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If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011) (calnewport.com)
499 points by unpredict on Nov 15, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 162 comments



Seems like a bit of a tail wagging the dog situation. How do we know the more relaxed/organized schedule leads to success, and not that success leads to a more relaxed/organized schedule?

This reminds me of some other advice I remember reading: No level of hard work or organization will substitute for talent and opportunity, and nearly all success stories to the contrary are missing key facts. ie Myth: Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Reality: Michael Jordan was put onto the junior team with players his own age/size so he could get more play time, instead of being prematurely promoted to the highest level of play. Myth: Bill Gates is a college drop out who found success in a technical field purely based on personal merit. Reality: Gates' private high school gave him more access to computers than Harvard, and continuing at Harvard would have been a waste of time given his level of experience in the field.

The lesson is that you need to figure out what you're good at and where you have opportunity, and then work hard in those areas. Just working hard is a recipe for failure for most people.


There is a false dichotomy here. Talented people who have seized the right opportunity can get overwhelmed or disorganized like everyone else. I've always assumed that all those tips for getting organized, getting this done, etc., are primarily intended for talented people who otherwise already know what they're doing.

> No level of hard work or organization will substitute for talent and opportunity

I find that very doubtful. A certain level of talent is needed, there is no doubt about that. Beyond that level, though, it seems to me that focus and continuous dedication (aka, hard work) in combination with being at the right place with right people at the right time are the most decisive success factors in any endeavour. Bill Gates is the perfect example. He has been working like crazy in his early years, was basically on the job all the time.


Why doubtful? Bill Gates is incredibly talented, and being in the right place at the right time is more or less the definition of opportunity.


To be such an extreme outlier success as Bill Gates took extreme talent, extreme, all-consuming hard work, and extreme privilege and opportunity (luck) all combined in a perfect storm.

He still would have been successful without all of those things together, but not at the same level.


This is approximately the correct breakdown. Its interesting that ⅔ of the combo could be lumped into different kinds of luck.

You can't do much about your inherited or birth situation, but the extremely successful people I know usually have a very fortunate background and also worked hard to expand their future luck surface so that when outrageous opportunity lightning was looking to strike somewhere, they had an outsized chance to be the spot.


Well, offtopic a bit but.. People say you never know what they have to sacrifice for they success.

Listening lately news about Bill and he's circles of friends.. I can honestly say I am not surprised why these certain billionaires are never prosecuted of anything..


What are you trying to imply?

Microsoft paid hefty fines for its monopolistic behavior...


I suspect: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...

GP shouldn't insinuate vaguely, IMO.


Leonardo Da Vinci is a good counter example. He wasn't organized at all and neither were his collaborators. A lot of his science breakthroughs went on unknown until somebody else totally unrelated did the same.


Counter example of what?

> A lot of his science breakthroughs went on unknown

I suppose if one's goal is solipsistic research, that would be fine. (We know that wasn't Da Vinci's goal, though.)

To put it a different way, suppose I have solved AGI and never told anyone.

... What good have I done?


Depending ones feelings about AGI, you might have saved the humans from extinction by keeping it to yourself.


> it seems to me that focus and continuous dedication (aka, hard work)

Some might say the ability to focus to that extent is a talent too.

I personally think it's all a mix of nature and nurture, and you can't put anything 100% in one category or the other.


Kudos for debunking two myths knew about and believed at face value.

I agree with the talent + opportunity + hard work combination, and I would say that enjoyment is also necessary for the hard work not to become (self-)destructive in the long term.


The myths are promoted as means to raise hope in the "little man" and to attract new blood (workers) to the specific industries, thinking they can also become as big as the stars of that industry, starting with very little.

This is very deceptive, and probably gets people into trouble more often than not, changing their long term orbits based on fantasies built on selective factology about what is enough for success.


>The myths are promoted as means to raise hope in the "little man" and to attract new blood (workers) to the specific industries, thinking they can also become as big as the stars of that industry, starting with very little.

Why invoke conspiracy when mere venality will suffice? Optimism sells. Hollywood has warmed its benches with a never-ending stream of would-be stars and filmmakers despite the fact that the image of the struggling Hollywood hopeful is as cliche as that of the morally intermittent lawyer.

Perhaps one of the strangest things about our psychology-and-PR-dominated world is that psychology is so subtle and powerful that it affects us even when it is not affecting us, making us see ghosts in the shadows of folklore. What would be so nice is a list of criteria for determining when a meme may have been designed for cultural impact. Surely cui bono is not enough -- it implicates nearly everything!


You are making this out to be a conspiracy. It's perfectly possible people are just unconsciously working together towards this end.

Let's say I grow up in a poor working-class environment. Years later I find myself CEO of a multi-national corporation and the people working for me are poor working-class people. - And most companies are set up like this. There's very few people at the top and they have all the power while the subordniate masses have none. You give orders. They take orders. - One way to justify my own place in this system is to convince myself that my sucesses have some special property rather than just coincidence: "You can make it if you work hard like me."

And if you're a media company one might suspect that because of this you would tend to tell stories of individual endeavor. And one might suspect the same would be true for a marketing company.


There's a difference between "conspiracy" and "class solidarity among the wealthy". You're totally right that it's probably silly to attribute this to all management/ownership explicitly collaborating together on a scheme they're keeping secret from the workers, but I'd argue that the comment you're responding to is also totally right to point out that things can structurally support each other in a way that ultimately ends up being a small group of rich people working to keep a larger group of poor people poor, simply because all the small incentives for the individual decisions can support the larger structural whole. We can still attribute that as "wealthy people promulgate a narrative to inspire false hope" in a meaningful way, as long as we don't take it from an individualist frame.


I agree!


"Just working hard is a recipe for failure for most people."

It is quite impossible to just work hard unless you are forced to. I mean there has to be some spark, some excitement about the work you are doing. Which typically means you have some inkling to do take on this task, which you may not be good at but with hard work you will make progress and eventually good at the task, and this self fulfilling cycle continues.

I am not however certain that this process will equip you to spot good opportunities. You can be really good at what you do and not even realize how many opportunities in that same space have gone by. You may be very content with your status quo. There could be multiple reasons for not spotting opportunities.

So I wouldn't say that just working hard is a sure recipe for failure.


You put it nicely and this is exactly what I've been thinking. As you said there has to be some spark within you to do that stuff that you are wanting to do. Rest of the part is about enjoying the process of doing that.

I personally believe that there is no clear-cut rule or path for success and it differs from person to person. So, this way - I wonder how people could come up with such an outrageous article saying that x will lead you to success if you do it this way?!


Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.

But crucially, at the peak of the game, both talent and hard work are just the cost of entry. The rest is luck and opportunity.

For example: Phelps won the Olympics by a knuckle. That’s a difference so subtle it’s down to chaotic systems and butterfly wings for that particular race. Overall everyone at that level is hugely talented and incredibly hardworking


> Phelps won the Olympics by a knuckle.

To be fair, Phelps has 23 Olympic gold medals. Some victories were closer than others but he really did have an era of true dominance.


Honestly, I'd say in quite a few fields, talent and hard work aren't even the cost of entry, they're semi irrelevant to how well someone does there. Sports is one of those cases where being extremely good at something is directly correlated to success, and there's no way around that.

And even that's got a certain element of opportunity in terms of the era you were born in. Tons of good athletes could have revolutionised their fields had they been born a few decades/centuries earlier. See British tennis pros, with the likes of Henman and Murray having had the potential to win a lot more grand slams in an era with worse rivals.

Still, other fields are a lot more opportunity and luck based. A lot of successful businesspeople got there by being well connected or simply having the right idea at the right time. Someone who had the foresight/luck to get into the vaping industry or bitcoin or whatever at the right time could become a millionaire/billionaire without any real talent. There are many YouTubers who can barely edit a video that got hundreds of thousands or milllions of subscribers via luck and timing. There are programmers who don't know what a switch statement here is how classes/OOP works who make thousands a month from game development on Patreon.

In many cases, talent and hard work sadly matters less than finding the right audience to appeal to, being good at marketing/sales and being able to network well/have good connections.


Spotting opportunities and trends is a skill. Building a network is a skill.

Seizing opportunities is a talent I’d say.

You’re falling for the fallacy that technical brilliance/execution is what matters. It doesn’t. It just needs to be good enough.


No, I agree with that. Being good at marketing, networking and seeking opportunities and trends are skills. And I don't think that technical brilliance/execution is what matters. As you say, if you're good enough at selling yourself, you can be pretty mediocre/genetically NOT gifted at what you succeed in and do really well off it.

But at the same time, there are definitely success stories who just kinda stumbled into it too. Hell, I'd count myself in that camp too, at least at a certain level based on past experiences. I look at some of my past sites, and genuinely wonder how some of them took off. I was terrible at design, mediocre at best at coding, had little idea about marketing and had no network to speak of... and was beating out people who by all means should have done much better.

Even now, I've had people I admire complain that their years of effort on YouTube haven't paid off, while I somehow got three times the subscribers without knowing how to properly edit a video.

I know tons of people who stumbled to undeserving success, and tons of others who should have done well but didn't.


Your hindsight bias is omitting the risk, or uncertain return on investment, in a business person throwing their lives at vaping, and the perseverance in keeping at it.


> That’s a difference so subtle it’s down to chaotic systems and butterfly wings for that particular race.

I don't know much about swimming but in bicycle races and skiing close results seem to be very common. Now if it really is "down to chaotic systems and butterfly wings" I wonder why we don't see much more variance amongst the winners?


Cycling is much more tactical. Trying to win by a large distance reduces your odds of winning.


That's a direct consequence of the aerodynamics of cycling. You need partners in the middle stage of a race to help overcome aerodynamic drag, only in the last stage of a race is there a pay-off for being a longer out ahead of everybody else. There is an immediate energy consumption penalty to cycling by yourself because you can't rotate the lead with someone else.


But most importantly for your example: genetically superior for the task. =/


Which is basically another form of talent.


> The lesson is that you need to figure out what you're good at and where you have opportunity, and then work hard in those areas. Just working hard is a recipe for failure for most people.

You are right, but too often what people take from this is that the hard work doesn't matter and the people who succeed only did so because of random talent and/or opportunity. No, if you have talent and opportunity but don't work hard, you still won't succeed.


But the people who are really successful in a field don't find it hard work to do that. They genuinely enjoy it, and find it extremely satisfying to do what the rest of us would consider to be a gruelling schedule.

There's also a cohort of people who are insanely talented in a field but don't really enjoy it that much, and find it hard work. One of my best friends is an incredibly talented artist, but burnt out doing commercial work in his 20's and rarely puts pencil to paper these days. I consider it a criminal waste of talent, but it's his life ;)

Then there's the cohort of people who are a bit talented in the field, but have decided for whatever reason (usually parents) that this is what they'll do with their life, and hard work is how they're going to do it. Watching them beat their heads against the brick wall is horrifying.

In the end, we need to avoid survivor bias. For every person who says "I did this, and you can too!" look for other people who did the same and yet didn't succeed. Learn from them, too.


Life is so much more complicated. One could be born into success. Luck is a factor. Understanding and exploiting risk is a factor. Persistence is a factor - you could continue to fail until succeed, or you could continue to fail until you teach yourself what is needed to succeed. You could have brilliant ideas but no capital and still fail even though you work hard and are talented. Reducing to success to two or three factors may be true in some cases but those two or three factors may be different in the larger set of successful cases.


> Myth: Bill Gates is a college drop out who found success in a technical field purely based on personal merit. Reality: Gates' private high school gave him more access to computers than Harvard, and continuing at Harvard would have been a waste of time given his level of experience in the field.

In what sense is that a myth? He is a college dropout. Lots of people had access to computers at that time. True, not everyone, but extraordinarily few of the people that had access to computers at that time went on to found multibillion dollar companies. The idea that the fact that he had access to computers somehow debunks the story of his merit is absurd to me.


>Lots of people had access to computers at that time.

More or less unfettered access during middle school in the late 60s?: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/24/bill-gates-got-what-he-neede...

"Lots" isn't a scientific term but I still don't think it fits here. He was probably one of a few people at the time to have a few years of in-depth experience before leaving high school.

I'd call it a "myth of omission". It's technically true but the missing details are very, very important to the whole picture. That doesn't mean he didn't work hard or have a knack for it though.


Certainly everyone else at his high school could have been doing what he was doing. I'm sure this wasn't the only high school like this, though the number may have been small.


I don't think people are arguing Gates didn't do anything to warrant his success, but they are saying that if he hadn't been afforded early opportunities significantly more advanced than perhaps 99% of other high schoolers in the US, or 99.999% of other high schoolers in the world (and I don't think that's an exaggeration - seriously, search for articles about how his HS computer system was networked in with U of Washington ... in the early 70s), that he wouldn't have been nearly as successful.


He went to one of the most elite high schools in the country, and in fact his cofounder went there too.


Bill Gates' parents were board members at other companies with moderate influence in the local Seattle business community. There is a good chance that he would have been more successful than most people at even just selling office supplies due to his connections. It's not like he grew up in the rough part of town and got in to Harvard through a hardship scholarship.


Indeed it was Bill Gates' mother, Mary, who had the clout to introduce Bill to IBM's the president, chairman and CEO John Opel while both serving on the board of United Way of America. This paved the way for Microsoft's deal with IBM.

I've heard so many way below average dropouts from nameless universities or high-schools justify their "performance" by mentioning how Bill Gates was also a dropout without realizing that Gates dropped out of Harvard (!) after already having an excellent education and most likely being above average at all relevant topics for his future career.

The myth isn't that Gates is a dropout but that he's the average dropout, or that being a dropout is somehow a signal of greater things to come.

This comic makes for an eye opening read for many [0]. (Edit: updated link, thanks, it must have been a case of copy/pasta).

[0] https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/the-wireless/373065/the-pencilswo...



Bill Gates was both extremely privileged and an intellectual prodigy.


The myth is the usually intended implication that Gates fell into the category of people who for whatever reason couldn't cope with their college, and not somebody who actually had one of his college papers published in an academic journal before taking leave from Harvard to found a company


> In what sense is that a myth?

That Harvard provided a better education than his High School and that leaving Hardvard is someting only loosers do.


Nobody goes to Harvard for the education. They go for the degree. The thing he abandoned was the credential - and that his high school did not give him.


You really go for the connections, which he clearly didn't need.


I've always wondered. Do you think someone studying Medicine or Mech. Eng. at Harvard wouldn't get a higher quality education than what many public colleges provide ?


One of my professors at an ivy would occasionally at the end of a lecture jokingly say something like, "ok here's what I think about all this, this five minutes is what you're paying 30 grand a year for so pay attention, everything else I've said today you could have read in the textbook. Nobody actually uses this algorithm, if you need it you're already overloaded, people just buy more capacity before utilization gets this high."

At the undergrad level I think the main benefit of a high end school is simply being grouped with other high end students and so getting a curriculum tailored for you. As if the Honors and AP classes in high school were only available in a few schools that were selective and more expensive.

I don't think this is completely true but I think there is a lot of truth to it... you go to fancy schools for the other fancy students as much as anything else.

Point being, at the undergrad level Harvard isn't better because it's Haaaard-vard, it's better because their curriculum is more advanced, which they can do because they have sufficient concentration of high-talent students who can handle it.


I can't speak to the quality of STEM education at top-tier universities, but having experienced humanities at a mid-level state school and watched a fair number of lectures for similar courses from Ivies, the main differences seemed to be:

1) The professor might be someone you've heard of,

2) Guest speakers/lecturers are both A Thing and are usually very important people (highly placed in government, NGOs, or corporations),

3) The students are way more engaged, which I think is a result both of actual higher levels of student interest in the material and more of the students having come through a K-12 education that was participation and discussion heavy (see: how most major prep high schools run their classes) so being used to behaving that way, because that's just what one does.

The actual material wasn't really different.


IIRC the consensus is that a Harvard undergrad education is high-quality, but not exceptional. The experience (including the networking, and the access to people and opportunities it grants) is what drives people to its gates.

If you want an exceptional education, with access to the hardest courses available, you go to MIT.


Yes, MIT is a level above. I have an M.S. from a good state school and took a graduate course where the text was SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming). At MIT that's the freshman course text book!


"Lots" is an ambiguous term to use for how many people had access to computers in 1975, especially the type of access that you would let you become proficient at software development. I think you'll find an unusually high number of rich people in that list.


I'm not saying he didn't have advantages. He certainly did. That does not mean he didn't succeed by merit, though. Though certainly in percentage terms there weren't a lot of other kids with the access he had, the absolute numbers involved were still quite large. Most of those kids did not become Bill Gates.


That raises the question of how many in the other side of that percentage (an overwhelmingly higher absolute number) had similar "merit" but not access as Bill Gates.

Because, look, the reason we're talking about him is because he is an exceptional story of a man completely trashing his competition, standing head and shoulders and bottom-hem-of-dad-sweater above anyone stepping toe-to-toe with him. But then, how impressive does that become when you realize that his "competition" was essentially a small subsection of the in-the-know low-tier-wealthy-and-up? In launching an industry-leading, cutting-edge tech company, his strengths were revealed to be in how quickly and differently he thought and how tenaciously he acted, compared to the relatively comfortable people in his extended network (the caveat of a network being that its members must be sufficiently similar enough to engage with one another). Outside that bubble, it probably becomes much easier to find someone who thinks differently and somewhat easier to find someone who is very tenacious. So... do the bell curves of intelligence for affluent West Coasters and everyone else not overlap at all, or what?


See also: writers/musicians/artists/etc who talk about the hard work behind their success while omitting the part where their partner provided for them while they focused on that instead of working for someone else to pay the bills.

They might have made it anyway, but there's a good chance all the stress and worry from providing for themselves in the modern economy would have taken all their focus and energy for starting a creative career. I've seen too many independent ambitions crushed under unpredictable automated schedules, wage theft, repair and medical bills, and cascading overdraft fees.


or the support from the state in some cases (Sweden?)


I feel that something is lacking in this study. The environment. Maybe the elite players had better support at home, maybe an only child? By the time these players, both elite and average, was picked out for this study, their life had already been clearly defined by their environment.


> The lesson is that you need to figure out what you're good at and where you have opportunity, and then work hard in those areas. Just working hard is a recipe for failure for most people.

It took me way too long to realize that I should focus most of my effort on things that are so easy for me that I'm taken aback when others find them difficult.


You are correct, but I think you have to make a distinction between being successful, and being the best in your craft. Those two not always align, and the article talks about the second one.

If you look at top athletes, where being the best in your craft is priority, talent, quality of training and rest are the most important factors. I agree that the same is true for mental work. Look at the daily schedules of famous writers and scientists. 6 hours is a full day of work, with a lot of resting and walking.

But if you move into the realm of successful people, all those things that you mention come into play. They can also handle more work hours because management is not as intensive as serious mental work on 1 topic.


> Seems like a bit of a tail wagging the dog situation. How do we know the more relaxed/organized schedule leads to success, and not that success leads to a more relaxed/organized schedule?

That's a facile rhetorical question. You could similarly ask, "How do we know that good food and exercise lead to healthy human beings, rather than that already-healthy human beings have access to good food and exercise?" The answer, of course, would be research. All the students were working the same amount. Their work habits were different.

Furthermore, although I can understand why success might lead to more relaxation (for instance, by making students feel less stressed about their future prospects), I don't see how it would lead to more discipline or a focus on deliberate practice. Successful people tend to do the same things they've always done, for the obvious reason that they are successful doing it. If they were undisciplined and successful, what motivation would they have for becoming disciplined?

In addition to the data and the research (and Newport has illuminated many more results than this one), two anecdotes come to mind. The first is from The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, where he brings forward some examples:

> [Consider] Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt’s confidential adviser in World War II. A dying, indeed almost a dead man for whom every step was torment, he could only work a few hours every other day or so. This forced him to cut out everything but truly vital matters. He did not lose effectiveness thereby; on the contrary, he became, as Churchill called him once, “Lord Heart of the Matter” and accomplished more than anyone else in wartime Washington.

The second is from my personal life. Having children forced me to concentrate my efforts and create a much more disciplined work life. I'm more successful and focused than ever. Although this is just an anecdote, this phenomenon is commonly reported by other people in demanding technical or executive roles.


> The answer, of course, would be research. All the students were working the same amount. Their work habits were different.

The proper research here would have been to make the student change their habit and see if they became better musicians as a result. This article isn't research, it's writing down a fact and then trying to extract conclusions when none can be made.


The “elite” people in this story aren’t relaxing more, they have their shit together and plan. They report that they work the same but probably actually work more because they are dedicating blocks of time.

Working smart, hard is how you get value from hard work. Good luck and timing manner, but fortune favors the bold.


> How do we know the more relaxed/organized schedule leads to success, and not that success leads to a more relaxed/organized schedule?

In the article, they looked at university students, prior to success. Of course this meant they had to predict the future, and they did this by asking the professors and by self-selection: The assumption was that music students who study to become teachers are average performers whereas music students who study to become performers and whose professors think they are great are also in fact going to be great.


So students that know they are not going to be great study to become teachers. Very smart of them.


> No level of hard work or organization will substitute for talent and opportunity

You need look no further than a literal lottery to learn that obvious truth. Could anyone with enough hard work and organization make $100M?

That said, it's not a very useful statement; you can't control what you can't control.


Bill Gates is the epitome of a no-talent ass-clown who owes 100% his financial success to his personal family connections (his mother was personal friends with John Akers and John Opel of IBM due to their work on the United Way board together, and she leveraged this connection to get a fledgling Microsoft a sweetheart deal to develop the OS for the IBM PC) and his willingness to mercilessly steal the source code of people far smarter than him. Seeing this vicious bastard praised on a "hacker" forum is mind-boggling to me.


Is there any good reading or critical biography of this? Assuming your account isn't a gross exaggeration of Gates' misdeeds, this sounds like it would make good reading


This article spoke directly to me! I’m in college right now completing a fairly difficult class, or so I was told.. A lot of my classmates tell me the class is so hard, but I think it’s easy so far. I asked most of them how they study, and they all tell me the same thing: They skim through the textbook AFTER hearing the lecture, and cram hard before the test.

I do the opposite. As soon as I wake up in the morning I read the book for one hour, then I stop. I do this every day, weekends included. I also read the chapter before the lecture so it’s still interesting, and any questions I have, I can ask the professor during the lecture. Once I finish the chapter assigned for the week, I split this session into 30 minutes of creating Anki flashcards, and 30 minutes studying those Anki flashcards. I score significantly higher than the rest of the class.

I just learned how to do this at the start of the semester thanks to commenters on HN, and it has changed my life. This also deals with my attention lowering after about the 1 hour mark of reading, but the concept is still the same. Before, I would procrastinate on reading, and spend most of my days playing video games. Now, I spend most of my day playing video games, but it’s always a very relaxed, guilt free gaming session because I already know I read for an hour. I hope I’m not rambling here.


I had a similar experience in college. In the classes I did best in, I studied for consistently throughout the week, working out problems and reading the book on my own. Then, when test time came, I still studied, but I largely understood the material already.

After a calculus class ended for the semester, I had the professor tell me that I was the only student that understood a certain basic concept of the class. I don't attribute that to me having a masterful intelligence, just that I happened to be diligent in the class and figured out a system based on seeking to really understand the material instead of just pass the tests.

The classes where I heavily procrastinated, I had more trouble with, or at least much more stress. There was one class where I procrastinated and then speed-read 300-400 pages in the textbook the days before the midterm, and aced the midterm...but that was really a freak exception to the rule. It probably did me a disservice, thinking I could do the same for other classes and still succeed.


I did this for a few classes because my teachers had such a thick accent that I could barely understand them. I figured out that if I read the book beforehand, I basically knew what they were going to say and I could follow along much easier.


Same experience. I use to joke about it; “The more crappy lecturer you have, the more you perform.” Understanding that you don’t understand is powerful.


I tried this with my algo class in college, but my prof also just cared about research and made the entire class a focus of obtuse proofs (still kind of interesting) and not vaguely applicable stuff for interviews etc.

In retrospect I probably should’ve eaten $2k and dropped for a better prof. Then again $160 on leetcode has given me more algo knowledge than my $160k degree lol.


Spaced repetition is something that should be taught in every school.


If you were trying to learn something on your and not attending a class, how would you modify your method?


I wouldn't change anything about it. When I graduate and get my first network engineer job, I'll be studying for my CCNP, so I'll probably wake up at 7, read until 8, then get ready for work. After each chapter, I'll spend (2) 1 hour sessions to work on flash cards, then move on to other chapters. This could change though.


Just want to say this is great, you are already ahead of the many. Keep this going even after college. Studying never stops even after you get job.


Thanks man


I think this is this is a great habit to get into early in life.

I will however recommend one thing.

Find out what internal representation of information works for you. I am an extremely visual thinker to whom things click the second they are put into context or situated in a flow chart / graph of concepts.

Since I have started started fitting every new thing into that mental model, I have started found memorizing significantly easier.

IMO, good studying and work structuring habits are among the most valuable long term skills a person can learn.


I'm a very visual person as well! Sometimes when I'm reading a chapter, I'll draw a graph to understand certain concepts a bit better.


How do you translate textbook literature into those visualizations if they aren't provided for you? I struggle with this, even reading news articles at times.

It's funny how a simple infographic on a video can really make things click for me.


It is more of a relation graph.

You identify the root variables/ideas on which the whole premise hinges. These ideas are absolute, assumed true without rationale and independent.

Then you establish dependent ideas and variables which are connected to these base variables along with a few minor isolated assumptions needed to support the structure. ( I mean it is not perfect, so the minor assumptions keep the whole thing form falling apart)

Once you have all the nodes, you connect new ideas as they come and as they fit into this view.

It is almost like a clustering task or think word2ve tsne visualization (https://miro.medium.com/max/3200/0*quUwP6EqEhFmNAqX)

Now you have a visualization, from something that never had any images to begin with. The distance between nodes can indicate how strong the relation is and colors can indicate positivity/negativity.

Once you have that, it becomes incredibly easy to hold very complex ideas in your head and it makes it a breeze to explain something. Just start from the root node and work your way up to the leaf, and the thing explains itself.


Can you expand on your process? or provide the original HN posts that helped you form this process? I've struggled with conceptualizing a proper routine for approaching work/study and incorporating it into my life properly sans dreading it/procrastinating the work.


Not much to it. I use an app on iOS called 'AnkiApp'

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ankiapp-flashcards/id689185915

I just read for an hour every morning, and once the chapter is complete, I go back through the chapter and create Anki flashcards for 30 mins, then study the cards I just created for 30 mins.

So right now my professor will be lecturing us on Chapters 7 and 10 next week on November 18. I did an hour of reading for chapter 10 today. I'll finish Chapter 10 and Chapter 7 by next week on the 17th.

So far, I've covered the material once: I read the chapter.

When my professor lectures us next week, I'll take detailed notes over the material. I write all my notes by hand.

So far, I've covered the material TWICE: I just took notes during lecture

Next week, since I finished Chapter 7 and 10 already, I'll continue my one hour routine every morning, but I'll do 30 minutes of creating Anki flashcards, and 30 minutes of studying those flashcards. Each time I perform an Anki session, it would be my THIRD time going over the material. Each additional time I study an Anki deck, the number increases.

I also realized that I become so much more productive when I started studying/reading first thing in the morning - I have the most energy, and it gives me that "Let's get this done and over with" mentality. I can wake up at 8, read until 9, then head out for class. Once I get home, I can do what I want.. I already studied. Homework is done in the afternoon. My day ends at 5. I treat school like a full time job essentially.


It does indeed seem like the arrow of causality may be backwards here. Many people I know who are truly naturally talented are relaxed because their work does not subjectively feel difficult to them.

Yes, they push themselves hard and strive constantly to improve. But when the nature of your work matches the contours of your mind perfectly, it's not really work – it's purpose. In this zone you can feel yourself excelling and striving with a sort of effortless ease. You needn't force yourself to study - on some level you want to sit down and practice. The feeling of being truly excellent is addicting and propels a virtuous cycle of growth and achievement. So yeah, of course you're relaxed. Winning feels great.


This doesn't seem to match what the article says. It's not saying that the elite players feel relaxed, nor is it saying that they don't need to force themselves to study.

Rather, it's saying that they studied exactly as much as the lesser players, and that they did so with more discipline, both by spending more time on deliberate/hard practice, and by strictly scheduling their practice sessions.


I’m not sure thatvthe same principal doesn’t apply. For example, by the time I take advanced calculus in college, if I already know a huge chunk of the material and have strong mathematical maturity, I can spend more of my time on “the hard parts” without it stressing me as much as if they were harder for me.


That's true, but I'm not sure it's analogous. In sounds like in the study, by "hard parts" they meant the parts that were hard for the students. So it's relative. There were no universal "hard parts" that were actually easy for some.


Cal honestly looks at a study of 6 violinists and makes sweeping generalizations to outside the musical realm?

1. Music is inherently a technical, movement exercise, especially violin with the bowing. If you are not relaxed, if you are not muscularly efficient, if you're tense from overwork, you're going to play less well. So, those who are busy may simply be less good due to that residual tension and stress....and this is much less relevant to coding or purely intellectual work, which simply requires typing and not muscular fluidity.

2. Deliberate practice is extremely hard to measure by looking at someone's time journal...it's a modality of practice, a time journal is not going to gather that information. Just because the talented ones practiced in huge chunks of time, versus spaced out shorter chunks, how do we know they were drilling the hardest skills and analyzing their weaknesses?

3. Looking at students who have promise (according to their professors) is vastly different than looking at actual professionals. Many pupils were not esteemed or had mixed reviews from their professors, and then went on to great things. I'm thinking Debussy and Valentina Lisistsa, both of who did not succeed initially but whose great talent was revealed later on.


I think this might be somewhat tangential to what the article has to say, but I think there is a fair amount of mindset to the "busyness" thing.

Some people seem to think that "busyness is next to godliness", so they make sure never to let anyone see them idle. They don't so much focus on what they are doing, just that they are doing something.

I've always taken the opposite approach. I go out of my way to make it look like I'm never busy. "Make it look easy." It's just a different sort of personality quirk.

It's fun to come across people from the other camp. We find each other very peculiar... :)


You are the embodiment of one of my favorite words. Sprezzatura "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it" and also more briefly "studied carelessness".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura


> Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

--Michael Caine


There is a very good cafe and roastery beside an old client of mine in KL called Sprezzatura. I as least assumed it was a made up name! It’s actually an exceptionally good name for this type of business.


Originally from the very readable Book of the Courtier

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_Courtier


Nice word!


I have a bit of that, I'm "busy" even when procrastinating. I think I developed this as a defense mechanism in my teens - when I seemed busy or said I was busy, people bothered me less with random nonsense and "win-lose delegation"[0]. I had huge problems saying "no" to people when younger, so whenever I felt overwhelmed, I would instead present myself as super busy to avoid paying the social costs of refusing a request for assistance.

--

[0] - asking me to help with something which would take them a small fraction of the time and effort it takes me. Wasting an hour of someone else's time to save yourself a few minutes is something I consider an extremely disrespectful thing to do.


I’m the busy sort, and I have really interacting with people like you who I have found a connection with.

I think these sorts of polar opposites can be deeply entertaining / enjoyable.


I think its borne of insecurity - if you cant be good at your job at least look like yoy care about your job


You read that wrong. OP never said s/he wasn't good at their job, nor did they say they didn't care.

They said they do it in such a way as to make it seem easy.

I'm in that camp as well. I never get flustered. I never get overwhelmed. I never get bothered to run around like an idiot or panic over everything, like so many other administrators in my field do.

And it's all on purpose. I never get flustered, because I want everyone around me to understand and believe that I'm doing what comes naturally to me, and that I'm the best at what I do because of it.


No, I think you and a few other people read me wrong.

You see these people going around in a flap, all heat, little light. Meanwhile there's other people in the office quietly getting on with things. The noisy one is compensating for inability with visibility.


Ah! Then I would argue that your original sentiment is too vague to be understood that way. How I read it was that the poster who doesn't look disheveled doesn't look like s/he cares about his job.

For what it's worth now, I agree with you 100%. The loudest person to talk about how useful they are, generally are the least useful.


Yeah sorry I might have made some mistakes with my emphasis. A sense of grammar shaped by years at the codeface ...

Empty vessels make the most noise, or so the saying goes ...


> Some people seem to think that "busyness is next to godliness"

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop." ...

There are entire ideologies based on this kind of thinking.

Interestingly, both Protestant work ethic (which some argue gave rise to capitalism) and communism (because in communism the value of a product arises from the work put into it rather than its market value) are centred around this idea.


Not sure how how legit it is, but I saw there was a follow up study where researchers couldn’t reproduce the deliberate practice finding to the degree the original researchers did: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.190327


Thanks for sharing this, with reproducibility being an important topic in science I think this is an excellent contribution.

I think we should all try a bit harder to disprove our conclusions as advocated by Karl Popper.


Good job the violinist works in the music industry not the software industry, or he might find after all his sessions of focused deliberate practice that now no-one wants to hear the violin anymore, and he must in future focus his efforts on the upcoming disciplines of both xylophone and clarinet.


And then he finds that the xylophone works in hall A and not hall B, and for the latter he has to get a slightly newer xylophone with more keys. Oh, and he has to learn a new scale invented by the xylophone's makers.


All the while taking instruction from someone who would struggle to knock out a few notes on a ukulele.


Of course, better-known orchestras will first assess an applicant's musical prowess by whiteboard interviews.

If you can't write down Freygish scale, including the dominant fifth, you needn't even dare thinking about playing there.


If he has appropriate training in music theory it should be easy to get moving more quickly though ... that said in this specific example muscle memory is a factor so maybe all the keyboards in the office getting switched to dvorak is a better metaphor!


I appreciate the humor but I also think working in tech is much easier. Like you can be 25th percentile programmer and have comfortable salary/job security vs 99th percentile violinist.


Well yes, one provides an actually valuable service while the other is a form of entertainment


(1) All of the notes written on the sheets will periodically be replaced with complicated names that mean the same thing but sound more modern.

(2) The musicians will start to charge fractions of a cent per note, with some sections playing certain notes while other sections play the rest of them. Incentivizing short bursts of music, and "interoperability"


Would you really want to work in a static industry? The constant change and opportunities for lifelong learning is something that makes me love being a software developer and not get bored (I've been doing it for almost 40 years).


My fiancé is an elite opera singer. I’m a programmer/founder.

She has spent years and years perfecting the way she practices, sleeps a ton, and hustles hard for gigs. She’s highly systematic as to how she memorizes her music, learns how to pronounce words in different languages, practices technique.

Less successful singers in our network can’t be this efficient. They struggle at sight reading despite years of practice. They take hours to learn new music as opposed to minutes. My fiancé takes minutes to learn music and hours to perfect. They work their ass off practicing their Italian accents but are never quite perfect.

My fiancé works hard but all her work has compounded over the years because she has an incredible talent for memorization, languages, and likely perfect pitch.

I’m a good programmer, not great like John Carmack. I get stuff done but I have to work to the point of exhaustion at times. Personally I don’t think this sort of elite relaxation is available to everyone and may be just specific to musicians.


People are focusing on this term "busyness", but what I see resembles more "deliberateness".

It's like... Let's theorize that the underlying mechanism of excellence is "strength of focus", in the same way that weight lifting is "strength of muscles". The elite player's practice schedule then resembles HIT vs the average player's aerobics.

It's similar to how work/life balance isn't just about leaving the office, but about having something to _do_ that is for your life (instead of your work).


That reminds me of this, "seemingly non-sensical but rings true upon reflection" quote:

If you want something done, give it to the busiest person


I think as usual Cal raises important points. But this feels a bit like Malcom Gladwell's proposals were he goes out looking for data that aligns with his initial conjecture.

As a man of science, I am sure Cal appreciates the weakness of a study with self reported journals, collected at a single site, in a single problem domain (Violin players).

My point is that it's ok to propose this and clarify it is your opinion or your proposed approach to work. But I often see with a lot of life/work advice, that we somehow try to prop up opinions under this "evidence-based" umbrella when we know full well that the scientific strength of this evidence does not fully support our initial claim.


Keep in mind that this is just a blog post. I don't usually follow Cal Newport's blog but in general, academic blogs are meant to be more informal and just exploring different ideas without the rigor of a peer reviewed journal. If he put this stuff in a published book I would agree completely. Sadly it's par for the course for pop science writing.


When he listed Gladwell as a source it immediately changed how I perceive the article. Perhaps I would eventually have come to take it as stretching the data to make questionable conclusions but the reference accelerated it.


I think what these people are doing, focussed practice sessions for hours on end is really hard and requires exceptional willpower and concentration. These are not common qualities. Remember that the average attention span is 15 minutes. Nothing close to four hours. Of course, the most elite students or professionals can go on for much longer. Personally, i can't force myself to do this and end up being average or worse. despite dedicating most of my life to programming. such is life. i have tried methods to combat this and eliminating distractions is key, however most of the time it is impossible. i do know i can come up with some amazing work when i'm not distracted.


Key factors that separated the elite players from the average:

- one morning and one night period of very deliberate practice

- an extra hour of sleep

- leisure time was rated as more relaxing


Well crap, I’d better start rating my leisure time as more relaxing.


no no no, make the more relaxing, changing the scale to 11 won't help :)


But but but... When I do one morning and one night period of very deliberate practice I wind up getting one hour LESS sleep

:(


I think there's a certain degree of privilege that helps with success. Someone born into money that gives them more time to pursue interests is going to have certain advantages.


Not even just that. The difference I had in available time in my 20s compared to my 30s is very different.

Moral of the story is succeed while you have the time.


Both groups spent the same amount of time though, the difference was how they spent the time.


Maybe the difference is one of the groups is talented, so the gap in time amounts for the talent. Not the other way around as the article suggests.

The two groups are not comparable, because the talent is a non-negligible difference, so the experiment is flawed (few samples, different groups....)


Er... These guys are still practicing 50 hours per week. FIFTY. That's _a_lot_ of violin.

So assuming you take one day off per week, you still need to pack 8 hours and 20 minutes of practice per day. So, we stack these hours in 2 sessions of 4 hours and 10 minutes per day. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. So what does it look like? They work from 8am to 12.10am, then take a break until 2pm, then work from 2pm to 6.10pm and then be done with the day?

Sounds like a typical workday for a lot of people...


The 50 hours likely include other things than just practice, like analyzing songs, reading about music e.t.c.


I'd think the key point here is focus. Short periods of very focused work is much better then a whole day of unfocused work. I guess that's true. And since you can't work hard and focused for eight hours, the elite players split it up in two time periods with some relaxation in between.


Short-term focus is why I fell in love with and still use Leo Babauta's GTD-related idea of MITs (Most Important Tasks). See links at bottom.

Each morning I set 3 tasks (sometimes 4 or 5 if I absolutely have to and they're small) that would make me feel good about the day if I finish. I write them in an otherwise empty text document, order them by importance, and start working on the first one.

These tasks can be large or small, sometimes even just "send this email" that will take 15 minutes to write, but is really important to send off. This also works great when working from home, because even if the environment is different, I can still feel productive if I at least finish those 3 things.

If I finish the 3 things early, I assess my energy level and either finish the day with organizing emails or reading up on stuff or other low-effort tasks, or I tackle one last MIT if I feel up for it. The point is to prioritize short-term focus of the 3 MITs instead of looking at the potentially endless list of todos I could keep picking from all through the day.

MIT: https://zenhabits.net/purpose-your-day-most-important-task/

Zen to Done: https://zenhabits.net/zen-to-done-ztd-the-ultimate-simple-pr...


I think anxiety is the key here. Everyone is capable of deliberate practice, but the degree to which one can sustain it for an extended, discrete session varies a lot by how the stress people feel from outside sources or from the process of mistake-making inherent in practice intrudes on and interrupts their focus. It could be that some subset of average players would be better if the stressors could be dealt with.


I think Cal Newport, and the study discussed in the article, are right on.

By most measures I have had a very successful career developing software and doing research.

My deliberate practice has been learning new languages, solving very difficult problems both on my own, and for work, and for most of my career averaged about 30 hour part time work weeks (even when working for large companies like SAIC).

I work very hard for a few periods during the day. The exception to this was my last job before retiring this year where I really had three jobs in one, so I had very few breaks in my work day except for a couple of long walks.

Deliberate practice is the way to get good at things and achieve success.


One possible issue with this article is that its focus is on students - their 'job' being to learn as opposed to producing or delivering something, which is the aim once their skills are learned.

Learning is often done best in small chunks e.g. when learning to rock climb it is usually best to climb no more than 6 hours a day, every other day. But when the skills are learned the climber may spend 15 hours a day, 3 days straight to climb their dream route and they may well sleep hanging from the side of their wall too.

I'd be interested to see how much time the elite players devoted to their work when on tour as professional musicians in later life.


The title is a bit misleading. In my experience, people have very different ideas of what being "busy" means. Regardless, an interesting read to invoke an even more interesting ponder on one's own habits.


Correlation does not imply causation: Are they talented because they are "relaxed"? or are they "relaxed" because they are talented?

The relax of the talented amounts for the gap in talent, not the other way arround. That's the definition of talent, they can achieve more with less effort.

There is a very big bias in the study, the reference team are average violin players. Obviously, the try to compensate with training the gap, to achieve the same result. On top of that, as other comments say, the sample is too small and narrow in time.


Can't see any confounding variables here! /s

> Hard work is deliberate practice. It’s not fun while you’re doing it, but you don’t have to do too much of it in any one day (the elite players spent, on average, 3.5 hours per day engaged in deliberate practice, broken into two sessions)

Let's not pretend like 3.5 hours a day of practice is not a lot. I completely agree that this is what it takes to be good, but try doing anything for 3.5 hours a day and then say that you "didn't have to do too much of it".


This feels familiar.

I went back to school at age 48 and it amazed me how younger people could do so much and so well. I'm amazed at how people can be so efficient. Those same people some just 10 years younger than me worked full-time jobs and went to a full schedule of classes.

I'm terrible at time management. At school I tried to start every assignment the minute it was assigned. Yet I was still working on it five minutes before it was due.

Eventually I figured I needed time to relax so I created a block of time only for school. I do better when it's evening or night so I blocked off 7pm to 9pm. That also allowed me to eat first I found eating later didn't work since my mind didn't work without food younger me could have plowed through the hunger (I'd often go days without eating as a 20-something).

From the article the two practice-time peaks make sense. Maybe I may do just as well in the early morning as I do in the evening. That would free up a large part of my day. At school I found things like laundry, grocery shopping, any small task was sacrificed to make up study time.


What this article IMO lacks is the impetus for work?

I can imagine myself well organized and focused when I largely work according to my schedules and according to my aims. Some else putting more goals into my system might effectively reduce my drive to get stuff done.

In this special case the aim and reaarding system of an artost is likely to be quite different to Hacker Average.


Go into each training session with a goal. To set a goal, think about what you need to train right now.


I don't believe it's related to being-busy. It's more about discipline in their life. Elite player's life is more organized, hence they seem less busy.

e.g I work out every day from 7 to 8 pm. I may be sounding less busy. But if the routine is the same, but I decide to go to the gym at random schedule, I will be more unorganized, will look busier, might be less productive, and yes I'm doing something wrong.


I think many of us like being busy because we use it as an escape. If you are not busy then the mind chatter will start about that side project you have been ignoring or that career move you have been planning. There is a huge dopamine hit in staying busy in your work and ignore more important things.

Btw if you have not read his boom “deep work” then I would really recommend it.


I know two person, in the similar business, one is doing project after project, and is high rich now, not big but in 5-10 million range, with life time of hard work. The other person, did only two big projects in similar life time. Both retired now, the other one has about 15-20 million. Waiting for the right opportunity paid off really well, along with hard work.


I have filled my schedule with study time, working out, cleaning time, full sleep time, cooking time, etc. The result is that I am a super efficient, productive employee that gets absolutely nothing done outside of work, has not learned anything past canned employee skills, and has no life.

Looks like there is a huge benefit to leaving some waste time in the schedule.


The article brings about some really good points. I find myself sitting down and studying without deliberate intent, which leads to countless wasted hours in my life. I think this is in part because you need to have some fundamentals down in order to actively learn, but mostly because it's just that much more work to actually do the core work.


Excellent counterpoint resource on Tiger-styled learning https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized...


Hard work is essential to success - the question is it your success? ie who is your hard work benefiting!

For example, working stupidly hard in a startup where you're stake/potential upside is either very limited or unlikely is working hard for other people.


If you’re chronically stressed and up late working, you’re doing something wrong.

Or you have an infant.


>but they’re not dedicating these hours to the right type of work (spending almost 3 times less hours than the elites on crucial deliberate practice)

What are these "average players" doing in their 50 working hours, then?


I don't get the title. How is 50 hours a week is not busy?


Maybe the elite players were able to get into flow state easier/more often than the non-elite. This would explain the longer chunks of time.


Unpopular counter opinion: If you are not busy, you (or the ones orchestrating you) are doing something wrong.


I'd say it depends on the type of work. A builder who is doing manual labour laying bricks? Sure. A designer following a creative brief to produce a new full page ad? I don't think you can force that type of work, so putting pressure on them to feel busy may actually have a detremental effect.


So my question now is: what would be "deliberate practice" in the field of computer programming?


It's an old topic, see, e.g. 'Etudes for Programmers', Charles Wetherell. Code dojos, code katas, code retreats, I suppose I should put together a list.


But I highly doubt that the best programmers we can think of got good by doing code katas and code retreats. They seem more like things mediocre programmers do, or people only do to prepare for interviews. I could be wrong though - have any great programmers expressed their love of katas?


"... which divided each 24-hour period into 50 minute chunks"

28.8 chunks. Nice.


my only regret is not reading his books before loss of opportunities.Based author,


TLDR; don’t burn yourself out


It's more about not dispersing your focus and attention throughout the day, instead concentrate your efforts in deliberate and focused sessions.

Either of these approaches can result in burnout.




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