ability to work hard also a "talent"?

ADHD seems like it impairs most of the (useful) hard work somebody could dedicate themselves to. Could there also be a scale of this that's unrelated to ADHD?

Re: How to Work Hard

#715

Post by ipnon »

rgifford wrote: post #690

I worked my way through college as a mover (and came out the other side with high 5-figure debt). Many of the older guys I worked with had drug habits. I worked 16-hour days with those guys. They'd get on me for not running up stairs, for packing with too little paper around glass, for setting things down more than once. None wrote articles entitled "How to Work Hard." None knew Warren Buffet as a child (see Gates).…

Not all hardworking and talented people become successful, but all successful people are talented and hardworking. Some people are born with better chances than others, but we should strive to make a society where at least most people are born with a good chance.

Re: How to Work Hard

#716

Post by balfirevic »

fchu wrote: post #272

There is something fascinating about this article, and it's not the tips about how to properly work hard, which aren't new or particularly insightful (otherwise reasonable and well summarized). It's the fact that throughout the article, hard work is an implied imperative in life, the main thing to do (otherwise it brings a "feeling of disgust"), without questioning if that's healthy, right, or so absolute. Maybe inst…

> It's the fact that throughout the article, hard work is an implied imperative in life

That would be strange, as PG doesn't seem to believe that: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1404321931491430403

Re: How to Work Hard

#717

Post by abhinavsharma »

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…

Having been through CMU and YC, I think while this piece makes sense for the average person, for someone who's been to CMU it's very easy to read this with a re-traumatizing reaction of stop-glorifying-working-to-the-bone.

CMU and YC were maybe the 2 hardest working environments I've been in, but CMU SCS was just plain more hours of staying awake, more implicit peer pressure, less mature peer support systems (mostly from being younger) in the median case of a class/batch.

You can get by (with a huge cost, as evidenced by the semi-regularity of suicide when I was there) with that intensity solving finite problems in semesters that come to an end but not tempering that attitude and knowing when to take strategic breaks in the infinite game that business is can really do harm.

CMU is a weird place, the kids that get in are very smart but often have their inferiority complex relative to say MIT or Stanford, which coupled with the uncompromising academics makes them work insanely, often unsustainably hard. I loved it there, but I'm very glad I had a training in balance going in.

Re: How to Work Hard

#718

Post by luffapi »

eloff wrote: post #520
dang wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s not clearly true at all. Please tell me what was “great” about Viaweb (how pg got where he is today). It was literally about being at the right place at the right time. I think you’d also be hard pressed to find someone who would call Arc great.

> Is it just jealously and pettiness?

It’s neither, it’s people seeing who gets rewarded, how and why.

Re: How to Work Hard

#719

Post by abhinavsharma »

abhinavsharma wrote: post #717
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…

Having been through CMU and YC, I think while this piece makes sense for the average person, for someone who's been to CMU it's very easy to read this with a re-traumatizing reaction of stop-glorifying-working-to-the-bone. CMU and YC were maybe the 2 hardest working environments I've been in, but CMU SCS was just plain more hours of staying awake, more implicit peer pressure, less mature peer support systems (mostly…

I also bet that anyone who went to CMU will read this essay and go "duh, why did he spent this much time writing this obvious stuff"

Re: How to Work Hard

#720

Post by kentosi »

swman wrote: post #625
bachmeier wrote: post #498

> It was similar with Lionel Messi. He had great natural ability, but when his youth coaches talk about him, what they remember is not his talent but his dedication and his desire to win. I can assure you, there are many kids that practice harder than Messi did when he was young. He is not a great player because of hard work, he is a great player because of luck. I know the VC thing about the importance of hard work.…

Okay, but nobody is going to become anywhere close to Messi without working hard. That's the point. Do you think someone could become Messi by putting in barely any practice or effort? You might get into a team, but you won't be a Messi lol. Be honest with yourself. Obviously luck plays a role, but most people (>90% I'll bet) who are successful in the end get there due to hard work. I could sit on my butt and do noth…

The parent's comment wan't implying that luck was everything, but to point out that luck is also an important factor.

> There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort.

And luck, Paul. Don't forget luck.

Hard work is only sustainable when you occasionally get that carrot at the end of the stick, before moving onto the next bit of hard work.

Post reply on HN