

Just work hard - antigua
http://thehundreds.com/blog/2011/07/12/just-work-hard-its-not-hard-work/

======
wdewind
As a millennial who actually works his ass off I always feel somewhat
compelled to respond to these. Many of my friends who just graduated,
especially non-developers, actually want nothing more than to put in hard work
and get stuff done. Unfortunately the few jobs that are out there for young
people rarely actually involve working hard if it is building towards a
career. Sure, you can go off and work your ass of as a waiter, but if you want
to go into something that's going to give you a long term career (an
internship or intro office job), guess what: you wont be required to work
nearly as hard as you can, and it will fucking bore you, and will not require
even 20 hours a week of actual work, and in the end you will have pushed some
papers around. When you compound this with the fact that the cultural
presentation of work that we've gotten for our entire lives is that "it sucks
and there's nothing you can do about it" (something I whole-heartedly disagree
with), it's no wonder our generation is "lazy."

Millennials "lack direction" (at least in work) because they are being told
over and over again that they are in the most fun time of their lives, it's
all down hill from here, and that there is no chance at a fulfilling work
life. Outside of software engineering, there is little "hard work" available
that actually builds towards a career. Finally, when you add in the massive
moral ambiguity of working at many companies (Philip Morris seems to own half
the country), it again becomes very difficult to become motivated about work.
I think most of us really do want to work hard and accomplish things but it is
really not clear how to do that.

~~~
jjanzer
I think the problem here is that not all employers will challenge you. In my
mind, the key to finding enjoyment in your work if it's not challenging is to
challenge yourself. Unless your job is oppressive to self direction there is
nothing stopping you or anyone else from creating or doing something that is
positive for the business and challenging for you. As a few examples you could
find ways to optimize a system that is inefficient (it doesn't even need to be
at the software level), analyze information about your customers, find ways to
save money, research ways to get new clients, etc. A side benefit to
challenging yourself is that you will find it quite rewarding. I can highly
recommend Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book on "flow" in regards to the
phenomenon around it.

I think what I'm trying to say is by challenging yourself to be more than what
it is your employer expects out of you results in a net win for both you and
your company.

~~~
janesvilleseo
I agree completely. I work at a company that is small about 25 people, but I
engage in this quite often. The company is rather open about everything. I
have access to just about everything I need except for the company bank
accounts, which I do not want. This provides with a lot access to do a lot of
this flow analysis. However the two greatest challenges I still have to
overcome are 1)Buy-In from the higher ups to actually use the data/analysis
and 2)the time to keep it up. I often feel, for multiple reasons, that I
shouldn't be spending time on these endeavors. However, I still seem to always
have a 'project'.

~~~
jbl
I also agree with the grandparent post. There's always something to do, and
something more that could be done to make a project interesting.

However, I've often been frustrated by the effort required to get buy-in or
recognition from higher-ups. I often found myself _wanting_ to contribute
more, but sometimes it seemed like a sisyphean task and not worth the effort
(especially once you start balancing compensation and effort).

------
flocial
Sometimes it feels like HN is descending into a self-help group for
intelligent but certified procrastinators. Does the consumption of such
articles and other forms of self-help literature actually inspire you to
create and do? Is the discussion of doing a form of action or the prelude to
it?

Just follow my patented 3-D treatment program for hardcore procrastinators.
Decide, declare, and do. Just stay clear of the 3 Es: explanations, extensions
and excuses.

~~~
keyle
The press always make it look so easy. This post was actually refreshing for
the ones of us slaving away hours of their weekends working while others play.

So yes this helps.

~~~
relef
Hey, wait a minute, you are procrastinating on HN just like the rest of us.
Pfffft, _working_ ....

~~~
nochiel
Just because an individual is browsing HN does not mean the individual is
procrastinating. Please consult a dictionary for an accurate definition of the
term.

~~~
cema
I think the right term has 4 letters, starts with a _j_ , ends with an _e_ ,
and has an _ok_ in the middle.

------
hippich
At some point in my life I was into NLP (neuro-lingustic programming - just
few bits of practical psychology.

What I've found - many dreamers do not need to achieve it - they already
experienced what they are dreaming about and it is the same as to achieve it
for them. It's like watch a trailer for a movie and then get bored in the
movie theater..

There is opposite side - people who never dream and find any excuse to not
think about possible future..

I believe, right way is in the middle - you have to dream, but only so much to
start wanting to get there. And never try to experience the whole thing in a
dream.

So we should teach kidos to dream, but only enough to ignite the spark, but
not to burn it full.. Have no clue how to do this tho...

~~~
jmitcheson
Poster may be talking about something similar to this

[http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you...](http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself.html)

"After hitting on a brilliant new life plan, our first instinct is to tell
someone, but Derek Sivers says it's better to keep goals secret. He presents
research stretching as far back as the 1920s to show why people who talk about
their ambitions may be less likely to achieve them."

~~~
hippich
From my experience, telling everybody around may work both ways - it may put
you in to frame where you HAVE to get to your target, or get enough discussion
to experience it and forget about it. But in general, I would say yes - for me
it is better to keep things in secret, try to build dependencies on these
targets and slowly go through it.

------
chegra
I was going to ask HN yesterday how many unfinished app they currently have.
This stems from the fact that a developer with a popular app told me currently
he has 30+ unfinished apps in his IDE right now. Naturally, I started to feel
good about the my 4-5 projects that are unfinished right now.

But, the truth is this isn't school. School strives on following through,
passing every test, rinse and repeat. In the world of business you only need
one.

"The point of all this is that it doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It
doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know
or care about your failures, and (n)either should you. All you have to do is
learn from them and those around you because

All that matters in business is that you get it right once.

Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are." - Mark Cuban

My point being, so what if their t-shirt company failed, onto the next one.
These guys get it.

[btw Antigua are you from Antigua in the Caribbean?]

~~~
pnathan
I have (1) MS thesis, (1) half-finished prototype for a desktop app, (1) idea
of a ios app, (1) idea of a niche MUD.

But I also work at a BigCorp, so I'm perhaps atypical.

I gave up on having one zillion unfinished programs a year or two ago, when it
became apparent nothing was getting meaningfully done.

------
j_baker
Work hard, eh? I'm sure the author has spent many years contemplating this
unique advice. I've got more fatherly advice while we're at it: save money,
try your hardest, don't put your elbows on the table, and close the door,
you're air conditioning the entire neighborhood.

In all seriousness, did anyone else find this post incredibly condescending?
If the new generation has these problems (and I don't think they do anymore
than the generations before), it's going to take a lot more than platitudes to
solve our problems.

------
drats
I just realised my generation is now old enough to be complaining about
younger generations.

I think the only "generational" debate worth having these days will be the
funding of the pensions (promised to people but not always saved for) and
medical procedures of the long-lived baby boomers whilst simultaneously
dealing with the debt mountains in the West. The debt in the West is
approaching, I think may have exceeded in some instances, levels just after
the end of WWII. A nice big screen TV doesn't quite have the same quality as
defeating fascism.

~~~
troels
Yes, it's funny how that makes you feel old, isn't it? Every friggin
generation has people who complain about the younger ones lack of direction.
I'm not worried though - They too will grow up.

~~~
rgraham
Yeah, but the real problem is the younger younger generation. Those kids have
no direction. You should see them...

------
johnw
Putting in the hard work is a huge part of being successful, no doubt, but
this article talks as if it is the ONLY important thing, which I disagree
with.

You can easily end up working hard on the wrong thing. Writing an app or
building a startup that sells something nobody wants for example. There are
plenty of people working super hard on already doomed projects because they
didn't do enough market research or listen to the right people.

You have to work hard AND get a lot of other stuff right as well to have any
chance of success. There are plenty of things you can do e.g. automating tasks
and outsourcing that don't require extra work but can improve your chances of
success.

Forgive me if this seems obvious, it just bothered me how the article tried to
sell hard work as a silver bullet. I don't think it's that simple.

~~~
billswift
It seemed to me that the article wasn't saying it was the only important
thing, but that it was the one thing most likely to be _missing_.

------
rglover
I think for the HN crowd (generally not a lazy bunch), this may come off as a
bit trite. But what the author is saying here is not confounded. I have plenty
of friends who fall into this category. They fail to realize that in order to
get somewhere, you have to work your ass off. Not to mention, his remark about
caring about popularity and fame over having a nice family or caring for
others is spot on. There are a lot of intelligent kids ambling about,
carelessly making choices that for the most part will not help them to excel
or move forward in life. For those that it applies to, this is a good article.

------
mmccomb
Hard work alone is often not sufficient. The real solution is to work hard but
also to work smart. You need to find a balance between slogging just to get
things done and innovating to reduce the slog required in the future. This
applies not apply to physical tasks but also to learning. When learning a new
skill/subject it's easy to expend a lot of effort reading whole books and
articles without taking the leap of getting your hands dirty and applying your
learning, but without doing so you can't build the neural connections required
to learn.

~~~
SergeyHack
Also I would say "hard work" is a bad metaphor. More important parts are:

1) (as you said) "work smart"

2) "enjoy your work"

and only then 3) "work hard"

------
diziet
I know I am nitpicking, but is there a reason that a huge semi-transparent
dark box is in the middle of my screen, informing me that:

Notice

JavaScript for Mobile Safari is currently turned off.

Turn it on in Settings > Safari to view this website

I do not quite see any content that requires the use of JavaScript, nor does
the noscript handler identify my browser, Firefox 5, correctly.

------
corin_

      A truly invaluable life is comprised of the journey
    

Something worth remembering in all aspects of life, not just your career.
Without the low-points the highs aren't as noticeable, and, in my experience,
some of the hardest things I've experienced are also some of the memories I
cherish the most.

I wish I could express this view in a less cheesy fashion, but I don't think I
can. It's a cliché, but it also often happens to be the truth.

------
coryl
I wonder if his observations about "millennials" is actually true. I'm always
skeptical when people refer to (especially) younger generations and their
flaws, it reminds me of a grumpy old man. "Kids were tougher back in my days!
Knew the value of hard work and a dollar! Nowadays they got their MTV and
their eyePhones, I'm telling ya this country's falling apart!".

However, we live in a different world now. Means of production have opened up
to virtually anyone; whether your writing software for computers, producing
films, music, t-shirts, etc. It can pretty much all be done with a laptop and
your basement. Channels of distribution have also opened up too, so anyone's
work can easily be accessed, purchased, and collaborated by anyone else in the
world. By these factors alone, we'd expect to see a higher volume of low and
high quality work. I don't think its necessarily true the younger generations
don't understand hard work, but that we see much more success and failure
together.

~~~
gruseom
Things have always been degenerating.

------
viandante
This is totally missing the point. Everybody I know is working hard and is
keen to work hard to achieve things. But today it's not easy. 30 years ago you
could work hard and you had good chances to succede. Today you may end up
working up to update a power point, or because the boss doesn't use vba and
you have to do all things manually.

I mean, work hard is a really, really, bad metaphore. It is more about
learning good and useful stuff. Which is also kind of diffucult having seen
the total absurd that universities have become.

------
simmons
Let's not forget that work is a vector quantity: direction is as important (or
more important) than magnitude.

Also, it's important to understand the relationship between work and
productivity. I knew a wannabe programmer who once bragged about how much
"hard work" he put into an 8-hour day of manually tweaking data, when he could
have written a program to do it in a half hour.

~~~
resnamen
Yes. There are also the superstars that just put in 8 hour days but manage to
get more meaningful work done than anybody else in the office.

------
michaelochurch
I'm going to side-step the generational flame-war and point out a few things.

First of all, we don't live in a culture that values hard work. To be fair,
maybe it shouldn't. Hard work at something pointless is just wasted effort.
But we should toss the hypocrisy by which we claim to value "hard work" when
what we really value (as a culture) in people is the resources they already
have. The Randists and conservatives and big-business lapdogs dress corporate
executives up as "society's most creative and productive individuals" but this
isn't true. As a society-- we worship _consumption_ , in the guise of jet-set
executives who consume the earth's resources and in that of celebrities who
consume others' attention-- and production and hard work really aren't major
concerns.

Consider the celebrity cult (the hatred and envy included, because the
baseless hatred of him is as execrable as the pointless veneration) around a
rather bland executive-- neither deserving of much admiration nor dislike-- of
a rather boring but important and successful upstart company, a cult existing
mainly because he's a billionaire in his 20s. No one know or cares if he
worked hard to achieve what he did (I think it's obvious that he did, although
he had ridiculously lucky breaks) but because he's rich, he's important.

"Millennials" don't see people who are rewarded or even respected for working
hard. They see a culture of rent-seekers, lucky bandits, and celebrity that is
based on celebrity alone. And if people are going to pin our cultural
degeneracy on the Baby Boomers (a reasonable contention) it should not be
based on what they _said_ as parents but what they _did_ in the marketplace.

------
omouse
The rugged individualism of Americans is amusing sometimes.

------
4J7z0Fgt63dTZbs
Ok, then, working hard in Nike factory would be a good start for many people.
Work hard. Seek advice from right people. Outperform coworkers. Three years
later you would be the CEO.

...No, I strongly disagree with this. Effort without significance to what you
want in long term is waste of everything. If you're not sure what you want,
the only effort you should be making is trying to come up with what you want
to do. Effort chosen to be, designed to be, MUST be, beneficial to what you
ultimately want to achieve is the only effort worth making.

