Comment by unabst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unabst | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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

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

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