

The only alternative is to work harder - siddhant
http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/the-only-alternative-is-to-work-harder.htm

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jimbobimbo
No offence, but this is something that I see every day from my Indian
colleagues at work -- instead of stopping for a moment and finding a right way
to go, they just keep pushing harder in some unoptimal direction. Yes, this
might fill you with a sense of righteousness, but no way the carpenter (see
comments to the blog post) who works 10 hours a day is better off than the one
who does only 5 hours of _right_ work.

~~~
FraaJad
The dynamics at work in a typical IT shop are different.

Indian IT industry does not depend on "programming geniuses". getting their
shit done by the day it was promised is more important for them, because the
client will not pay for "indian outsourced guy" for having a moment of
programming epiphany.

Of course, this is not just to blame the customer.. Most Indian IT Managers
still believe in Taylor's "scientific" management methods.. So, whoever is
"seen" working 10 hours to solve a problem will earn a brownie point.

note: Edited for clarity

~~~
jimbobimbo
Actually, that was my conclusion also.

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patio11
There are at least three alternatives to working harder: automate the work,
outsource it, and elect not to do it at all. These are often better choices,
since not all work adds equal amount of value (and much work subtracts value).

I'm working on a blog post about this subject, as "longer hours is a proxy for
productivity" is the most pathological thing I have seen in my career as a
Japanese salaryman.

~~~
ellyagg
These are not alternatives to working harder. These are strategies to make
your efforts more efficient. If you outsource some work, there is other work
you can be doing. Presumably your competition will be automating, outsourcing,
and avoiding unnecessary work as well.

People can reach many types of goals with ease. This guy is talking about
goals which require beating competition to achieve. If your goal is to compete
in low latency market trading, and you aren't already extremely wealthy, you
aren't going to be able to be competitive and live a life of leisure at the
same time.

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bbg
I'm reminded of the advice of Thomas Jefferson to his daughter: "It is
wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing," from this HN post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=675308>

~~~
gruseom
_It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing_

... and have a team of slaves or servants doing everything else.

I'm not picking on Jefferson. It's worth remembering that most such famously
productive historical figures were of a class that never had to cook anything,
clean anything, plant anything, etc., and didn't even raise their own
children. That's got to free up some time.

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Tichy
Somehow I don't really buy it. Seems to me it is more a management problem.
Looking at sports, I suspect simply running 10 hours more every week than the
competition won't automatically make you the winner. Rather, there is a system
to getting the best effect from training (when to take breaks, what muscles to
train when, what to eat, ...).

If you are stressing out with working harder and harder, perhaps you lose the
time for having inspirations and seeing the important things to work on.

~~~
ellyagg
Working harder does not mean being stupid. I don't understand why people keep
pretending working harder is somehow how inversely related to the quality of
your decisions. Your IQ stays the same, you just work harder.

Let's take your example. Working harder doesn't mean naively running 10 hours
more a week. It means doing research on training systems, consulting with
coaches, monitoring your diets, revising workout plans, etc. Having been
involved with sports all my life, I can tell you that this stuff matters, you
can always do more of it, and it's work.

~~~
Tichy
Sure, I am not against working harder, just against the simplistic "work
harder". Also I still think it is a management problem and breaks are
important.

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TrevorJ
To sum up what this article says along with the insightful amendments in these
comments: Perhaps it is best to work smarter _and_ harder.

~~~
ellyagg
He was talking about factors under your control. So I guess you have to decide
whether you think you can get significantly smarter, which I don't. You can
learn more, but that takes time and should be considered part of working, of
course. Even if you can get smarter, that would also presumably take work and
the more of it you did the smarter you'd get. What we know for sure is that
you can't just wake up today and say, hey, I'm going to make decisions that
are twice as good as yesterday.

And if working smarter means things like automating tasks, that also doesn't
quite make sense. Of course you should automate tasks. Working harder doesn't
mean being stupid. It means you should spend more of your brain time working
toward your goals. If you free up time by automating some stuff, that gives
you more time to be working on (including automating) something else.

~~~
TrevorJ
Yeah, I was borrowing from the old expression "work smarter, not harder".

Smarter in this context means bringing our intelligence to bear on the issue
of workflow and _how_ we go about doing our work. I wasn't meaning to imply
that it means we need to literally become smarter.

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bhousel
"What do you do if you feel you are born unlucky? What do you do if you feel
that the whole world is conspiring against you to make you not succeed? And,
what do you do if you feel you have less intellect, less resources and less
everything to succeed?"

Just a word of warning: There are many people who will default to _feeling_
this way, whether it's true or not. Don't rule out mental illness or anxiety.

Turning yourself into a workaholic is not the solution if what you really need
is to talk to a therapist. I've known several people who learned this the hard
way.

Before diving head-first into work, do a quick reality check and ask yourself
whether your feelings are reasonable, and be honest with yourself about what
you're giving up in order to get those extra few hours of productivity.

~~~
derefr
So many people have undiscovered personality disorders or neuroses that they
think are just "how life is." I wish that there was a "mental health check-up"
that everyone, whether thinking themselves healthy or not, was encouraged to
attend at long-but-regular intervals, similar to a dental- or eye-exam.

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davidw
In the spirit of providing equal and opposite cheap advice:

Except for the alternative of taking a break and thinking about your life, and
perhaps choosing to focus on something where your hard work is more likely to
pay off or where working harder comes more natural because you love what
you're doing.

~~~
paraschopra
I agree -- my point is that _everything else being equal_ working harder pays
off. Once you have determined what to do and if it is what you like to do,
putting in more hours will do harm to no one but probably increase your
chances of success.

~~~
bonsaitree
Honestly, I don't know where to begin, but suffice it to say, everything else
is NEVER equal in the real world.

1\. You're assuming "success" is zero-sum-game. 2\. There's no opportunity
cost for working towards a different goal. 3\. There is some sort of equitable
measure of "success" across all participants in "the game". 4\. The
effort/reward curve is averages positive for your given set of stratagems. 5\.
You are the ONLY vested participant in the game (e.g. no ancillary costs for
increased efforts to other parties (e.g. family, friends, partners, investors
etc.).

~~~
ellyagg
It's only hard to know where to begin because you're seriously expanding the
topic. Let's take point 5:

"You are the ONLY vested participant in the game [...]"

The point of the post was that working harder is one of the few resources
under your control for working toward a goal for which there is competition.
Whether there are other vested participants is irrelevant to that point.
Whether there are costs to your family is a quality-of-life choice and a moral
choice, but doesn't say a single thing about whether working harder makes you
more likely to achieve your goal.

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edw519
I would amend this to "Work Harder on the Right Thing".

What's the right thing? That's something you'll just have to figure out for
yourself. Sometimes finding the right thing is harder work than actually
working on it.

~~~
ellyagg
Obviously, working on the right thing is the best choice. The problem is that
knowing the right thing is probably a function of mental abilities of one sort
or another, and you may be deficient in that area with respect to your
competition, which is the point of the post. You can't control whether you're
good at knowing what the right things to work on are (although you can get
better at it, maybe).

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joel_feather
This is not right. Work in a manner that the work you are doing can be spun
off and will continue to work on its own, leaving you free to do something new
that will build on top of that.

