Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours | Hacker News Reader

Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

nautil.us

603 pointsdnetesn292 comments

I suspect if you counted the hours they were thinking about their work, the conclusion would be the exact opposite.

Granted, we are talking about "thinkers" here. We can think sitting on the toilet or taking a shower, and maybe even better than staring at a book.

Walking to get your juices flowing surrounded by clean air and a soothing environment would make any hiking trail a great office for any scientist or philosopher.

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. "

― Albert Einstein

"Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, 'How did he do it? He must be a genius!"

- Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts

Yes indeed! From TFA: "Yet when you look closely at their daily lives, they only spent a few hours a day doing what we would recognize as their most important work. The rest of the time, they were hiking mountains, taking naps, going on walks with friends, or just sitting and thinking."

"Just sitting and thinking" sounds like part of their work, and the article deploys a sleight of hand to define this as "not really work" so that it can discover that these guys didn't work very hard.

But I still think the articles conclusions are meaningful: namely that, in our overly hurried world, we need to make space to breathe, to think, and to rest. If we're constantly racing off to the next thing, or sitting at our desks trying to force a solution, or sucked into TV or our various devices, we leave no room for our minds to percolate on problems, explore solutions, etc. And we tend to worship those who sleep as little as possible. How radical would it be if we started admiring people who take naps, who go on long walks, who sit and leave space for thinking without pulling out their smartphone or turning on the TV?

Before smartphones came along I did some of my best thinking on the toilet. Now it's become time consumed with reading drivel on my news feed. And I don't sleep enough, and personally can see how my productivity and emotional health is impacted. Tough times which require greater self discipline, I think, than times past.

I quite agree with you. We should generally spend more time working without seeming to work, which is part of the problem. I get a lot of work done staring out the window, taking showers, etc. I don't recall any particularly great ideas while on the can...

I think the appearance of doing work is now very important. So sitting and thinking has the problem that you might be thinking about the problem or who knows what? Possibly there's a causation problem here - if you are already a famous scientist, you can probably be trusted to "sit and think".

I think they're assuming a difference between focused productive work and the sort of musing that happens during a walk, which seems fair to me.

If you can keep 12 problems constantly present in your mind, you're a genius.

Also here's the Feynman algorithm[1]:

- Write down the problem.

- Think real hard.

- Write down the solution.

This article not only falling for survivorship bias but also confirmation bias [2]

1: http://wiki.c2.com/?FeynmanAlgorithm 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five.

Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified.

You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day all three students graduate.

At a certain point you get diminishing returns for working harder. On the flip side being able to be productive for those few hours consistently without burning out nets you long term growth.

Exactly. I view school as an optimization problem where the goal is to find the minimum amount of work that will get you the maximum performance (grades, effective learning), while also minimizing the negative impact on other aspects of your life.

I was a straight A student all though my major (EE), but I never hesitated to take a B+ if I felt the amount of work needed for an A wasn't worth it. In addition, I made sure to enjoy my free time and work on stuff that I love (software dev, for instance!). I think I was successful: IIRC, I pulled 1 all nighter in my 4.5 years as an undergrad.

Obviously, I didn't graduate with a 4.0, but I got a high enough grade to get admitted to an excellent school for a PhD.

A point of note is finding that minimum amount without sacrificing future growth in terms of learning/skill set, ie. learning to learn or understanding a fundamental.

Good point, otherwise cheating would be a valid strategy (ethics aside).

But cheating is a valid strategy.. Colluding when everyone else is competing is exactly what intelligent people do. Not following the rules because they're stupid is what intelligent people do. It's not mutually exclusive to understand the fundamentals and cheat. The idea that we should compete with our peers for a chance at higher education is like a dystopian hunger games novel.

It is a valid strategy when you end up learning as much as a person not cheating. But in general, this is not the case because students see cheating as an alternative to hard work.

You can also learn a ton about how to bend rules when cheating, something that's often useful out in the real world. I feel like half of what I learned in school was how to be better at avoiding doing things (including cheating, when applicable).

There's various ways to go about morals in general but "following the rules" in itself is not a good basis for morality.

Not sure about you, but my university was very strict with cheaters because of how widespread cheating was. Gaining an extra 10 points on tough exam wasn't worth the risk of expulsion. I suppose that deciding whether to cheat or not is an optimization problem in and of itself. If no one else is cheating, the gains are huge, but if there are a lot of cheaters, it might not end up being worth the risk.

Actually, there never was a time where I felt that cheating was worth it. On the contrary, the amount of time I'd need to prepare a strategy (compile cheat sheet, figure out how to use it, where to sit, etc.) probably exceeded the time I'd take to just study for the exam!

I agree, always following the rules isn't beneficial to society, but I'd argue it's better than the case where no one is following the rules.

Virtually all my classes in college allowed me to have cheat sheets of varying sizes for exams. Creating that cheat sheet was a good way to focus my studying, to the point where I rarely had to use the cheat sheet.

Cheat sheets were limited to classes that had a lot of memorization, which is rare in EE. Professors usually included an equation sheet with the exam for courses with a shit ton of equations (EMAG, circuits, etc.).

And note that I was talking about a cheat sheet to be used for cheating.

"Not following the rules because they're stupid is what intelligent people do."

Plenty of smart people follow the rules on principle and plenty of rule-breakers are dumb. Notably, many students who cheat has to cheat, because they are unable to learn underlying material.

I totally agree here. Sometimes I've been frustrated at the lack of flexibility to use assignments in a self-directed way. I like the idea that you should "never waste a good deadline." I've always admired students who find creative ways to learn what they want while still getting credit.

The assignment from which I learned the most and which I had the most fun on was totally open ended other than some general methods.

Exactly what I did. I didn't realize I was approaching it as an optimization problem, but I knew that I wanted to get enjoyment out of college and have a degree and GPA that would get me a good job.

I switched from a Computer Science Engineering major to just Computer Science. It saved me 100 more credits of work and gave me the chance to take great courses like beer brewing, samba drumming, plant identification, and history of rock'n'roll. Not to mention all the time I had to spend with friends and enjoy my hobbies.

Graduated with the bare minimum GPA (to a 0.01) required for Honors, and got a great job. Life is definitely more important than the 4.0, and the fancier degree.

> I suppose because it's so easily quantified.

I wonder what's being quantified.. intelligence or obedience.

This would be like rating a strong-man competition by how much time was spent in the gym and how much unnecessary pain was self-inflicted.

It's like there's a culture of "pain enthusiasts". They do things like talk about running until it hurts, they tend to get injured often, and of course they have nothing to show for their dedication.

I'm realizing that there's a mentality about these people. The idea of working smarter and not harder literally offends them. The idea that the amount of work is less important than the effectiveness of work offends them. These are often the same people that voice their concerns about working from home and why it can't work. My suspicion is because their value is measured by "time in the gym" rather than tangible real-world results.

Given that students are almost always graded on how well they do on assignments/exams rather than how long they studied, your strong-man competition analogy doesn't make much sense.

You're implying that grades are an objective metric of value. This is often false, because the metrics for grading are oriented around what's easily testable, rather than what's actually a sign of good work.

Kind of like hours spent in a gym, actually.

No, I am just arguing that someone's grade on a test is directly linked to how well they do on the test and not necessarily on how much studying they did. If you don't like university tests, that is fine (I do not believe they are perfect either). But, they do a decent job of determining if a student knows a specific set of facts and can solve a specific set of problems. I have graded these tests before and no where during the process do I ask myself how long someone studied (because I don't know how long people studied). Very smart people can ace tests with minimal studying. Some people do poorly after studying a lot.

The problem is final GPA means almost nothing. High School Valedictorians are an interesting population because they tend to do poorly in life. Prodigies similarly underperform vs expected results.

So, when you look objectively you find the most highly paid author has zero relevant accolades. in academic terms, gave the appearance of doing what was necessary".[18] Rowling recalls doing little work, preferring to listen to The Smiths and read Dickens and Tolkien

> The problem is final GPA means almost nothing. High School Valedictorians are an interesting population because they tend to do poorly in life. Prodigies similarly underperform vs expected results.

Interesting, do we have any explanations for this phenomena?

Not sure how much research backs this up, but I think it's a change in what's important. A 10 year old who copies someone else brilliantly is praised, an adult doing the same thing makes minim wage.

"Even prodigies who avoid burnout and resist social pressures are unlikely to make a big splash as an adult. The problem, notes giftedness researcher Ellen Winner, is that to make a major contribution in the arts, and even the sciences "you need a rebellious spirit and the type of mind that can see new things." Most prodigies, however, are acclaimed not for their innovation but "for doing something that's already been done, like playing the violin in the style of Itzhak Perlman." Only prodigies who can reinvent themselves as innovators, she says, are likely to leave a lasting mark during adulthood." https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200511/why-prodigie...

Well, I guess it all depends on what you mean by do poorly in life.

High school valedictorians and child prodigies (especially the former) are disproportionately likely to hold positions of societal power. Just read the bio of any president of the IMF or the World Bank or the Federal Reserve. Essentially all of them graduate university summa cum laude or magna cum laude.

Innovative scientists and people who move the world forward? Perhaps less likely to come from this group, for a variety of reasons.

Sure, when all you need for 'successes' is to be accepted credentials are useful. But, that just means you where picked it does not mean you actually succeeded at something.

It's the difference between getting funding, and not just having an IPO but actually pay real dividends for significantly more than total investments.

That's exactly what I was thinking when I commented above. Getting the highest marks across the board in school shows more about obedience and spending all your time studying, rather than an innate intellect.

I think the posters are making some subjective judgements that vary from the norm.

There was a Boston College study awhile back that tracked a group of valedictorians. The were almost all successful and satisfied with life, but were more likely to be in professions. (Doctor, nurse, accountant, etc)

In this forum, entrepreneurs are on a pedestal. It's a different personality type -- when people with entrepreneurial instincts are in an environment that doesn't support them, they tend to do poorly.

My sister was a valedictorian. She's smart and creative, has a great career in a great company, is in a good marriage and has a happy family. Success by any measure that I can think of. There are people on HN who know who she is, but she is unlikely to be a billionaire tech mogul, which seems to be the standard of success in this particular story's comments!

I am not saying they are more likely to end up in prison. Rather, if you rank people and pick the top ~1/1000 and then preform about as well as the top 1/10 there is something wrong with your ranking.

PS: I also had a valedictorian sister who went on to Disney and is now a solid cog in their profit machine. The trap is she never really had a need to strike out on her own. Another sister was salutatorian and became a nursery school teacher. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If they are happy and fulfilled, they are successful.

Until recently where startups have turned into a strange variant of hedge fund, many successful entrepreneurs were frankly oddball types who needed to work for themselves.

One of my cousins is a prep-school/Harvard MBA/Columbia Law school type who is flipping goofy startups instead of closing factories or doing investment banking things. Startups aren't startups anymore when organization men are attracted to it.

I would guess that being a valedictorian is not so much a sign of being smart but of obedience. Certain subjects like history require rote memorization rather than intellect/understanding. That's why the intelligent anti-social folk tend to do good at subjects like mathematics yet could care less about subjects that are testing pure memorization.

I honestly think that having As in subjects that don't matter much, shows a form of mental illness like OCD or a lack of self-identity. It may be a grim and rather crass outlook so if you have a counter-example, I'd love to hear it.

One thing I really appreciated in higher education was to be graded based only on an exam where our name was unknown to the persons who graded us.

I skipped a lot of boring lessons, read the books (yes, practical and visual type) and got really good grades.

They are pretty objective, but you're right they are oriented around what's testable. This mostly is true in large intro classes -- specialized grad courses (well really qualifiers), advanced undergrad courses with 10 students, they're testing good work. But what's testable is generally straightforward and pretty easy. So if a student can't even do well on what's testable they don't have a prayer at moving farther than that. Excepting for students with special needs, learning disabilities, etc.

It's like if we wanted to test someone's ability to run a mile but had no way to measure time. We'd still test them to see if they could complete it, and if they can't, well they certainly can't do it quickly. But anyone competent can most certainly pass that basic test.

Grades aren't an opportunity to show off, they're an opportunity to express basic competence.

The assignments are often (even typically) crafted to be straightforward but require significant amounts of time to complete, and often graded more for diligence than understanding. Exams are sometimes more about flattering the grader or following a fixed procedure than developing an interesting argument and defending it well or solving novel difficult problems. Add course attendance and participation on top, and what you get is grades that generally correlate more to time spent than to competence per se.

Obviously someone clever can figure out how to get away with putting in less effort than the average student while still scoring well, but that’s more about learning to play the school game than learning how to think according to the methods of inquiry whatever field is ostensibly being studied.

It makes sense that school takes this form: instructor time is much more scalable to many students when assignments and exams are simple and uniform. Mentoring students who are working on real research problems takes much more time and effort.

This doesn't hold in my experience with an engineering education.

The objective is for students to gain and demonstrate basic competence in fundamental concepts of their field, and straightforward answers to straightforward questions suffice. There's not a lot of room here for novel arguments, and the objective is not to solve novel problems; that comes later.

This is time consuming because, for most of us, learning a new concept and applying it takes some time. It's not a sinister plot by the system to waste our time.

Regarding mentoring students to work on real research problems: yes, this doesn't scale to huge number of undergrads. But most undergrads don't yet have the drive or the fundamental knowledge required to tackle real research questions. That said, if a student does well in a class and shows interest, a lot of professors will give an undergrad a chance to work with their research lab.

Who ever said there was a “sinister plot” involved?

The best (most time efficient) way to learn factual knowledge is using some kind of spaced repetition.

The best (most time efficient for the student) way to learn mechanical or conceptual tools to mastery is to be presented with a problem which needs the tool, struggle with it for a while and develop some personal familiarity with the problem and personal ad-hoc methods; then have the standard tool presented, then go back and struggle some more using the standard tool to solve various types of problems and combinatorially trying the new tool out with various old tools to see what it can do and how they all relate. Then after basic competence is achieved, continuing to occasionally apply the tool to new problems over the course of months or years, including problems which require unusual uses of the tool or unexpected combinations with other tools, generalizations of the tool, etc. This is all generally much faster and more effective with some amount of 1-on-1 tutoring/mentorship between the student and a subject expert than with any other known arrangement, whether the tool in question is a pair of scissors, argument analysis, google search, rhetoric, regular expressions, or complex multiplication.

The best way to learn methods of inquiry or creative work which characterize various human endeavors (history, journalism, physics, graphic design, ethnography, mechanical engineering, pure mathematics, philosophy, literary criticism, acting, technical illustration, sales, ....) is to spend time actually doing real or realistic work, watching experts do real work, and looking at lots of finished work.

Unfortunately it’s hard to make 1-on-1 tutoring or research project mentorship scale to a classroom. Strategies like putting the students into groups to solve project-type problems of a variety of scopes, “flipping” the classroom by presenting lectures via video outside of class, mixing up assignments to include a mix of easy small-scope problems of the new material combined with harder problems highlighting past material, and so on can help, but there is a huge gap still between (even average quality) 1-on-1 tutoring and the best alternative method, which educators and education researchers would love to know how to fill.

The dark side of the "protestant work ethic".

"time in the gym" is way easier to measure than tangible improvement. It's not surprising that people try to optimize things that are the easiest to graph in Excel :P

Really? Lifting more weight, running a faster mile or losing weight are just as easy to measure.

You're right I think, but what's actually interesting (I think at least) is that time in the gym is more likely to make you a significant social member of a certain group (gym => office, lab, bar, etc).

Time spent present is easy for the social group to measure. Everyone might be impressed by the guy running the 4 minute mile, but after he leaves we're much more interested in Greg improving from his 7 minute mile to a 6:30 minute mile and that 4 minute mile guy was kind of a jerk anyways. Finding a way to get a 4 minute mile without the trackmaster 2000 and the protein shakes, who does he think he is.

In tech/development culture, working smarter equates to something like "I did this in 3 lines of Node". God help the maintainer or ops person when left pad is pulled or the performance suffers.

Mm, you're talking about a microcosm of the buy-vs-build question. Only junior developers would obliquely state that using a library is always "working smarter". A much bigger aspect of working smarter is deciding that you don't need to build something at all because it's the wrong approach to solve a business problem.

At my job, we have a mix of stuff we do in house and stuff we contract out. We could have our in-house subject matter expert spend all of his time developing a component or we could hire a company that already makes the component and has a great track record. Sometimes things are cheaper to do in house, especially when a one-off just needs to get built and quality control isn't a major issue. But in my line of work, quality control can be a major thing sometimes. Sometimes it's cheaper to go with a component that's been fully tested and has the documentation to go with it. If we want to implement the component in our product line, we then develop it in-house after the first run is completed. A lot of our vendors are our competitors for certain components so there is always a discussion when we need to buy something from them.

Sure, me too. These are huge decisions. At my previous company I greenlit building our own CDN on bare metal. Sounds crazy right? But factor in limited content library, on-the-fly DRM and packaging, and long tail of global users all of a suddent it is not so crazy.

The fact is whether to use some random NPM library is a strawman, in the case of left-pad it's trivial either way. The more interesting question is how you assess the stability risk of NPM.

There is also people who enjoy finding out how much pain they can endure, where masochism is the point. For me, max-weight deadlifting is a measure of how much I can grit my teeth through the pain and how much I can pull off the ground. I know it's not terribly effective in how much progress I make as I do it so I keep it to a minimum, but it is fun to get a new high score!

that's sounds like a trip to snap city waiting to happen. I was a D1 athlete and saw way too many people wreck their back doing heavy deadlifts, not for me.

I did something similar, unfortunately gritting my teeth... well, the dentist had to repair one of my teeth that cracked slightly.

Both figuratively and literally, be very careful how hard you grit your teeth. They (and you) can break.

Keep in mind though that that max effort pull is a tangible measure of what you can accomplish and your progress toward goals.

Your training, and time-in-gym particularly, is only partially related to that. Train on a stupid program (squat-rack curls, sets of 100 reps), and you're not going to progress.

Use a properly periodised training schedule, with complementary and auxiliary lifts that work toward your goal, mind your time between lifts, avoid overtraining, etc., and you can make rapid progress.

Powerlifting's easy, from a measurement perspective, because the end result is so tangible and measureable: legal lift, known weight, success or fail. Speed events, whether sprint or endurance, likewise. Direct contests, whether competition (tennis, darts, rugby), or fighting sports (MMA, wrestling, boxing) largely the same, though some subjectivity of scoring may come into play.

Determining who is the better programmer or systems administrator from a 15 minute assessment is all but impossible if the contestents are even remotely evenly matched: the criteria for drawing judgements are much more complex, and may not become apparent for months or years.

Yes but in the universe of knowledge work, what is work and what is not-work?

Do we count work as "being in the office/lab"? Or do we count work as thinking about the problem?

If one were building a company like Tesla for example, I would count going to the gym and thinking of the problem domain while running on a treadmill as work. I would also count thinking of the problem while going for a walk as work.

If one has really set one's teeth into a nasty problem, things like going to a party, or social calls like seeing friends not engaged in the problem, isn't relaxing, it's frustrating.

I think we should redefine the parameters of this conversation into time that depletes the body and time that replenishes it.

Being in front of a computer for long periods is hard on the eyes, it can be hard physically especially if the ergonomics aren't perfect. Being at the office for long periods can be draining as well because unlike being at home there aren't places to go that are replenishing on demand.

If one has a good sit/stand desk and spends a lot of time coding while standing, 10 minutes lying on a bed is incredibly replenishing for example.

The other dimension here is that perhaps it is alienated work that is inherently depleting. Working for someone else, or on something one does not really want to be working on is draining.

Working on something you care about is invigorating and I can't see how spending less time in that state can possibly be more productive than more time in a productive, non-depleting state.

> If one has a good sit/stand desk and spends a lot of time coding while standing, 10 minutes lying on a bed is incredibly replenishing for example.

Pomodoros[0] are life changing. While writing a paper/fiction/code/anything, I force myself to take that break; even if I'm on a roll. Sometimes I leave myself a note "When you get back, solve this particular problem/write this particular part" or I'll scrawl some shorthand solution for the problem on my whiteboard. I'm way way more productive if I do anything else for 10 minutes, whether it's laundry, video games, lying down, reading fiction... doesn't matter. It's almost like my brain is working while I'm relaxing.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

I agree about school. I see people constantly trying to use pattern matching and memorization to pass tests; always doing extra credit; putting too much effort into minor things; and exacerbating all of these problems by taking too many units in an effort to get out early. I don't know how they're not already burnt out.

Meanwhile I never specifically study for a test. I've just studied regularly every day, thought about these things regularly, let my subconscious do some heavy lifting, and built associations in my brain that help me derive equations or fill in gaps if needed. For my effort, I've got a ~3.9 GPA and all kinds of free time for dating, exercise, hobbies, and teaching myself useful skills in my field that university isn't teaching me.

I think the core problem for most people is that they are attached to the wrong outcome. Their goal is the high GPA. My goal is grokking material and making myself useful; high GPA is almost a given (and frankly redundant) after that, and the only difference between my 3.9 and a 4.0 is the tolerance for BS and busywork... and about a gazillion extra hours of work.

It is, of course, understandable, because people think High GPA -> Good Grad School -> $$$$. But I suspect, and your story confirms, that "Reasonably High GPA" + "An Actualized Human Being Who Is Not a Robot"[0] -> Good Grad School -> Richer Life + $$$$.

[0] - Not trying to denigrate those who take the other path, but I see them miss out on a lot of life and ultimately not be as developed and awesome as they could be. I'm saying these things not just about random strangers, but also about people I know and love. They've optimized primarily for passing tests.

You're point about the wrong impact is spot on.

I have a gift of getting good grades. I know what things will be on the test, I know how to answer questions so that I leave enough wiggle room to avoid exposing ignorance on a topic, and I know how to structure an answer to get partial credit if I really don't know how to answer a question. My GPA in my first undergraduate class was essentially all A+s (curse you intro to the philosophy of language!).

For my second undergraduate degree, I just flat out rejected that approach. I exposed my ignorance where possible (and typically as early as possible rather than on the final exam). What was surprising was how little impact this had on my grades. Some, but not much, and I learned a lot more. Now I try to pass that on to my kids, but the structure of school is such that everything in that system is oriented towards the wrong goal.

Really pushes me in the direction of homeschooling, I have to say.

Right on. I strongly believe that if we do not admit something about ourselves, we cannot change that thing about ourselves. The most important skill I think I've ever learned in my life is to say "I don't know" often and unabashedly.

For me, saying "I don't know" was more of a social fear than an academic one. I thought people only liked me for my performance. But, like you, I learned that saying it didn't really affect the outcomes I thought it would, but it did result in learning a ton more. And I think, socially, it actually helped, because it humanized me to people who just saw me as "that super smart guy who gets good grades". I was no longer a machine they could not compete with, but a companion in the same struggle.

It's also much less exhausting just being true all the time, rather than trying to achieve some arbitrary educational or social metric.

> I have a gift of getting good grades.

> You're point about ...

Thank you for adding to this conversation. This important point, that people make both typos and homonym errors, is a critical insight into this issue.

I had classmates who studied themselves into the wrong side of the emergency room. Some were proud of it. I couldn't understand. I liked things like my health and sleep.

I congratulate you on your innate talent that allows you to excel that way.

In various subjects, particularly abstract mathematics, I had to grind heavily in order to keep up with the class. I attended every office hours and pattern matched heavily, studying into the wee hours. (I had tried your method and failed in previous semesters).

Other subjects I had no problem. Low-level operating systems, writing, literary deconstruction, chemistry, foreign languages, statistics: I had no issues studying a reasonable amount and having a good work-life balance.

Eventually I realized that I was never grokking things with mathematics beyond a certain point. I was in office hours with the professor, asking how I could generalize the concept to a new problem. He said "just use your critical thinking skills! That's what employers are looking for." I truly didn't have the ingenuity to do it. I really wanted to be good at it, but I knew I never would be.

I think you are forgetting about the areas in your life that you don't excel at, that you couldn't be good at no matter how hard you tried. Some people genuinely have to grind at some things in order to succeed. For me, it allowed me to realize that no matter how beneficial it would be to have a Math minor, it wasn't going to happen. I spent that time pursuing coursework I would benefit more from.

He may not be forgetting them but rather taking them in to account and picking his pursuits based on it. That's what I do and I think it very much fits in to the same dynamic of valuing efficient use of time or being determined to achieve X. I stick to things I have a natural aptitude for.

I do not think we are in disagreement. I'm talking about the difference between someone who maximizes life and education versus someone who maximizes GPA. I'm taking it as a given that these two individuals are equally capable in whatever subject they're studying.

That said, I tutor mathematics and I hear all day long "I can't do this" and it has never once been true. For the people I help it is usually a matter of finding how they learn best (visual, verbal, hands on...) and/or finding an appropriate metaphor. And yes, even despite this, they often struggle; but genuine struggle is a good reason to put in more hours. I don't dispute that.

Your prof's answer is the kind of answer that disgusts me. It's not teaching. In mathematics it is exceptionally questionable, because it is tantamount to expecting you to derive the whole of mathematics by yourself.

> In various subjects, particularly abstract mathematics, I had to grind heavily in order to keep up with the class. I attended every office hours and pattern matched heavily, studying into the wee hours. (I had tried your method and failed in previous semesters).

Grinding will always fail with abstract mathematics because it distracts you from divergent thinking and spontaneous insights. The problem is that university courses are on a fixed schedule so people that need more time than allotted for this kind of study are not accommodated, which pushes a lot of people away from mathematics who could otherwise contribute.

>Eventually I realized that I was never grokking things with mathematics beyond a certain point. I was in office hours with the professor, asking how I could generalize the concept to a new problem. He said "just use your critical thinking skills! That's what employers are looking for."

That's the introvert's version of "just be yourself, you're overcomplicating it" -- i.e. just draw on innate skills that I have without realizing and you don't.

>I think the core problem for most people is that they are attached to the wrong outcome. Their goal is the high GPA.

Likely to be true for many people. I remember my uncle, who was a prof. in the US, bemoaning the fact (and this was way back) that some of his students used to come and ask him "What do I need to do to get an A?" His point being, of course, that those students did not have a genuine interest in the subject for its own sake (which tends to lead to better outcomes anyway).

I've seen the same. To me it always came across as "Your chosen field of study bores me. What's the least amount of this thing which you've devoted your life to that I can learn without it affecting my future in any way? Please provide this in checklist form." Why would any prof respond positively to that?

Wow, that's a somewhat strong way of putting it, but yes, I guess it would seem that way to a prof. hearing that (the original question from the student). And as an instructor on software topics myself (part-time), I guess I might think somewhat the same way, if that happened. Thankfully it rarely has happened with my students, the ones who actually join my courses, that is. There is of course the top of the funnel, in which there are many such people like the ones my uncle talked about.

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

For good or bad, academic performance is measured with GPA, so you should not be surprised to see people optimizing for this measurement. You can't measure "interest in the subject" and even if you could, you could not judge teacher and/or student performance based on it, so instead we have GPA.

You're right. I wasn't surprised, though (okay, I was, a bit, since I was a kid when I heard this, and also wasn't like that myself - usually was interested in all the subjects I took [1], and did well on most). It was more like I was just commenting on the parent comment to mine, by cgriswald.

[1] One exception was organic chemistry in high school. Never could get my head around it, though I did fine in inorganic. I think it had to do at least partly with the fact that in organic, you have to memorize much more (e.g. molecules and their transitions - hardly remember much now), whereas in inorganic, you have to use logic and deduction and problem-solving skills more.

It took me nearly all of my college career to finally figure out how to actually be successful in my studies. I never had to work hard in high school to pass my classes (I think because my teachers held my hand a bit too much). I took that attitude to college and got my ass handed to me over and over again. I skated by for awhile until it was clear that I had to shape up or go home and go to community college. It took a couple years to build up my skills but by the end of my college career, I was getting the semester grades I should have been getting the whole time. My GPA didn't recover as much as I had hoped it would but I graduated. I was able to get a job where the recruiter didn't ask me what my GPA was, probably a major reason why I got the job in the first place.

Now I have to think about a grad school because it's pretty much required for my field of engineering. I'm not sure if any grad school would be interested in my pitiful grades from back then.

Don't apply to universities. Come up with a strong proposal for a research project, think about professors at the less popular research universities that you would want to work with, and see if any of them would be interested in having you as a student. Then you can apply and if the graduate program admissions department is not swamped with 95th percentile applicants you have a much better chance of getting in if the professor wants you in. If that professor happens to be on the admissions committee or is chairing the department or however the administration is set up at that university at the time you are applying you may even get the GPA requirements waived altogether. Professors are always up for competent students that are interested in the field, in working with them, and that can publish a lot of papers. As a student the last thing you want to do is get into your dream school only to end up being advised by a "difficult" professor.

As a PhD, I want to give a word of caution: Classes in school are really almost nothing like doing research (or taking on any large, difficult project). I still take some here and there personally, but the main idea in this article isn't about finding a optimum point on the grade vs. effort plot (I totally agree with your assessment though!).

I'm not sure I buy the "you get diminishing returns for working harder" in general --- yes, you can absolutely burn out, but you could also just do amazing things if you work really hard. Sometimes there are diminishing returns (like the A vs A+ in school), and sometimes there aren't.

The most important thing is that progress can be made even if you want to work at a more leisurely pace on difficult problems. And, of course, that's far less likely to burn you out.

I think also that there is something to be said for 'staying in the game'. The most important thing should be taking steps to make sure you are still around and working on the right problems in 4-5 years. Sometimes that requires taking it easy, sometimes that requires working harder.

If you are still around then there is a chance you will also be making progress.

As a counterpoint to this, my second year in CS had four papers (Programming, Data Structures and C, Operating Systems, and Networks). The course was being revamped one year at a time, and right at the beginning of second year there was a problem with the workload:

they had set the load and level for Programming to final year level. A dozen (out of 140ish students) dropped out by the end of the first week, and by the end of the course (13 weeks long) more than half of the students had dropped out, and just 37 were in a position to pass. I don't mean that they had completed the work necessary to pass, but they could conceivably do so by the final due date for the course.

I don't know how many actually passed, but of the 37, not everyone did. It was so bad that they had to drop the prerequisites and allow in anybody who had completed the other papers just so there could actually be a final year (three year Bachelor of Science).

Funnily enough, they refused to refund any fees, even though the person in charge of the course was eventually fired over the mess - one that he didn't even create! He was handed the course and workload, and told "This is it, this is how you must teach it." We were all told "Suck it up and do it." Even the teaching staff had told the professors that it was a badly designed course, which didn't go down well.

I passed that paper, failed all my others (no refund: I was told I should just have worked harder than double the standard semester workload), and burned out. Not one of us paid intending to be part of their incompetence. Had I known how badly put together the course was, I would have dropped out in the first week as well. If I wanted the Honors workload, I would have entered the Honors program.

Regarding this comment, I have a general broad question for the HN community: I honestly find it hard to strike a balance between being extremely cautious in my writing/responses, and being straight-forward and clear. What is the right balance?

In this case, of course I don't mean to say that every class in existence follows this grade vs. effort plot. There are absolutely incredibly difficult classes where this is not true, and you need a lot of effort just to pass.

The fact of the matter is that this is absolutely not true in general. I didn't mention that in my comment, but I totally agree there are counterexamples of classes, it's just that the vast majority of classes follow the trend of being pretty easy to just pass (considering classes of all disciplines here --- for example, I know many people that have taken literature courses, pulled an all-nighter before each paper due date, otherwise didn't work at all, and passed. All together the class took maybe 30 hours of work outside the classroom for the entire semester!)

Ah, the old "What do they call the person who graduates last in medical school?"

Aren't most medical schools just pass/fail these days? They don't actually give grades or rank students, do they?

I can't speak for all medical schools, but at my ex's school they have Honors/High Pass/Pass/Low Pass/Fail; so basically (ABCDF).

Other than being required to get at least Pass in order to remain in good academic standing, I'm not certain what effect these grades have.

As I understand it (from friends in med school), the grades in the pre-clinical classes are important as they affect the Dean's letter, the primary letter of recommendation for residency applications.

However, the grades from the time they spend in the clinic are much more important than the pre-clinical coursework.

And what do they call a soldier who graduates last in BUD/S class? Graduating is itself a big feat.

I subscribed to this school of thought in college. I worked WAYYYYY less than my roommates and got the same engineering degree with a slightly worse GPA (I had a 2.93 at graduation and they had all above 3.2). It didnt hurt my job prospects because I had side projects I thought were fun and was involved in a few extracurriculars.

Edit: I also realize that this isn't for everyone

> You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day all three students graduate.

Forgive me but I must take you to task for this. The point of post-secondary education is not to graduate; the point is to get an education that enables you to succeed in your career. This may or may not matter if all you're doing is websites and CRUD apps (which should really be taken as a warning about the long-term stability of such a career) but that's not the fault of the degree program.

(Some may wish to point that grades don't necessarily correlate with mastery of the knowledge presented, and I'd have some sympathy for that, but that's a different argument entirely.)

Elite and even state flagship universities do not see their mission as primarily career training [0]. You'll get that in vendor certification courses at your local community/technical college (Microsoft Certified whatever, Oracle Certified whatever, Cisco Certified whatever). Not generally under the heading "computer science."

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/02/...

In an environment with few opportunities, a B/A is not good enough. Highly recommend the Indian film "3 Idiots" for a great critique of the pressures that students face in other parts of the world. It's also one of the most accessible and enjoyable Indian films.

Seconded. 3 Idiots is fantastic fun film. If you haven't seen it you should!

Genre: Superhero?

This exact strategy is what some competitive athletes apply to win: be strong enough to stay alive and converve maximal energy to live another round. Rich Froning applied this for years in Crossfit competitions, for a very non HN example.

At a certain point you get diminishing returns for working harder.

Diminishing returns on your health and in actual quality work of done, for sure.

But unfortunately you also tend to get "increasing returns" in terms of appreciation by uninspired middle-level managers, who tend to think: "We know he's a good worker 'coz we can see him workin'!". Which is unfortunately the great majority of them. Who themselves tend to be deeply insecure about their own position and how they're being evaluated, and so forth.

And so the world keeps going, round and round and roun,

When I was in grad school, I took a middle ground: I determined to get a B or B- (if it could be done with reasonable effort) for all the courses. This let me have extra time to put into the courses I found most interesting and I would spend longer hours on those with the goal being learning rather than grades. It kept school fun.

If their job was, say, picking cotton, then the hours they spent at work would directly correlate to their work output.

So what is the difference?

Maybe scientists are still thinking about difficult problems when they are away from work. Like when they are sitting in their porch swing with nobody else around to distract.

For factory work at least this is not true. Multiple people and real-world experiments, from Henry Ford to German factories, have found that 40 hour workweek maximizes output: http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons

The methods of testing employed by most manufactures of that time period are extremely flawed and considered blatantly unscientific today.

Robinson also points to studies in construction industry run in the 1980s.

If you pick cotton for 80/hr a week I promise you won't be picking cotton in the long run as long as the guy only doing it 20 hr/week (you will develop physical problems very quickly)

From a business perspective it is probably better to burn though many people at 80 hours a week, rather than fewer 20hr week employees (er, or slaves as history goes). Since it is a low skill job and anyone can do it the employee longevity likely doesn't matter. An employee that has picked cotton for 1 month isn't likely to be that much worse than an employee that has picked for 1 year. Of course this is my anecdote, and picking cotton is rather brutal by hand, hence we have machines that do it for us now.

If the amount of experience is irrelevant why not use more employees for shorter periods of time?

What is the administrative cost per employee?

In most business you will have a point where the cost per employee align with the output per employee and you try to peg production there. Also getting too many employees can lead to second and third order effects that have to be managed, like transportation of employees and parking.

Okay obviously there's some limit. It doesn't make sense to have 1000 employees that only work 5 min each. However I also fail to see the benefit of making anyone work 80 hours, rather than say 40.

Or when they are brushing the teeth

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170328-statistician-proves-...

Being creative is like tending a garden. Ideas grow on their own, and all you can really do is prepare the environment to facilitate this growth. You do this by clearly defining the problem, fertilizing your mind with inspiration, and revisiting the problem periodically to keep it present. From there, you need to relax and let your brain do its thing. Actively thinking/concentrating actually inhibits brain activity in much of your brain to prevent interference, and the brain areas inhibited are usually the ones that make creative jumps. The rational networks of the brain should only be engaged to sanity check/refine creative ideas.

Not exactly:

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." - Sun Tzu

One way to have good ideas is to have a lot of them and then filter.

Even in highly creative endeavors like say music and painting, volume of work largely matters. You have to spend a lot of time(years) doing a lot of work before you get anywhere close to good.

You can work on a lot of different problems and still do the creative garden cultivation that the previous poster said. I do that. I've got about 10 prototypes for board and card games actively going at once at the moment, and I write down fresh ideas that pop into my head to come back to later.

Even if months pass, I'll get spontaneous ideas to certain projects that improve them a ton. But I have to feed my brain with fuel for inspiration constantly, and actively try to apply any interesting idea to my existing projects and see if they inspire anything new for them.

I can't find the quote now (It's written in a notebook I don't have on me at the moment), but this is apparently how Richard Feynman approached work, although by working on multiple problems at once, not projects (although all of my projects have problems :).

"creative garden cultivation" might be a poetic way of putting it. In reality its just hard work and sweat at the end of the day. It requires you to go through many iterations of success/failure loops testing outcomes of your work.

Of course you can do more than one of this at the same time. In fact that was precisely my point. The more of such you grab, the more come they come to you.

"sweat" is poetry/metaphor in this context, too, so your description and the previous one are equally valid "in reality."

Hard work is what you do once you have a creative direction. Before you have creative direction, you need "work hard" fertilizing your mind with inspirational material, then relax and let your brain create connections on its own. This process might need to be repeated frequently, but it is how big ideas are grown.

Think of your potential idea space like a box. When you relax the box moves around and reconfigures itself into different shapes. If you are actively thinking, this locks the box in the current location and shape. This can be useful when you want to explore the current box a bit more, but there is only so much exploring you can do within the current box before you are just retracing your steps. If you are always in explore mode without letting the box move and reconfigure you're just going to generate small variations on the same old ideas.

I think the John Cleese speech is particularly relevant here - it's different modes of thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xPvvPTQaMI

Your hourly output will go down after a lot of manual work. Same as when you manually work without breakes.

They take a very constrained example and claim that "You should be a slacker too".

This is at best an irresponsible piece of writing that's clearly targeting discussions like what's happening here. This is the 1000th time I've seen a post on this topic on HN, and every time it's posted here it's like groundhog day, same comments. Well this is what publications like these want, they want more traffic.

There are many famous athletes who worked long hours. Ask Michael Jordan.

There are many famous entrepreneurs (actually I don't know of a single extremely successful entrepreneur who didn't work extremely hard) who worked long hours. Ask Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and really any successful entrepreneur who's changed how the world works.

Just don't ask some nobody writer who writes for a blog who just needs to get more page views. They don't know what they are talking about.

In fact, you know what? MOST successful people work very hard. Surprising right? Duh.

It's your freedom to choose how to live your life, but don't tell others what to do based on your idiotic research clearly aimed at generating page views. That's irresponsible.

Also, if you want to succeed, don't listen to these idiots. Statistically those who work harder succeed more. Period.

That said, if your life goal is NOT about being successful but more about living a balanced life with happiness, then go live your life whatever way you want. In fact that's how 99% of the world live their lives.

But again, if you want to have huge success and achieve more than you ever wanted in life, work hard. Don't let these people ruin your life. You will really regret later.

There is so much aggression here. Relax.

Working longer hours isn't equivalent to working harder. Plenty of unsuccessful entrepreneurs worked long hours and worked hard, and there are examples of people/businesses doing productive work with more balanced workdays.

99% of the people in the world live in a way to not be successful, but to have a balanced life with happiness? It should be obvious that for 99% of people, that isn't a choice they get to make. It's also a grotesque separation of success from balance/happiness that shows a profound lack of insight.

The word "slacker" is only present in the title of the article itself. It's normal that the writer, who you railed against, doesn't get to pick their title. So it's important to read the actual content for the premise. The writer doesn't argue against putting in time. There is the idea that quality of working hours is also important.

It's pretty clear that doing the 80 hour week is something that works well if you're, say, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. A difficult job, to be sure, but not top-notch in the grand scheme of things. You're not inventing quantum mechanics, you're figuring out ways for people to share more cat pictures.

But if you are operating at the top of the pyramid of knowledge, like some of the people mentioned in the article, that's a different kind of effort. The 4 hours a day schedule, with plenty of breaks, seems to work best.

> But if you are operating at the top of the pyramid of knowledge, like some of the people mentioned in the article, that's a different kind of effort.

Yeah, it's an effort they are probably thinking about 24/7. Defining 'knowledge work' is challenging because so much of the 'work' happens when the person is not sitting at the computer/desk. Creative work is similar.

Instead of saying so and so worked 4 hours/day, we need to change the definition of work.

I think it's virtually certain that, if they are indeed top figures in their fields, it's guaranteed that they are deeply involved in their work, and that means their subconscious minds are processing that stuff non-stop. But the subconscious is a funny thing, because it doesn't seem to require "effort" to operate, however you may define that notion.

It's the fully conscious, purposeful, organized work that requires "effort" and consumes "energy". Not even sure how to define these things properly, but everyone seems to understand them intuitively. Anyway, to be successful at the highest levels, it seems like you have to be awfully protective of this "energy" thing.

> Not even sure how to define these things properly, but everyone seems to understand them intuitively.

Focused vs. diffuse thinking.

>you're figuring out ways for people to share more cat pictures

Ahem, it's called "changing the world".

After about 10 years of consulting in the field of thermodynamics, my week of work has now settled to 25h. I simply cannot be efficient after 4 to 5h of intensive work in this field. What is interesting is that not a single customer complained about it.

Amen! I love all the nobodies who tell me how to be successful and accomplish my goals by straight chillin. I'm always thinking: "and you are...?"

Everyone who tells me to take it easy is a nobody anonymous person who hasn't done anything and never will. And as you said, that's up to them. Everyone picks their course and I try to remember everyone is different. But I always wonder why they choose to evangelize. I don't evangelize at them. I think Dylan said it best: they just want to get you down in the hole that they're in.

Most important thing in life is to love what you're doing. Work isn't work if you love it. But nothing valuable is easy. Eventually, usually very quickly, what you want to accomplish becomes very boring to accomplish. That feeling of reward may come very infrequently. It's very difficult to do anything new or different.

I broadly agree with you, but I think the issue is more subtle. Ambitious people will always work very hard; the danger of working hard is that it necessitates a degree of path-dependent myopia that can lead one to miss huge opportunities.

The most ambitious people are quite concerned about this, and try to use leisure as a comparative advantage. The article is pretty fair in painting this portrait: the author admits that the scientists construct their lives around their work (Darwin worried about getting married, for instance), but points out that constructing their lives around their work involves the construction of leisure.

I am willing to bet that starting with a million in the bank will make you more likely to succeed that working hard. Didn't Thomas Piketty's book come to a similar conclusion?

All things equal, the person who works harder will usually come out on top (of course, there's always some RNG). Applies to all areas of life. Scenarios where you have an unfair advantage (money in the bank) are irrelevant here.

Sure I am not denying that (though a bit of good luck doesn't go wrong). It was mainly a response to the line:

>In fact, you know what? MOST successful people work very hard. Surprising right? Duh.

There is even a link on HN today to this article "Untalented rich still earn more, says Greening": http://www.bbc.com/news/education-39444993

Agree but the danger is equating only hard work to success.

i.e. successful? => works_hard?

But works_hard? => successful? does not necessarily follow.

In the words of Bezos:

"You can work long, hard or smart, but at Amazon.com you can't choose two out of three"

Very few people have the stamina, energy, and brain and emotional chemistry to perform on three out of three for very long.

> MOST successful people work very hard. Surprising right? Duh.

If you're going to complain about an author making unsubstantiated generalizations, you should probably avoid doing the same.

I'm not OP, but this is an interesting moment to ask: would you not consider the "I worked harder than others, therefore I'm more successful" sentiment self evident?

In my experience, people in my group whom I'd categorize as "successful" have often been confident in making peace/having passion for the vocation of their choice, and have paid their dues so to speak, in terms of research papers read, hours spent with their instrument, hours of training for sport etc.

> I'm not OP, but this is an interesting moment to ask: would you not consider the "I worked harder than others, therefore I'm more successful" sentiment self evident?

No - I consider the sentiment very unscientific. I suspect that a significant percentage of people who think they put in above average effort fall below the average. That's assuming we can agree on a common definition of "hard work" - is physically toiling, clocking in hours, mental anguish, perseverance or a combination of the above?

Its rather odd that you chose to fight the battle of what is 'scientific' simply based on logical reasoning - which is flawed to begin with. Logical arguments serve no purpose here without practical proof.

> would you not consider the "I worked harder than others, therefore I'm more successful" sentiment self evident?

Not at all.

We can swap anecdotes about successful people all day, but the fact of the matter is that hard work guarantees nothing, and it's not a prerequisite for success.

I'm curious why you think Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the rest "worked long hours". Being there for 16 hours a day is not the same as working 16 hours a day. There are days where I feel busy but get very little work done. I suspect because these guys ran these companies like kings in a fiefdom they had a lot of busy work.

Let's not conflate time wasted to time worked. Also intellectual jobs most certainly require walks, sleeping, and leisure because creativity is a right-brain activity.

sure entrepreneurs work hard, but they produce very little of lasting cultural value. If you want a legacy, you have to be more creative.

Yes but it's currently popular to speculate on the automated future where nobody works and everyone gets free money.

Yet, I have a hard time believing that vision of the future. My vision of the future is one where people still need to work, and those that work harder will reap more than those who don't.

You can not control your sub-conscious, the one part that glues together the creative part of your work. You can feed it, you can walk it and you can hope that the digestion pours out something useful. This might look like slacking off to some ignorant person, in violent denial regarding creative work. Because, if break-troughs are not gained by mechanically grinding away for hours on logic riddles, till you level up to genius- it might be the "work hard, not smart" that's actually lacking off.

One can treat this like a sport, can threat this like a craft. But then you still will never be a da Vinci, or a van Gogh - elevating a whole field by digressing and recombining . Just another speed-painter hoping that his great day shall come after the 1000x tourist portrait.

> some ignorant person, in violent denial regarding creative work

What an apt description of the tone of the top of this comment subthread.

> if your life goal is NOT about being successful but more about living a balanced life with happiness

What good is (your definition of) success if you do nothing but work and are unhappy? Or did you mean something else by this?

Not OP so I can't say what is meant by "happiness" here, but maybe if you feel your life can serve a purpose other than your own pleasure/comfort you would be willing to experience less pleasure/comfort to achieve that goal. That's different than happiness, but maybe that's what he/she was getting at.

Why would you not be happy if you achieve what you want in life?

Sure it's a stressful journey, but if you ask me if i would pick between a life that actually served a purpose vs. a life I just lived because I lived, I would pick one that aimed to serve a purpose any day, no matter how stressful it is. You may think living a balanced "happy" life is happiness, but when you're at your deathbed and think back at your life, you will regret not having done all you could have done.

Speaking of, check out Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I didn't believe in it when I was very young because I was down there in the pyramid, but now I realize that's not the case. You may say this is luxury for most people, and that is true. Most human population are not in a situation where they have the resources and ability to climb up all the way to the top of the hierarchy of needs, but I think anyone from HN community should be able to.

As far as I know, most people wish on their deathbeds that they'd have worked less, been with their loved ones more, and generally would have done more anything else than work.

I get that there are extremely driven individuals who want to achieve great things - and some of them are even able to do so - but articles like this should be understood in the context of a culture where common people work themselves to death trying to achieve "success" defined by the surrounding culture rather than in their own terms.

> "As far as I know, most people wish on their deathbeds that they'd have worked less, been with their loved ones more, and generally would have done more anything else than work."

No, this is just a hackneyed cliche that gets repeated every time work-life balance gets discussed.

I know quite a few people in late middle age that dearly wish they have worked harder and earned more money, now that they need it and can't.

There is a difference between late middle age and deathbed. If it is a hackneyed cliche (and I wouldn't be surprised if it is), I would like to see evidence for it (first hand anecodotal evidence is sufficient, but from someone who is verifiably not you, but worked long hours, and is dying).

And you counter with personal anecdotes. But of course they must be true because they fit your narrative.

I think it's can be more the realisation that the achievement you thought you wanted wasn't actually what was important to you. For example seeking fame and status because you have low self-esteem is famously not a great way to feel better about yourself.

Further even Maslow acknowledged that the level taxonomy he came up with was fluid. How could it not? Being a model and not a description of reality. Self-actualisation is a really broad categorisation that can include things that to another person might look like "a life just lived" but has real import in reality.

>That said, if your life goal is NOT about being successful but more about living a balanced life with happiness, then go live your life whatever way you want. In fact that's how 99% of the world live their lives.

Human beings have struggled for thousands of years to define what it means to live a good life and be "successful." Few (if any) ever associated success with the acquisition of wealth. Even the rich ones, like Marcus Aurelius, did not consider wealth to be an indicator of a good life. It's rather odd that you would do so with such flippancy and dismiss those that pursue other avenues of fulfillment as "not successful".

No. you define your own success. For most people it's a social thing so you look at people around you and define your success. That's why people buy home, buy cars, etc.

That's fine but you should really have control over what you consider as "success".

When I say success I mean having a clear goal of where you want to go and achieving it.

If you want to be "cool" and just enjoy your life AND achieve what you want outside of your cool life, feel free to do so, and good luck. I'm just saying you can't win against people who have the same ability who decide to go all in.

> I'm just saying you can't win against people who have the same ability who decide to go all in.

You're really killing it. <3. I'm loving it because people who say these pretty obvious things are just so few and far between. Instead of listening to John Carmack (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10882202) they choose to parrot these articles by random people who've never done anything except produce clickbait.

Also I like people who say: "don't you need to exercise, go for walks, relax?" Of course! But these things must be deployed as part of your effort to achieve your goals. The odds are stacked so hard against you. You need stable finances and health, for one thing, to accomplish anything. Then you need patience, support from your friends and family, vision, a good idea... not to mention some talent, too. It's really hard. If you're not all in, you're not going anywhere in terms of producing something new and interesting. Which is fine, just don't try to sell people on the opposite.

>When I say success I mean having a clear goal of where you want to go and achieving it.

I strongly disagree with this. Goals - insofar as they exist at all - should always be small, fluid, and constantly shifting based on how you evolve and grow as a person. Who you are in five years should be completely different and better than the person you are today. That only happens by establishing systems of behavior that meet higher order ideals of what is good and virtuous, not embedding your entire understanding of success into a single end point. It's far more effective to measure the hours of each day by the quality of your habits than the years of your life spent fighting for some arbitrary accomplishment that may never come.

the "entrepreneur" narrative is swinging back to personal goals/development/balance, now that a bunch of people are failing in the 3rd wave (dotcom, the recovery, now post-crash). you're going to see a lot of this stuff.

obviously what you said is true but the real golden goose is working reasonable hours AND making really good money. a lot of people find that place eventually, a lot don't.

also i have a feeling the people who found a way to work 2 hours a day (or whatever) and make tons of money aren't really talking about it... for obvious reasons.

You're conflating knowledge work with manual work.

Knowledge work requires the brain to wonder...to explore a problem and possible solutions freely.

Michael Jordan wasn't trying to create anything new, he was trying to develop a physical skill. Physical skills are made via repetition.

Things like stress and distraction destroy knowledge workers. This is something every experienced engineer knows.

i'm not conflating anything more than what this article is doing.

On the other hand, you are guilty of taking my words out of context. It's convenient to just take michael jordan and use it as an argument, isn't it? I also mentioned another "knowledge work" example.

I'm not saying scientists should be working 18 hours a day. In fact when it comes to scientists and researchers I do agree that you should NOT work too hard because you will burn out, and most creative ideas come when you're taking a break.

But it's not cool to take that example and tell the world you should "slack off" because it's "scientific". That's not how the world works. If you want to achieve something, you can't win against someone who go all in. Simple as that.

You can't count productivity in hours. Someone who goes "all-in" 6 hours a day can certainly accomplish more than someone who says they go "all-in" 12 hours a day.

Creativity also applies to athletes. They have to come up with new solutions to solve problems all the time - such as coming up with a novel way to bypass the defense of the opposition and score, given a particular situation. Just because they combine their physicality with prior experience, knowledge and cognitive ability (which they can't use too much of given the "realtime" demand) doesn't make them any less creative. IMHO They're more creative than most people on here who are implementing CS ideas already explored decades ago.

an idea to consider

time might not be a very good dimension to compete along

because it has a firm upper cap

> That said, if your life goal is NOT about being successful but more about living a balanced life with happiness, then go live your life whatever way you want. In fact that's how 99% of the world live their lives.

Maybe you should re-phrase that as "about being financial successful". I for myself find a "balanced life with happiness" as very close to what being successful in life really means, for the simple fact that I've gone through periods when I would have given half of the world just not to be miserable anymore. The black hole of depression cannot be filled no matter how much money you have, and it can reach you even you're the most financially successful person in the world.

> Also, if you want to succeed, don't listen to these idiots. Statistically those who work harder succeed more. Period.

Here is the absolute crux of the problem. Putting in hours of toil is not how you get ahead in most fields. It's not an XP system, it's non-linear. More hours isn't better. More drudgery isn't better. You need to be putting in an appropriate amount of time but you also need to be using your time well. If you show up and you're just punching a time card you're not guaranteed any progress whatsoever. If you're working long hours chances are high that you're not putting in your best work, that a lot of the work you're doing is just rote, autopilot stuff, and that a lot of the time you're "working" you're merely being present in a work environment and not actually working.

Concentrate first on understanding what you're working on at a deep level, being present/mindful in your work, being adventurous and curious, and accepting of feeling like you're struggling. That takes a lot of effort and a lot of courage, it's always a struggle to expand your mental horizons or to explore the unknown (to you and to humanity in general). But it doesn't necessarily take much time. If you use your time efficiently you can absolutely get ahead, far ahead, of others who are working more hours and making less progress.

It's not a tradeoff, it's not a binary choice, it's a matter primarily of how effectively you use your time.

That said, if your life goal is NOT about being successful but more about living a balanced life with happiness

You seem to be using an extremely narrow definition of success. Perhaps you should articulate your premises more clearly.

> There are many famous athletes who worked long hours. Ask Michael Jordan.

Jordan also gets paid enough that he can hire a support infrastructure so that his long hours don't impinge on his down time. Did he get back after practice and then need to worry if his house is clean, or car needs to go into the mechanic, or do his bills, or even if his pantry and fridge are stocked with food? Likely no. Long hours for the extremely well paid don't have the same effect as the rest of us.

Success, especially in science, which is what the article is about, comes from working on the right problem, and concentrating on it, more than from long hours or strenuous effort.

People who are successful and don't work hard are probably more an exception than the rule. Or maybe they're working hard and not in the office?

Higher likelihood of being successful if you work hard than not.

That said, these type of clikbaity articles are making me wonder where HN is going and if we have any measures in place to de-clickbait-ize the stories to prevent something like this from occuring..

Steve Jobs had a shit personal life. No thanks.

> Also, if you want to succeed, don't listen to these idiots. Statistically those who work harder succeed more. Period.

I'm mean I generally agree but one thing I really can't stand is people believing that success is entirely hard work.

The reality is most of success is "standing on the shoulder of giants". People are generally successful if they are given a massive starting advantage. That starting advantage could be genetics (which can be argued easily since that is sort of hidden) and wealth (of which there is less denying).

You mention Bill Bates. Bill and both Mark Zuckerburg went to Harvard. Both had(ve) affluent parents. Even Steve had some nice advantages as well. As well in the case of this article most scientist have/had affluent parents.

Of course there are Cinderella exceptions. I don't know stat wise what it is but I'm guessing low.

I just don't want to hear hard work always equals success when most board rooms are filled with the white good old boys network.

I didn't say that. This is why it's hard to have civil discussion online because people take words out of context and use whatever interpretation they have.

If you are one of the people who are in unfortunate situations, you can choose to live two different lives: either believe that you're done for and live a loser life, or try hard to get out of it.

It's your choice, but there's plenty of evidence where people who came from the bottom rose to the top by working hard (and I mean "top" as in someone who's made world-changing achievements)

> I didn't say that. This is why it's hard to have civil discussion online because people take words out of context and use whatever interpretation they have.

How about I just agree and say you are right?

Its pretty hard to have a civil discussion when you top level post and accuse HNers of commenting like lemmings.

> This is at best an irresponsible piece of writing that's clearly targeting discussions like what's happening here. This is the 1000th time I've seen a post on this topic on HN, and every time it's posted here it's like groundhog day, same comments. Well this is what publications like these want, they want more traffic.

It sounds like you took a lot of: words out of context and use whatever interpretation they have to come up with your theory.

And now your sort of playing king of the mountain on your original comment (being contentious with me and others) and not wanting a discussion. I even originally mostly agreed with you (see my original comment).

> It's your choice, but there's plenty of evidence where people who came from the bottom rose to the top by working hard (and I mean "top" as in someone who's made world-changing achievements)

Yeah we have had lots of female presidents.

Yeah sure people can go up a few rungs with hard work (hence why I agreed with you) but extremely rare is the true Cinderalla story. It usually takes generations.... but I suppose even success is nebulous.

Actually one could even argue you don't need hard work to be "successful" ... you just need to be happy (this is even based on your previous comments).

Like I said, if you're scared to even try because it will "never happen", be my guest. There are tons of other people in the same situation who will try, and succeed to become the character in your "cinderella story". "cinderella story" never happens to someone who slacks off.

No one is saying "work hard" => "100% success!". I'm saying success doesn't happen to people who slack off (especially if they're in a bad position to succeed). If you can't tell the difference between the two expressions, learn logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition

> Like I said, if you're scared to even try because it will "never happen", be my guest. There are tons of other people in the same situation who will try, and succeed to become the character in your "cinderella story". "cinderella story" never happens to someone who slacks off.

There are many that are not even give remotely an opportunity (think North Korean resident... I'm sure you can come up with some other creativity reasons as well).

The funny thing with the real Cinderella story is Cinderella was helped out by a fairy god mother.

By the way many successful people admit that they got massive help and were generally lucky. Read the plethora of quotes from actual successful people. Even my previous quote of "standing on shoulder.." was apropo because it was from a scientist. Steve Jobs: "The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world.". Delegating is a powerful thing. It allows you to work harder with out actually working harder.

> No one is saying "work hard" => "100% success!". I'm saying success doesn't happen to people who slack off (especially if they're in a bad position to succeed).

From your previous comment:

> In fact, you know what? MOST successful people work very hard. Surprising right? Duh.

They don't necessarily work harder. They take advantage of what opportunities present themselves given their starting point. What I'm saying is more of a component of their success is their starting point and many successful people admit this all the time.

You can apply this to a macro entity level as well such as companies. Companies become massive and don't have to work as hard or innovate because the can just acquire and leverage out other firms. If it was the case hard work even remotely equalled success we would have a lot more successful startups.

The reality is once you have a winning entity that entity can start relaxing and not work has hard. And in some cases they didn't have to right from the beginning. This is called the Winner take all theory [1].

Going back to individuals often for many its not even work (in the colloquial use of the word) because they enjoy what they are doing.

> If you can't tell the difference between the two expressions, learn logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition

Its really hard to have a logical discussion when you haven't really even defined:

* What success is?

* What is hard work?

Otherwise you are just being captain obvious and saying if all things are equal the entities that try harder will more likely succeed. Everyone knows if you don't try you will not succeed.

Here is my 2 cents on being more successful. You don't need to work harder... you need to be more opportunistic and strategic.

Being opportunistic requires more than just perfunctorily "working hard". It requires stepping back some times and getting a big picture of things which some might call slacking. It often requires delegation or deferring.... some would call that slacking or being lazy.

And thanks for the link and accusation that I don't understand Contraposition. Apparently insulting people is a good way to be successful these days.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner-take-all_market

I think this exposes the "religious" nature of humans in general, including plenty of people on HN. You see them using logical arguments to reason, instead of practical proofs (presumably in order to get away from personal bias). Surprisingly they end up with even more bias when using logical reasoning.

I wouldn't say logical reasoning is at fault here, as much as analogical reasoning.

But it is, because it ignores the reality of the situation. "People don't like to be constantly shown ads, and so if you don't show ads too much they might respond to the ads. They also say they want more truth in advertising so you should refrain from over the top advertisements that promise the moon." sounds like a reasonable logical argument. Except that practically speaking its not how it works and contradictory things often get you results. The main problem is that we're dealing with humans and also that logical arguments don't work well in heavily interconnected contexts.

As programmers we like to isolate and optimize and we will continue to run into a wall when we try to apply that in human contexts.

this is such a typical HN discussion; misleading headline provokes reaction to the headline rather than the content of the article. nowhere in the article are entrepreneurs discussed, or doctors, or anyone else whose work requires many hours of clocked-in work.

the fundamental claim of the article is that deliberate focus in a creative field cannot happen without deliberate rest. you can't always be on if you want to achieve the types of breakthroughs which underpin the most significant steps forward in science, literature, and music.

that's it. he never discussed Gates' work habits, except in context with Gladwell's 10k hours for expertise thesis. he then goes on to say that those 10k hours do not exist in a vacuum, and that this number is often misinterpreted; those 10k hours of focus also require a commensurate amount of leisure and rest.

he even specifically says that "[scientists'] legacies are often easier to determine than those of business leaders or famous figures", which to me says that those individuals are outside the scope of his discussion. how so many people here are projecting that conclusion is a mystery to me.

And then on the flipside there is Musk, Jobs, Gates and countless others who work(ed) all the time.

All I'm saying is I see a lot of emulation-of-success articles posted here...

>who work(ed) all the time.

Except as executives, their work is different than a skill workers' work. I mean, they don't have a manager busting their ass about TPS reports, they made their life their work. So a two hour lunch meeting that is 50% bs'ing is 'work.' Leaving at three to go golfing with a few guys, one of whom who is vendor, is 'work.' Going to the birthday party of a partner's kid is 'work.' Staying late for a meeting where you sit quietly munching on a bagel and watch those below you sweat through a presentation is 'work.'

They're human just like us and only have x amount of productive hours. Low key managerial tasks, networking, socializing, and sitting through meetings isn't exactly the same thing as sitting at the compiler agonizing over someone's legacy code and burning your brain out. If you're doing hard skill work that requires serious concentration, you simply can't do that for 8-12 hours a day. You can push 4-5 and then you're done and if you don't recognize your limits you're entering burn-out zone. Unlike a high level executive you can't take a 4 week 'working sabbatical' to a Greek island and work by answering emails on the beach when the stress catches up to you. You have your vacation days and that's it and you better hope its not crunch time when you do burn out.

edit: grammar fixes

> Except as executives, their work is a little different than skill workers.

This, which is addressed in the first chapter of "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. The concept of long periods of uninterrupted concentration and singular focus applies to researchers, programmers, artists, and other occupations. But an entrepreneur does not require "deep work" (though can certainly apply it).

There is some deep work for the executive / entrepreneur which is to figure out what to build or where the market is going.

Yes, it is required for the creative parts of the job which is building a coherent vision, strategy and planning.

Musk might run a successful company but that's not really a science

Those people are not scientists. Lookup Musk on Wikipedia and you'll find that he has a BSc. only, and he started a PhD only to quit after a few weeks to pursue his business endeavors. Jobs dropped out of University. And Gates is probably closest to a scientist, although I'm not aware of any research by him.

The article isn't entirely focused on scientists either. Many writers and other creative professionals are discussed.

I think with Jobs et al, for however long they work, it's likely they still only do a limited amount of focused creative work in that time. The rest is spent doing the every-day politicking, intuitive decision-making, and administrative stuff that goes along with being a CEO.

>"Lookup Musk on Wikipedia and you'll find that he has a BSc. only, and he started a PhD only to quit after a few weeks to pursue his business endeavors."

Three of the most important scientific papers in modern history—uncovering the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion and the special theory of relativity—were written about a hundred years ago by a man who could only sign them "Mr." when first writing them. About 80 years before that, another physicist who had no formal schooling past the age of 14 was pioneering advances in humanity's understanding of electricity and magnetism.

Science isn't restricted to or based on credentialed people. If you look at the history of science, credentials and recognition often follow groundbreaking scientific work.

A hundred years ago you could reach the frontier in theoretical physics without a decade of intensive study. That's no longer true.

Yeah, science is just so hard these days.

Regardless of the century, the credential is not the defining characteristic of science.

That's not why anyone gets a PhD. The training is designed to teach you research. Unlike any other schooling, the degree has little class work.

The PhD is essentially an apprenticeship to a practicing scientist.

I would be really interested in someone elaborating on this idea "phd is an apprenticeship for researchers".

Several people have insisted that I should go into a phd program, but when I looked into it I saw a lot of: learn how to do grant applications, publish this non-reproducible and barely significant result just so you have something published, work on a phd adviser's bad idea so he can take the credit, etc.

If you're working on an idea no one has had before, what kinds of support can others give you and do modern phd programs give that support?

Much more important than the idea is the process you learn how to vet and research the idea. That is the 'support'. Now I can independently expand on my own ideas, and reject unpromising ones. Some are born with this skill, but many who think they have it... don't.

A PhD isn't really about doing something useful, although that is typically a result. It's learning how to explore an idea and expand upon it.

Your advisor does not lead you as much as guide you. Hence the name.

While the dangers you mentioned are absolutely a threat, much of that can be mitigated by choosing a good advisor. Personally I think taking a tenured, well established prof is a better bet, because they aren't as worried about their own career advancement. But everyones mileage varies.

To expand on my original idea: imagine being given an opportunity to work closely with a recognized expert in your field. For years he will meet with you, advise you and honestly try to help you also become a world authority on this subject. Afterwards, he will always support your career and care for your future. That's what I have, and while I certainly feel fortunate, I would not call my situation atypical.

I'm happy to provide more info.

> Now I can independently expand on my own ideas, and reject unpromising ones.

Unpromising in what sense? Unpromising for you personally, or for the greater good of humanity?

Research always comes with a risk. It is called "re-search" and not "re-find" for a reason. You can learn some heuristics that will help you explore, but it is certainly no guarantee for finding anything.

> You can learn some heuristics that will help you explore, but it is certainly no guarantee for finding anything.

Agree. Those heuristics were precisely what I was alluding to. It is all about how you explore that space. The best researchers have an amazing ability to intuitively ascertain promising directions. Many smart folks I know constantly spin their wheels working on problems that are intractable.

To me, that ability is the principle value add of a senior PI (aside from funding, of course!)

Yep, over-reliance on rationality, overspecialization and dogmatic thinking are huge problems with the current academic landscape. Faraday and young Einstein thought about problems in a fundamentally different way. In fact, when Einstein became firmly entrenched in the establishment and started approaching everything from the math first perspective, he failed to make further progress.

Another interesting anecdote is that on the crowd sourcing platform innocentive, the majority of problems (which have stumped fortune 500 R&D departments) are solved by people outside the domain of the problem.

Einstein finished his doctorate in 1905. He certainly was entitled to be prefixed "Dr." in 1906.

All three papers mentioned were published in 1905, also known as his Annus Mirabilis. The one that won him the Nobel Prize was received in March, before he'd even finished his thesis (on a different topic). The work itself was done prior to submission, of course.

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

At the same time, how many of the 3 are (were) doing scientific work?

> Science isn't restricted to or based on credentialed people.

You are correct, but what other evidence do we have showing whether these people are scientists?

>> he started a PhD only to quit after a few weeks to pursue his business endeavors

Having PhD or working on it is not a prerequisite for being a scientist. Musk is not in academics, but he is a CTO of a SpaceX, so he is in charge of scientific and technological issues within an aerospace company. He does more applied science than vast majority of scientists that I can think of.

Edit: Typo

>He does more applied science than vast majority of scientists that I can think of.

Does he do it or does he manage a company and people who do it?

People who work with him say he does both managerial work and scientific.

Believing them would be naive.

> And Gates is probably closest to a scientist, although I'm not aware of any research by him.

Gates' only research paper[0] is one on the Pancake Sorting algorithm[1] — which he wrote in his second year at Harvard.

[0] - https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/papers/GP79.pdf

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancake_sorting

> And Gates is probably closest to a scientist, although I'm not aware of any research by him.

Gates has one published paper: Gates, William H. and Christos H. Papadimitriou. “Bounds for sorting by prefix reversal.” Discrete Mathematics 27 (1979): 47-57.

PDF: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/papers/GP79.pdf

Pancake sorting seems to attract Harvard people who decide to forego their planned science careers for other fields. It got Gates with normal pancake sorting, then 18 years David S. Cohen did burnt pancake sorting, before leaving science to change his name to David X. Cohen and write for The Simpsons and later Futurama:

Cohen, David S.; Blum, Manuel (1995). "On the problem of sorting burnt pancakes". Discrete Applied Mathematics. 61 (2): 105–20

Scientists and Entrepreneurs are two very different kinds of people. Creative thinkers vs Executers.

Most scientists are NOT creative thinkers. They just extend what came before them. People like Einstein is the exception but people seem to think all scientists are like him and draw wrong conclusions.

On the other hand, if you think entrepreneurs are just "executers" and not "creative thinkers" you are completely wrong. Most entrepreneurs are forced to think creatively every single day (otherwise they won't survive). Scientists don't need to because they have a stable job. If you're a scientist, some ambitious people want to become an Einstein but 99% of the population don't ever believe they can become one and just do mediocre research all their life. Unlike entrepreneurs where mediocre work will mean their business will fail and their family will starve, mediocre scientists can survive just fine, because they're paid by the research organization or the university they belong to.

> Toulouse noted that Poincaré kept very regular hours.

I feel that this is key. I remember an old post about someone's account about another phd candidate they worked with (my memory may be hazy). He noticed that whenever she made good progress, it didn't matter when during the day; she would take off and stop for the day (a lot of times before 2pm) for happy hour. His hours by contrast were less regular and he would work longer streaks, working much longer hours overall. If I remember correctly she finished her thesis a few months before he did.

> The rest of the time, they were hiking mountains, taking naps, going on walks with friends, or just sitting and thinking. Their creativity and productivity, in other words, were not the result of endless hours of toil. Their towering creative achievements result from modest “working” hours.

As others have noted, while you stop working consciously when you're 'relaxing'; you never really stop working subconsciously.

Adam Grant and others (like Napoleon Hill) have elaborated on it, but I can only find his account

https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_the_surprising_habits_o...

I would say a huge distinction is that for scientists the expected failure rate is in the 80%-90% range; so diminishing returns hit harder and sooner. Success is more contingent on keen observation and pivoting to a better ground idea. For Musk, Jobs and Gates, who are more like engineers, the expected failure rate is much much lower. There is still a 'fail fast' paradigm that is effective, but it's effective in a very different way.

Richard Hammings anecdotes of famous scientists would suggest otherwise... They may not look like they were working but They were always thinking on their problem. Working on a problem doesn't need to be done sitting in your desk but it can be done while on hikes with your colleagues or locked in the attic of your room.

Their minds were constantly thinking of their problems.

I think about software development all the time too, but if I was in the office as often as I think about it, I would be so burnt out and depressed, I wouldn't get anything done.

Or otherwise said - "Your get your best ideas on the toilet/in the shower/walking around."

Link to a transcript of Hamming's talk on the subject:

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

Yeah, just because it takes me 2 hours to physically type out the code does not mean I was not working on it mentally for weeks leading up to it. I think this is kind of the age-old question of "where does creativity happen" (replacing 'work' with 'creativity' in this context).

Most physicists, philosophers, and mystics will maintain that time does not actually exist, but is a conceptual projection in a sphere of transformations, so trying to measure things like creativity and time may not lead to very useful correlates. However, the fact that one should focus ones effort in small, useful periods, is precisely what I take away from information such as this.

I need to figure out a way to bill for time I've spent thinking about the problem rather than the time my butt was in the seat.

Bill by results/projects not by time?

After that, it was all downhill: The 60-plus-hour-a-week researchers were the least productive of all.

Could causality be in the other direction? Researchers who aren't getting publication-worthy results spend more time in the lab desperately trying?

At least anecdotally the opposite is true.

Researchers who are getting publication worthy results are in general hustling to manage multiple projects, run experiments, write papers, apply for grants...

The most talented researchers I know are without exception the ones who willingly live in their own lab. By their own admission they love it though. I don't sense burnout.

publication worthy != famous

Publication-worthy scientists try to manage multiple projects, work slave hours in the lab, interact with people 60+ hours a week, shaving themselves to fit perfectly into the mould of the scientific community. Sure-fire 50% improvements on existing results should be chased, because you'll get a paper in your name. Low-hanging fruit should be chased, because you'll get a paper in your name. Papers in your name gets you degrees, tenure, and more grants. Forget chasing 10-fold improvements. 10-fold improvements are dangerous because they're likely to fail -- too risky when you're trying to get grants, get tenure, or get your PhD.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1436

Famous scientists didn't care about tenure, PhDs, papers, or any of that crap. They cared exclusively about 10-fold, 100-fold, 1000-fold improvements. Some published papers in peer-reviewed journals, but many had a hard time getting them reviewed because of their controversial ideas, especially if they were theoretical.

Of course, for every famous scientist, there are hundreds of others that tried and failed hard, and you never heard about them.

Of course, merely by statistics, there must be a few exceptions too, i.e. lab slaves becoming famous by accident. And the question then is if those exceptions are more abundant than those famous people going for the hard results.

Consider the scientific method starts only after a hypothesis is made. A hypothesis is certainly informed by prior art, but even the most limited hypotheses have some kind of a leap they're trying to test; A hand extended in some direction in the darkness. It's not science there, it's intuition.

I'm just spitballing my opinion here.

One of my favorite quotes is: "Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years." - Bill Gates

Working long hard inefficient hours might get you short term gains, but consistent effective work over years will bring long-term success.

Typically (for me) putting short time constraints on projects amplifies my focus and cuts down on wasted time. The best way to cut down time is to have a well planned path of execution (know what you're doing before you sit down and don't do anything else).

That's how you can be successful without necessarily working long hours.

I'm not successful in terms of my own standards, but I think this makes sense.

The rest of the time, they were hiking mountains, taking naps, going on walks with friends, or just sitting and thinking. Their creativity and productivity, in other words, were not the result of endless hours of toil. Their towering creative achievements result from modest “working” hours.

If Darwin spent most of his time "hiking mountains... or just sitting and thinking", guess what he was actually doing? Yep, he was studying, and working. Just because he was not hunched over a table or a microscope does not mean he was not studying.

^ this. My best cited paper came to me while summiting a 14er in Colorado.

Did actually generating the results take long hours and serious work? Of course. But the idea required freeform thought and subconscious mulling.

There was a poll on HN a couple of years ago that asked how many productive hours each reader had in a given day, and if I remember correctly there was a large plurality that picked 4-6 and a rather large group that picked 2-4. Which seems to square fairly well with my personal experience and that of the scientists in the piece. I often wonder how much actual work people who spend 80 hours in the office are actually getting done.

Are you referring to this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7900741

No, I looked, but couldn't find the exact one I was looking for. It had a lot of responses and was in a purer poll form.

maybe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=493152 ?

Yep, that's it! Thanks for the find. So, basically, ~56% of respondents actually worked between 3-6 hours a day, what I wish the poll also gave was how many hours they spend at work. So we could really get a sense for how many hours at work are actually productive hours.

I used to spend 80 hours in the office. Most of it was waiting around for everyone to go home so I could get some programming done.

Now I'm much more balanced. I realized I want to have work I'm passionate about, and go at it with all the gusto I have, but also limit it to a timebox so it doesn't take over my life.

Everything that involves reaching "as far as you can" needs to also be boxed. Otherwise, it's like a cancer cell that "grows as much as it can" until it destroys you.

So, define a box for how much you want to work. Inside that box, work like a single-minded barbarian. But outside the box, enjoy life, smell the roses, and participate in hobbies. That's my formula now.

As someone who has been on both sides of this equation, I think you've phrased it very eloquently. Well said.

Maybe I missed it in this story, but this anecdote about Poincare himself is apropos:

"The famous French mathematician Henri Poincaré was very interested in mathematical creativity. He describes a period of hard and seemingly fruitless effort to solve a problem, from which he took a break to join a geological expedition. As he was stepping on a bus, he made one of the most important breakthroughs of his life. The solution came to him out of nowhere, and was accompanied by a perfect certainty as to its correctness"

(from this blog: https://kjosic.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/creativity-and-waste...)

Similar to what Gelman said about what he called the Feynman method: "Step one: write down the problem statement. Step 2: think real hard. Step 3: write down the problem solution."

His point was, I think, that not every scientist can work that way. Some are real treasures, come along one in a generation.

That's not the most useful lesson I'd take from that. (That's not a very useful lesson, because I guess if you're not already a Feynman level genius, too bad)

The more useful lesson, useful for anyone, is that sometimes sleeping on it (literally, or just doing a very different activity) helps.

There's a better Feynman method: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~cahn/life/gian-carlo-rota-10-le...

> Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"

Some other anecdotes:

At seventeen Hussain went on forty-day self-imposed retreat known as a chilla, where a musician practices in isolation until a state is reached in which the music and musician become one. The removal of everyday distractions, combined with single-minded concentration on the practice allows the musician to attain a state of Samadhi or meditative absorption, where one enters into a deeper relationship with one’s own music, and comes in direct contact with the source of music itself. Visions and hallucinations are not uncommon, where one’s musical ancestors may appear and offer encouragement or criticism. What is certain is that the musician makes remarkable progress in his craft. Hussain recalls his first Chilla in Hart’s drumming “I saw things in the music that I had never seen before, new combinations, new patterns”. Six month’s later, against his father’s advice, Zakir was ready to do a second chilla. This time around, the visions were more intense, and Hussain had a premonition that he would soon go to America. From: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zakir_Hussain_(musician)

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” From: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to-...

Just presenting a different perspective. Its all too common to look at this idea of brilliant talented scientist to whom 'solutions come out of nowhere'.

The point really is it takes a lot of work to get to a point where you can paint a masterpiece or compose a symphony effortlessly.

It's the seemingly fruitless effort that builds up our familiarity with a problem via intense focus on each small detail. With the clear, detailed problem built up, Poincare could look at it from a distance and see the solution.

I will add a personal anecdote from software development. On one project I had a difficult objective (to write a database that met certain criteria). I had never done database work before.

For the first year, I worked with almost no supervision and developed a routine where I would select an area to work on, give it a week, and if I could find no good solution, would switch to something else. All the while I read many related technical papers. Often after a couple weeks of "not working on the problem" I would think of a clean solution and implement it fairly quickly.

After that year, I got a new boss who insisted that I schedule my work using agile techniques, which meant that when I started something I had to focus on it until it was delivered, while trying to meet my estimates, planned to at most a two-day delivery cycle.

My productivity in the second year was terrible and much of the coding I did then sucked, as it was full of hacks designed to make my first, sloppy approach work quickly.

For me, downtime, and reading papers that were indirectly related to my problem area, vastly increased the quality and quantity of work done.

You've got it right, it works that way in computer science similarly to how it does in natural science.

If you require balance relative to the mainstream, maximum scientific creativity is probably not for you.

In expensive unique laboratories which often require years of assembly before productive creation of technologies can begin, it is easier to appreciate why the higher-performing individuals do not pursue much idleness.

Seeking eminence is also a major productivity drain for someone who would otherwise be the most capable of breakthroughs at the bench.

Anecdotally over a lifetime, seeking recognition for a million dollar breakthrough consumes the time & resources needed for more than one equivalent breakthrough that could have been.

I am as happy as the next person to accept that you can work less and achieve more.

Ordinarily, I would protest that there is no data here, just some anecdotes.

But in this case, I say, let's just accept this claim at face value.

For some data I suggest the following books, if the subject interests you:

"Peak: Secrets From The New Science of Expertise"

"Deep Work"

"A Mind for Numbers"

All are pretty engaging reads!

Okay, before I read them, are you saying that these books contain evidence for the rather startling thesis that hours of labor are not required for achievement?

Because if they are just laying out what you need to succeed (focused practice, immediate feedback, elemental skills or whatever the current theory might be) then, although valuable, it doesn't speak to the matter at hand.

> hours of labor are not required for achievement?

Well, you need to put in something like 3-8 hours per day, certainly. But it's been documented over and over that 60+ hours a week does not increase your productivity.

Each book does contain evidence for its claims based on research. Perhaps "Deep Work" is more anecdotal than the others, but Cal is up-front about this.

Note that work hours mostly means hours spent at one's job site (e.g., at their university in the case of an academic scientist).

My experience observing people when I was at Caltech, and observing a few top software and hardware engineers in industry, is that the most productive people do work the way Bruce Banner handled anger in the Marvel movie "The Avengers":

Steve Rogers: Doctor Banner, now might be a good time for you to get angry.

Bruce Banner: That's my secret, Captain. I'm always angry.

I often remember a blog post or something that I read by a programmer--I'm sure I discovered it here.

Anyway, he said that his wife was conditioned to not interrupt him no matter what activity he was doing, because he might be 'programming' while doing something like tending his garden.

I think all of us programmers have experienced the phenomenon where we get stuck, then stand up and walk away and within 5 minutes we have 5 new possible solutions in mind.

Darwin was thinking during his walks. During his writing tasks much of the activity was mechanical or the consolidation of notions arrived at during leisure. What society regards as 'work' largely comprises the application of existing knowledge and the running of errands.

>He was passionate and driven, so much so that he was given to anxiety attacks over his ideas and their implications.

Emotions driving emotions? No, he was right to be anxious about the consequences of his work. Though marvellous and important and interesting, not to mention true, it set up a huge conflict in the psyche of the West due to the competing claims of science and religion. Which still hasn't been resolved.

I'd be perfectly happy if the takeaway companies got from this is to let people get away from the desk and do some thinking about work during work hours.

Let me take an extended walk and think about where I'm stuck on a problem during the work day, instead of forcing my butt in a seat for 8+ hours, and interrogating me if the time-tracker at my computer drops down below that.

Reminds me of this:

http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/if-i-had-one-piece-of-advic...

I know it's The Onion, but irony being that Roy Halladay probably worked harder than any other pitcher in the same span. Natural talent still helps, though!

[Darwin] was passionate and driven, so much so that he was given to anxiety attacks over his ideas and their implications.

He many not have spent that many hours sitting at a desk, but he had to be directing a tremendous amount of mental effort and attention to his work to have this sort of reaction. The article describes his not-sitting-at-a-desk time as "downtime," and maybe that's half-defensible. But that "downtime" probably isn't something I'd recognize as leisure time, either.

Here's something else that many successful 19th/20th century artists, scholars, writers, and scientists turn out to have had in common, the other side of the same coin, perhaps: sufficient economic prosperity (often familial) to employ servants. They could devote great swaths of time and attention to their work, even when away from a desk, because they were not fretting about the grocery shopping, not wondering if they should be pushing the kids harder on their ABCs, etc.

The class structure and sexism that made such arrangements common also surely squandered enormous amounts of human potential.

Depends on whether whatever you are doing is something with a finite goal and has clear steps (e.g, deliver a prototype, complete testing, complete a presentation, prepare for a test etc.) or something that is more exploratory and you are not really sure what you are looking for. Most of the work we do is of the first kind. In that case, the amount of work accomplished is directly proportional to time spent*focus. For the second type of work, there is no correlation. You just have to train your neurons to try all combinations until something clicks. People who are not doing research or art (i.e, most of us, despite what we'd like to believe) can and will see more results if they spend more time. You need to be able to recognize whether you are doing type 1 or type 2 work and plan accordingly. Time and focus is not going to help in type 2 work beyond a minimum. If you are doing type 1 work and stretching yourself, recognize the trade-offs you are making and don't burn out.

Since so many people here are talking about how "in science it's different, you need to just chill out. Science is all about creativity and you shouldn't work hard if you're in a "creative business"", let me just leave this link here: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/work-hard/

If one of the best mathematicians of our time is saying "Work hard", it probably means more than some rando who writes for some blog.

If you want to just "chill out" and live a fun life, feel free to do so, the world would suck if everybody worked hard. It's actually great that you guys decide to believe working less is good for achieving what you want, because the ones who actually know what's up have higher chance of success.

I would argue that "working hard" and "working long hours" are not the same thing.

Yes, merely staying late to work every day won't lead to a breakthrough.

Being so absorbed in your work that you forget to stop working is a by-product of really enjoying your work and wanting to learn more. You can't force enjoyment of (or a breakthrough in) a subject just by slaving away for hours after the office closes.

Breathing is not just inhaling, you also need to exhale.

I think Terry Tao's advice is consistent with the original article:

> There is an important distinction between “working hard” and “maximising the number of hours during which one works” ... Generally speaking, it is better to try to arrange a few hours of high-quality working time, when one is motivated, energetic, prepared, and free from distraction, than to try to cram into one’s schedule a large number of hours of low-quality working time when one or more of the above four factors are not present.

Teslas and Edisons did insane work hours most people would consider suicide these days.

In my experience these are largely a function of volume, quantity and relationship with your work. Most managers I know can get by even 2-3 hours of work/day. This is true because the work is largely meta- Delegating, tracking things et al.

If you are involved in your work at a lot more micro level, then the speed of the project is the function of your involvement with the project.

This fantasy of achieving extra ordinary things doing just 5 hours of work/day is largely a millennial thing. As a Indian millennial myself, I find this attitude sick. Our fathers used to largely look these things as 'opportunity'.

I bet famous scientists spend almost every waking hour actively thinking about their subject of study, even if they're not necessarily sitting around pushing a pencil at their desk.

Mixed feelings on this -- I don't think sitting at a desk for 12 hours is useful for anything other than social signalling, but, there's a Stephen King quote I love: "Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work." Sometimes you just have to grind. Some of my most productive days have been when I really really didn't want to work, but I had to, and somehow the inspiration came out of that.

This is stupid. The article completely misinterprets its source evidence:

Darwin, from the article:

8am - 12pm: Work; 1pm - 3pm: Work; 4pm - 5.30pm: Work

That's a 7.5 hour, day which is pretty standard in the UK at the moment. The fact that he fitted a one-hour walk into his lunch break doesn't make him a slacker, and neither does the fact that some of that work happened to involve answering letters in an aviary.

They also didn't have iPhones or televisions.

Evan Robinson has collected a whole bunch of evidence that long hours don't result in greater output (http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons). This has been known for something like a century at this point.

Actually what I can read in the article is that they have in common to work long hours.

The very first example about Darwin already mentions that he gets 3x 1.5h stretches of dedicated work in, every f'n day. That's way more what the common 80h/week employee gets in with all the meetings, cross-office talk, and water-cooler waits. Even if you don't consider that "every day" probably also includes weekends.

Famous scientists apparently didn't just work a lot, they worked very efficiently to achieve something like that.

The guys on the article were walking about on huge familial estates and had servants.

I on the other hand have a mortgage to pay.

Out of the box creative thinking as the result of leisure is great. Sometimes it pays off. More often it doesn't. Sadly most of us don't have the luxury of finding out. At least for now.

I spent my early 20s working 2 shifts a week at a bar. It doesn't cost much to buy yourself the time and headspace needed to get from 0 to 1 as a creative worker. It was a rich life. It still is. All that's changed is that I travel more. Priorities, man.

Oh, fully agreed. It's not like it's 1874 and we pretty much all have a fair amount of leisure relatively speaking.

It's just I've noticed a fair number of "great contributors" to human knowledge and civilization appear to have had a lot of trivial things in life taken care of out of the box. As opposed to those who come up scrabbling (who often wind up wealthy but aren't necessarily great contributors in an intellectual sense). The Greek philosophers, Buddha, people like Thomas Jefferson, the people in this article. All some degree of wealth and leisure and other people (initially at least) taking care of the small things for them.

There are always the Ben Franklins though so I guess it's not a universal truth.

Just kind of makes me wonder what humanity could be if so many people weren't born into a world that required a hustle or die mindset. Meh, probably just a lot more video game screencasts on YouTube:) But maybe not.

I wonder if the maximum aspiration of any scientist is to be famous, or even "successful", for whatever definition of success is out there.

I would imagine a scientist as someone who wants to make a positive impact on the life of his fellow human beings by investigating a field of science, or maybe is just curious about said field and just works to find out what intrigues her.

Whether she becomes famous in the act is only a side effect, and maybe not even a necessary condition to fulfill her desire. I have the impression that just aspiring to fame is not conducive to "good" science.

This said, I'd like to see articles comparing the working days of people who accomplish something important in science, regardless of their fame (or lack thereof).

This article resonates with me in so many ways. I barely managed to get into any university in my home country, but once I was accepted to one, I set up a strict and timed schedule of 5 hours of concentrated work each day, outside of classes and other mandatory requirements, and left each evening for recovery. A few years later the structured work payed off and I am now completing grad school at Stanford. I honestly thought I would be working in a video rental store in my tiny hometown for the rest of my life. Let's home the structured approach continues to help into the future.

I am not Einstein but in my 40s and definitely doing a lot with my time: on one side it was hard commitment and fierce hustling for 15-20 years in the past, on the other side hustling increases efficiency and high-level productivity dramatically, so that I can now do a lot (and well conceived / designed) in a very short time. Low-level implementation is invariantly slower though, be it by yourself or delegating. As an analogy with more talented people, I suspect scientists finding their Eureka! moments easier worked very hard for a long period in their past.

What a load of bullshit. Most of the scientists have spent a long time actually working, especially in the modern era. None of the successful physicist/mathematicians of those whom I have seen slackers. Each one of them (without exception) have worked extremely hard. Also, more importantly, I have seen level insight into solving difficult problems being directly and causally proportional to the amount of work people have put in trying stuff that hasn't worked till now.

As a counterexample, Hans Geiger was a workaholic. Rutherford said he "works like a slave… [He] is a demon at the work and could count at intervals for a whole night without disturbing his equanimity" [1]

He eventually discovered the atomic nucleus, so I guess it paid off.

[1] http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/science-and-technology/ph...

Yet Another Article With Initial Caps Telling Me How To Live My Life

No one is telling you how to live your life. This article merely points out that there's evidence that common assumptions about the relationship between the amount of time worked and productivity aren't accurate.

What you choose to do with that information is entirely up to you. You may enjoy working 80-hour weeks and achieving as much as a person who works a 20-hour week. Others may differ.

This may have been true during Darwin's time, but it simply does not apply in today'a academic world. The level of competition for grants, publications, etc. is way, way higher than before. Not that I've conducted a survey, but I'm pretty sure every professor at an R1 university works at least 60 hours a week, if not more.

Source: Am finishing up my PhD in theoretical high energy physics.

I am quite interested in "how" the working hours are spent, rather than how many. Personally, it's when I forget about time, that I am more efficient, engaged and satisfied. Today I cleaned my house for 5 hours and almost forgot it suppose to be daunting.

Did the same trick, imagining I have plenty of time. Just taking my time...

That seems to be in direct contradiction with what Hamming said on the matter: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

Maybe some people thrive by slacking, and others by working their ass off?

There is being at work for long hours and actually being productive during that time. They are different things.

There are still many jobs and/or management mentalities that see "butt in seat" as productive time. Especially in "brain labor" jobs versus physical labor jobs where your time working is inherently productive.

"The rest of the time, they were hiking mountains, taking naps, going on walks with friends, or just sitting and thinking"

I think in most likelihood that the creative mindset of these people ticked when they were doing these stuff, hence, once they get back to work, their focus is so sharp and intent on finishing.

" or just sitting and thinking. "

Put another way, these people worked long hours, so long as you recognize what kind of work they were doing. I mean, they were not shoveling coal. I think humans have some bias such that we don't recognize thinking hard as hard work.

I'm just going to drop this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10882202

You can listen to the guy who wrote this article. Or you can listen to John Carmack. 0_0.

I think there is a sweet spot of 30h a week. 60 hours and you are tired as hell and don't get the rest of your life managed. 20 or less and you don't really focus on it and take forever to get a little step ahead.

The best book I know about research is "Apprentice to Genius: The Making of a Scientific Dynasty":

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801847575

It's a fantastic book.

The thing I want to know is how did they achieve the independence, whereby they could focus on their problem of choice and not have to continuously context switch to problems of other people's choosing?

Poincare is an interesting example, because he seemed to have a process of rotating between subjects of thought.

I am also reminded of Guy Debord, who espoused the implicitly Marxist dictum, "to never work."

That's because a lot of people we think of as famous scientists were really politicians. Rest assured the people who did the actual research weren't working 40-hour weeks.

OK, forwarded this to my PI... will let you know tomorrow. :D

Your subconscious grinds away, even when you do not work. Then you see or hear something, a final piece in a puzzle, and an idea is born!

One point about these guys is they were men of means. They were hyper-rich for the time, had vast properties and many servants and such.

No desire to be famous but I can't see myself getting to where I am without working hard. I'm just not smart enough.

Maybe they are famous due to serendipity and luck. I don't believe there is a correlation between long hours and luck.

So Survivorship Bias in play in this article?

Exactly what I thought. Lots of not-so-famous scientists didn't work long hours either. This is just another case of the "Halo Effect".[1] Let's select a group based on an outcome (i.e. being a famous scientist) and then work backwards to find similarities that fit a narrative.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions-Manage...

They also had another thing in common; they didn't care much about money

Roger Bannister found time to break the 4 minute mile while in med school!

logical fallacy

- these people are famous/successful

- they also have characteristic X

- therefore if I want to be famous/successful I should aspire to characteristic X

it's a logical fallacy

Is this article really worthy of so many votes?

Another something in common: they are famous.

What did Darwin do to pay his bills?

The title is misleading - Darwin was pretty much always 'on the job', as we can see from his notes and correspondence.

In his early life he was a neglectful student, an underachiever. He was a late bloomer.

As a poet I must contend that no flower blooms late for its own rhythm. They're all right on time.

Though I admit I'm mused, this is Hacker News, so you're gonna have to specify time signature otherwise this is just conjecture.

True - maybe he needed something to motivate himself, and he certainly found that!

So much of our "work" these days are only paid by the works ur in the office, where as most of the answers come to us at other hours of the day. Number of times I've emailed code snips to work....

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