Ask HN: How Can I Be More Hardworking?

You've had a really poor response from the HN community here. Barely a single comment even attempts to speak to your question! HN is normally pretty good at resisting Sturgeon's Law, but not today.

muzani isn't asking to be talked out of working more hours, everyone.

Anyway, my suggestion: it sounds like you work alone. Maybe try working with other people, for a day or two per week. (I don't know if that's compatible with your line of work, or if you'd consider taking on a different one.) The camaraderie may help you make a habit of it.

Also, a formal commitment to turn up each week is likely to work much better for you than a take-it-or-leave-it arrangement.

People are talking them out of it because the way they word it sounds like there's no reward. They don't need or want more money -- they don't have trouble working harder when needed -- they have no generalized motivation issue or mood issue that would affect their quality of life. So... they're not working harder because they don't want to?

I mean it would be like asking "how can I deep clean my house every day" and then explaining that you never have visitors, you find your house fine as it is, you have had no health or sleep issues, and you really only go a week between cleanings. It's a caliber of problem where I guess there's drugs for that, but it's also not really a problem in the first place.

Yeah, that sounds like something I haven't tried. I actually work really well remotely; my most productive time was idling in chat rooms. But unfortunately, forums like this and reddit are too distracting. I'm not so fond of coworking spaces as they come with productivity hits of their own.

Oddly enough, it is quite reassuring that there are not a lot of helpful responses, because it means it's a problem that nobody has a solution for.

I think arandr0x has captured the reason for the poor replies -- people aren't clear on what it is you're really after.

If you're committed to work that's fundamentally just you working alone, there's probably not as much value in my suggestion as I'd hoped.

Even so, perhaps finding some way of turning your planned extra-work-day-per-week into a formal commitment, would help.

It’s be useful to know why this person wants to work more though.

Assuming it’s to have a purpose in life, then the answer is to find that purpose.

Alternatively there are plenty of open source projects that need a maintainer.

Well, the purpose is to be able to finish more projects. Just like a rock star wants to create some magnum opus.

But just having a purpose is not good enough, as a good purpose tends to be intimidating. If a man wants to climb Everest, they still need to build up the stamina for it.

Absolutely. Try and work with someone who challenges you to be better as well.

Why do you WANT to work more?

You are in the enviable position of being able to work for just 10 hours per week to support your quality of life. Perhaps you could pick a new hobby and dedicate your free time to becoming a master woodworker? Perhaps you could find a cause you care about and volunteer your free time to helping in some capacity? Perhaps you want to learn to paint or travel or meet new people or, hell, just sit in the park and feed the ducks.

Or if you really do want to do more income generating work, what do you want to work ON? Just saying "I should work more" isn't going to cut it.

> It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? - Henry David Thoreau

Why is the top answer to "how can I work more" always "work less"?

If you don't agree with that the poster is trying to do just don't answer instead of undermining their motivation.

Perhaps because a desire to spend more time working is, in the grand scheme of things, a colossal mistake.

You get top answers advising the OP to work less because some of us lived through the same problem and in the end realized what a colossal mistake it is to waste your life living to work instead of working to live.

How many people have laid in their deathbed complaining how they didn't spent more time at the office pushing some paperwork? Hoe many complained they didn't spent enough time with their loved ones?

Yes, the top answer is always "work less" because that's alwayd the right answer.

I disagree with this. Some people do not want to have families, and some people are really competitive and ambitious. Not everyone's goal is to spend their time with others or leisure.

Furthermore, I know for myself I feel like shit after a lot of social activity or leisure, and feel actually really great after working for a long amount of time. The only hard part is starting.

This hits the nail on the head. I feel like shit after too much social activity, and feel great after working very hard. I thought it was a given that everyone feels better after it and didn't see the need to mention reason in OP.

Because the question is impossible to answer without an understanding of why they want to work more.

Why is the motivation important? I mean if you see any athlete trying to increase physical stamina, they'd get a few responses. Why not mental stamina?

Athletes want to be able to run faster, jump higher, etc.

If OP's question was "How can I become better at coding", or even "how can I code for more hours of the day before feeling burnt out," I think the responses would be quite different.

I don't actually want to do any of those things. There's dozens of ideas to work on and I want to work on some of them.

Working double the hours more than doubles my income, which is nice, as I can do things like have a nice dinner or bring my kids to Disneyland.

But I do enjoy the things I work on, and I don't enjoy the period where I'm idling in preparation for the thing I intend to do. It sounds a little strange, but it's a lot like flipping through channels on Netflix before actually watching any shows.

In my experience, you have to build habits. Motivation and willpower can fluctuate, but forcing yourself to do something for awhile until it becomes the norm tends to work for me (assuming it's something I value).

Now I have a question for you. How did you end up in a situation where people will pay you for ten hours of work a week instead of forty?

Surrender to yourself. Acknowledge your limits and accept them. Know that you are enough and you are not the hours that you work or the effort you put into things. You are not your works. Through surrender and acceptance you'll allow yourself to stop focusing on how you aren't doing enough and instead reframe into a perspective of gratitude for what you are doing and can do.

It sounds like you're trying to deal with boredom rather than a need to work harder. Working from home only ~10 hrs/week, I could certainly see myself going a little stir-crazy.

Have you considered changing your routine a bit? Maybe try working from a coffee shop, or rent a co-working office for a couple of months.

I've tried working from other places. It's actually a little less effective. It's tempting to procrastinate other ways - walking a little further for lunch, taking long walks around the nice co-working building, or just making small talk with people.

Coffee places tend to cut the internet after an hour, which straight up kills flow. I have issues starting, not continuing work, and this limited time brings enough dread to not start at all.

This was my life in college and I eventually realized I just had an above average prioritization mechanism. If it doesn't really matter, and I don't feel like doing it, it's not getting done.

It's actually pretty productive at baseline since I can do the things that do matter lightning fast, so if you're like that, just try to do more things/more varied things (for example start a class not related to your job or get a second job not in the same field). (Also different/more intense physical activity. I don't know if you're like that but I'm a standard issue adrenaline junkie in addition to having selective motivation.)

This is true. I think I get paid way more per hour than average, and a good reason is doing things quickly and effectively.

However, the bottleneck is just doing more work. I do secondary less paid jobs like teaching and mentoring for events, where I can work 10 hours per day just fine, because it's mostly physical/social. But it doesn't help things and makes me too tired to be productive coding, which is where the real money is.

So it is for more money.

At 10h/week I'm assuming you're a consultant. Have you tried accepting more jobs than you feel you can do (not a lot, a little more) and then giving the client a deadline? It's not usually recommended because it's stressful but you're essentially having issues not having a boss and as a freelancer the clients are your boss.

It seems like your efforts to work more are very self-directed (working on ideas you had vs things customers are asking for) -- in my experience some clients will definitely bring you metric tons of coffee and breathe down your neck for hours if you'd let them, so doing client work may be easier (and well, more lucrative). Smaller clients are more agile(/annoying). Clients who are local are more likely to engage in high-pressure behavior to remind you they're important, like, pick up the phone.

Have the same problem here.

The only thing that motivates me is the EXTREMELY interesting work.

So I'm starting thinking that I don't need the tools to improve my ability to work harder, instead I need the work I want to work harder.

If not - then I should not worry about this.

Why do you want to increase your work rate? I find having an external goal can help drive productivity, at least a bit.

Similarly, what do you want to work on? (Motivation for working on your job can be very different than motivation for a side project)

This is absolutely my immediate question as well - I don't see what your end goal is.

It really takes obsession, you have to be obsessed with what you do to output > 40-50 hour work weeks. <—- this is excluding extremely high pay which can be another motivator albeit a short term motivator

3 months ago I started waking up at the same time every day, and immediately having a breakfast with good amount of healthy fat. It’s been a game changer for my consistency. Some days are more productive than others, but in general I hardly ever have the useless days I used to have where i couldn’t seem to get anything done. I initially had a hard time waking up on time, but I got the philips Hue smart bulbs and the sunrise routine on them has really helped me wake up. It’s much more pleasant than an alarm.

what are you eating for the healthy fat?

There are a few good approaches, but an easy one is adding chia seeds. A tablespoon of chia seeds has 9 grams of fat (omega 3 mostly but not DHA), 4 grams of protein and 11 grams of dietary fiber. I usually soak them for about 5 minutes while i prepare a protein shake or coffee, and then add them into said protein shake or Greek yoghurt. Most people don’t get enough dietary fiber, so this is especially helpful to your productivity if it means less miserable constipated toilet time, like it did for me.

I think the most important thing is wanting to do something. The problem in front of you shouldn't just be work - you should actually be interested in solving it.

That would probably range from something that's so easy you just want to drop the hammer and knock it out to a massive problem that you'll spend months or years chipping away at. Either way if you really are interested in working on it you'll think about it in the background and approach solutions from multiple angles. When you're excited about working on the problem you'll have no issues with working more than 10 hours per week if that's what it takes.

Everybody is different but I've found that when a problem is actually fun to work on "productivity" techniques don't really do much. It's mostly making a plan for what to do, working a bit, learning more, and either solving or starting the work cycle over again with new information.

So I think you probably need to work on more problems that you're actually interested in.

This worked well a year into my first job. After several death marches, I've developed an aversion to work. The problems are still interesting and it's hard to stop when I start, but starting has become increasingly more difficult.

You're probably right in that productivity techniques don't work. They treat the symptom but not the root.

IMO, any response to this question is tightly associated with specific contexts of your current workspace and only gets more complicated when considering what kind of company you work at / where your current goals for the next 2-5 years stand.

You want to maintain progress and improve your output, but not at the cost of compensation or burnout. This is very hard to answer without those contexts.

From your post I think you're going about this the wrong way. External acts like meditating or "optimizing time" are easy ways to burn yourself out doing stupid things and end up flat out not enjoying your life. I tried this during a gap year I took to work at a startup in college while I was considering dropping out and one other time after I'd graduated.

Genuinely wasn't worth it.

My best simple advice is to just focus on work while you're at work or set 4hrs aside each day to really focus. Otherwise, live your life. In time if you follow these simple rules I think you'll find surprising gains.

Find a purpose that drives you. Volunteer your time, start a business, have kids, get another degree, build a house start to finish. From the purpurse, the desire to get thinks done and associated time management will follow. Jobs can serve the function of having a purpose, but can also not be sufficient. Do something hard, not easy.

Heck: for what it’s worth. If you or anyone else on HN is interested: I’m in college right now working part time, so I’m low on spare time, but I come up with seemingly profitable business ideas pretty regularly. If you want something to work on, drop me a line and we could discuss starting a side gig. I contribute leadership / project management, you contribute operations/ getting stuff done, split 50/50.

Getting into a flow state is most important, at least for me. Starting is the hardest part, but if you force yourself to start then it becomes much better. That being said, some people don't ever seem to hit that flow state or have trouble hitting it for certain things. In that case, I would advise doing something like a Pompadour clock type of thing, 30 minute sessions (or whatever time limit you want) of continuous work, then break, then another timed session.

Like others have said, a lot of it is just developing the habit of doing it. Habits are defined by cues, so you want to be in an environment that is associated with work, so you should avoid trying to work at home or any place you have associated with leisure.

One thing that I've realized over years is that discipline beats motivation. Motivation to work on something hardly lasts a couple of weeks, but if you are disciplined enough to wake up every morning and work on it, you'll work on it longer.

Now coming to the main question - You need to have something to work for. I did the mistake of wanting to work more without having a solid goal. Unless you have a pressing deadline or a challenging goal, human mind always tends to slack off. Think by asking yourself this question - "What is the problem you want to solve?" and then work backward and allocate time to things.

I’d say you think you should want to work more but what you actually want is do the things that you do instead.

So I’d explore these thought patterns “I should work more” — maybe use Byron Katie’s “the work” process?

That's called living your life. I think you need to work on your mental blocks. i.e the fact that you feel the 'need' to work as opposed to 'wasting' time by living your life.

you haven't mentioned your goals here anywhere - do you have any that you're pursuing? Working harder should be a means to an end (pursuing a passion, advancing a career, etc) and it's much harder to work hard on something without having a reason to do so. Also, arguably pointless.

You might find it helpful to make to-do lists and only work on one thing at a time. By limiting your work in progress and context switching you might find that you don't need to work as many hours in order to get the same results.

Can I ask why you think you should be more hard working? Social norms?

TBH bullet journaling has been great for me. Making monthly, daily, and future logs has dramatically increased my productivity/anxiety.

I used to keep all these thoughts cluttered in my head and then they became blockers because if I did one I'd be thinking about the other.

While I use it to organize my thoughts and put plan to action, some may use it just an outlet for whatever.

Not to get off topic, but what do you do out of curiosity?

Change nothing. You are living the good life.

Get a mortgage.

And 5 kids, in metro California

Go see a doctor and discuss ADD.

You need to not work more. The bug numbers out of Luquillo are terrifying: 98% gone in the forest floor, 80% gone in the canopy. These are supported by numbers elsewhere.

Productivity is a self-destructive idea. Forget climate change; if the bug numbers are correct, we're going to lose the pollinators within a few years, and all your money won't another minute buy.

We all need to do the absolute minimum necessary to survive and stop reproducing until our numbers and lifestyle return to a sustainable level. This is now a dire and desperate matter of survival of our species.

I have to ask, why does HN seem to have a high number of these weird conspiracy-esque ramblings.

It almost seems as if they are generated by a neural net, and not a person.

California.