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Comment by Dig1t | Hacker News Reader

Counterpoint: sometimes eating frogs is an opportunity, and if you don’t eat them, someone else will and they will be better off because of it.

Eating more frogs now can mean that you have to eat fewer frogs in the future, or in total, ALSO that your children and family will have to eat fewer frogs.

I still believe that working hard is a virtue and the people who do will usually end up becoming the people who (and who’s children also) are privileged.

I agree though that the culture around it is a bit much, and it’s not for everyone. Those type of people should not be forced to participate in that kind of culture if they don’t want to.

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>> Eating more frogs now can mean that you have to eat fewer frogs in the future

Key word there is "can". We need to be very careful when deciding about temporal shifts in frog eating (more now, fewer later). If it's not a very tight loop, you are likely eating someone else's frogs so they don't have to. Be sure you're actually reducing the number of frogs coming your way.

This is the con. If you convince a whole generation of people of this, you have a lot of people eating frogs. Some small percentage of those people will have the extraordinary fortune of not eating frogs later, and then attribute their success to all the frogs they ate, and recommend frog-eating to everyone.

This is certainly true. The article speaks about how sometimes you must eat frogs. The point is that we often do not ask ourselves whether eating so many frogs is actually necessary and instead take it for granted that we must do this thing that we hate and seek advice for how to do that.

Obviously you have the right mindset but the point is that the majority of surface-level work addicts don't even have the intention of getting less work in the future as a result. Work for more work for more work -- no end in sight!

>if you don’t eat them, someone else will and they will be better off because of it.

so what?

The person may lose an opportunity. Eg. if you don't train (any sport), someone will occupy your spot in the playing eleven.

Eating frogs means more earwigs. We need maximum viable frogs.

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