Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by asafira » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 3:34 PM UTC

YCode wrote: post #7

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified. You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day…

As a PhD, I want to give a word of caution: Classes in school are really almost nothing like doing research (or taking on any large, difficult project). I still take some here and there personally, but the main idea in this article isn't about finding a optimum point on the grade vs. effort plot (I totally agree with your assessment though!).

I'm not sure I buy the "you get diminishing returns for working harder" in general --- yes, you can absolutely burn out, but you could also just do amazing things if you work really hard. Sometimes there are diminishing returns (like the A vs A+ in school), and sometimes there aren't.

The most important thing is that progress can be made even if you want to work at a more leisurely pace on difficult problems. And, of course, that's far less likely to burn you out.

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

#82

Post by differentView » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 3:34 PM UTC

YCode wrote: post #7

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified. You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day…

Ah, the old "What do they call the person who graduates last in medical school?"

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

#83

Post by kamaal » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 3:37 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #74

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 i…

Not exactly:

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." - Sun Tzu

One way to have good ideas is to have a lot of them and then filter.

Even in highly creative endeavors like say music and painting, volume of work largely matters. You have to spend a lot of time(years) doing a lot of work before you get anywhere close to good.

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

#84

Post by Afton » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 3:37 PM UTC

cgriswald wrote: post #60

YCode wrote: post #7

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified. You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day…

I agree about school. I see people constantly trying to use pattern matching and memorization to pass tests; always doing extra credit; putting too much effort into minor things; and exacerbating all of these problems by taking too many units in an effort to get out early. I don't know how they're not already burnt out. Meanwhile I never specifically study for a test. I've just studied regularly every day, thought ab…

You're point about the wrong impact is spot on.

I have a gift of getting good grades. I know what things will be on the test, I know how to answer questions so that I leave enough wiggle room to avoid exposing ignorance on a topic, and I know how to structure an answer to get partial credit if I really don't know how to answer a question. My GPA in my first undergraduate class was essentially all A+s (curse you intro to the philosophy of language!).

For my second undergraduate degree, I just flat out rejected that approach. I exposed my ignorance where possible (and typically as early as possible rather than on the final exam). What was surprising was how little impact this had on my grades. Some, but not much, and I learned a lot more. Now I try to pass that on to my kids, but the structure of school is such that everything in that system is oriented towards the wrong goal.

Really pushes me in the direction of homeschooling, I have to say.

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

#85

Post by wl » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 3:38 PM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #72

erkkie wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Virtually all my classes in college allowed me to have cheat sheets of varying sizes for exams. Creating that cheat sheet was a good way to focus my studying, to the point where I rarely had to use the cheat sheet.

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

#86

Post by drdeadringer » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 3:41 PM UTC

cgriswald wrote: post #60

YCode wrote: post #7

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified. You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day…

I agree about school. I see people constantly trying to use pattern matching and memorization to pass tests; always doing extra credit; putting too much effort into minor things; and exacerbating all of these problems by taking too many units in an effort to get out early. I don't know how they're not already burnt out. Meanwhile I never specifically study for a test. I've just studied regularly every day, thought ab…

I had classmates who studied themselves into the wrong side of the emergency room. Some were proud of it. I couldn't understand. I liked things like my health and sleep.

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

#87

Post by wl » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

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…

Einstein finished his doctorate in 1905. He certainly was entitled to be prefixed "Dr." in 1906.

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

#88

Post by criddell » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

differentView wrote: post #82

YCode wrote: post #7

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified. You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day…

Ah, the old "What do they call the person who graduates last in medical school?"

Aren't most medical schools just pass/fail these days? They don't actually give grades or rank students, do they?

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

#89

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 3:45 PM UTC

jartelt wrote: post #59

smokeyj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose because it's so easily quantified. I wonder what's being quantified.. intelligence or obedience. This would be like rating a strong-man competition by how much time was spent in the gym and how much unnecessary pain was self-inflicted. It's like there's a culture of "pain enthusiasts". They do things like talk about running until it hurts, they tend to get injured often, and of course they have nothing to…

Given that students are almost always graded on how well they do on assignments/exams rather than how long they studied, your strong-man competition analogy doesn't make much sense.

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by linkregister » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 3:46 PM UTC

cgriswald wrote: post #60

YCode wrote: post #7

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified. You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day…

I agree about school. I see people constantly trying to use pattern matching and memorization to pass tests; always doing extra credit; putting too much effort into minor things; and exacerbating all of these problems by taking too many units in an effort to get out early. I don't know how they're not already burnt out. Meanwhile I never specifically study for a test. I've just studied regularly every day, thought ab…

I congratulate you on your innate talent that allows you to excel that way.

In various subjects, particularly abstract mathematics, I had to grind heavily in order to keep up with the class. I attended every office hours and pattern matched heavily, studying into the wee hours. (I had tried your method and failed in previous semesters).

Other subjects I had no problem. Low-level operating systems, writing, literary deconstruction, chemistry, foreign languages, statistics: I had no issues studying a reasonable amount and having a good work-life balance.

Eventually I realized that I was never grokking things with mathematics beyond a certain point. I was in office hours with the professor, asking how I could generalize the concept to a new problem. He said "just use your critical thinking skills! That's what employers are looking for." I truly didn't have the ingenuity to do it. I really wanted to be good at it, but I knew I never would be.

I think you are forgetting about the areas in your life that you don't excel at, that you couldn't be good at no matter how hard you tried. Some people genuinely have to grind at some things in order to succeed. For me, it allowed me to realize that no matter how beneficial it would be to have a Math minor, it wasn't going to happen. I spent that time pursuing coursework I would benefit more from.