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Alan Turing's Best Productivity Tricks

lifehacker.com.au

43 pointsColinWright23 comments

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Trick #0: be a genius.

Also, missing from this is "Talk to the Teddy Bear": http://blog.jgc.org/2010/05/talking-to-porgy.html

Being clever is only half the battle. Turing (amongst many others) had the perseverance to apply their intellect. Plenty of smart people - including geniuses - are happy to glide through life on their intelligence while applying the minimum effort they need to.

As for Porgy, I "met" him in person earlier this year when visiting a Bletchley Park. I was oddly surprised at just how humble that teddy looks in real life. I found it a great reminder just how hard times must have been during WWII and how much industry and technology have advanced since. Which is odd because you'd think the Bombe et al would be enough of a reminder itself. But I guess being a nerd I've grown up fascinated by those early machines so struggle to equate the wider development of society using the evolution of computers as my yardstick. But I'm digressing massively now :)

I am going against this HN mantra in this special case: if you are a genius like Turing, I mean a genius of genius of genius of ..., someone who is a genius at another scale. Then you don't need too much effort to move forward or the effort flows and you don't need to transpirate it.

Speaking from my personal experience as a Turing-level genius who hasn't accomplished much due to a lack of perseverance, I disagree.

I also speak from my personal experience! ;-)

How do you know you are a Turing level genius? I'm genuinely curious.

I think Stephen Hawkins is a great example here. He was an average performing student in his class (albeit a highly advanced course). Many of his lecturers would comment about how lazy he was. It wasn't until his health turned against him that he really started to apply himself. (to paraphrase his life somewhat).

Genius can help - massively. But it doesn't automatically guarantee success.

It's like how Olympic athletes still have to dedicate their lives towards training and competing in their chosen event despite being fortunate enough to posses the right genes.

I didn't say that being a genius is a guarantee to success and the Olympic athletes comparison doesn't exactly fit in the scientific field: only one wins the gold medal each 4 years while there are multiple gold medals opportunities on each instant in science.

What I said is that people who are genius in a different scale (I am not talking about a specific measure like IQ) work in a different way. They need to learn and train because the knowledge is not encoded in the DNA but they have so less friction doing this, that one unity of their efforts is like 100 or 1000 of the other genius units. Another skill to take into account is creativity, some people can produce new things with less knowledge and efforts because they see things in a different way.

> the Olympic athletes comparison doesn't exactly fit in the scientific field: only one wins the gold medal each 4 years while there are multiple gold medals opportunities on each instant in science.

There are multiple gold medal opportunities in the Olympics. Plus you don't even need to win a gold medal to be an Olympic athlete.

It seems to me that you're complaining more about fame than accomplishments; which really isn't anything to do with genius at all.

> What I said is that people who are genius in a different scale (I am not talking about a specific measure like IQ) work in a different way. They need to learn and train because the knowledge is not encoded in the DNA but they have so less friction doing this, that one unity of their efforts is like 100 or 1000 of the other genius units. Another skill to take into account is creativity, some people can produce new things with less knowledge and efforts because they see things in a different way.

Well yes. But that's such a vague and obvious remark that it borders on being a platitude. And frankly, I'd rather celebrate Turing's achievements than dwell on how much easier he may or may-not have found his work. In much the same way as I like to enjoy good music for it's music rather than moan that creativity comes easier to some artists than it does to me.

Like I said before, some people might be lucky enough to be born with a natural aptitude in some areas of life. But they still have to put the effort in to reach the top of their respective fields. And it's that which really matters at the end of the day.

My main point in the original thread is that, probably, effort for Turing and other geniuses is a different thing that effort for the rest of the mortals. Also, that effort is overrated for geniuses because many of them can do it in a natural way like people walk.

Take my other comments as a decoration. I don't think writing a comment in HN is the same that writing a formal proof.

Do you have any references to back up your claim? Stanislaw Ulam, who was the coauthor of the successful atomic bomb design, describes in his memoirs how in his students day he would think on a mathematical problem even for more than 10 hours straight, up to the point of almost suffering a mental breakdown on one occasion. I used to share this belief of yours, but reading memoirs and biographies of really successful people actually convinced me otherwise, they were working really hard.

In fact, you often have the illusion that someone is a genius, because he works so much harder than you and has done so for a long enough period.

Do you have any references to back up your claim?

First my personal ones knowing people at different genius levels. Second, I can find references supporting both sides without a meta-analysis so that will not work on either side. As a final comment something can be valid sometimes, do you think that there is not a few cases where people don't need to make a great effort?

The Stanislaw's comment doesn't invalidate what I said. Other people spending this same hours will not achieve the same as him. Also, I spent many years thinking in algorithms and developing software daily for more than 10 hours straight without having big achievements in the genius sense.

> The Stanislaw's comment doesn't invalidate what I said. Other people spending this same hours will not achieve the same as him. Also, I spent many years thinking in algorithms and developing software daily for more than 10 hours straight without having big achievements in the genius sense.

Maybe you're working on the wrong projects? Or maybe you're just complaining about fame (eg person x's achievements rewarded them with more fame than person y's achievements). In any case, you're digressing from your original point which I took objection too.

> Maybe you're working on the wrong projects?

Probably.

> maybe you're just complaining about fame (eg person x's achievements rewarded them with more fame than person y's achievements). No

> In any case, you're digressing from your original point which I took objection too.

I replied to another comment in this thread that opened a new thread. I am not a robot.

This reads like some bubbly day-time entertainment news piece. "You don’t accomplish all that without some clever productivity tricks." There are so many important things you can write about Turing but this is not one of them.

Turing was very good at finding good problems, and then had the courage to work on them.

The Lifehacker list is amusing, at best. I quickly run out of fingers and toes if I count the mathematicians I know who are runners, have messy desks, and break big problems down into small problems. Few, if any, of them are near to having Turing's influence.

On the other hand, they ARE mathematicians. Presumably with Phds. Working at some university.

That's enough accomplishment for a Lifehacker reader.

Alan Turing's Best Bio Paragraphs That Can Be Turned Into Posts To Meet Your Quota

"I asked [Turing] one day why he punished himself so much in training. He told me, ” I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by running hard.”"

I like that. The level of exercise has to be higher than the stress at work in order to drive it away. No 20 minutes walks on a treadmill...

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