urgh all this "working very very hard" glorifying talk makes me feel nauseated. science and creativity stems from leisure and idleness. not working very very hard.
How to Work Hard
921–930 of 1001 posts
Re: How to Work Hard
#922Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, I've been burnt out too many times now, for too long. Every job now ends in burn out and takes 6+ months to recover from before I can start looking for another job. This time, however, feels different - it never felt insurmountable like this before. I can't work on my own stuff, can't level up my skills, not sure how to get back to that. I suspect that my situation is likely common among aging coders a…
I do not know your situation, but my observation is high-performance requires high-maintenance. Also, see this article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32056943/ Anything else I might suggest might sound like an advertisement, but apply your skills in software to what's required for your high-maintenance needs.
I can't believe that I've never heard of the phrase "high-performance requires high-maintenance" before. I really like little aphorisms like this as a way to regulate behaviour. Thanks!
Re: How to Work Hard
#923I 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).…
Every time pg puts out a new essay, we get into this privilege bingo stuff. It’s always irrelevant. There’s a huge audience of people who don’t care if their CEO is 300x better paid than they are, or that they didn’t go to an elite school, or that they didn’t have prestigious family connections: what they want to know is how did he work, what can we do to unlock our productive potential, how can we create things that we can be proud of in the same way. That’s who Graham is writing for.
Re: How to Work Hard
#924Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that everyone on this forum is prima facie remarkably privileged compared to someone in this world. 'We' all went to some kind of school as opposed to no school. 'We' all have amazing technology at our finger tips, as opposed to lacking basic nutrition and sanitation and personal safety. The difference between 'us' and the abject poor is much greater than the difference between 'us' and PG or Bill Gates. The abj…
It's an article called "How to Work Hard" that doesn't once mention luck, psychology, or basic human needs. What do you get from the success how-tos of multi-millionares? Do you really not see it as self-serving? Disclose survivorship bias, incredible privilege, and impossible odds and I'm in... I think? At that point I'm still unclear why the rich have something useful to say here that Maslow or other academics don'…
You have just become lucky because you stumbled upon the article and can act on it. So it is not necessary to mention luck, because the readership of the article is already selected for luck.
The article also mentions the necessity of talent.
It also doesn't say everybody can become a billionaire by simply working hard.
Also even if you are born in Africa with no access to schools (or in some US ghetto were everything is sooo horrible), you can probably set yourself apart from your peers.
Re: How to Work Hard
#925Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> ...all successful people are talented and hardworking. I doubt it. Most measures of economic mobility show this is becoming less and less true -- if it ever was. I think believing it is important though.
Well the most important factor of economic mobility has historically been women marrying up. So you might be on to something - it seems doubtful that wives who were able to marry up work that much harder than other wives.
Re: How to Work Hard
#926Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the criticism is not so illogical. Let's just assume your company has a 5% chance of wild success and you can double it by working insanely hard (I think these numbers are likely generous, but easier to take round numbers for the sake of argument). It is in this case simultaneously true that it's in VCs' interest to convince you to work very hard and also that it's probably not in your interest. It only makes…
Then hard work increases your chances. What is controversial about this?
You ever read jwz’s “Watch a VC Use My Name to Sell a Con”?
> I did make a bunch of money by winning the Netscape Startup Lottery, it's true. So did most of the early engineers. But the people who made 100x as much as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under their desk. If you look at a list of financially successful people from the software industry, I'll bet you get a very different view of what kind of sleep habits and office hours are successful than the one presented here.
> So if your goal is to enrich the Arringtons of the world while maybe, if you win the lottery, scooping some of the groundscore that they overlooked, then by all means, bust your ass while the bankers and speculators cheer you on.
The controversy is that while it technically increases your chances, increasing infinitesimal chances to slightly less infinitesimal chances isn’t necessarily worth your health. But if you have a stake in tons of companies hey, one of them will probably pay off if everyone is sacrificing everything for them.
Re: How to Work Hard
#927Earlier 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,…
This is me. Though I didn't just learn this in my upbringing - I feel like my entire working life has been one of false promises and dehumanization, that has left me unable to enjoy anything. I'm 47 now, have worked at 6 failed startups in a row, and can't face work, or looking for a job. I used to blame social media and hacker news, but I now recognize that too much delayed gratification and overwork have had a much…
in my early 50's, and I think 5 failed startups now. I kinda lost count. Just closing off the latest failure this month.
I'm taking July off completely, finishing some creative coding projects that I haven't been able to work on while coding for the startup. Then I'm going to work out what's next.
I sleep a lot. There's no motivation to work. But I've been through this before, and it changes. I went through a serious clinical depression a few years ago, and have learned that the trick is to keep breathing and trust that everything will change over time.
The whole "work hard" mantra is interesting, and not nearly so simple as PG makes out.
Yes, to do great things we need to work hard. I love those times, when I'm inspired, the work is flowing, and all I want to do every day is work.
But working too hard for too long is not healthy. It causes this kind of burnout. Sitting staring at the keyboard, the last thing I ever want to do is switch to the code window. Emotionally drained. It's not a matter of discipline, or willpower. It's deeper than that. I'm literally unable to focus for any length of time even if I force myself to work.
I love my work. I genuinely enjoy building things. But I can't do it all the time. I have to take time away from it because it's a marathon not a sprint, and I need rest periods.
Re: How to Work Hard
#928Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fact there is a good video from Verassium [1]. One can't discount luck. There is no such thing as hard work. It's just the feeling of being in flow and whatever one does to make you re-live that flow, it's totally worth it. Instead of working on hard problems, it's best to prioritize on optimum problem and get the best out of your situation. With optimum problem, I mean the problems that allow you to maximize your…
*Veritasium. His tag line is "An element of truth", since "veritas" is Latin for truth and most element names end in "ium". I recommend the whole channel!
Veristablium?
Re: How to Work Hard
#929PG never misses
Re: How to Work Hard
#930Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then hard work increases your chances. What is controversial about this?
You ever read jwz’s “Watch a VC Use My Name to Sell a Con”? > I did make a bunch of money by winning the Netscape Startup Lottery, it's true. So did most of the early engineers. But the people who made 100x as much as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under their desk. If you look at a list of financially successful people from the software industry, I'll bet you get a very differen…
I still don't understand what is so difficult about this. If you work hard, you're more likely to succeed. Not guaranteed to succeed. Luck still matters, although a lot less than people think.
Whether or not VCs are justified in earning their returns is a completely different issue. This has nothing to do with hard work and everything to do with investment and dilution.
The "controversy" is this online meme that everything is just "random" and "luck" and no one, anywhere, can ever do anything to be successful. The entire world is nothing but a Vegas casino.
It's just rationalization for laziness and frankly, it's completely uninteresting. No one who has actual business experience thinks this.