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How to Work Hard

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Work Hard

#971

Post by eloff »

RivieraKid wrote: post #954
eloff wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG says: > There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard. I think that's the fundamental secret to success at anything. If you want to compete at the top level you have to have all three. It's not sufficient to just…

Fundamental secret? I thought this is obvious. Imagine the following simple model. People have 3 normally distributed attributes: luck, talent and laziness, their sum determines succcess. If you generate 1 million people and sort them by success, the top 1000 will be good at all of the 3 attributes

It is obvious, but a huge number of people don't get it still.

Re: How to Work Hard

#973

Post by peter_d_sherman »

I would like to start out by saying that I am a great fan of Paul Graham, his work, his essays, YCombinator, HN, etc., etc.

However, I have to sharply, and I mean sharply disagree with this one essay...

You see, I will put this essay against one from antiquity, and that one is the 5th Labor Of Hercules:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/stables.html

>"Hercules went to King Augeas, and without telling anything about Eurystheus, said that he would clean out the stables in one day, if Augeas would give him a tenth of his fine cattle.

Augeas couldn't believe his ears, but promised. Hercules brought Augeas's son along to watch. First the hero tore a big opening in the wall of the cattle-yard where the stables were. Then he made another opening in the wall on the opposite side of the yard.

Next, he dug wide trenches to two rivers which flowed nearby. He turned the course of the rivers into the yard. The rivers rushed through the stables, flushing them out, and all the mess flowed out the hole in the wall on other side of the yard."

PDS: See, King Augeas was expecting that Hercules would clean up the stables the old-fashioned way -- by using his strength to clean them out manually.

King Augeas was expecting that Hercules work hard for him.

Hercules did work hard, but additionally, Hercules also worked smart -- by digging only what was necessary to direct the river or rivers -- and letting the flowing water, letting nature itself -- do all of the work!

Now compare this to MapReduce.

Compare this to Jeff Dean of Google, and all that he does.

Jeff Dean and MapReduce leverage computation power (think of them as the streams of water) -- to do all of the "Heavy Lifting".

They work hard -- but they also work smart.

They utilize an infrastructure (Hercules with the water from a river, Jeff Dean wtih the power from distributed computing/distributed queries/MapReduce, etc.) which when skillfully directed, at their hands, performs all of the hard work for them...

They work smart.

Now this being said, I'll close by saying that I am Paul Graham's greatest fan -- I think he is one of the greatest intellectuals in the world today! And I agree with 99.44% of everything else that he has so wisely and eloquently said or written in the past!

And I love his essays, YCombinator, HN, etc., etc.!!!

But we slightly disagree -- on this one!

In a friendly way, of course!

Re: How to Work Hard

#974

Post by jstrebel »

I am always amazed at how well-received Paul Graham's blog entries are here on Hacker News, despite their thinly veilled underlying message: "Start a company, work hard, get rich". All of his writings center around this topic in one way or another and glorify it in various way.

I always take his writings with a big grain of salt, because I know that his sweet message might not be right for me.

Re: How to Work Hard

#975

Post by sunstone »

Think of how astonishingly amazing it is to be a sentient being in a universe of 100's of billions of galaxies! What could anyone ever do to come close to justifying such a privilege? Sure, work hard if you like but don't forget what an astounding trip existence is.

Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water.

Re: How to Work Hard

#976

Post by micaeked »

jodrellblank wrote: post #941
going_ham wrote: post #575

Earlier 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…

There was a long article linked on HN a while back, about how you can't start a company or invent something unless it's the right time, you can't rush innovation just because you try hard. It was gwern-style detailed and full of references and citations, not just a top of the head opinion piece. Anyone have a clue what it was or where?

Perhaps you're thinking of gwern? https://www.gwern.net/Timing

Re: How to Work Hard

#977

Post by erisinger »

nonbirithm wrote: post #414
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…

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,…

I was the exact same way in college. I remember saying to a professor one time that whenever I was inside studying hard I would look out the window and say, "What am I doing? I should be outside in nature, enjoying the beauty of the world for the short time I have here." But when I would go outside, I would immediately say, "What am I doing? I should be inside studying so I can make something of myself and contribute to the world!"

No matter what choice I made, some other choice always seemed like the mature decision, and I was perpetually stuck in either a childish pursuit of good grades on paper, or a childish avoidance of work while I frolicked outside. I just couldn't win.

Re: How to Work Hard

#978

Post by thomastjeffery »

luffapi wrote: post #637
swman wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s important to recognize physical activity is very different from mental, creative or social activities. If you can convince people of things, you can be wildly successful. They may listen to you because you speak well, they may listen to you because you’re telling them what they want to hear or they may listen to you because you’re rich. None of which require the rigorous practice of a professional athlete. Same…

> the most successful people I know didn’t work hard at all. They either inherited cash...

That's not success.

Re: How to Work Hard

#979

Post by tim333 »

quacked wrote: post #640
WalterSear wrote: post #617

Earlier 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…

Why not work a service job for a while? There's no delayed gratification in bartending or waiting tables. Show up, clock in, serve drinks, go home. It's not easy, but the success conditions are clear, and when you're done you can completely forget about it until it's time to go in again.

I've got a cousin who unsure with things got a job as a delivery van driver for a while. Worked ok for him. He now has a fairly cushy lowish level job at a pr outfit.

Re: How to Work Hard

#980

Post by overtonwhy »

tmule wrote: post #304
overtonwhy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow yourself to be exploited by capital in exchange for experience and you'll probably be rewarded later when you get to exploit inexperienced people? Sounds like a big risk for labor and a big win for capital.

Strange framing. Working very hard in the US has made my compensation increase 7X in 9 years. I’m not capital (this isn’t a static group, btw), I don’t feel exploited, and I don’t exploit anyone - I invested in myself and successfully optimized for long-run outcomes.

Strange how you're assuming that your personal anecdotal experience is applicable to everyone else.
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