
If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong - brianwillis
http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-youre-doing-something-wrong-the-surprisingly-relaxed-lives-of-elite-achievers/
======
scottdw2
I like the hypothesis the article presents: focusing on working intently hard,
followed by relaxation and you will perform better. It's something I would
want to beleive.

But, I find his analysis a little suspect. It appears to confuse corellation
and causation. It notices a difference in behavior between the "great" and the
"average" and assumes those differences to cause the difference in ability.

It completely ignores the possibility that the behavioral difference might be
caused by a difference in ability, rather than the behavior changing the
ability.

Also, another problem is that student classification is based on faculty
opinion. The fact that students with a class of behavior tend to be liked more
by their instructors implies something about the instructors, not the
students. It does not measure music ability. It measures the ability to be
perceived positively by music professors.

I would be interested to see a study that actually measures music ability,
using set learning time frames with unfamiliar pieces and double blind
assessment of music samples.

If that was correlated with behavior, then it might mean something.

The best the study can say is "if you want music teachers in Berlin to rate
you highly, then behave this way".

~~~
mmaunder
"It completely ignores the possibility that the behavioral difference might be
caused by a difference in ability, rather than the behavior changing the
ability."

Exactly why I clicked the comment link. The differences in behavior could also
be caused by a difference in psychology between students. e.g. the elite group
love what they do and the other group don't. Which could indicate why the
other group spread their practice throughout the day - because they're
procrastinating all day long.

~~~
GreenNight
No, I don't think so.

I love what I do (my hobby - swing dancing). I do it for 3-5 hours a day
(after work). I would improve much faster if I danced less, spent most of the
time doing hard work (cleaning my moves, learning more moves, more cardio,
...) and rested more.

Right now I'm always on a tired state, and improving quite well, but finding
myself lacking in a lot of ways. When I take a break my improvement is greatly
enhanced.

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dpark
I wrote up a long critical response and then deleted it. The bottom line is
that this is a valid point for _studying_ , which is what the blog is about.
Studying 10 hours a day is not productive. Shorter bursts of intense study is
indeed very useful.

However, it's important to note that this doesn't extrapolate to the general
world. A lot of jobs simply involve doing a lot of stuff. Efficient study of
storage technologies might make you an elite expert, but it won't make you the
founder of DropBox. That takes a lot of "hard to do" work, and you most
definitely will be busy. Most jobs are closer to this than they are to the
violinist in a university.

~~~
Xylakant
I think the issue revolves around the notion of "busy". The article notes that
spreading your work in small chunks distributed around the day decreases your
efficiency - something quite obvious if you step back a little from what you
do. Still, most people (with myself being guilty) tend do get disrupted and
spend time on hackernews, ... interrupting their workflow. So the argument
boils down to "being elite is a matter of better focus, not a matter of more
work hours."

~~~
dpark
The thing is, being successful in most things doesn't require being "elite".
Instead it requires a ton of traditional work.

Certainly, being focused can be a good thing, and can definitely mean you get
more done in the same amount of time. Most of the truly successful people I
know, though, are both focused and busy. If you work twice as fast as the
average person, but also spend only half the time, them you aren't more
productive.

------
shaldengeki
As much as I appreciate the fact that the original paper was linked in the
article, I can't get over the nagging feeling that it may be a slight
overreach to take three groups of ten people studying in the same academy, ask
them to record their activities for a week, and then generalize the results to
recommend certain behaviors to the entire human population.

------
barnabyk
You can find the article for free at scholar.google.com -
[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=The+role+of+deliberate+p...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=The+role+of+deliberate+practice+in+the+acquisition+of+expert+performance.&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C33&as_sdtp=on)
-

With this article you also have to note the estimated number of hours the best
violinists and good violinists spent performing. By the age of 20, the best
had accumulated 7,410 hours of practice, the good violinists had accumulated
5,301 hours, and the teachers had accumulated 3,420 hours. The best and the
good violinists can practice the same amount, but if you are 2,000 hours of
deliberate practice behind, it will be really hard to catch up.

If you are interested in expert human performance, I would read this article,
the Talent Code, and Talent is Overrated. Every time I hear Gary V say that he
is successful because of his DNA, I think of this article because it is the
10,000 hours he spent running a lemonade stand, selling baseball cards,
working in a wine store, and deliberately reading wine spectator that made him
an expert.

------
steve-howard
Cal Newport's articles are always interesting to read, but I find them to be
less than encouraging. It's not that the advice isn't sound -- it's just that
his recommendations generally require the reader to be extremely self-
disciplined. I am constantly trying to practice this, but in truth I'm still
all over the map. I do poorly in courses where I'm expected to be constantly
involved in little incremental pieces (like the course I'm taking in Agile),
and I tend to work rather well doing large chunks at once.

Most days I can't bring myself to do real, boring, challenging-but-in-a-sucky-
way work. Then I'll realize I'm weeks behind and I'll hammer out everything I
need to do in a couple of days. I had a twelve-week internship over the
summer, and when it was almost over and I still wanted to get things done, I
spent about sixteen hours a day in my office for a week. The reviews of the
end result were fantastic.

I am somewhat under the impression that there are some people in the world who
are great organizers, who have some record of everything they've committed to
and planned for, and that I will never be one of those people.

~~~
goblin89
Being in similar situation myself, I think it's not self-discipline. It's just
that deep inside you don't see the point. Although sometimes extrinsic
motivation becomes strong enough that you hammer things out, you're not
generally interested in doing these.

What is needed here IMO is somewhat opposite of self-discipline.

You don't make something important or interesting by thinking that it's
important. It must naturally _be_ important for you, you need to be
intrinsically interested in this. _That_ state of affairs we normally don't
verbalise or contemplate on.

I doubt that you can come to that with self-discipline. It must be something
else. You need to trick yourself.

Possible ways might be introducing some short-term psychological reward,
or—better—learning to enjoy the process. My opinion is that some high-
achieving people might actually use some psychological tricks like these
without knowing about it.

~~~
Alexandervn
Leo Babauta has an interesting claim on this that discipline therefor is a
myth: <http://zenhabits.net/discipline/>.

In the light of the article: those kids must at least get the organization and
scheduling part of their lives from their parents.

~~~
TDL
Thanks for the link. "Build habits for consistency" is exactly they way I
view. I believed strongly in "discipline" for a long time, but never built any
strong habits to reinforce what end goal or lifestyle I was trying to attain.
Inevitably I would build this heavy daily schedule, work incredibly hard for a
period of time, and then just completely break down from exhaustion.
Afterwards I would feel guilty about not being able to accomplish even small
portions of my daily schedule and then eventually give up all together.

Working hard is admirable; but, when you don't have the capacity to do so, you
have to build that capacity first.

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vacri
The author has never worked on a farm; there is always something to do.

~~~
mattlong
I don't think he is addressing people who do physical labor.

~~~
vacri
It's still worth pointing out, since it's easy to take an aphorism like this
and assume it covers everything.

~~~
notJim
It's also pretty easy not to.

~~~
vacri
Well, let's use that excuse for everything then. Never advise anyone on
anything one person might find 'easy'. It's easy not to fall prey to the
constant crap that the news media throws out - but hey, it's 'easy', so let's
not remind people that news media has an agenda. It's easy to find flaws in
creationist arguments, so screw it, don't oppose the bad science there. It's
easy to remember where the assembly point is for the fire drill, so no need to
put up signs. Hell, it's easy to remember to brush your teeth, so let's not
remind people about the importance of brushing teeth.

What you say is the worst excuse I have heard in a long time, and betrays a
fundamental lack of understanding of human psychology.

------
siliconcalley
I recently picked up a book in an airport called Talent is Overrated. It's all
about this theory. There is a ton of evidence given to support it, how to
improve your own performance, and that of your team, and how to apply the
methods to promote innovation. It's a great book, if you're into this article
you should definitely check it out.

------
jroseattle
What a poorly titled article. The study itself isn't invalid, but the
conclusions are.

It's easy to read the evidence -- put in more effective practice/studying, and
your rates of success and capabilities will be higher than any
marathon/cramming will ever do for you.

A fine sentiment, until its applied to the general world. And in the real
world, there is plenty of hard-to-do work that needs to be handled. I guess
all my hard-to-do work that I'm responsible for as an employee, friend,
father, volunteer, etc. is simply a "busyness" choice that's preventing me
from reaching the stars in some focused endeavor.

It's completely anecdotal, but I know several people who follow the focused-
drive-limited-busyness approach. I find two common traits about them: 1) they
are highly competent in their chosen field, and 2) they are stunningly boring.

The world needs experts, but life needs well-rounded people. I respect the
experts, but I much prefer the well-rounded folks.

------
betterlabs
The hardest thing is to take this learning (and the concept of deliberate
practice) and hack it to your startup founder role and your chaotic day. Its
easy to say that this concept it not applicable there but I believe it is. I
have tried to apply it by splitting my day for new sales calls, existing
account management, product dev management and operational issues and it does
work well on the days that I can be disciplined enough to not get distracted.
There is also a tremendous sense of achievement when it works. So that is my
take away from this article - take the core concept and make an attempt to
apply it to whatever it is that you are doing - so you can do it better,
faster and cheaper ( in terms of energy spent!).

------
ddelony
Creative work seems to happen in short bursts. Along with a lot of other
writers, I like working in short, intense bursts, especially in the mornings.

~~~
leibniz
Is morning "early in the morning" or "after getting up"?

------
martinkallstrom
I see no proof of causality in the article. My assumption is that a teacher
needs to be an expert in not only her subject but also in pedagogics. Why
wouldn't this multidisciplinary expertise require harder work to attain,
resulting in less sleep and a longer work schedule containing tasks not
directly related to music?

I also resent the inherent bias in labelling someone with the ambition of
becoming a teacher of the arts as _average_ based on this ambition alone. As
earlier HN posts have informed us, in Finland it is the top 10% students of a
class that go on to become teachers.

------
rodolphoarruda
Intelligence is perceived on someone's outcomes to society. Playing the violin
extremely well is an individual outcome, which denotes individual
intelligence. On the other hand, the majority of us work for organizations,
groups, teams etc, where the quality of the outcome comes from the group's
collective intelligence. I wish I could find a different version of this
article named instead: "If your team is busy, it's doing something
<research_findings_here>"; because then it would apply to a more significant
share of our societies.

I believe that someone being busy working on social interactions (of any type,
real or virtual) generates great outcomes both personally and collectively. I
don't believe in meditation, reclusion, cocooning anymore. A complex world
requires sophisticated groups of talented people working together to solve
problems. The busy they are, the better.

Maybe this slides off the topic. But I just wanted to express my view from a
different angle.

------
andrewfelix
"The data, as it turns out, had a different story to tell…" No, it doesn't.
The data shows that different levels of performance are directly related to
the amount of time invested in practice. The author seems to have attempted to
re-interpret the data to suit his argument

------
Zimahl
And sometimes practice doesn't matter much at all. Some people are just great
at what they do.

Charles Barkley (well-known NBA future Hall of Famer) was well known for being
a slacker at practice. He hated it.

Randy Moss (well-known NFL future Hall of Famer) was also one of the laziest
players, poor team player, and hated practice.

Mark Spitz (7-time gold medal winning swimmer) apparently was particularly
uninterested in practice, put in the bare minimum yet reaped huge rewards.

~~~
eurohacker
these examples show just what the research concluded though -

dont do too much training all day long but rather do effective short period
intensive trainings couple of times a day

------
azov
I think the title is highly misleading. It's not about busy vs not busy, it's
about doing the right thing vs doing something that doesn't matter. The
A-group was doing _three times_ more work that matters. And work that doesn't
matter doesn't count.

In other words, how is that different from 80/20 principle? Looks like the
research is just another confirmation of it.

------
bdhe
I think it is another example of _quality versus quantity_. Often people use
quantity of time rather than quality of time towards a particular task as a
metric of effort and that is unfortunately wrong. Another big point in favor
of telecommuting.

~~~
dpark
I'd say that's a big argument _against_ telecommuting. Time spent directly
interacting with your team is often much higher quality than time spent in
isolation.

------
saturdaysaint
A lot of this is consonant with Tony Schwartz's "Manage Your Energy, Not Your
Time" -

<http://hbr.org/2007/10/manage-your-energy-not-your-time/ar/1> (paywalled,
unfortunately)

~~~
TDL
I second this. "The Power of Full Engagement" is a rather good book on how to
manage your energy. I like Cal Newport's blog, but what I think often goes
unmentioned is the energy required to sustain this regime. It's not going to
happen over night.

Schwartz and Loehr worked with some of the best tennis players of all time.
From there they built a system of how to build up your energy (energy is the
term they use.) Some might find their work to be a bit hokey, but I got the
book used for $.01 (+ s&H) on Amazon so it's worth a shot.

The deliberative practice literature is pretty consistent on what people do to
become better performers. What much of the literature (or at least what I have
read) lacks is the recognition that getting to the point of being able to
practice deliberately in a consistent manner takes building up endurance over
time.

------
fbpcm
This is why I focus my efforts on reaching certain goals effectively rather
than efficiently accomplishing as much as possible.

------
thorie
This article complete ignores the simple fact that if you're talented, you
don't need to work hard.

------
topbanana
503\. Oh, the irony

~~~
timsco
Awesome. I was about to write the same thing!

------
billpatrianakos
I don't get that difference between hard work and hard to do work. It says
that the players who were spending time stretching their abilities were higher
achieves than the ones who simply worked hard. Does that mean the average ones
were working tirelessly to perfect their existing skills while the elite were
going beyond that and testing their limits? So then were the elites simply
satisfied with their current abilities so to speak and simply moving on to
more challenging activities while the average ones wouldn't do that until
their existing skills were absolutely perfect? I'm tired so maybe Im missing
the obvious.

I love articles like this. It's just so hard to put the results into practice.
I'm a programmer. I admit I focus on improving skills that are in my comfort
zone most of the time. It has served me well and I see a lot of improvement in
my work. I also spend some time working on things I'm not familiar with or not
comfortable with but far less time that that which I already have at least a
decent grasp of. I tend to improve by getting a passing knowledge of something
new and building on it slowly by dissecting examples. Maybe I should spend
more time on the skills I don't yet have a firm grasp of rather than
perfecting my current skill set?

Interesting read for sure.

------
Rodrigo_Thauby
Epic fail. 503 status.

~~~
tnuc
503: server unavailable. It's probably busy, not doing anything wrong.

~~~
div
Deliciously ironic given the title of the article though.

