
Hard work vs. Long work (2011) - arto
https://seths.blog/2011/05/hard-work-vs-long-work/
======
war1025
I like this, but also on some level I feel like it's nothing more than
inspirational "rah-rah" garbage.

I wish he would have expanded on it.

A great example of the distinction from my younger days:

We had the game GranTurismo2 back when I was 12 or so.

We wanted the really fancy "best" car in the game.

The right way to get the good cars is to improve your skill and gain access to
the higher level races that have bigger prizes.

That's the "hard work" part.

What we did instead was do one of the easy races over and over and over again
for a couple days until we had enough saved up in the game to buy the car.

That's "long work"

It's stupid and boring and no fun.

If you want a fulfilling life, go for the "hard work".

Which I guess is also just a stupid "rah-rah" inspirational quip.

~~~
umvi
There was an MMO game called "Kingdom of Loathing" I played back in 2006.

The right way to get more money in the game is to improve your
skills/equipment and gain access to the higher level areas that have bigger
monsters/better loot. (hard work)

What we did instead was manually create hundreds of new accounts, complete the
tutorial level and then send the tutorial prize to the main account for
selling on the open market (long work).

Eventually I figured out how to create an "autoit" script that automated the
process of creating a new account, completing the tutorial, and then sending
the goods over to the main account. The main account was getting very wealthy,
but I should have known I needed to launder the ill-gotten gains somehow
because an admin (Multi Czar) eventually caught on and all the accounts
(including the main one) got banned.

~~~
arsome
So does coding bots to do the long work for you count as hard work or long
work? Because that's the kind of work I've always preferred.

~~~
nlbrown
Hard work takes over and replaces long work when innovation, new skills and
modalities are center stage and repetitive tasks take a back seat. I'd
consider any form of automation hard work.

~~~
ProZsolt
Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1319/](https://xkcd.com/1319/)

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GCA10
This is a useful distinction, but it this misses what's actually hard about
"hard work." The risk of failure is only 20% of the issue.

What's central is the fact that do hard work well, you need to temporarily
tear apart the solution-forming systems that have served you adequately so far
-- and put them back together in a different way. In the midst of this,
there's genuine discomfort and nausea. Even if you know you'll eventually get
it right, having everything in pieces on the floor is very jarring.

Finding your way through a lot of missteps, near misses and roadblocks takes a
special sort of perseverance. I've done this long enough in my work that I get
mordant joy from tracking the misses. Versions 2, 2A, 2B and 2C were dead-
ends. It's on to Versions 3, 3A, etc.

Usually version 4E or so gets the job done. And it's elegant and I'm happy
again. I had one epic struggle that went into the 7s. I ended up cracking it
in a borrowed lab in Arizona, because the usual settings in NYC and CT were
not getting me there.

Being patient and persistent at times like that is hard.

~~~
dougmany
It is hard. After a few times around, you start to recognize the dreaded
feeling. But then you realize you are closer to the other side than the way
back and press on.

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devmunchies
This makes me think of war time vs peace time. During a war, the govt will put
engineers and architects into an R&D incubator with all the resources they
need. To the engineers, the fact that there is a war is irrelevant, they
aren't paying attention to that, they're just focussing on innovation because
it's their job.

Couldn't this scenario be simulated, even without war? I think of bell labs.

It strange that innovative environments, filled with hard work, aren't a
priority until its a matter of life or death (of a company, nations, etc.)

Related movie by studio Ghibli (engineers innovating during war time):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Rises](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Rises)

~~~
svachalek
If a department is doing well, or even just fair, it will do everything it
possibly can to prevent any sort of innovation. When innovation happens, new
rules and safeguards are put into place to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Of course they'll keep talking about how innovation is very important and
rewarded all the while they're stamping it out.

Innovation is a rebellious act which is why it typically only happens in small
startup environments. Occasionally a larger company will set up a "skunkworks"
where it can be temporarily tolerated by hiding it from the view of the rest
of the organization.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
This is a remarkably myopic view of innovation that completely ignores the
roles of government, research institutions and yes, large companies, in a huge
chunk of all the innovations of the last 120 years.

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Frost1x
>Hard work is frightening. We shy away from hard work because inherent in hard
work is risk. Hard work is hard because you might fail. You can’t fail at long
work, you merely show up. You fail at hard work when you don’t make an
emotional connection, or when you don’t solve the problem or when you
hesitate.

I disagree with this, at least what the author classifies as risk. I'm more
than happy to take on challenging work, work I am emotionally connected to and
want to see succeed--then fail. I can deal with failure and progress on just
fine because I have pretty iron clad motivation. I've worked in R&D
environments most my life and I can assure you, research has a lot of failure
if you're doing it correctly.

The risk that makes certain work "hard" vs others is that failure results in
livelihood setbacks: not having food, not having a place to live, financial
failure, health risks, not having any bit of job security, etc. Those to me
are the real risks people shy away from when we talk about "hard" work.

Give me a difficult/creative problem or task and I can try for hours, days,
weeks, months, years... to find a solution, but only if I know at the end of
the day I'll have a reasonably comfortable life.

The way a lot of work is structured, I find "hard" work is that which has
inherent livelihood risk to the person doing the work in some way, shape, or
form. It could be health risk work (say a police officer), failed research
resulting in lack of a job, or a poor new art collection that ruins the future
career of an artist.

Our society needs to learn to be more accepting to to a few more degrees of
failure than the hypercompetiveness currently allows. Less and less failure is
being acceptable and it's completely unrealistic to hold all humans to these
standards. Yes, we should reward high risk success but should we punish every
form of failure as we often do? Sure, laziness can be masked under failure and
abuse this leniency, but so can success.

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martindbp
I prefer the labels "predictable" vs "unpredictable" work. For example, I've
been experience the difference between research and back-end web dev work
lately, and the main difference is that for research you don't know if it will
pan out, while for back-end work you're almost always making incremental
progress towards the end-goal. But I wouldn't necessarily call research
"harder", it's just different. It's usually more difficult conceptually, but
there's also way less stuff you need to keep in your head at the same time.

~~~
Tervis
I think the hard part is that unpredictable work has to be done more with
discipline. Predictable work often originates from external requirements, and
the external interest to the work gives you motivation. However, unpredictable
work requires more intrinsic motivation (or discipline), as there is no
external interest until you get some results.

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PaulDavisThe1st
"You can work long, you can work hard and you can work smart, but you can only
do 2 out of 3"

\-- source unknown, common among programmers on usenet in the 1990s

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siscia
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Df6ZI4...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Df6ZI4_GhcgJ:https://seths.blog/2011/05/hard-
work-vs-long-work/+&cd=2&hl=it&ct=clnk&gl=ch&client=ubuntu)

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andersco
It seems what is being called “hard work” here really is “expert work” which
often can be no work at all, in that it rests on the shoulders of likely
thousands of previous hours of long work, and can sometimes feel effortless.
One seminal example of this Paula Scher’s 5 minute design of the Citigroup
logo. [https://link.medium.com/KuxBw6rJi9](https://link.medium.com/KuxBw6rJi9)

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bschne
Somewhat related, from Andy Matuschak whose notes were on here earlier today,
on the feeling of progress when doing open-ended work:

[https://blog.andymatuschak.org/post/159979927467/satisfactio...](https://blog.andymatuschak.org/post/159979927467/satisfaction-
and-progress-in-open-ended-work)

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amanzi
I really love this graphic showing the difference between hard work and being
productive:
[https://twitter.com/lizandmollie/status/1231605700960432128/...](https://twitter.com/lizandmollie/status/1231605700960432128/photo/1)

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squibbles
For those who are musically inclined -- When learning to play a musical
instrument (including voice), the distinction between long work and hard work
is the difference between spending time and making progress. Long work is
mindless practice; hard work is identifying weaknesses and using targeted
practice to improve.

For those in marketing -- Long work is spending more on an advertising
campaign; hard work is determining what increases the conversion rate.

For those in computer science or mathematics -- Long work is implementing a
brute force approach to calculating a specific result; hard work is
generalizing the problem and generating a class of results.

For students -- Long work is studying to pass a specific exam; hard work is
internalizing the fundamental principles of a subject so you can derive
answers regardless of the particular exam questions.

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k__
Important point: "Hard work" doesn't mean it has to be feel hard for you to do
it.

If you have fun setting up a K8s cluster, that's still hard work.

~~~
hpoe
One thing I've found interesting is that the first time I do something related
to tech as long as it isn't mind boggling frustrating _cough_ Oracle _cough_ I
enjoy learning it. The second and third times it's tolerable, but if I have to
keep doing something repeatedly the only way I can enjoy it any longer is by
listening to an audiobook while doing it or by automating it.

As soon as I set myself to automating I realize that I like it again because
now I am interacting with it in a new way.

~~~
majkinetor
Oracle isn't even fun when automating.

~~~
nitrogen
But seeing a modern ecommerce platform fully integrated with Oracle payments,
invoices, inventory, and shipping is pretty satisfying when it's done.

~~~
majkinetor
Satisfying for Oracle overlords for sure.

Always remember, Oracle doesn't have customers, only hostages!

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bullen
What about "deep" work? The kind of work that requires you to understand the
fundamentals of a complex system to be able to simplify/modify it for the
better.

~~~
datameta
I think understanding a system enough to modify/extend/repair it would be
"wide" work. If one is dipping in thoroughly enough to truly understand all
components and be able to build such a system that is also open to later
modification - that is "deep" work.

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thisisbrians
Seth is always pithy and thus leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but I
do find this an interesting prompt.

"Hard" is, of course, very subjective and depends a lot on the person and the
project. What's hard for me may not be hard for someone else due to skillset,
personal risk, time pressure, mindset, etc. and vice versa.

What's created hard work for me in the course of founding a startup is
constantly balancing delivery timelines against a lack of resources and deep
skills on the team. Having to invent my way out of situations I'm not
technically qualified to handle where there is real risk to the business in
being wrong or late has been harrowing, but also a very effective way to grow
my skillset.

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yamrzou
[https://archive.is/nGVxb](https://archive.is/nGVxb)

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allie1
I think it’s what the “failure” would mean for a person that makes it hard,
part of the fixed mindset Carol Dweck is talking about, i.e. only seeking
validation of what one thinks of oneself.

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bryanrasmussen
there are two other salient differences between hard work and long work - hard
work when the person is skillful enough to do it is energizing, long work is
always draining.

~~~
hinkley
Only if you're using someone else's definition of hard instead of your own.

If by 'energizing' you mean morale-boosting, yes. But hard work is generally
taxing. You are paying for long-term happiness with short term pain. Having
slain a dragon on Thursday, you are likely to be in high spirits on Tuesday.
But for the rest of the day and possibly tomorrow, you're may be sitting here
doing menial tasks or reading documentation.

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bluedino
It’s like sports stars. You se the championship game on TV, but you don’t see
the years of practicing, eating the right diet, all the sacrifices...

------
known
The Self-Attribution Fallacy
[https://archive.is/VCuFO](https://archive.is/VCuFO)

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watertom
Using his definitions, I hate long work.

I avoid long work, I'll take hard work always.

~~~
hinkley
Our jobs revolve around convincing machines to do the long work for us.

I don't think I'll ever understand why so many of us are perfectly content
doing the same long work over and over again. Do you know what computers are
_for_?

~~~
james_s_tayler
Never really thought of computers as needing convincing but come to think of
it it takes about as many tries to convince my computer to do want I want as
it takes to convince my son. Hmm..

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naringas
aka the toil vs the hustle

