Ask HN: How to learn work ethics and discipline as an adult? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to learn work ethics and discipline as an adult?

36 points165iq48 comments

I was marked and regarded as "smart", "gifted" from my childhood, and aced up to half of my High School without almost any effort. I breezed through tests with no work where I saw other kids really struggle. Achieved highly in co-curricular activities as well.

So, I never learned to work extremely hard sustained over a long period. College kicked my arse and I got below average grade. And I haven't achieved as much in my life as I think I should have been. I cannot concentrate on grinding Leetcode or finishing a 600 page programming book.

How do I learn work ethics as an adult (now 24 yo)? How do I learn to work hard, with regularity, with no immediate returns for a long period of time?

I still can learn extremely fast and solve hard problems with sporadic effort.

Can you help me with this? Anyone who was on a similar boat but changed for the better?

I have zero discipline. How do I get more disciplined?

Please foegive me creating a throwaway for this.

View on HN

You don't learn it, you practice it. Just start trying, failing, and trying again. You'll build endurance over time.

It's counter intuitive, but the mind and body get better the more you work, exhaust, and challenge them.

Good luck.

Thanks for the advice.

This is probably not what you’re looking for: You need to first lower your expectations. The reality is most “work” is fundamentally unchallenging, and with the exception of some smaller, early stage companies, the day-to-day will generally feel closer to high school than college in terms of complexity.

You might be expected to get something done in a week that’ll take you 2 days. As a smart person, you are probably used to procrastinating. Use that to “pace yourself” and learn to keep up appearances. And get used to BS, because you’re going to see a lot of it.

> The reality is most “work” is fundamentally unchallenging, and with the exception of some smaller, early stage companies, the day-to-day will generally feel closer to high school than college in terms of complexity

About that. I want a job where I am challenged, can work in interesting problems, and appreciated for my effort. I would die of boredom in an unchallenging environment. My current goal is to get a PhD from a good uni. Research will be challenging, and as CS is a great field where you can get immediate feedback by just building things, even outside of your curriculum/task.

The courses or their complexity in college didn't hurt me- it's the bureaucracy- doing everything on their timelines, their ways. I aced in some courses, but overall grade was low. I simply avoided mandatory courses that I didn't find interesting.

I am not really fit for a common workplace. So, if I have to give up on very high achievements, I will settle for a job with job safety and lot of free time. Like working for the government. So that I have decent amount of free time for family, playing music, games, making Quantum Computing videos on YouTube, reading, and contributing to open source, and writing blogs.

Until I give up, I am going to push through for some more years (5-6) to get what I want in my life.

(I don't know if my thinking is right. :|)

I think we all want jobs where we are challenged, work on interesting problems, are are appreciated! However, the fact is, that just doesn't happen all the time. You'll be challenged with interesting stuff sometimes, just much less frequently than you hope. This gets back to needing to lower your expectations. If you do ask about this in an interview, you won't get a valid answer. The answer will be from their context, not yours. "Of course it is challenging and super exciting place!@" Right.

If you want something challenging and exciting, look for an early stage company where you can wear lots of hats. That's where I've had the best luck. But still, it's not 100% solution. You'll still have plenty of dull days.

If the working world was built only for smart people with genius IQ's, there wouldn't be enough workers. It's built for the other ~95%. Don't get me wrong though, because when that other 95% needs you, they really need you. There are things you'll be able to figure out that nobody else can. But most of the time, those problems aren't happening. You'll see stories on here about someone going through some incredibly difficult leetcode interview, only to discover that after they take the job, it's all simple CRUD API or HTML form work.

I agree with everything you say.

But I want to try for 5-6 more years before embracing the duality that many live with comfortably- work for paying bills, health insurance, vacation, etc., and free time for things that they find truly interesting and their calling. (Most people don't have callings but just do partying, vacation, etc. in free time. No judgement from my side.)

But I know people on the other side, too- those who have embraced the duality. I had a teacher in HS who is a true scholar in cultural history and literature. He has books published from tier-1 publishers. Yet he teaches High School. It leaves him with a lot of free time and he conducts field-visits during vacations and Sundays. So people do it.

But before I give up hope, I will try my hardest. FAANG means a lot of money after 5-10 years, academia means freedom to think for my own and publish research. As the field is CS, it is pretty easy to turn an idea to a prototype and to a paper after 1-5/6 months of work. That really attracts me.

If you can't concentrate then you don't know why you are doing it. You have to write down what overall goal you want that you are very interested in then break that up into weekly research tasks where now you recognize that doing those tasks is necessary for said goal.

The only time I really used leetcode was to practice a basic linear algebra course. I had the idea to identify every non-linear problem on leetcode then see if I could use the course I was doing to practice writing linear approximations as solutions then leetcode was interesting to me otherwise yeah I can't just sit there and do it hours per day without a reason either.

Try briefly auditing some advanced open courses and see if anything there is interesting to you that now require self-directed research so you can figure out what's going on. Erik Demaine has a bunch online.

Find an open source project that is interesting and become a contributor now you have to teach yourself the codebase and whatever it is they're doing. Find a technical podcast then make a YouTube video animating in some software visuals to describe what they're talking about. Whatever you choose it should be something you really want to do everyday and then discipline isn't a problem

> "what overall goal you want that you are very interested in"

When I am really interested in learning something, researching and solving isn't a problem. But that doesn’t last beyond at most 2-3 weeks, right? Working really hard for some hours to two weeks isn't my problem.

If I don't really need something in my daily life or job or some philosophical answer that I am seeking, should I not try to learn that? If I am looking really long term, and don't have any concrete need for something, should I forgo that, in your opinion?

Say, I don't need Julia for my job, but I want to learn it to the level of contributing to open source libraries. I need to spend some weeks of my (little) free time, right? I get lost after 2-3 days and something shinier comes along.

So, when I don't have any concrete need present, should I forgo them? Like, I am not a web developer, but wanted to learn Elixir and Phoenix. Never could continue beyond 2 days straight. If my goal simply is: "broaden my horizon" or something similar and vague and really long term, I shouldn’t really pursue them?

I do okay when I can sporadically spend some time now and then and solve a hard problem. But if it requires sitting down everyday for some months straight for something broad and vague, I fail every time.

Something that has helped is group study. People look up to my sessions when it is my turn to present, I prepare and study really hard, and polish my presentation really well and understand things deeply to answer possible questions. But here extrinsic motivation of impressing people is present.

I have thought about making YT videos before and I am going to, soon.

I have some famous open source contributions, and I can get an interview at Google according to a PM I know. I want to prepare for that. But haven't set a date.

Big Tech isn't ideal for me but I don't come from money and FAANG salary could turn my life around.

I flunked another surprise and immediate technical interview because I took too much time. I solved the problem, and communicated well (according to them), but took too much time. Only if I Leetcoded regularly, I could land that 6 figure job. I passed 3/5 rounds and got rejected after the the 4th.

If I start doing any course by Erik, I will lose interest after day 2 because that won't immediately give me fruits.

Sorry for the wall of text. :/

You could try writing down actual goals where you want to be at 1 month, at 1 year, in 5 years. Then unravel into tasks from there. Without a plan I end up doing nothing.

Like Julia has sciml youtube lectures showing the guy doing all kinds of optimization to improve the libraries for HPC but he had a specific goal why he's doing that, he runs a startup pumas.ai

For me it was basic competency at Y subject I was very interested as first goal, find a mentor and work beside them for Y subject (second goal) finally become an expert at Y to freelance and I wrote all that down years ago because I too was just aimless and dabbling then giving up.

To find a mentor I had to impress them first to make it worth their time so that was motivating to slog through all the fundamentals in the beginning. Normally I would've given up here because who on earth wants to deep dive logical relations unless there's a good reason. Working was then a motivator too because I was given tasks to figure out with deadlines so there was urgency and focus so the person I chose as a mentor would actually keep teaching me.

Before that I would take interesting thing, that thing goes into the weeds to teach foundations and I gave up bored chasing new thing and repeat with no direction at all.

Finding a mentor is a good idea and as it involves loss of face on getting derailed, it keeps you motivated to remain disciplined- or at least keep working. I get that.

Also, something that I want to do has to align well with someone else's career path. I can think of 2-3 people like that. I will consider getting in touch with them and ask them to mentor me.

> If you can't concentrate then you don't know why you are doing it.

I can concentrate alright, but cannot continue beyond some days.

There is a lot of psychological research on this. Start with the big 5[1] and then read about conscientiousness[2]. Then realize that conscientiousness is negatively correlated with intelligence at around -0.27 and politically oriented. The last time I commented on this here at HN I went into further detail about what conscientiousness means in real life according to the research and my comment was flagged and suppressed. I guess it made people sad. So I will let you do your own reading.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness

There are two things you can do to improve this:

1. Become detail oriented. Too high of conscientiousness becomes associated with obsessive personality disorders and perfectionism, but that is the direction you must pursue in order to improve in this regard.

2. Be organized and tidy. Do you find cleaning your room stressful? Get over yourself and get it done. Make it a competitive challenge in that the next time can you do it faster and better. Challenge yourself and get it done. Each you do it focus on learning so that you improve for the next attempt. Think like this for everything. Keep in mind its almost always better to be wrong and done than to have never started out of safety.

Highly conscientious people tire less when it comes to making tough decisions, which allows them to make tough decisions continuously for longer streaks of time. You can build stamina about this, but be careful. Quality of decision output degrades dramatically with fatigue. I have had to teach myself to stop programming new things when I become exhausted and when to realize my exhaust limit.

Since conscientiousness is not aligned with intelligence you don't have to be smart to be good at this. That means less smart people will surpass you in life if you aren't good at this.

My heart goes out to you. My story is similar. Everything in school came easy to me. Later in life I found myself outmatched by "lesser minds" who knew the value of consistent effort. I knew I lacked discipline, was envious of others whose parents had taught them this, but could not figure out what to do.

If and only if you are like me, the actual problem is that you have not mastered yourself. One who does not master himself is mastered by others. Mastery of oneself is the ability to make a wise decision and execute.

To get started, literally from scratch, I determined to commit to one decision professionally and another personally. Then later I would expand.

By the way, none of this involves delayed gratification. Self-mastery is immediately gratifying day by day and hour by hour as we see the small results. What people call delayed gratification I experience more as compound interest.

At work it was simple. I committed to watching closely those I admire (or envied). I studied their behavior carefully and practiced it myself. As Aristotle said, when you imitate a person's behavior, you gradually gain an internal understanding of it. Sometimes you even know why they do things better than they do, as you have come into it deliberately and with objectivity.

On the personal side I committed to pursue something fun that I enjoy - even past the easy and fun part. Deeper pleasure in something we enjoy become possible when we give up being the dilettante and seek to be the master.

Life is amazing, but anything worth doing requires sustained effort. Pick something that is worth the effort - to you - and master it.

> was envious of others whose parents had taught them this

My parents tried to teach me but I wouldn’t, and throw the grade cards and other achievements at them- and they stopped trying after a certain age (twelve/thirteen).

I also get pleasure from achievements in my job and learning.

Trying to learn from your peers is a good idea. I will keep it in mind.

Seek out a position of responsibility. Be accountable to other people. Be in a situation if you mess up, you'll get severe negative reactions from others. Nothing like an important job to straighten out our psychology and inner efficiency.

"If you can afford to mess up, you probably will" :)

I actually don't have the problem of lack of accountability or responsibility.

I also don't see how it relates to long term learning and efforts that make achievements such as acing college possible. The kinds of achievements that require long term discipline and work ethics.

First of all: your question says you have to fix the discipline problem as an adult. As an adult, I am assuming you're in the context of workplace, and not college.

Second - you claim to have no problem with responsibility. Maybe you have to dig into your own psychology a bit deeper (self-awareness, work against opaqueness of various parts of the mind).

The effort you put in will usually be in proportion to the seriousness and magnitude of your responsibilities. The amount of learning required to handle complex jobs is more compared to simpler jobs. Note that the concept of "learning" goes beyond mere degrees and credentials. In the real world, the best indicator for learning and competence is the power to get complex jobs done.

Say, you're managing a nuclear plant, then you need a totally different level of discipline, compared to a job where you're supposed to keep an office clean. You can mess up a cleaning job, and get away with it nobody noticing. But if your nuclear reactor goes off, then everyone knows it, and you'll not be forgiven. The demands of rigour increases with bigger responsibilities.

Aim for identifying and getting complex and difficult jobs first. If you take these jobs seriously, you'll have to transform yourself.

PS: Recommended reading: https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm

I see your point.

I will keep it in my mind.

> Be in a situation if you mess up, you'll get severe negative reactions from others.

I agree with seeking a position of responsibility, and be accountable, but i disagree with the above point. Specifically with the severe part. I think two of the most important lessons are to learn from your mistakes (accepting that you will fail sometimes), and when you fail/make a mistake take the responsibility.

Having severe reactions from others for when you make a mistake (I.e a beat down and not constructive critism) is a recipe for disaster.

Conditional agree. I'd say as a beginner, the "rigour" of particular situations can be too harsh. So when you're starting out, it is better to have lower penalties for mistakes. However, as one advances in career, then it sort of becomes necessary to reduce disasters emerging from one's actions. This doesn't mean mistakes should be avoided, but one has to control the effects of one's mistakes through proper sandboxing/experimentation setup.

I have the same issue.

My workaround was to join up with somebody else that was more driven than I am and I chose to help them cofound.

I used their motivation to help me remain focused and productive.

Worked out well for me.

I still haven't resolved the problem - after decades my personal drive has not improved much.

Thank you for responding.

I actually had other serious problems in my life and I have resolved them in satisfiable manners.

So, I think that this problem is solvable as well.

As an adult, I have found study groups to be extremely helpful. But there aren’t study groups for everything. And each one has one's own journey. I must learn discipline and work ethics for myself.

I'm not the most qualified to answer this but...

- Reduce distractions. Pay attention to the things that break your focus and aggressively mute them.[0]

- Treat yourself like a plant, not a machine. You need the right conditions to grow. This means good sleep, good nutrition, and the right setting. This affects your focus.

- Consider that some approaches might not work for you. Not everyone learns well in a classroom. Explore other ways of achieving your goals. Alternative work arrangements could suit you better.

[0] https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/silence

I can focus uninterruptedly in something for long hours. I don't have the urge to check email and social media that is so common nowadays. Some years ago, I read Deep Work and implemented as much as I could and those have served me really well.

With coffee, I can focus on the hardest things for ~2 hours.

I also mediatate almost every day.

In the last year, I have also fixed my sleep (was messed up for ~9 years)

As to your third point, I am familiar with my own patterns and can get things done. Just long term discipline-requiring tasks seem unachievable.

You will need to build up habits, slowly. Discipline is mostly a collection of habits. Look at Atomic Habits for example. If you can't manage to read the book (or listen to it), there are some YouTube and TikTok videos about it. Or a first habit to implement could be to read the book for 10 minutes each day before going to bed (tie it to something you do every day).

Another angle might be mindfulness training (meditation). If you can become more aware "in the moment" of when you become distracted or side-tracked, then it should become easier to preempt it.

I have read Atomic Habits and meditate almost everyday. I also made some minor changes to my life learning from AH.

I don't have an attention deficit. Neither do I use social media or other common culprits of the day. I don't have any problem focusing or learning. Or, as another user mentioned- accountability problem.

My problem is staying focused at something for months or years. Something shinier comes along and I switch to that.

When I was a child, I got away unaware because everything required little effort from my part. I barely studied outside of my classroom and still aced all tests. In college, although I got below average, I still graduated. With almost zero effot. About a dozen of my peers dropped out even after a lot of effort. It was a hard major.

I am responding to all comments as the writing is also reflective to myself.

I think I also have the problem of being unable to assign priorities to things that I want to do. I want to do a lot- and I want them now. I have to change this, I guess.

And I need to finish things that I start.

>And I need to finish things that I start.

Do you, though? Try reading Barbara Sher's "Refuse to Choose". There's a place in the world for everyone, and not everyone has to be an administrator to succeed.

Thank you for your comment.

I will check out the book.

Yes, I believe what you say. But I will have to pay the bills and get fast internet and have money to pay health insurance. I also want to start a family some day.

And do these, I need a job. Rather than a boring, Dilbert type job, I would prefer an R&D position, or be a professor, etc.

And to do these, I need discipline, and that is why I am trying hard, and making this post to see if I can get a good advice.

Rather than working in fintech, or at a webdev consultancy firm, I would like a better environment and an esoteric job. I have mostly failed because the lack of discipline and work ethics.

I think I was able to convey why I am trying hard and in distress about my lack of work ethics and discipline.

Creating a task manager / TODO list made all the difference for me, for the simple fact that marking things as DONE provides a little dopamine. Over time you positively-reinforce yourself to do more things to get more magic checkboxes.

I try to keep everything in there. Of course I have my daily routine, project goals, scheduled events, people birthdays, etc.. But I also have things like vehicle maintenance, system maintenance, chores for home, and stuff like that.

My todo list becomes too big and I start to procrastinate.

What you describe, sound much like GTD. I never truly tried it because the kinds of task don't have much overlap with my life.

Another problem I have is prioritization. I can't do it well and want to do much more things than possible.

one thing people haven't mentioned is habits. if there's something you want to do, and it takes a lot of discipline to do, how can you adjust your life so that it takes less discipline to do it?

One way to reduce the amount of discipline you need to do a thing is to start doing it according to a rhythm that you do the thing daily/weekly/whatever, so that it becomes a habit. Initially it is hard and will require more discipline and effort but after a while it will just become the thing that you do by default, or (perhaps at times) a thing you even enjoy doing. Are there one-off changes to your environment or situation that you can make, that will make it easier for you to regularly practice the thing you want to practice?

you mentioned technical interviews. the software engineering technical interview game is a mix of skill + preparation + interview technique + sheer luck. don't neglect the latter "sheer luck" component --- a lot of the outcome will be based on which interviewer you get assigned on the day, how much sleep they got, if the role is being advertised as a formality but they've already decided to promote someone internally, etc. you overcome this luck component by applying for a large number of roles with different companies.

Maybe another thing is to lower your expectations. it isn't necessary to "work extremely hard sustained over a long period" to have a good career or good life.

Maybe yet another thing is starting to think about the longer term, and what your longer term goals mean you need to start doing in the short term. I didn't start to think about long term goals until my late 20s.

I have thought about it, but didn't pursue it in a deeper manner.

I will try to set aside some time every day- for learning/working on things that make me grow. I haven't been able to do this yet.

About lowering expectations, to do challenging, esoteric things for all my life (otherwise I will die of boredom), I need to upgrade myself (like getting a FAANG job, or getting a PhD, etc.)- to do that, I will need to learn discipline. Or I risk hitting a glass ceiling.

All of what you advise are well thought out and genuine. Thank you for your advice.

I can tell you for one thing - avoid graduate school for now. You will find yourself becoming a 40 yo postdoc with barely a living wage.

But what if I really like this stuff- learning, teaching, coming up with new ideas, solving problems, writing papers, presenting them, etc.?

And my field is Deep Learning.

There is no magic. You need to define the task and complete the task.

Larger tasks are just smaller tasks.

A six hundred page book is one hundred nights of reading six pages a night.

Have you considered the military? Your background sounds a lot like mine and this was the path I ended up taking and am really happy I did. With a degree you can commission as an officer, you’ll learn a lot of discipline, time management and other really good habits.

I have a friend who is an NCO in the army.

It's definitely not the life for me. Extremely harsh living conditions, idiotic bosses, chain-of-command, blind following of orders, zero place for innovation, intellectualism, or individuality- these are not really my cup of tea.

He went simply because he had no other means. His family is extremely poor, and unless he wanted to be poor like them as well- he went. While he is smart, he is no intellectual.

NCO in the Army is a vastly different situation than a commissioned officer in any branch, and each workplace is going to differ in terms of idiotic bosses, harsh environment, intellectualism, and tolerance for innovation and invididuality. The rest of your items (chain-of-command, blind following of orders) are going to be present in some form everywhere in life, and you're welcome to push back on those if you're careful about how you do it.

Sounds to me like when you say both that you want to learn discipline while also saying certain things are not your cup of tea, one of the areas of mentation you may want to work on is "the ability to experience, tolerate, and overcome discomfort". Discipline may even be described as that ability, in part.

Not saying you absolutely need to join any military service to get that, but there are few other circumstances where you have no real option of quitting once you've committed to a certain duration of obligation.

I have forgotten to add "Ask HN" to the title.

@dang can you please add it?

Your post resonated with me enough quite a lot. I was having the exact same thoughts at 24. College kicked my ass too except I failed out with 1 class left to go towards a CS degree from a good and well known school. I had no discipline at all. I had no work ethic. I literally did exactly what I felt like doing in the moment. I look back at myself now and realise that I was pretty much unemployable.

I knew I wouldn't make it following a traditional path so I started a business and figured out how to make money. Being broke and not having rent money kept me focused. Then I went back to being undisciplined. Girls, parties, travel, booze, food, and video games. When money ran out I became hyper focused on making money again until I could eat caviar by the spoonful. I found a profitable niche and then I didn't have to work more than 10 hours a week. I did this for about a decade until my mid-30's and I still never developed any discipline. I let the business die out of boredom; by the age of 36 I was flat broke again.

I found a co-founder and a customer who paid a big deposit upfront and we set up a new company to build the product. We hired people and I realised I had to change. I suffered for years having to wake up early enough to start work before 9. Things went okay but not great. I tried to adapt to the normal world but it was painful. I hated having to turn up everyday but I turned up anyway. I would feel guilty for turning up late. This was an unhappy period of my life.

But by the age of about 40 I finally learned how to do shit that I wasn't in the mood to do. This is a really valuable skill and what keeps me going in between periods of inspiration. I did this by learning to feel satisfaction for completing boring tasks reasonably well.

Being able to hire people to do tedius stuff for you is also helpful.

Now I'm in my mid-40's and I've found what I think is a healthy middle ground. The company is still going and it's grown to 20 people. I stopped feeling guilty about being late or about any of my other flaws. I just accept myself and do my best and that's okay for me. I feel like I'm on a good and healthy trajectory and while I'm not rich I am very happy and content. I love my life.

>I have zero discipline. How do I get more disciplined? >How do I learn to work hard, with regularity, with no immediate returns for a long period of time?

I don't think there is a silver bullet here you have to try to find what works for you. I'll list some ideas that I think helped me but keep in mind that I never solved my problems I instead found a way to work around them.

- Having a good work ethic will make you a great employee. fuck that. Instead learn to relentlessly chase your goals and to fight through periods where you have no motivation.

- Work on things that naturally motivate you and make you feel good.

- It's a lot easier to learn to work hard if the returns are in clear sight. For long term motivation it's just a matter of extending your vision further out into the future.

- Making money is addicting. Let yourself get focused on chasing your next score.

- Try to create a positive feedback loop for yourself where more effort directly translates to more money.

- Putting effort into doing something every day will lead to you getting better at that thing. Once you experience that for yourself you may find it easier to motivate yourself for long term goals.

- Stop feeling guilty. Don't get trapped in a guilt/escapism loop. Forgive yourself to break out of it.

- Fear of losing your apartment when you're two months behind on rent can be pretty powerful motivation, but it only works for a little while before you become numb to it.

- There are lots of situations where the lazy solutions are the best solutions.

- Pay people to be disciplined and work hard for you.

- Instead of adapting to your environment, learn to make your environment adapt to you.

Thank you very much for taking the time to write the comment.

I notice so many similarities with you.

I will definitely keep what you advise in mind.

Practice meditation:

- Learn meditation

- Go to meditation retreat

- Keep practicing meditation. Use it as an exercise in focus.

- Sit and study. When you feel bored, close your eyes, take a deep breathe in and out, meditate for a bit. After a couple (or a few) minutes (maybe even get up for a stroll or a little break), then, continue work.

Re-Program your mind:

- Listen to motivational speeches & music daily on youtube and spotify

- Example Channels: Eric Thomas, David Goggins, Motiversity, Fearless Motivation.

Lastly: Exercise

If you're don't 1. have a focus practice, and if you aren't 2. actively programming your mind to create positive, optimistic though cycles, and aren't 3. exercising, then these are three important things that I recommend to you, which really helped me develop my discipline skill.

I don't have a focus/attention problem. None at all. I am better than others at maintaining focus and concentration.

I already meditate almost daily. I exercise every day and also walk ~4 miles each day.

I am sure you are well meaning, but I disagree with you on the motivational speeches part. I find those guys to be awfully filled with themselves, and annoying. They are in the sole business of selling motivation. If your life's biggest achievement is selling motivational speeches as events/books/courses, then I am going to pass. I found motivational speeches helpful when I was maybe 12.

Many people also suffer from survivorship bias and lack nuance and extremely hot-gas-full for my taste.

I am more motivated by people I know achieving highly, or true stories of people fighting adversity to make it big in life. E.g. the project head of India's moon lander mission supposedly didn't have electricity growing up (according to an HN comment a few days ago).

In addition to the "just keep trying" comments, I think it's also a thing that improves with age.

When I was younger, I used to be able to work "harder" but less sustainability, like a blue star that burns bright but supernovas pretty soon. Over time, I've gotten more like a red dwarf -- better at burning low, slow, and sputtery but sustainably. 1 hour per day adds up to a lot if you do it every day! You can read a 600 page book in like two weeks at that rate (and that's how I read books). :D

Thanks for your perspective. Appreciate it.

I read non-fiction and novel successfully. If it is a non-textbook, then I can finish it in ~10 days.

But for math/programming books, I have to sit down with either a notebook or a laptop- after work- for a much longer time period.

And I lose motivation.

For normal books, I can read while in commute, or listen to while walking, during having lunch and so on. I read ~25 books per year. By dedicating not more than 20-30 minutes to reading.

I will keep your perspective and advice in my mind.

Competitive sports are a microcosm of life.

you just have to do it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com