
 Working hard is overrated - prakash
http://www.caterina.net/archive/001196.html
======
Mz
I'm reminded of an episode of MASH where Burns tries to get Hawkeye in
trouble. Hawkeye is playing cards. Burns feels he should be in surgery. But he
is waiting for the patient to be stabilized. He had ordered the kid get IV
fluids, whole blood, and antibiotics so he wouldn't die on the operating
table. He is playing cards (without drinking, for a change) to keep himself up
so he will be awake and alert when it is time to operate in the middle of the
night.

There are two kinds of "hard work": The type where you are busy and putting
out continuous effort and the kind where the hard part is resisting stupid
suggestions from other people, resisting what the crowd is doing, resisting
temptation and so on to stick to your guns and do things the right way. That
kind of work may not look like hard work to outsiders but in some ways can be
harder than looking like you are working hard. I have found that second
category of hard work to be more productive and valuable than the first. The
first is more about appearances and about reassuring ourselves we are "working
hard". The second is about doing the right things at the right time. It often
involves a lot less physical effort and therefore often looks like "slacking"
and "luck" to outsider observers when it is neither.

~~~
steveplace
Unfortunately, the analogy breaks down when Klinger walks in with a dress.

~~~
Mz
I don't really understand your point, but will note that Klinger's dresses are
a good example of someone working extremely hard at something and getting
nowhere. :-)

~~~
jessejmc
I think it was just a funny reference to the episode.

~~~
Mz
Funny works for me. I'm guessing that's it as well.

------
rend
Regarding the Watson and Crick reference: it helps when you have other people
like Rosalind Franklin working through the nights doing X-ray crystallography
and taking the "pictures" that shed the real light on the structure of DNA. It
leaves enough time to write the papers, do the PR, and get the credit. And, I
guess, there's more than enough time left over for "chasing popsies."

[http://webweekly.hms.harvard.edu/archive/2003/4_7/student_sc...](http://webweekly.hms.harvard.edu/archive/2003/4_7/student_scene.html)

~~~
bootload
_"... it helps when you have other people like Rosalind Franklin working
through the nights doing X-ray crystallography and taking the "pictures" that
shed the real light on the structure of DNA. ..."_

The 50th anniversary of the finding of the DNA structure meant a lot of new
documentary information on the background to the race to find the structure of
DNA. Firstly it shows the high degree of competitive rivalry between the
players (Chargaff, Franklin, Pauling, Watson/Crick and Wilkins) to find the
structure of DNA.

The key to finding the DNA structure was not just a fact of experimenting but
assembling the pieces of the puzzle to create a workable theory. Each player
had different pieces required in the puzzle

* Wilkins: who's earliest X-ray diffractions meant the dimensions could be calculated & who supplied Franklin with DNA samples.

* Franklin & Gosling: the X-ray diffraction pattern clearly showing the structure.

* Linus Pauling: Who's triple stranded DNA idea which turned out to be wrong but tipped off Watson & Cricks idea of a double helix.

* Watson: who knew the base pairing (AT & CG) fit all the dimensions

* Chargaff: who deduced the DNA ratios of A, T, G, C are equal

Then there was the technique. There is no doubt Franklin was the more analytic
and systematic scientist compared to Watson and Crick who bumbled around like
many of the others in the field building models. But Franklin had two things
going against her. Firstly she working in a male dominated field. But more
importantly she missed out on the benefit of teamwork. A lot this appears to
stem from the personalities of Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. They simply
didn't gel as a team as well as Watson & Crick. [0]

So the winners in this case could have been any of these players but it was
Watson & Crick who happened to be at the right place and time understanding
the smaller picture but more importantly having the imagination and freedom to
think about how the pieces fit. Others supplied the information, they found
the right theory to tie the information into a coherent idea. Watson and Crick
didn't get the Nobel prize for just doing the basic science of discovering the
structure of DNA. The pieces of the DNA puzzle lay in front of them. They get
the recognition because they re-organised what information they had around
them, come up with a theory that matched the data and wrote it up.

[0] Cold Spring Harbor Lab, DNAi, "Finding the Structure, Players",
<http://www.dnai.org/a/index.html>

~~~
btilly
Good summary but you missed a critical point of serendipity. There are 230
possible symmetry groups a crystal can fall into. Franklin, as a
crystallographer, knew them all. But Watson's PHD thesis involved a compound
with the same symmetry as DNA, so he was much more prepared to recognize that
one than Franklin was.

~~~
ebishop
Err... As chemists Watson & Crick were light-years behind Franklin. They
initially proposed a model of DNA where the phosphates were on the inside.
When they showed it to Franklin she (along with other chemists) basically
laughed at them, and the faculty ordered them to stop working the problem
because they obviously didn't know what the hell they were doing.

Then they got a hold of Franklin's photograph of B-form DNA without her
knowledge. Some sources say Wilkins, the guy who gave Watson & Crick the
photograph stole it, others that he was just trying to be helpful, but they
agree that Watson & Crick used Franklin's work without her permission to form
their final model... with the phosphates where they belong, on the OUTSIDE,
this time.

Franklin was very cautious and methodical: she wanted everything all lined up
and double-checked before she published, and she didn't seem to realize just
how important what she already had was. (She was after all a chemist, not a
biologist). She wanted more data before she said conclusively what the correct
model was.

Watson & Crick were rather impulsive, but courageous. Even though they were
dead wrong the first time, they kept working and with Franklin's data managed
to put together a cohesive, plausible model, which turned out to be right.
They raced to publication, and didn't give Franklin any of the credit.

I'm not sure what you want to interpret from that about hard work, except that
someone's hard work (in this case, that of Franklin) is usually required for a
major success, and that if the hard worker isn't careful, he/she might not be
the one to get the credit.

Sources:
[http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/KR/Views/Exhibit/narrative/dna.h...](http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/KR/Views/Exhibit/narrative/dna.html)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_franklin>

~~~
btilly
They were dead wrong the first time, yes, but they had the right symmetry.
Watson was a much worse chemist, but he was prepared to recognize that
symmetry.

------
_pius
Without prejudice against her conclusions, a few things came to mind while
reading this.

I couldn't help but think that it's easy for someone like Caterina Fake to
keep cool and chill out: she's already made her millions from Flickr and she's
got no one to impress. Her investors (if any) and colleagues already believe
in her, she believes in herself, and quite frankly she doesn't have much to
lose.

Also, I did not find the description of Watson and Crick to be particularly
surprising, nor the implicit comparison to her current founding team
particularly valid. Anyone who's done serious research (or undertaken a major
creative endeavor) knows that you need to give yourself time to breathe, be
creative, and think about the big picture. Ironically, as I write this, I'm
beginning to think the comparison may be more valid than I first gave it
credit for ...

Finally, I was reminded of a Steve Blank quote something along the lines of
"In uncertain times, people tend to look down at their business cards and do
whatever it says on the title line." I think as founders, when all else fails
we fall back on doing _that_ thing. Those of us who are technical founders
will write code and create features; those of us who are more business-
oriented will build new strategies and obsess over details of the business;
those of us who have to do both will, well, do both — and not particularly
well.

------
jmtame
I was hesitant to click on this link. I thought to myself "oh no, another
article that's going to defend 37Signals' philosophy." But as an entrepreneur
and designer, the author makes two good points:

(1) we often make things out to be bigger than they really are. This is the
case in many situations, just because we don't want our lives to feel dull, so
even some of the small problems can be blown a little out of proportion.

(2) Time off is time well spent. It's called incubating in design, and it's
where the brain is actually at its most creative. Just a gentle reminder that
while we claim to work 120 hour weeks, not all 120 hours are spent furiously
pounding out code or designs over a computer.

------
jotto
john carmack does not believe working hard is overrated:

"Putting creativity on a pedestal can also be an excuse for laziness. There is
a lot of cultural belief that creativity comes from inspiration, and can't be
rushed. Not true. Inspiration is just your subconscious putting things
together, and that can be made into an active process with a little
introspection. Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes
on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you
aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works
better."

~~~
unalone
Then perhaps the moral here is that it's possible to be successful regardless
of how hard you work, and that different people have different habits that
lead to success.

I'm a fundamentally lazy person who does nothing all day and has enough
frequent flashes of brilliance to get away with it. Friends of mine have told
me that they're not capable of working like that, though I have my doubts:
I've always been curious if my method of productivity can be replicated, and
one day I think I'll put an effort into figuring that out. But what's clear is
that two people working in radically different ways can produce as much in the
end.

~~~
ellyagg
Sorry, maybe other folks around here know you...what have you done similar in
scale to John Carmack?

~~~
unalone
What does that have to do with what I was talking about? If accomplishment
matters, I'd say that Caterina's launched one of the twenty largest web sites
and, more importantly, made it scalable and beautiful, and that Hunch is one
of the most attractive web sites I've ever used.

The point of the post wasn't "Oh, look at me and how smart I am." The point
was, "Smart people can do the same task in different ways."

------
sachinag
I don't get the hate for this. Caterina has worked hard before, and she's not
slagging on it.

What she is saying is that working hard may not be necessary, and certainly is
not sufficient. Anyone who invests in startups knows that she's right: the
market is the most important. Getting to product/market fit is important. The
first you can't control at all; the second may not take forever/a ton of
effort if you really understand the market.

Working hard, in this construct, is essentially just "keep trying new things
until you get to product/market fit". Sure, in that case, working harder means
you get to try more things in any given period of hours/days/weeks/months.

But if you're in the wrong market, or you can't get to product/market fit, no
amount of hard work will lead to success.

~~~
einarvollset
I think the hate is there because the stated YC/pg ethos is "work really hard
so you can compress your working career into 4 years then don't worry about
it".

------
moron4hire
While I think there is merit to the concept that "workin' hard is for suckas",
I mean that only in what our classical conception of what "working hard"
means. Our entire industry, this "Information Technology" thing, is
fundamentally about making things that allow people to not work hard.
Technology is about being lazy, about avoiding effort where effort is not
necessary.

Using index cards and typewriters to compose documents is certainly harder
work than using a word processor application on a PC. Nobody would ever say
there was greater merit in the old way (well, nobody worth paying attention
to). It's the distinction between "working hard" and "working smart."

So "hard work" in the classical sense seems to mean "sit down, head down, move
the pencil, move the pencil, move the pencil." That's toiling. That's _not_
thinking of more efficient ways to "move the pencil". Working hard is a
productivity enhancer, but only in a linear fashion. Technology is a
productivity multiplier.

I refer you to the Robert Heinlein short-story "The Tale of the Man Who Was
Too Lazy to Fail," which is provided in his magnum opus "Time Enough for
Love". We should be "working hard" on finding ways to be lazy. It's through
the pursuit of technologies that allow us to be as productive as we are on
less effort that make the big advances in productivity, not "working hard".

~~~
Mz
"The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail,"

I hadn't heard of that but I like the title. It reminds me of some personal
experiences I've had where I listen to how other people handle certain
problems and then think to myself something like "I don't have the time or
energy to do things so inefficiently/ineffectively."

------
hegemonicon
Knowing what to work on is certainly more important than trying to brute force
all problems with man hours, but unless you've spent hours and hours of hard
work learning your field, you won't KNOW what to work on.

The only reason the Caterina people knew what to work on this time is because
of the hundreds of hours of experience they got building flickr.

The importance of hard work to success is extremely well documented:
[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/08/02/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/08/02/the_truth_about_grit/?page=full)

<http://blogmaverick.com/2009/05/13/success-motivation/>

[http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/magazines/fortune/talent_col...](http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/magazines/fortune/talent_colvin.fortune/index.htm)

[http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-
Gladwel...](http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-
Gladwell/dp/0316017922)

~~~
joe_the_user
I think that the problem is the term "hard work".

I've spend a tremendous amount of time learning those fields that I enjoy and
am successful at. But a lot of that time has felt more like 'play' or
'exploration' or curiosity than 'hard work'.

Hard evokes doggedly trying a thousand elements with only the hope that they
might create light.

I am sure that Tesla spent at least as much time and energy as Edison in
pursuing his field. It also seems he brought more play and imagination to it.
And Tesla's inventions were the big ones that made electricity practical - the
electric motor, the generator, alternating current, etc.

I think that argument isn't so spending time and energy but rather against
thinking that _merely_ putting forth time energy is enough....

~~~
hegemonicon
I great interpretation of Malcolm Gladwell's 10000 hours that I came across
somewhere is "Don't be concerned with practicing 10000 hours at something - be
concerned with finding something you enjoy so much that you don't notice when
the 10000 hours have passed"

~~~
adg
Gladwell popularized the "10,000 hours rule", but he didn't invent it. It's
originally from a paper by K. Anders Ericsson on "deliberate practice" [1]. It
cites a ton of other research in the area and is definitely worth reading if
you liked Outliers.

[1]
[http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf)

------
visitor4rmindia
First, Watson and Crick were hardly entrepreneurs so the comparison is totally
unrealistic.

Secondly, every single successful entrepreneur succeeded by working hard. It's
easy to say "work on the right things" but my feeling is the "right thing"
only emerges because you are working hard.

~~~
ahoyhere
I think you might be surprised by how many people got rich by not working very
hard at all -- practically, in fact, by accident.

But nobody wants to admit that, not to themselves and surely not to other
people. Because "hard work" is the ethic that makes you virtuous in America
and among "startup wonks."

So, even when the truth is "I got rich by accident" or "luck," it always comes
out the mouth of the entrepreneur as "hard work."

The desire is to look virtuous and deserving. Humans are justification
machines -- if we have something, we have to justify why we have it. If we
don't, we have to justify why we don't. If you want insights into this topic,
read _Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)_ , _Predictably Irrational_ and _On
Being Certain_.

Even more than that, there are people who got rich by having the right insight
at the right time, and acted on it. That often doesn't take hard work.

Those people, too, want to view themselves as triumphant as opposed to lucky.
They want to pretend that they have something to impart, so that others can
"learn" from their success.

Beyond that, most people are horribly incapable of analyzing their own
actions, and of analyzing real-world cause and effect, and "hard work" is a
verbal tick -- like the "um" of the business memoir world.

There is a cult here -- and everywhere young coding hotshots think they will
get rich -- of "entrepeneurpr0n."

And while Caterina and 37Signals might be contributing to the pr0n collection,
they are contributing to a totally _different_ stack than the "Work hard and
you'll get rich" stack.

And that, in my opinion, is worthwhile.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I've been thinking about this exact thing for many years now. During that
time, I've had a few web startups that did not succeed -- even though I worked
like the dickens on them.

There are two types of people in the world: people who think that success is
due to learning and work and people who think that success is due to luck.

The side-effects of these belief systems are very important.

If you think success is due to hard work and knowledge, you are likely to work
hard and keep learning. If, on the other hand, you think it's luck, you are
likely to resent those who are luckier than you and to feel like success is a
rigged game.

I think you can err too much on either side here. What's the truth? The truth
is that you can learn and work and increase your chances from 1 in a million
to maybe 1 in a hundred. Perhaps better. Given these odds, some folks try a
few times and make it. Some try once and make it. Some try dozens of times and
don't make it. Usually looking back, as you point out, the story is about
skill and hard work, even though luck probably had a lot (but not all) to do
with it.

You can look at this as a reason not to work or try hard, or you can look at
this maturely as simply the way life is played. Personally I think the best
strategy is to balance learning/working with increasing the frequency of your
startup attempts. If you could fail a dozen times in one year, within ten
years you're likely to do well. [insert black swan reference here]

~~~
_pius
_There are two types of people in the world: people who think that success is
due to learning and work and people who think that success is due to luck._

Or perhaps a third type who simply think that success is due to "being right,"
no matter how you get there.

~~~
joecode
The third type is right. Though it can be learn to discover what is right
without failing a lot, by working hard. Opportunity is key.

------
mvp
Working hard is just being conscious of what you are doing (most of the time).
If you can do the same work without being conscious of doing it, you won't
feel it to be working hard.

So learning any new skill, or negotiating new situations can feel like hard
work. Imagine how you conscious you had to be of what you were doing when you
first learned to drive a car. Making your first startup a success will
definitely feel like hard work, as you would have to be learning so many
things, and be in situations that you (or many) have not been in before.

Once you have succeeded (and looking in the rearview mirror), you will realize
that a lot of the hard work was not really required because it is easy to see
(or believe) after the fact what actually contributed to the final outcome
that is considered as success.

------
tybris
Your brain is like a muscle, it needs both exercise and rest and the more you
train it, the more it can do.

------
wglb
This is a good article, and as a person who works long hours, I would like to
suggest a distinction. If you are very into what you are doing, long hours do
not seem "hard". Hard in the article seems to include a good dose of freaking
out. Lets avoid that.

~~~
wglb
Which reminds me of one of my relatives who said that he worked long hours but
not very many of them.

------
richcollins
I see this story over and over again. Someone successful worked really hard
and succeeded. They go on to say "I've learned that you don't have to work
hard to succeed"

~~~
aristus
Hmm. It's more like someone comes back from a long wilderness trip or a hike
through Europe and they go on and say "I've learned that you don't need 30 kg
of luggage". Or someone who's built a good relationship saying "I've learned
you can choose not to be jealous or dependent".

I've seen all four combinations of frantic/measured and smart/stupid startups,
and I think that measured + smart is the way to go. But I also think that this
is one of those lessons you have to learn from experience.

~~~
staunch
Isn't that long hike still _really_ hard work? Doesn't that relationship still
require _really_ hard work?

Just cutting out the stupid make-work doesn't take something from being
ridiculously hard to being easy.

~~~
aristus
Not easy, but _measured_. In general I'd rather have someone who maybe thinks
about a problem while having a life during the weekend then walks in on Monday
with a place to start from, than someone who slept under the desk in between
heroic coding sessions. There's a place for both, but having the time and
mental energy to gain and maintain perspective is also necessary. You (or at
least I, and many people I've worked with) do better work when they have a
high thinking to typing ratio.

------
edw519
_Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing
to work on._

That's like saying, "Much more important than breathing is having a beating
heart."

Theroem: Working hard and working on the right thing are _both_ necessary but
not sufficient conditions.

Corollary: Working hard on the right thing is a necessary but not sufficient
condition.

~~~
scotty79
> That's like saying, "Much more important than breathing is having a beating
> heart."

According to modern resuscitation guidelines this is actually true and
meaningful statement.

~~~
euccastro
But it doesn't follow that breathing is optional.

~~~
scotty79
For some time it is. You can be well for some time just with the oxygen
lingering in you lungs and in your blood, as long as the blood is circulating
through your body.

------
fpgeek
Working smart beats working hard, but working smart and hard is best, of
course.

~~~
jimfl
And working fun beats working smart and hard.

~~~
billswift
Only if fun is your goal. Otherwise, smart and hard win.

~~~
jimfl
If fun is not your goal, it is time to reevaluate what you are doing.

~~~
billswift
Fun is good, but fleeting. Satisfaction and even money last longer.

------
daleharvey
obligatory Jefferson quote

“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have”

but I do completely agree that its easy to go back into a safe little world of
"oohh im busy coding new feature X", when in reality it isnt needed, its just
delaying you from doing the important(and hard) things.

~~~
antidaily
...and Ben Hogan - "the more I practice [golf], the luckier I get."

~~~
lpellis
actually that phrase is normally credited to Gary Player.

------
scotty79
The more you have, the more you waste.

If you have a lot of your working hours available, there is a greater chance
that you'll waste them on useless crap like freaking out and stubbornly making
useless misguided things.

It's better to be a bit lazy and treat your work as scarce resource and think
about ways to allocate it better.

------
billswift
There was a Japanese proverb that was made much of during the 80s:

"If you work hard, you can do it."

Of course, with the Japanese recession and "lost decade" there is less noise
about Japanese work habits and so forth. But I have kept thinking about this,
because it is important, and a couple of years ago had a slightly different
take on it; You can do it if you will do it, and if it isn't worth working
hard at, then maybe it's not worth doing in the first place. At the very
least, even if you decide later that your goal is mistaken, if you worked hard
at it, you will have taken less time to discover that and move on to something
else.

ADDED: Working hard also helps you to keep up your enthusiasm and momentum on
a project. You can rest and relax and catch up on all your other stuff between
projects.

------
psyklic
Working hard does not guarantee success, but it improves your chances. So does
having good intuitions about which problems to work on ;-)

~~~
scotty79
> Working hard does not guarantee success, but it improves your chances.

Not a bit if you are doing the wrong things, as you may learn from many
startup failures.

------
imperator
Working hard is hardly work when you are operating from the basis of your
strengths. If you have a group of coworkers whose strengths are your
weaknesses, than it is very easy to enter into a state of flow.

Working on which right things is not very elucidated in the essay, but part of
that is asking yourself, "What is the write thing for ME to be working on?"

This is a very good essay.

------
staunch
I look forwarding to hearing what they really did 2 years from now. My guess
is a) They worked obsessively/freaked out/panicked and are possibly successful
or b) Hunch was a total failure.

------
zaidf
May be once you sell your first company, make your FU money you are able to be
more chill about your next start-up?

------
spiralhead
My 2 cents. I am not "experienced" in that I haven't yet achieved my millions,
but experience has told me "forcing" myself to continue hacking away when I'm
clearly experiencing physical fatigue only leads to more lost productivity
down the road.

For example, forcing myself to continue working at my computer when I don't
feel like it will lead to eye strain, back pain and anxiety. I will often wake
up with a headache after such marathons. I refer to this as burnout. Burnout
is very real.

In my early years of programming I could work non-stop because I was doing
something new almost every day. And for someone that likes new experiences, it
was exciting. But after years of experience, programming in-and-of itself
feels more and more like labour.

Don't get me wrong. I still love programming, in general. I've just become
more focused on the end-results of programming--of what it makes possible,
what it does for people. The act of programming itself, while being something
that will always be a significant part of what defines "what I do", is no
longer something that can sustain my interest full time.

------
krav
I don't know. There's working hard and then there's looking like you're
working hard. I'm guilty of falling into the latter and learning how to work
effectively. Conversely, this guy works hard but seems to be effective:

[http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090901/the-way-i-work-marc-
lor...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090901/the-way-i-work-marc-lore-of-
diaperscom.html)

------
jerome_etienne
a well worded, more detailed version of 'running like a headless chicken'.
Running too often make it easy to get lost on the path and pick the wrong one
at an important crossroad.

In french school, it is typical to learn "le lievre et la tortue" a fable from
la fontaine (sorry i failed to find a english link on it) .

~~~
Mz
In English, that's "The tortoise and the hare":
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tortoise_and_the_Hare>

------
baran
I think all successful people are guilty of this at some point. When people
feel like they are up against the wall, they feel like they have to be
constantly fighting, even though sometimes it just best to take a step back.

------
anildigital
Agreed completely! People have wrong faith about working hard that it would
help in bringing out something useful and cool. One should clearly know why he
is working hard and is it really worth to work hard for.

------
wheels
\- I don't think you get to skip to the part where you know which things to
worry about without worrying about the wrong things.

\- This advice will be much more believable if Hunch even scratches the
surface of Flickr's success.

------
jgrant27
[http://jng.imagine27.com/articles/2008-05-01-000046_work-
eth...](http://jng.imagine27.com/articles/2008-05-01-000046_work-ethic-and-
startups.html)

------
oliveoil
Wow! I didn't know that Watson was so cool!

~~~
zackattack
He's also racist, though that may be accredited to his senility:
[http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/18/science.race/inde...](http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/18/science.race/index.html)

~~~
Shooter
I have two good friends from the science fair circuit that worked for him at
CSHL. They both (separately) said he has been a _huge_ jerk for many years, a
jerk of legendary proportions. Except they used different words for jerk. They
said he frequently made off-color jokes and had some _"interesting"_ theories,
but that they didn't really think he was actually racist. Neither friend liked
him, but they both really respected him - especially his stance on patents.

[The last time I put something like this on HN - something anecdotal and
mildly negative - it was about Billy Mays, and he died a few days later. If
Watson dies this week, it's not my fault...he's old.]

------
tfh
That's damn right. Clearly definied priorities can save a lot of time..

------
known
Your life will be productive, if you plan your life in your teens in reverse
order (death->life).

~~~
moron4hire
If you plan the rest of your life out while you're still in your teens, you'll
likely end up with a bad plan (because you lack the life experience to know
what a good plan looks like), and you will probably miss out on a lot of the
nicer things in life. There's something to be said for stepping back and
experiencing life _now_ while you're still young and flexible instead of
waiting until after you've achieved "success" and are consequentially old and
creaky.

~~~
known
Plan = What to accomplish in your life

------
Ardit20
That's so dumb. Of course you need to work on the right thing. I'm actually
confused. She mentions Edison and how he has tried so many experiments and
fails, suggests that he worked hard, yet seems to imply that his hard work was
somewhat irrelevant. He was successful because he found the right thing. I am
puzzled as I am wondering whether she thinks that her readership is ten years
old or have no common sense at all.

You need to work hard to understand the little things and incrementally
advance towards the solution, or the right thing. You might discover something
on a day in which you did little work, but surely you have been working for
many years perhaps to arrive to that day.

Working hard is if anything underrated as society puts more emphasis on talent
and innate ability. It is hardly over rated and as our society becomes complex
by the day, it will perhaps never be overrated.

~~~
fjabre
I think we can have an intelligent debate without having to call her post
'dumb'. I'm surprised this comment was voted so high.

This is the quickest way to lose any debate...

and besides: it's often the most obvious that escapes us. Smart people fall
into these kinds of traps all the time. I found the post to be enlightening in
that regard.

~~~
Ardit20
It waters down the expectations that a writer should have of their readership
however and the expectations that a reader should have of an article.

Personally I would not mind reading some of pg's articles as although some may
contain obvious information, they usually have been thought through and
synthesised to create new knowledge. This article however is simply stating
the obvious as much as an article suggesting that you should eat everyday
would be suggesting the obvious. I do not think it has escaped by anyone the
fact that they need to work on the right thing, nor as the above comment
suggests, that sometimes they may be 'traped' by focusing too much on a
certain thing. If the article was about research findings on how to organise
your time, how to manage tendencies towards perfection, how to recognise when
you are spending time on something you should not, then perhaps the reader
would have learned something. The article however is superficial and typical
of a wider trend on the internet where opinions are the norm and currency
rather than imparting knowledge on the readership.

Perhaps to suggest that what the article contains and the one who wrote it is
dumb - within the confines of this specific article - might be perceived as
derogatory and uncivilised, yet I do not think that one should refrain from
speaking their mind. I found the article dumb, I could have said pointless,
yet I thought dumb describes it better because it is so obvious, the title is
misleading and hardly supported in the article and the article itself has not
been thought through at all, let alone the title. If the writer wants me to
hail her as a beacon of truth then she should try much harder rather than
think that she is having a chat with her friend while drinking a coffee about
what she thinks of hard work.

~~~
Mz
Serious question: I am wondering if you aren't American. American culture puts
a lot of emphasis on "work ethic". Someone in the comments section of the
article indicated they were British but living in America and generally
appalled at how we "flog ourselves to death" constantly. Perhaps this
observation is more "obvious" to people from other cultures? But for most
Americans it probably merits repeating (very regularly even).

------
joechung
Worst. Advice. Ever. She has confused overworking with working hard.

------
radu_floricica
But for those of us who aren't Crick and Watson we have to supplement with a
healthy dose of working.

