How to Work Hard

http://paulgraham.com/hwh.html

by razin • 5 years ago

1223 1117 5 years ago

paulgraham.com

yewenjie• 5 years ago

Off-topic but Firefox gave me a potential security risk warning for the site!!??

acuozzo• 5 years ago

I think the cert is expired.

headalgorithm• 5 years ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27196917

nicholast2• 5 years ago

I know this is somewhat of a false dichotomy, but at some point I think PG's essays started to shift from being directed at startup founders to giving advice to his children that they can read when they grow older.

nicholast2• 5 years ago

Ok I just looked up the phrase false dichotomy, apparently doesn't mean what I thought it meant, probably would have been better said as "the two are not mutually exclusive", still point holds.

WillDaSilva2• 5 years ago

"False dichotomy" implies more than just the fact that "the two are not mutually exclusive". It further implies that the speaker in question has implied that the two are mutually exclusive, when they are in fact not.

dalbasal• 5 years ago

There probably is some tethering to whatever his perspective is at the time. At some point, YC was a relatively new idea coming to life and he was probably constantly thinking a certain way. Now, it's something that he's been up to for decades.

That said, I think there's more of a zeitgeist change than actual change in pg's content. Things sound different 10-15 years apart. A lot of things age poorly, often: idealism, stand up comedy... most anything avante garde-ish.

Clever people spoke highly of agile,for example, when it was manifestos and such circa 2005.

SlapperKoala3• 5 years ago

I feel like a lot of it is the same stuff that you get in generic self help books, but explained in contemporary techie language and cultural references.

Not that that is necessarily bad per se, there can be a lot lot of value to reminding people of things that may seem obvious. But it's annoying when people treat him like a genius for saying fairly standard platitudes in a clever way

aliceryhl• 5 years ago

Typo:

There may be some people do who, but I think my experience is fairly typical

WillDaSilva2• 5 years ago

Strange that Firefox's reader view cannot be enabled for this post. Probably because instead of using `` tags or similar, the content of the post is contained within a `` block inside a table, with ` ` tags separating the paragraphs.

Not having the content inside of `` blocks is a departure from Paul Graham's older content, and a confusing one at that.

EDIT: It looks like the posts with the "Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator." banner are contained within a `` block, and can be read with Firefox reader view, but those without the banner are not within a `` block, and cannot be read with Firefox reader view.

dash22• 5 years ago

Good place to say what a profound genius P G Wodehouse was. Here's one of my favourite exchanges from a Jeeves book:

"If you will recollect, we are now in Autumn – season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."

"Season of what?"

"Mists, sir, and mellow fruitfulness."

heavenlyblue2• 5 years ago

What is that about?

FoldMorePaper• 5 years ago

A reference to a Keats poem, apparently? <https://poets.org/poem/autumn>

dash22• 5 years ago

The joke is Jeeves' very solemn quotation of a famous Romantic poem.

designium• 5 years ago

Summary:

- Working hard starts at school, but there is a lot of "distortion"

- It's complicated to since it depends on multitude of person's factors and likes

- You have to be honest with yourself

- You have to find something you want or/and talented to do

- More competitive areas or ambitious goals will required more effort

- What was said before may not work given the circumstances of each individual

brador• 5 years ago

June 2021 for anyone wondering if this is new. Would be nice if we could get that date stamp into the title. Sometimes PG essays are reposted. Dang?

jimbokun• 5 years ago

Being able to decide what to work on requires a certain amount of privilege, as opposed to needing to do whatever you can to pay for rent, bills, and groceries this month.

dhimes• 5 years ago

I think you're on to something here. I'm struggling to articulate that somehow this essay addresses, albeit well, the low-hanging fruit of working hard, at least in the move-the-world-forward sense than this is written (he's not talking to bricklayers, he's talking to the architects). You have options; you have family/social support, and so on. These things allow the other things to become. [As you can seem I'm still struggling.]

UglyToad• 5 years ago

This is sort of tangentially related, since TFA doesn't really talk about long hours as such but I definitely prefer the following angle: https://ericlippert.com/2019/12/30/work-and-success/

yetihehe2• 5 years ago

So what? Being able to comment on HN requires a certain amount of privilege too.

pjerem2• 5 years ago

Personally, I just had to click on the "login" button then to fill a username and a password.

Y_Y• 5 years ago

Doesn't this sound shit though? If Bill Gates is so smart why did he have to work so much? Did he like coding and management more than days off?

If a life of hard work is needed to get you into heaven that's fine. Or if anything less would mean you and your dependants going hungry. But once your basic needs are met then it's irrational not to start spending time on all of the other things that life has to offer.

I feel like drive and energy and work-ethic are great, and you're useless without them. All the same if you have nothing else then you just become enslaved by your need to output more or increase your wealth or whatever, without connecting that to any healthy goal like health or happiness or wellbeing. It's like a cognitive defect, a disability except you're unable to not-do.

dataduck• 5 years ago

Chris Williamson's video on this is really touching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbgkMhio3jY

markus_zhang6• 5 years ago

He probably didn't treat those as "work" as we laymen understand. We just work for bread and butter and most of the time workis kind of boring. But if you happen to work for yourself or enjoy your work for whatever the reason, you don't treat it as "work" and it's all about achieving the maximum happiness as you can.

I expereinced this a few times in my life and I never regretted about working hard on it. Why would I regret about playing hard and achieving what I can? But sadly due to my shortcomings these events are short and far between.

borski9• 5 years ago

This is it. When you’re working on things you love, it’s hard, and can be lots of hours, but it doesn’t feel like work.

Speaking from my own experience of founding a startup. There are also times it was absolutely miserable. But it’s true: I wasn’t beholden to my VCs or angels. I could have quit. I just enjoyed the work so much, so deeply, that I didn’t want to quit.

The challenge was not burning out: I needed to take more vacation, because it not feeling like work didn’t mean it wasn’t, still, hard work which people need a respite from.

capiki• 5 years ago

Rationality really only makes sense in relation to goals, as far as I can see. If your goal is to meet your basic needs, then it’s irrational to work all day. If your goal is market domination, then I’d say working all day is a very rational thing to do

newnamenewface• 5 years ago

I'd go a step further and it sounds woefully disconnected from the joys of culture and life. For those it works for, I imagine that this seems satisfying but for the rest who work hard and don't hit acclaim and fortune (or at least not wild acclaim and fortune), they're going to have midlife crises when they realized they itemized away their youth... I'd guess.

borski9• 5 years ago

The thing that most people seem to be missing is PG isn’t advocating for working hard just to work hard. He’s advocating for working hard at things that you love, because then it doesn’t feel like work.

He is also glorifying anxiety, which is unfortunate, and I think this essay stands stronger without those particular points.

pjc50• 5 years ago

It's like a cognitive defect, a disability except you're unable to not-do.

He specifically trained himself to have leisure anxiety and advises other people to do this as well:

> The most basic level of which is simply to feel you should be working without anyone telling you to. Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off.

It's certainly effective, but as you say, effective to what end?

prawn• 5 years ago

I tend to agree, but I guess it depends on what you're replacing with work, and how you feel about the work. If you're replacing idle TV watching with a form of work you enjoy, great. If it's replacing time you might be watching specific shows with your partner/kids and with get-head-of-the-pack projects that stress you out, the trade-off will be far from universal.

But as usual, he's writing for a very specific group of people - young people with a strong urge to do late nights building something.

onemoresoop• 5 years ago

If Bill Gates was so smart why did he have to screw so many people over? Remember how many other smart people and other companies he eat for breakfast? If Bill Gates had the right work ethic would he still be so rich?

bserge• 5 years ago

He worked other people hard, which is really the only way to become very rich. One person can only do so much no matter how hard they work.

meheleventyone5• 5 years ago

There’s also a conflation of working hard and working really long hours. Plus some cherry picked examples. Basically if you only need to find five or six examples of success you could probably defend any lifestyle to get there. For example if I didn’t have kids or need to coordinate with the west coast of the US this mode from Haruki Murakami sounds lovely.

When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m.
I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.
But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

tonyedgecombe3• 5 years ago

I read a book on authors work habits and this pattern seems very common. Work for a relatively short period in the morning (by modern work standards) then spend the rest of the day at leisure.

dionidium• 5 years ago

Further, the thing about Bill Gates is that he can't not be Bill Gates. Whatever drove Bill Gates to work as hard as he did, he probably had no real choice. If you have the drive of Bill Gates, then you'll work with the drive of Bill Gates. Simple!

pcbro1413• 5 years ago

Because he was trying to build one of the biggest/most successful companies ever? Some things are just hard regardless of how smart you are, building a mega company is one of those.

richardwhiuk4• 5 years ago

I suspect it's more likely to just be fiction.

nkingsy• 5 years ago

I understand the drive to share here, as nothing fees better than hard work, but it’s a very intimidating read and feels quite navel gazey.

In my experience, there is no such thing as hard work. There’s a universal river of truth that I can tap into in flow state, and if something is blocking me from getting there, I might as well watch a show and see if the river is open later.

uniqueuid• 5 years ago

Feels like solid advice overall.

One thing I find important relates to other people. Some say that success comes from hard work, or that the right focus is essential to success. But that's a false dichotomy.

In truth, there are many people out there who work incredibly hard, and some of them are even good, and some of those have the right focus.

Hard work is the precondition. Even if your focus is right and you're clever, you are always competing with people who also have that but put in many hours on top.

It's a tower, and if you want to rise, you need to tackle all the layers.

leokennis5• 5 years ago

There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard.

I'd like to add that it is more than fine to not do great work. If you like to spend a lot of time with your kids and tend to your vegetable patch, by all means only try hard enough to keep the job that pays for that lifestyle.

So, no dig on the author, but there is more than maximizing for great work. Try for a while to instead maximize for life happiness and experience how that feels for you.

nickelcitymario5• 5 years ago

Agreed, but I also found that 3-ingredient formula to be one of the more insightful things he says in this essay. It's a good way to understand what it takes to be successful at anything.

Including, by the way, being a parent. Many of us aren't born with (or have a sufficiently healthy childhood) to have naturally great parenting abilities. But hard work and practice sure do go a long way.

lanstin6• 5 years ago

Anecdotally, from years at the playground, the attitude of trying to maximize the quality of your parenting is however a killer impediment to being a good parent. Parenting is challenging and a lot of time, but works a lot better when you are doing it in the moment rather than to achieve some agenda.

Of course one of the great things about parenting is that mostly you get to have the same situations over and over again, and get to change your approaches (including consistency) to see what happens with different approaches. So you get practiced at each thing. And the talent needed for parenting is more intimate that for writing software - it's the talent to make your toddlers laugh, to make your 4 year old confident enough to try something they want to try. It's a set of skills for doing stuff between a particular parent/child system. My tricks might not work for you; my tricks for my first born did not work for my second born.

temp89642• 5 years ago

PG never said you should maximize for great work. The essay is about "how to work hard", not "work hard is the only purpose of your life". You are missing the point here.

In addition, you mistakenly exclude great work / achievement from happiness. Spending time with your kids is great, tending your vegetable patch is great, doing great work is also great. Life is not a single purpose process. Happiness is not a single threat process either.

Currently all the critics on the essay are terrible, but you are better at least know to keep it civil.

asdfasgasdgasdg• 5 years ago

I don't think the person you're responding to is missing the point. Rather, they are making another, adjacent point. Our culture glorifies hard work and financial success (and excess) to what some believe is an unhealthy degree. It's worth noting almost anywhere hard work is brought up that it should be within the context of the values you hold for the other aspects of your life.

I will say that it is better to do great work than good work all other things being equal. But other things aren't necessarily equal. I would not want to have the discomfort with idleness that the author of this blog post lauds, for example. Although, if you do have that and are pleased to, then good for you!

bumby6• 5 years ago

I wonder how much of the criticism is skewed by the Western notion of “work”. I.e., we tend to view a vocation as the most legitimate definition of work.

If we take a different perspective, I think the author is much less likely to be the target of ire.

working hard means aiming toward the center — toward the most ambitious problems.

To those in a society hyper-focused on productivity, this can certainly rub people the wrong way because so few are able to dedicate themselves to super ambitious vocations. As the saying goes, the world needs ditch diggers too.

But if your ambition is to cultivate a meaningful, verdant life I don’t see why the author's statement is incompatible with the GP comment. Maybe we just need to broaden our definition about what is worthwhile “work”. It’s certainly possible to do great work cultivating relationships if that is your goal rather than, say, creating a new field of mathematics.

leokennis5• 5 years ago

My reply was based on the interpretation that the author defined work as "doing your job". That interpretation was mainly based on him mentioning Bill Gates not taking a day off from Microsoft (his company and job) in his twenties, and the writer Wodehouse spending so much effort on his livelihood, writing. So I think my interpretation is correct.

The article strongly correlates this interpretation of "working" with "being happy". Two quotes:

When I asked Patrick Collison when he started to find idleness distasteful, he said
> I think around age 13 or 14. I have a clear memory from around then of sitting in the sitting room, staring outside, and wondering why I was wasting my summer holiday.

And

Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful.

My point to the above is: if you feel awful when you don't work hard on a job, by all means work hard on a job.

But if you feel fine only working moderately hard, and that is enough to fund your true passions, pleasures and happiness, do not feel bad for not wanting to work hard on a job.

And the reason I felt the need to say that, is that "hustle culture" [1], which this essay is not far away from in my opinion, might make people believe (incorrectly) that only people who work hard at a job are valuable and worthy human beings.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hustle+culture

ant6n• 5 years ago

That was also my first question:

Yes, but how do I work hardly?

gotsa• 5 years ago

Playing as Devil's advocate here. I think that "good work" is much wider that you are considering.

Having quality time off with your partner is "good work" Raising your children is "good work"

In a more philosophical way. "Work" could be defined as trying to make a change in your reality. So yeah, that life discovering the arts, eating tasteful and healthy food, and spending time with your beloved ones is "good work" and requires ability, practice, and time to do it well.

leokennis5• 5 years ago

See my other reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27676771

I very much agree with you. But I have the feeling that in the context of the linked essay, work is narrowly interpreted as "working at your job".

I might be wrong though.

hkrgl• 5 years ago

This, exactly. It takes a lot of hard work to raise children and have a good relationship with your partner. I consider taking vacations to lay on the beach with my partner or children a part of that hard work. The definitions in the essay seem a bit short-sighted to me.

gxs2• 5 years ago

This is exactly how I think one should think about it.

It's along the lines of how people say whatever you do, do it well.

borski9• 5 years ago

I agree with everything you said, and a lot of what Paul said. You’re just talking to different people.

fulafel• 5 years ago

There's a lot of spectrum between "only try hard enough to keep the job" and PG described "great work" in many tech jobs, and indeed most tech people are somewhere in the middle.

young_unixer• 5 years ago

"Society" at large already tells us to be average, to not work hard, etc. I don't think PG needs to restate that.

sbierwagen4• 5 years ago

PG essays are written for an audience of startup founders and prospective startup founders. When he says "doing your best work" he doesn't exactly have a guy pouring concrete sidewalks in mind. Theoretically, a founder who works harder can make 10,000 as much as if they slacked off. That will never be true for basically any other profession.

leokennis5• 5 years ago

I wasn’t really aware of PG’s audience and goals for writing…so thanks for this insightful comment!

kungito• 5 years ago

I really don't lije these "work hard in all your 20s" advice because I'm at nearing the end of my 20s with great results but I feel like I want to save what's left of my 20s instead of chasing more cash. I haven't personally met people who worked hard until 40s and felt like it was worth it for them. Being a successful person personally has always been way more than just having a successful career and money.

jjice• 5 years ago

...because even in college a lot of the work is pointless; there are entire departments that are pointless.

I loved all of my CS courses in college. They were my bread and butter. I also liked a lot of my math courses and even an English class or two. I just wish I didn't take 5 history courses (three as part of an elective set that had to be liberal arts), three unrelated sciences (bio 1+2, and astronomy - imaging science was great and applicable), and two women and gender studies courses (nothing against the major, just unrelated to my degree).

I've been told countless times that these courses help round out a student. Most of them don't. I end up bullshitting them as much as possible and getting a B so I can focus on the courses I care about. A streamlined college education where we remove some (not all) non-major course work and save two or three semesters of time would be amazing, but of course that's two or three semesters of lost cash for a university...

logshipper• 5 years ago

Most of them don't. I end up bullshitting them as much as possible and getting a B so I can focus on the courses I care about

I hear where you're coming from on this (and have been in similar shoes), but I suppose there is more nuance to it, mostly because professors and departments play such an important role in the experience.

The argument of liberal arts electives lending themselves to a richer education experience is a well-intentioned one, and does reap benefits if executed well by the professor, the department, TA's and so on. If not, well, it is just like you mentioned, one is inclined to BS their way out of a class to focus on things more important to them.

Speaking from my anecdotal experience, I have had to take three electives as part of my undergrad: microeconomics, macroeconomics, and a philosophy class on the philosophy of the mind. I have thoroughly enjoyed macro-econ and philosophy simply because the professors put in an incredible amount of work to inspire me to work hard and care about the subject. Micro-econ, on the other hand, was one giant mess and I did not show up to more than 3 lectures over the course of the semester.

I believe in the earnest that students stand to gain so much if some university departments and professors gave a crap about the experience that they are offering.

s53005• 5 years ago

You chose to go to this University/College though. For whatever reason, you chose to attend studies there, knowing this was how the institution operated.

If you went not knowing how the institution operated, well, that's completely your issue.

You could have chose to seek your studies at any institution that caters to the ideals you've stated in your post. Yet you didn't, and you have the audacity to complain, about how the place you chose to attend operates, while they fully and publicly disclose how they operate

I'm simply baffled by this thought process.

shadofx• 5 years ago

He was told prior to entry that the history courses round out his education. At the time, he accepted that explanation (or did not really care). After experiencing it firsthand, he no longer accepts that explanation.

eutropia• 5 years ago

What you want exists: it's called a vocational school -- and no, as of now, many don't teach higher level academic subjects to the exclusion of all others, but they do provide a focused training for a specific line of work and nothing else. A Code bootcamp, for example.

Universities have their historical origins in educating the children of elites in the ways of the world: which by definition is a varied education consisting of many different subjects. I can only guess at the reasons why one can't commonly attend a Computer Science University in the U.S; but there are a handful of institutions in the world that are more focused (The Max Planck Institutes in Germany come to mind)

jasperry• 5 years ago

Maybe the world also needs people who are not so achievement-driven, who act as a kind of lubricant in the machine of society by making the environment around themselves lighter and more pleasant. And people who are that way should learn to value themselves and not feel guilty for not being as driven as some.

A world where everyone is a nose-to-the-grindstone overachiever seems like a pretty dreary one to live in.

borski9• 5 years ago

It does, and you’re right. Not everyone has to work hard, and those people are important too.

But: those people aren’t the folks for whom this essay is written.

lanstin6• 5 years ago

And really is Viaweb that big of a deal? He got rich by selling .com in the .com bubble to another .com company. That wasn't so hard at the time. He wrote a good book on Lisp, and used his riches to invest and get richer. None of this seems particularly extraordinary. Does he somehow imagine Dropbox or Viaweb have transformed human experience? He writes a good essay, but he seems overly impressed by his own success.

cma• 5 years ago

He has had many successes. He essentially was the first to solve the commercial email spam problem:

http://paulgraham.com/spam.html

If you remember email before and after those techniques were implemented into mail clients of the time, it was night and day.

philmcp• 5 years ago

I prefer to focus on efficiency, rather than hours worked (i.e. effort). It results in a better work / life balance imo

I actually just posted this article on HN today:

https://4dayweek.io/blog/how-to-code-faster

krustyburger• 5 years ago

>There wasn't a single point when I learned this. Like most little kids, I enjoyed the feeling of achievement when I learned or did something new. As I grew older, this morphed into a feeling of disgust when I wasn't achieving anything. The one precisely dateable landmark I have is when I stopped watching TV, at age 13.

I wouldn’t dare question Paul Graham’s accomplishments, but I’ve always found it odd that some people are so proud of their abstention from television. There are time-wasting things on tv, but there are also time-wasting books, albums etc. I think not watching television and advertising that one didn’t was once an easy intellectual badge of honor. When there were only a few networks and the programming didn’t vary much, perhaps this made sense.

Every so often I still hear someone proudly say that they don’t watch television today. I usually wonder exactly what they mean, now that we are all able to choose the exact film or program we want and play it on demand. Surely it’s not a mark of excellence not to stream, say, the Criterion Channel?

benjohnson• 5 years ago

For me, I stopped watching TV twenty years ago - but then transfered my neurotic novelty seeking behavior to the internet. But because I quit once, it made it easier to reign in my mindless internet consumption. And then stop any mindless book consumption. Then mindless video-games.

So for my - "No TV" is a easy way to express "I'm trying to maintain a ballance between living a vigorous life and consuming meaningful media"

BurningFrog• 5 years ago

TV is passive consumption of someone else's story.

NOthing wrong with that, but you're not exactly achieving anything by doing it.

prionassembly• 5 years ago

It's an empirical regularity, dude.

It's probably due to hidden third causes (the kind of personality + circumstance + challenges that cause people to abstain from TV are the same that cause this and that positive outcome), but it's there, at least according to lots of anecdata in this very same thread.

goodlifeodyssey• 5 years ago

I've wondered about the "no TV" stance too. I used to push back against it, but I believe there's something to it. Here's my current reasoning:

First of all, TV and movies have their strengths. Videos can communicate phenomena that are difficult to portray with the written text. They're also very accessible. However, all but the most low-budget shows and movies need to make money. Therefore, they need to appeal to a reasonably large audience. The economic motive limits the depth of the content.

Books can be written by individuals. Great books, and especially classics, are usually written for non-economic reasons. Often the author has a passion or a world view they want to share.

Books, as a medium, are older. Old books are filtered by time. They also let us learn about peoples who have different assumptions than we do. You can do this by reading about other cultures that exist today.

Books, as a medium, let one pause and think. You can write in the margins. It's possible, but more difficult, to do this when watching a show, listening to an audio book, or listening to a podcast. I like that I can listen to podcasts when I run or clean the dishes, but I grasp much less then when I read.

I agree that it's not enough to not watch TV. You need to discriminate regardless of the medium you're consuming, but I believe books are a better way to learn than most other mediums. Therefore, skipping television is probably a good idea if your goal is to develop a deep understanding of the world.

1123581321• 5 years ago

Typical TV has low information density. It’s not a good way to learn. This is ameliorated in the non-fiction world in the YouTube era as there are so many detailed video essays now. PG grew up before then.

As far as fiction, books have told richer stories, though, again, things are somewhat different in the “prestige TV” era.

BoxOfRain2• 5 years ago

I stopped watching broadcast TV out of sheer spite towards the TV licensing system and the slack-jawed oafs that enforce it, but that's a uniquely British reason!

Zababa5• 5 years ago

There are time-wasting things on tv, but there are also time-wasting books

Books require constant attention to progress, TV doesn't, for me that's the big difference. If you start to drift out and don't remember the last few paragraphs, you know you can pause, read them again and continue. With a TV, you usually can't go back. You may be conscious that you were not engaged, but you can't take the steps to fix this.

kstenerud2• 5 years ago

The true ah-ha moment comes when you finally realize how much bullshit this is.

"Hard work" is the mantra that keeps you a slave. "Success stories" are the tasty carrots that keep you toiling away your best years enriching others in pursuit of the things you're supposed to seek in life: Power, success, status. "Life hacks" are little dopamine hits to keep your eye on the carrot.

And the kicker is that those few who actually do attain these things mistakenly attribute it to their own prowess, when it's mostly luck and circumstance with a smattering of ambition and striking deals in the right networks. They then take it upon themselves to perpetuate the system that now feeds them at your expense.

So you go on toiling away, pushing that wheel around and around for years as your masters feed you stories of their success and a promise of your own one-day-someday, until eventually you hopefully realize the futility of enriching these parasites, and get off their treadmill.

The proletariat are only useful to the rich if they're toiling for them.

Edit: In case you're wondering why this tanked to the bottom of the comments despite being at 38 points after 30 minutes, it's because the admins can artificially drop a comment's priority if they don't like it, and prevent further upvotes (downvotes still work though).

eafkuor• 5 years ago

Yeah this is absolute shit, and it appeals to a very specific kind of "driven" people. Nothing against them but they need to realise that most others just want to enjoy their short time on this planet. I'm happy with my really mellow stable job that leaves me plenty of free time to do the things I actually want. Life is too short.

giantg236• 5 years ago

And then there are many people like me who work a job they hate, still don't get much time to enjoy life, all just to pay the bills. Less time on the planet might actually something many of us look forward to as life is full of pain and misery.

bumby6• 5 years ago

Curious if you would elaborate on your own personal philosophy that’s an antidote to this?

Is it to strive for something other than power or status? To “not work hard”? To focus on endeavors that disproportionately enrich yourself?

I do think this type of mindset is perpetuated by those with highly industrious personalities (who would probably ‘work hard’ anyways).

kstenerud2• 5 years ago

Ultimately? Focus on:

- Relationships: The single biggest deathbed regret is neglecting relationships (either not forming them, or squandering them).

- Finding time to live: The second greatest deathbed regret is missing out on life: Travel, arts, discovery, etc. As you get older many parts of this become a LOT harder.

- Stress free living: Stress is one of the top causes of a short lifespan.

6DM• 5 years ago

This was my high school experience, but it was an early lesson I took to heart.

I used to work at K-Mart, one day a windy storm blew in. I was really hustling to get all the shopping carts in before they blew around the lot and damaged vehicles. I was still trying to get my other responsibilities done and noticed the patio furniture was starting to blow around too. I mean at this point I'm literally running to get to everything.

New guy, chatting up the manager. I can't remember the exact reason, but at some point on the same day the manager got upset that my stuff wasn't done. (my stuff being organizing and fronting shelves)

This guy didn't do anything. Like literally just hung out and made the manager laugh.

That's when I knew. Hard working people don't get ahead on their hard work alone. Sure, it gets recognized when you've got good leadership in charge. Honestly though, after that experience, I've seen it over and over.

Do solid work, know what you're doing and help others around you. Just don't kill yourself trying to impress your boss. The old saying goes, "If you want something done, give it to the busiest person."

You're just asking for someone to dump their load on you in some way. If you have the capacity and enjoy your work, get it done. If you don't, and there's no deadlines, why stay late?

fredley2• 5 years ago

The thing he doesn't mention is all the people burned out by 35, with the best years of their life behind them, coping with deep and lasting psychological damage that will affect them for the rest of their lives, and nothing to show for it (except, if you're lucky, a bit more money).

bbreier• 5 years ago

well clearly they just didn't work hard enough!

dagw• 5 years ago

The thing he doesn't mention is all the people burned out by 35

The business model of his company is built on the backs of those people. The more of those people he can attract, the richer he becomes (to a first approximation)

melomal2• 5 years ago

Everyone around me that has wealth built it up from simply talking and connecting with people. Going out for golf and drinks where people tend to let their guard down and just enjoy themselves allows people to build trust.

This would, in my opinion, truly define their success as luck. I will outwork them, out hustle them, learn things and do things yet I am a whole Everest beneath them with wealth.

But they will strike up a conversation in a hot tub in Mexico and end up partnering up on a major project/deal over mojito's and bubbling water. Whilst I build my landing page stuffed with SEO keywords because I have 'data' to guide me.

paulpauper6• 5 years ago

Imagine knowing someone in 2009 who could get you in early on uber or airbnb. or in 2006 get you in on Facebook. you need to know the right people, combined with luck (choosing to invest in uber isntead of quora) and some risk taking.

paulpauper6• 5 years ago

If hard work were correlated with success, we would probably all know a lot more successful people . Most people who bust their ass have little to nothing to show for it compared to people who are truly successful, like people with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars or critical acclaim. Look how many people aspire to be successful writers, athletes, marathon runners, singers, actors..are those who fail not working as hard?

sergiomattei4• 5 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

johnwheeler3• 5 years ago

This is bullshit. This is what people who’ve failed tell themselves to rationalize that failure.

People who’ve succeeded at achieving ambitious goals are able to look at success from both vantage points: from having yet to succeed and succeeding. You’ll hardly ever, if ever, hear them say it’s solely the consequence of having the right networks and being lucky.

Sure some luck is involved, but most of it is attitude, and this is NOT the attitude.

I say thank God for people with this faulty perspective. It makes it easier to succeed when the playing field is full of people who’ve told themselves it’s futile to even try.

greedo2• 5 years ago

The amount of luck involved in "success" is almost always underestimated. Whether it's being born into a family with money, or having a great teacher who helps you understand Calculus. To avoiding health issues and accidents. To choosing a spouse that doesn't self-destruct. The list is long.

Luck is the trump card of life. You can be smart, hardworking, all the business traits that are espoused by "successful" people, and still fail. As Lefty Gomez said "I'd rather be lucky than good."

Look at Michael Jordan. He had talent and an incredible work ethic. Yet until the Bulls drafted Scottie Pippen, he didn't have the team required to win a championship. Imagine if the Bulls missed out on drafting Pippen and had drafted Dennis Hopson instead? Would Jordan have still become the GOAT?

dragonwriter4• 5 years ago

People who’ve succeeded at achieving ambitious goals are able to look at success from both vantage points: from having yet to succeed and succeeding. You’ll hardly ever, if ever, hear them say it’s solely the consequence of having the right networks and being lucky.

Yes, people tend to adopt a personal narrative that maximizes their own moral status, so successful people artificially minimizes the effect of circumstance on average and unsuccessful people artificially minimize the effect of choice.

But we don't have to rely on competing personal narratives weighted by who has the resources to reach a larger audience; these are concrete fact questions, and there is plenty of evidence that (1) circumstance beyond personal traits has a very large role, (2) personal traits contribute in ways different than the popular narrative of the successful, and (3) the personal traits that contribute are themselves largely products of (mostly inherited and early childhood) circumstance, not active choice.

arvinsim• 5 years ago

People who’ve succeeded at achieving ambitious goals are able to look at success from both vantage points: from having yet to succeed and succeeding.

You fell for the classic survivorship bias fallacy.

nobody0• 5 years ago

It seems nowadays, or maybe not only in modern age. Being not doing anything is more painful than to be occupied and leaning toward burning out.

It kinds of reminds me of a published story on hn [0]

"That is why we like noise and activity so much. That is why imprisonment is such a horrific punishment. That is why the pleasure of being alone is incomprehensible. That is, in fact, the main joy of the condition of kingship, because people are constantly trying to amuse kings and provide them with all sorts of distraction.—The king is surrounded by people whose only thought is to entertain him and prevent him from thinking about himself. King though he may be, he is unhappy if he thinks about it"

It seems that being in the passive mode or `flow` is a therapy itself, we can't seems to even stand non-productive ourselves to a certain extent. And modern convenient distractions only steer ourselves down this path even further.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25482927

naavis• 5 years ago

I didn’t really interpret the essay that way. I think the essay applies as much to working hard on personal things, like becoming better at playing some instrument or painting better. Both of those take a lot of hard work, but it has nothing to do with ”toiling away your best years enriching others”.

dasudasu• 5 years ago

This essay is basically yet another pamphlet for puritan work ethics. Funny that it comes at a time where "faith" in hard work as a main determinant of success is at a low point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27514188

imafish2• 5 years ago

This. So much this.

nickelcitymario5• 5 years ago

I had to learn what real work was before I could wholeheartedly desire to do it. That took a while, because even in college a lot of the work is pointless; there are entire departments that are pointless.

The arrogance! This is one of my pet peeves at work: When someone looks at another person's work and judges its value or difficulty. "That's easy." "That's pointless."

Ugh.

Everyone else's job looks easy and/or pointless until you're the one doing it. Then it's important and challenging (hopefully).

Most people who feel their own work is pointless simply don't understand how their role fits into the bigger picture. I assure you, the profit motive is very good at weeding out truly unnecessary costs. It may lag, sometimes. But if there's a dollar being spent that doesn't need to be spent, someone is going to eventually find out and eliminate the expense.

I think this mentality comes from a deep need to feel superior to others. So when we can't understand or appreciate someone's job, it feels powerful to declare their work easy or pointless.

But that's just ignorance, arrogance, and, frankly, bullying by other means: I'll make myself feel bigger by making you feel small, and I'll do it in front of all of my friends so they can affirm how big and tough and awesome I am.

bumby6• 5 years ago

I agree with the main parts of your post but how does the quote below fit into non-profit-seeking organizations? (E.g., govt, schools, charities etc.)

the profit motive is very good at weeding out truly unnecessary costs.

musingsole2• 5 years ago

In my experience, nonprofits do accrue a bit of needless fat that is often justified by their compassionate mission. BUT, even then, only by so much. They still need to accrue enough funds to pursue their mission.

nickelcitymario5• 5 years ago

Every organization has to be cost-aware. It catches up to you eventually.

For context, in my home town of Sudbury, Ontario, our leading university (Laurentian U) kept growing and investing in new things. There's lots of debate around the merits of what they were spending on. But it caught up to them in the form of bankruptcy.

One of the few things I like about capitalism (there aren't many, but that's just me) is that it gives a laser-clear focus. Just because an organization is a non-profit doesn't change that. At some point, you either bring in more revenue than you spend, or you fail.

Governments that continuously overspend eventually have their debts catch up to them, too. (See: Every empire in history.)

Zababa5• 5 years ago

That would actually explains non-profit-seeking organizations that degenerate and focus just on surviving and getting bigger and bigger. The unnecessary costs are the original intent, the necessary costs are feeding the bureaucratic machine.

ARandomerDude2• 5 years ago

The author is right. Gender studies, for example, is a pointless degree. You certainly have a point about not being quick to judge, or overly dismissive, but there are certain things in life that are genuinely pointless, even in education.

tpush• 5 years ago

Why would a Gender Studies degree be pointless? Given the current landscape around gender and such, having more educated people in that area seems like a very good thing.

sergiomattei4• 5 years ago

The level of disrespect towards the social sciences in HN is just baffling to me.

Sometimes people study stuff for intellectual fulfillment. I haven't studied gender studies, but according to HN, if I were to study sociology I'd be an ass with a pointless degree.

jerrre• 5 years ago

Isn't that always subjective? Pointless with regard to what goals/standards?

Is lying in the grass pointless?

hikingsimulator• 5 years ago

Anthropologic, literature, and historical research endeavors, even -- and in all likelihood especially -- when they intersect, can have a lot of value in many fields of the humanities, and beyond. They can inform our societal, political and economic prospects, and shine a light on what we usually don't even acknowledge.

It's not because it doesn't impact your field/industry, isn't marketable and profitable, or because your politics don't comingle with them, that such studies are pointless or useless.

Handwaving humanities on the premise that they are humanities is just another very stereotypical show of STEM arrogance.

dragonwriter4• 5 years ago

Gender studies, for example, is a pointless degree.

I would say that, like most interdisciplinary and many other degrees, its not particularly useful as a vocational credential outside academia.

OTOH, gender studies as a component of or elective within other degree programs that are more vocationally useful outside of academia is useful, and you don't have that without gender studies professors who you don’t have without people focussing on gender studies.

stnmtn• 5 years ago

Shouldn't there be people researching and understanding if there are any differences between men and woman in our society?

You can say that the degree "leads to no jobs", but saying it's pointless seems like you are angry at it when it is just a subset of social science

Ntrails• 5 years ago

You're going to get downvoted into oblivion I suspect, which may have been your intent?

Is History a _useful_ degree? Is Economics? Is Politics? Psychology or Sociology?

I actually don't want to make those determinations. I don't think I'm qualified. I have a rough view that highly specific degrees are worse overall than general ones. Eg Actuarial Mathematics vs Mathematics. Marine Biology vs Biology.

But those are personal dinner table views, and I'm not certain I'm right! I certainly don't want to define policy on it, and I'm not sure I know of anyone I think is qualified.

jschulenklopper2• 5 years ago

According to which criteria are some studies apparently “pointless”?

Who’s to determine these criteria? And aren’t they just opinions instead of real facts?

nickelcitymario5• 5 years ago

I don't agree with the premise that gender studies is pointless (and if I had to guess, you selected that one for the sake of controversy?).

That aside, let's say that a degree is "pointless" if it doesn't lead to good job prospects. By that definition, there's an awful lot of fields of study that are "pointless".

For example, I love philosophy. It was my favourite topic in school. But the only job that a philosophy degree seems to make available is that of teaching philosophy.

I think what we're seeing now is the market at work. There was, for a long time, a push to simply get a post-secondary education. It didn't matter which field. Just get a degree! Now we have a couple generations of heavily indebted students in fields that did not improve their job prospects, and they're telling the next generation: don't do it.

So I think we're going to keep seeing financial pressure on these fields until they shrivel up and go away. Capitalism at work, for better or worse.

But that's not the same as thinking these fields were pointless. I see tremendous social value in them. Having entire generations raised with a healthier and more accurate understanding of race, gender, class struggle, etc., is good for society. It's just not good at creating jobs.

So I guess my point (no pun intended) is that "pointless" is in the eye of the beholder. No one sets about wasting money pointlessly, and the things that you see no value in may be of great value to many others. You're not the arbitrator of what has value. Nor am I. But the market does a pretty damn good job.

Just because you think something is pointless doesn't make it so.

s53005• 5 years ago

This is such an idiotic take.

It would be much more truthful to say that everything in life is genuinely pointless than what you've said - and I'm saying this as a lifelong multidisciplined engineer.

Perhaps you meant to say useless instead of pointless? Yes, I would agree, that the overwhelming vast majority, if not all of gender studies degrees are useless in the world/societies we live in. But pointless? No.

BoxOfRain2• 5 years ago

It depends on how you're measuring value I suppose. Research for research's sake is rarely pointless, contributing to the sum of human knowledge is a worthy endeavour if you're okay with being in academia forever which many people are. Society's relationship with gender is a field worthy of study in my opinion, regardless of the political radicalism that apparently originates in that field.

I'd argue that the social sciences need more people involved in them, not less. For example, the way behavioural psychology has been weaponised during the pandemic by political actors (particularly the British government) has been very unethical in my opinion but as the social sciences are often seen by the general public as a bit woolly there's not been an awful lot of publicised expert criticism in the same way, say, a government denying genetics in favour of LaMarckism would put angry biologists directly into every newspaper.

greenie_beans• 5 years ago

Curious to hear your opinion on why gender studies is a pointless degree? Other than you thinking it's "pointless", what is it about a gender studies degree that is pointless?

rexreed• 5 years ago

Doesn't it all depend what you want out of life? And is the hard work even guaranteed to provide you what you want out of life? Hard work, desired outcomes, and goals are not in alignment.

What's the point of this essay, to convince people who don't want to work hard to work hard? Is this meant to chastise people? Motivate? Demoralize? Self-congratulate?

borski9• 5 years ago

To identify that for people who succeed, hard work is often required, and most people aren’t born with the ability to do really hard work. That takes conscious effort and an uncanny ability to stay on task.

ADHD makes this hard, fwiw, and PG is not saying this mode is right for everyone. But I would agree with that idea: working hard isn’t natural, at least for some people, but it is a requirement for attaining success. If you’re going to work hard, it makes sense to do it on something you love. And there are people who thrive on hard work.

There are a bunch of prerequisites, some of which he explicitly states (find something you love, eg) and some implicit (sometimes you have to take the job you don’t like, because circumstances dictate that; families, eg).

But it certainly isn’t for everyone.

sidcool• 5 years ago

John Carmack read a draft of this.

ridruejo• 5 years ago

I noticed that too. I would love a podcast of them talking about any topic really

wantsanagent• 5 years ago

"Natural ability" is a cop-out and PG should know better. It'd be fine if this came with a disclaimer, "we don't know what natural ability is and the more we learn the more complex and diverse this umbrella term becomes." But taking it at face value is fuzzy thinking. It feels like this was included to hedge his bets.

The Polgar sisters(1) serve as evidence that while "natural ability" may be a thing it's even less important than you might imagine. Instead this and work like that of Ericsson(2) on the development of expertise point to repeatable environmental factors for success.

I look forward to a day when we can eliminate this phrase and replace it with measurable phenomena and repeatable processes.

(1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r

(2) - https://smile.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-Han...

mikewarot• 5 years ago

"Natural ability" is when your skills and interests happen to have a good impedance match with a problem to be solved.

jahewson• 5 years ago

That’s not what it means.

newacct5832• 5 years ago

Is anyone else distressed by pg's sudden turn to these sorts of para-culture-war issues? He's gotten increasingly anti-woke over the past year or two and it's starting to leak into sloppy argumentation like this.

In decades past, he'd discuss similar issues ("how to identify a good hacker", stuff like that), but the focus was on the talent and what it meant and how it worked. Now... suddenly this kind of genetic stratification is just a given? Not a good smell.

s53005• 5 years ago

Appears that he's having some sort of internal struggle/identity crisis the past few years that he can't come to terms with.

giantg236• 5 years ago

Hard work can be good, but only if you own a substantial capital interest in the company/result. But if you can hire people to do it for you, then you can reap the benefits and live a life worth living. If you are just part of the labor and not the capital, then there really isn't an incentive to work harder than necessary to keep you job or earn a measly raise.

If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in their 20s that they would be multi-millionaires or billionaires, then almost everyone would accept that position. The real world doesn't work that way and using statistical outliers like Gates is disingenuous to the discussion about hard work and how it applies to normal people.

PragmaticPulp7• 5 years ago

If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in their 20s that they would be millionaires or billionaires

Billionaire isn’t a realistic goal, but millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now. It doesn’t even require a FAANG job or living in a super expensive city any more, just wise job selection, a reasonable amount of financial savvy and budget adherence, and a deliberate effort to work on your career path.

You don’t need to own substantial equity in a company in your 20s to have a reason to work hard, as long as you’re doing work that builds your skill set, reputation, and network. Everything you do (or don’t do) has some impact on your persona capital over time.

Working hard in the mailroom or stocking shelves at a grocery store isn’t going to translate into a successful software career, but making an impact and helping people get things done at several companies through your 20s is the easiest way to build a strong network that opens doors in your 30s and beyond

necrotic_comp3• 5 years ago

And luck. Don't forget luck.

hashkb• 5 years ago

Not common. As in, strictly less than half.

minikites5• 5 years ago

just wise job selection, a reasonable amount of financial savvy and budget adherence, and a deliberate effort to work on your career path

The "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. You seem to be saying that privileged people become successful, which is kind of a tautology.

sidlls12• 5 years ago

millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now.

No, it's not. It's common for some FAANG engineers. It's not common at all for the industry as a whole.

Look at all these comments doubling-down on the "7%/$10k-per-year" arithmetic, as if the only thing that affects savings rates is knowledge of this basic math. For a data driven community there sure are a lot of people ignoring the data.

freewilly1040• 5 years ago

wise job selection

I.e. choosing companies that have (or eventually get) publicly traded stock that goes up a bunch.

There are whole classes of people who sit around all day trying to figure out which companies will grow and succeed and which ones won't. They aren't really that good at it.

There's a certain point of working hard enough to clear the interview bar of the FAANG companies or similar, but beyond that your financial success is largely tied to a favorable roll of the dice.

bko2• 5 years ago

Working hard in the mailroom or stocking shelves at a grocery store isn’t going to translate into a successful software career

Right, but it might lead to satisfaction regardless. Even the most menial positions are often rewarded. I have worked a few menial jobs, and effort is even more important. When I worked hard and went the extra mile when required, I got rewarded with better shifts, more flexibility and more respect. It also personally felt good.

I find that people who don't work hard and are apathetic about the work they do are often deeply unhappy, while people that take pride in their work and work hard are satisfied. The best feeling I get in the day is after a grueling workout. There are health benefits sure, but its not worth the amount of discomfort and suffering I have to endure. If there were a pill that gave me the same benefits, I would be less satisfied than putting in the work. But maybe that's just me.

People who work hard often have better personal circumstances as well. Who would want to be with a partner that just spends their life going through the motions with no real purpose or drive?

overtonwhy2• 5 years ago

Allow yourself to be exploited by capital in exchange for experience and you'll probably be rewarded later when you get to exploit inexperienced people? Sounds like a big risk for labor and a big win for capital.

giantg236• 5 years ago

I updated to multi-millionaire. The idea was that people would have enough money to quit their job and live very comfortably.

I think the network effect is highly overblown for the average person. Sure, networks can be good for the people in the top 10%, but I don't see it really helping most of us because what are the chances our average friends will be in a position to hire us to a high position.

I don't see an average developer being even a millionaire after a decade. Average salary is about $100k, but might be skewed due to the high cost areas. That's $1M before tax, living expenses, etc. Maybe you could hit $1M after 2 decades if lucky.

the_jeremy2• 5 years ago

just wise job selection, a reasonable amount of financial savvy and budget adherence, and a deliberate effort to work on your career path.

None of that requires working 12+ hours a day. I am one employee out of x,000 at my company. The difference between me giving 75% and me giving 150% (hours) seems very unlikely to affect the stock price in any meaningful way.

ryandrake2• 5 years ago

Working hard in the mailroom or stocking shelves at a grocery store isn’t going to translate into a successful software career

Equally, working hard as a software engineer isn't going to translate into the "uncapped salary" class of employment like CEO/CTO, VP, Founder, etc. There's a class ceiling where only a certain type of person gains entry. You can hard-work yourself to the bone writing code, but that "VP of Engineering" role is going to go to the external candidate who is already "VP of Engineering" somewhere else, and who has been some flavor of Director or VP his whole career. Jobs are a lot more class-stratified and career immobile than we like to think they are. This reminds me of a previous "hard work" discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27517158

lm28469• 5 years ago

but millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now.

lol, the world isn't limited to SF and FAANG.

Software developers are the new factory workers, becoming millionaire is far from "common"

coldtea2• 5 years ago

Billionaire isn’t a realistic goal, but millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now.

In some bubble yes. There are 10s of millions of software developers in the world, and hardly 1% of them is any kind of millionaire...

temp89642• 5 years ago

What you said is simply not true. There are countless people work on different positions in different fields are enjoying hard work as part of their life.

If you read the essay through, he never said "hard work == long hours of work". He explicitly wrote "Trying hard doesn't mean constantly pushing yourself to work, though."

papito3• 5 years ago

Do they enjoy it or do they THINK they enjoy it? Many people realize that they wasted their lives on being in the office after they retire.

This TED talk can be a revelation: https://www.ted.com/talks/bj_miller_what_really_matters_at_t...

And the Bill Gates thing? PLEASE. Yeah, I agree with the previous comment. A horrible example.

Bill Gates was one of the most lucky sons of bitches in the history of the planet. Born to wealthy parents, he was impossible to deal with, so they took him to a therapist (again, a lucky pick) that advised them to set Gates free. They put him in this prep school with other privileged kids, and like a meteor made of pure gold, by luck, it had a computer. Almost no schools had a computer at the time.

Hard work is only part of the equation. You have to be at the right place, at the right time. Most people never are.

Might as well read the next article on "Ten morning habits of billionaires". Luck. Is. A. Factor.

gmadsen3• 5 years ago

if you are actually doing software 12+ hours a day for a decade, I find it hard you wouldn't find great success.

unless you spend none of that time improving and just doing the same thing you learned in the first year, you will become an expert. Experts are well rewarded for their skills

giantg236• 5 years ago

My personal experience was that once I became an expert the company wouldn't promote me and then outsourced the team. It was obscure tech, so it was basically a dead end.

bluedino2• 5 years ago

Depends on if you're working on the next Twitter or plugging away at Java code as a corporate slave for an insurance company.

minikites5• 5 years ago

The real world doesn't work that way and using statistical outliers like Gates is disingenuous to the discussion about hard work and how it applies to normal people.

Exactly. This is the central lie that sustains capitalism. Wealthy C-level executives get rich when the rest of us work hard, which is why they harp on "working hard" so much. There's no reason to work hard when all the benefits go to the already-wealthy above you, which is why they try to obscure that fact in as many ways as possible.

xyzelement7• 5 years ago

// There's no reason to work hard when all the benefits go to the already-wealthy above you, which is why they try to obscure that fact in as many ways as possible

I have always been an employee and yet I am thrilled and thankful for the financial returns.

Looking around my neighborhood, the same is true for most folks around me.

There are not guarantees in life but if you have the combination of luck, skill and hard work, you can land in a place where you and employer are mutually benefited.

I am lucky enough that this has been the case for my 18 year career so far and not uncommon.

What you are saying on the other hand is a dead end. If you don't believe good employer/employee relationship is possible, you won't do your part and it will be a self fulfilling prophecy. I feel bad for people who think like this.

Honestly it reminds me of the incel movement. Someone somewhere owes you something and you have no agency on how it shapes out. I fundamentally disagree.

lupire5• 5 years ago

Jeff Bezos could bankrupt himself giving each of his current employees $200K (one time only, after 25+ years of work, not per year).

And that's by far the most extremely case.

You can argue that it's exploitative or that no one should be as rich as he is, but you can't say that working hard to do better for yourself as an employee is useless just because that small amount gets skimmed off.

reader_mode2• 5 years ago

If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in their 20s that they would be millionaires

In software development this is a realistic goal if you play your cards right. Plenty of other careers too.

I think there's also statistical data to support this as well (hours worked early on increasing your income and net worth down the line).

Working hard early on in your career does pay off.

xyzelement7• 5 years ago

You got downvoted not because you are wrong but because you are right.

Some people would rather hear they have no power and no chance because it takes away the bad feeling for their own agency in their situation. Others are empowered by their agency and act on it.

Thank you for spreading the 2nd point of view.

giantg236• 5 years ago

I haven't seen it personally. I've done everything "right" in life and I still get screwed 10 ways.

Do you have any links to the data you mention?

luffapi29• 5 years ago

As someone who has gone from being poor to being upper middle class via the tech industry, I can say without exception hard work had nothing to do with it. Every quantum leap in my career came from convincing some rich guy to allow me to bask in the mist of the cash firehose being directed at them.

I would say working hard is actually negatively associated with success. Once you get branded a “worker bee”, your chances for high level advancement quickly bottom out.

If you really want to get ahead go to the right parties. The VP no one can ever get a hold of is making an order of magnitude more money then the middle manager putting in 80 hours a week. That person will correctly have been identified by the execs as not belonging to the upper class.

That being said, once you see how the game is played it can be hard to stomach. It is reality though.

Aunche• 5 years ago

Working 12+ hours a day isn't necessarily working hard. It may be physically and mentally draining, but people can do that by just grinding rather than challenging yourself. Working hard is more about the relentless drive towards self improvement rather than your economic output.

xyzelement7• 5 years ago

I think you are using a narrow definition of hard work.

Doing "actual work" is hard. Figuring out what your business is and who you need to hire is also hard work. Hard in a different ways but perhaps also harder in that fewer people are capable of doing it and it's less obvious.

brobdingnagians• 5 years ago

I think this is a great argument for a decentralized economy for creatives (and anyone else who wants it). Society would be more productive. People would see the products of their effort, share in the rewards. Even if the rewards are small it is still nice to see a direct effect between your work and the results.

throwaway8943458• 5 years ago

then you can reap the benefits and live a life worth living

I wish we could make the "inequality" point without resorting to hyperbole like this. The median American lives a life that is the envy of 99.9% percent of people who have ever walked this earth including most monarchs and emperors, and certainly >90% of people alive today.

I do agree that something needs to be done to keep inequality in check; I just happen to think that hyperbole and dishonesty create more problems than they solve.

giantg236• 5 years ago

"create more problems than they solve."

Like what? Or was this ironic use of your own hyperbole?

luffapi29• 5 years ago

I really don’t think 99.9% of people want to pay 1K /month for health insurance or be a missed paycheck away from living on the street. Americans make a lot of money but the cost of living is through the roof and there is practically no safety net. That’s not even touching on our complete lack of social and family support structures.

tut-urut-utut• 5 years ago

Entirely agree.

Instead of worshipping hard work, maybe we should be promoting "smart work". As a society, we don't need a bunch of overworked and burnt out people in their late twenties. That's not good for anyone.

foobarbazetc• 5 years ago

To add to this: there are people who earn minimum wage doing what some might call menial jobs (or 3 jobs back to back) and they work 10x harder than the average startup programmer or founder.

They might not have gone to school at all. Or they might have a PhD from country most Americans couldn't find on a map but still end up cleaning the offices of startups.

okprod• 5 years ago

then there really isn't an incentive to work harder than necessary to keep you job or earn a measly raise.

Some people just like working hard, regardless of the financial incentives/disincentives.

__MatrixMan__• 5 years ago

I think that hard work is also good if you're working towards an outcome that isn't money/ownership.

In my experience the zero sum nature of those things tends to make it harder to be intrinsically motivated towards the work.

Spooky23• 5 years ago

Working hard is an attitude, not just hours. The Gates example is more approachable as we’ve all heard of them.

I’ll use myself as an example both ways. You don’t know who I am, and you never will, I’m just a cog in the wheels of society. I was a shitty student, always interested in whatever wasn’t being taught. I became good at working the system instead of working.

When I started working in high school at farms and later in sales, it clicked that the people who worked harder and did a better job… did better. That didn’t always mean money, but it meant respect, better shifts, etc. It was more real to me than academics.

Later on in my professional life, working really hard and delivering more, whatever more was, paid off in innumerable ways. It turns out the way to know what you’re talking about is to do stuff. Now I’m a midcareer director level person and that hard work means when I pick up the phone, someone answers. When there’s a problem or a solution, people listen.

That said, there’s lines I won’t or can’t cross. I won’t sacrifice my family’s life, which is a career ceiling. My mediocre performance as a student effectively locked me out of high end schools and the jobs that follow.

extr• 5 years ago

I accepted a job at a startup not too long ago. They offered a pretty good salary, but no equity. Shame on me for not doing better research. As soon as I got in the role, they made it clear they expected 70 hours a week, oh and by the way, the CEO is really excited about the prospect of selling the company, and how rich he's going to get. He's going to mention potential valuations all the time, and he's also "really depending on me" to shape up core business functions to make the company sale-ready. LOL! Fuck that, I left within 3 months.

vlunkr• 5 years ago

I guess it depends on what we're calling "hard work". I think most software devs have already done lots of different types of hard work to get where they are. Going to school, doing intern work, finding a job and learning new languages, etc. It gets easier once you've established a career, but it takes significant work to get there.

But if we're defining it as "working lots of hours," then yeah, I agree, don't do that.

throwaway98797• 5 years ago

I wonder if how to work hard is best answered by the inverse.

How to not work hard?

1. Work on things of little importance to yourself

2. Pretend that you dont need to work hard and that’s for suckers.

3. Work on things that don’t require your talents

… more?

andy_ppp• 5 years ago

There's different things to consider I think than just finding something that you can work as hard as possible on. I think Tom Blomfield's story is worth hearing about, it sounds like he found being CEO really anxiety inducing even if clearly he was very successful at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP2_QOCrVO4&ab_channel=TheDi...

unklefolk2• 5 years ago

Regarding the "work hard in your 20s" advice.

I took the approach that in your 20s you are still forming, still growing, still malleable. The experiences you have in your 20s will have a disproportionate effect on the kind of person you end up being. Therefore, you have to think about what environment, what experiences you want to foster that growth in. I would suggest optimizing for variety and new experiences is a better idea that working 80 hours weeks throughout your 20s. In your 20s, don't just work hard, work hard at becoming the person you want to be.

Forge36• 5 years ago

Work hard at learning?

unklefolk2• 5 years ago

Yes. And "learning" shouldn't just be measured in PhDs or being an expert at one thing. I think the "work hard" advice can be interpreted as "focussed, tunnel vision, excelling in one area to the exclusion of everything else" when there is great benefit of aiming for a wider range of experiences in your 20s.

ChrisMarshallNY• 5 years ago

Good advice.

The issue, of course, is that we seldom have the luxury of this, unless we are willing to make sacrifices, or do a heck of a lot of extracurricular work.

In my own development, I never had the advantage of a fancy sheepskin, so I wasn't really paid that much, compared to a lot of folks, and my employers didn't have much of an issue, when it came to throwing me at experimental stuff. It wasn't much of a risk, for them.

Meant that I learned a lot. I was also given a disproportionate amount of architectural responsibility. I learned how to design systems, and complete stuff, early in my career.

But it also meant that I have spent my entire career, looking up a lot of noses. I've usually been a "n00b," in most of my endeavors, and geeks tend to treat neophytes pretty badly (maybe because of all the atomic wedgies we got in grade school?). It drove me to do a much higher-quality job than what might have been considered acceptable. I developed a "screw you, I'll show you" attitude, and I've habitually produced highly-polished work, from the very beginning[0].

Didn't always win me friends. No one likes it when the chav kid shows up the toffs (but the bosses liked it, and really, they were the ones that mattered).

I'd say that the humility taught by that treatment was as valuable as the book-larnin'. It forced me to solve my own problems, find information, develop a thick skin, and not rely on "magic answers from the sky." I was never able to throw the problem over the fence, so someone else could address it. I always had to clean up my own messes.

I also practiced a very good team ethic, with a great deal of kindness towards teammates that were struggling or being marginalized. I figured out how to support and mentor people without making it seem as if that was what I was doing (the trick is to lead by example). I used the cruelty that I experienced from other geeks, and from awful managers, as an antipattern, in my own dealings with others. I think it helped me to be a fairly good manager.

It's always a very good idea to help out folks that are not that high in the food chain. They are likely to return the favor, sooner or later, and they often have their fingers on the real pulse of things. They can be quite helpful.

It hasn't been that much fun, and I haven't lived high on the hog.

But I am pretty good at what I do, and, in this phase of my life, it's paid off in spades.

When I saw the title, and who wrote it, I said to myself "This should be fun."

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/TF30194/TF30194-Manual-1987.pdf (Downloads a PDF of my first-ever engineering project)

disruptthelaw• 5 years ago

It’s always a trade off and there’s no right answer for everyone. I spent my twenties roughly as you advise, and i definitely grew and learned from it. But some of my counterparts focused on career and have achieved more on that front and have been able to have more freedom in their thirties as a result. It’s not obvious that either path is better. There is no optimal

sjm• 5 years ago

I love this advice. I started working remotely in my 20s and negotiated to work 4 days a week, while traveling the world and deciding where I wanted to call home. I'd never trade that time spent growing up and finding myself, learning about other cultures and places, for any level of start-up monetary success.

Everyone is different and obviously has different priorities, ambitions, ideas of success, but that time spent not working my ass off has made me a more well-rounded person and I believe has contributed to a different kind of success and confidence now in my 30s.

s53005• 5 years ago

Oh PG. You're so damn loathsome

adamnemecek• 5 years ago

Working hard is relatively easier if you care about the work.

ottoflux• 5 years ago

or, you know, work hard when it's work time and take a life balance. your company isn't going to come to raise your children (if you have them) when you die, nor are they going to live a happy life for you.

we have to stop thinking exploiting ourselves for someone else's gain makes us a better person.

i'm not saying the author says the opposite, but i think in any discussion of hard work we need to bring up balance. a good part of Bill Gates success was the money infusion from his friends and a wildly asymmetrical deal with IBM and the writer of DOS on the other side.

if we don't take a more nuanced approach we are (intentionally or not) perpetuating the myth of sacrificing your life for your company. i did that with my 20s and a chunk of my 30s. would not recommend. live your life, you only get one trip through and sometimes the body doesn't hold up well enough to keep enjoying all the things you love.

_Nat_4• 5 years ago

It'd be nice if articles about some common term, e.g. "work hard", would start out with a clear definition.

sidlls12• 5 years ago

That would mean putting effort ("working hard") at understanding something outside one's own thought bubble.

PG's essays are exercises in narcissism and confirmation bias: they're the last place to go to for the kind of wisdom you suggest.

_Nat_4• 5 years ago

Admittedly I'm a puzzled by the quality-level of these posts.

A lot of stuff, like the lack of formatting and HTTPS, give off an antique feel, almost like a signal that they're not meant to be taken seriously. Ditto for the over-the-top arrogant tone and relatively sparse content.

I might be off-base on this, but I sometimes wonder if these articles aren't like a honey-pot for non-serious YCombinator applicants. Like maybe people who resonate with these articles are flagged as non-serious applicants, to better focus the pool? Maybe we're all looking a little silly for commenting here at all, rather than moving on with our days and being more productive?

nkotov• 5 years ago

I started to work full time during the summers at 15 in IT - doing easy tasks like imaging laptops and setting up desktops for teachers my local school district. My friends would spend their time with video games, hanging out, etc. At the end of the summer, I asked if I could work part time after school for the district so that I don't have gaps on my resume. When I got out of high school, I technically already had several years of experience and I just started to apply for jobs instead of going to college. I hit over a decade of "professional" experience by the time I was 25.

Do I regret working hard during those early years? Definitely not. It shaped me to be what I am today. I believe you should live your life that way you want to live it. You can't achieve great things by doing mediocre amount of work. Figure out where you are content with life and live it without regret of "what could have been".

dahart2• 5 years ago

This only barely glances the number one way I’ve found to work hard: to work for yourself. Working on things other people want is, for me, more difficult than working on things I want. Working at someone else’s company is more difficult than working at my company. With my own company, when things were going relatively well, it was easy to spend every waking minute working. At other companies, putting in overtime is more draining, especially if the reasons for it are because things are late or something broke. I’ve put in a lot of overtime in my life, I tend to work hard, but there’s really no comparison between hard work with a boss and hard work as the boss.

borski9• 5 years ago

I echo this completely. One is invigorating, even when it’s tiring, and the other feels like slow death.

tonyedgecombe3• 5 years ago

It's the old joke isn't it. A boss is out with one of his employees when they see a Ferrari drive past. The boss turns to his employee and says if you put in the hours and work really hard then one day I'll be able to afford one of those.

SlapperKoala3• 5 years ago

In my experience "working for yourself" means in practice "working for your clients." You still need an external party willing to give you money for your work. And they will have requirements about how it is done and when it is delivered that you won't necessarily like

dahart2• 5 years ago

Very true, being the boss is no panacea in terms of having to do work, it’s usually more work. But the intrinsic motivations really are very different when you are the one on the hook, when you decide which clients to take on, when you are building the company or deciding the dev or research directions, when you decide what happens with the revenue. I mean, for me anyway, but I know it’s true for at least some others too since many books have been written about this. It’s one of the reasons that a mentality of ownership is advocated even when you’re not the boss.

username904• 5 years ago

The difference is that you have multiple clients but only one boss. So saying no to a client doesn't mean you lose all your business, but not wanting to do what your boss tells you to means you need to change to a new job.

Alex3917• 5 years ago

And since you can't really change how much natural talent you have, in practice doing great work, insofar as you can, reduces to working very hard.

Only a few people will have the right body type to be great at any given sport, but a lot will have the right body type to be great at at least one sport. E.g. if you don't have the right body type for basketball, you might have the perfect body type for ski jumping or whatever.

jeffwass• 5 years ago

“ There's a faint xor between talent and hard work.”

I love this techie yet insightful quote.

PaulDavisThe1st• 5 years ago

Long, Hard, Smart - pick 2 out of 3.

SMAAART• 5 years ago

I second this. Each and every time I met someone who lives by the motto "I work smart not hard" or a version of that, they ended up being lazy, or stupid, or - most often - both.

We live in a world where the "average" is actually very high, so working hard, really gets us right around average; in order to break that barrier, in order to be >1 standard deviation from mean, we need to work hard and smart; and the road to >2 standard deviation is brutally hard.

endisneigh• 5 years ago

I hate the whole "hard work," but not "long hours" sort of discussion. Basically, if you work hard, but not long and succeed, then your hard work was "valid", if you work "long hours", which by some definition is "hard work" but don't succeed then it was just "long hours" and not "hard work."

In other words, as long as you succeed whatever work you did is considered "hard work" or "working smart", etc. etc.

a0-prw• 5 years ago

This is absolutely insane XD I had so much fun and got into so much trouble in my late teens and twenties. I would be weeping into my scrooge money if I had worked like this essay advocates. I've also always had enough money and I've always had a little more than enough fun.

antiterra3• 5 years ago

Reading about Bill Gates not taking a day off in his 20s doesn’t inspire me to work harder at all. If anything, it’s a miscalculation on Gates’s part, assuming he’d actually enjoy a day off. Would he have been materially less successful if he took a single day off in his 20s? Probably not. How about a week, or a week a year? Two weeks?

Gatsky3• 5 years ago

I don't think this is it - he is an obsessive person. He was working that hard because he wanted to. I mean look at him now, he isn't exactly playing golf or swanning about on yachts.

antiterra3• 5 years ago

I meant to allow for that with the ‘assuming he’d actually enjoy a day off’ caveat, but even so, there’s this, from Walter Isaacson:

“Every spring, as they have for more than a decade, Gates spends a long weekend with Winblad at her beach cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where they ride dune buggies, hang-glide and walk on the beach.”

Yachts? How about this:

https://moneyinc.com/a-closer-look-at-serene-the-330-million...

He also does play golf, is a member of Augusta National, and, apparently, has been living at a golf resort for months.

rdiddly• 5 years ago

Good point. Gates isn't really even a good example because luck and happenstance played a big role. Possibly it's the same to some degree for most "outliers." People seem to minimize the effect of chance when writing how-to's, probably because "be lucky" isn't helpful advice, luck isn't something you control, and in some cases they might want to believe they themselves had a bigger role in their success than they did. Although hard work seems to be table stakes nonetheless.

helen___keller3• 5 years ago

When I was an undergrad at CMU, I learned how to work hard. Really hard. After having coasted through too-easy high school, I spent all day every day at CMU either programming, doing mathematics, or thinking about one of those things (to great effect: often the trick to prove a theorem would pop into my head while showering or while taking a walk). I would fall asleep while programming in the middle of the night, dream about programming, then wake up and continue programming just where I left off.

One thing from this essay really stuck out to me:

The most basic level of which is simply to feel you should be working without anyone telling you to. Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off.

One thing that always happened at the end of a semester is we'd have a few days after exams but before flights back home. On these days I'd typically try playing a video game (my hobby before college) and every time I would stop playing after just an hour with deep feeling of unease at the pit of my stomach. "Alarm bells" is exactly how I would describe it - a feeling at the core of my psyche that I have been wasting time and there must be something productive I should be doing or thinking about.

Years later, having tackled anxiety problems that had plagued me most of my life, I came to recognize that my relationship with hard work during my college years was not healthy and that this deep seated desire to do more work is not a positive thing, at least not for me.

I've since reformed my ambitions, instead of looking to start a company or get a PhD in mathematics, I've decided that hard work is not the love of my life and instead I should focus on my hobbies while looking for a career path that can be simultaneously fulfilling but laid back.

bradlys4• 5 years ago

I’ve heard this same mentality from many people who went to rigorous colleges or had a rigorous college experience. (It isn’t just prestigious schools that are like this - choose the wrong major at particular public schools and your life can be just as difficult)

I’m of the same opinion. I still don’t know how to enjoy just existing - even small pleasures can be hard to do unless I think there is some kind of “work” aspect to it. Video games need progression or bragging rights, hobbies need skills that will make me better at something, and simple pleasures must be only to get me back onto the progression track. Recharging must be to get me back in the game and working hard again. Etc… I was overtuned in college to always be working on something because if I didn’t, I was going to flunk out. (Yay for bad professors and academia that cherishes weeding people out than growing what they have)

I despise the way college trains people. Feels like capitalism training 101.

rakejake• 5 years ago

This was exactly my experience except Masters instead of Bachelors. I had this feeling that I mostly coasted during my bachelors, only putting any effort the week before Finals or Unit Tests. I did my Masters in EE from a university renowned for being a tough program. I was up for the challenge, doing exactly what you did: thinking math all the time, feeling like I was wasting time any moment I was not in front of my books.

I have the exact same problems you mentioned: not being able to just be, always anxious to be doing something productive, can't bring myself to watch a movie unless the movie was an all-time classic and "worth wasting time on".

The pandemic, weirdly enough, brought me back down to Earth. I faced some real mental lows but now I am able to relax more. Time management and deep work a few hours a day goes a lot further than just fretting about being productive all the time. I still have a lot of work to do, and I still don't think I've fulfilled my potential but posts like yours have definitely helped me re-calibrate my expectations.

Thank you very much.

ska6• 5 years ago

Fwiw CMU undergrad CS has a similar reputation.

There are university programs where you can coast through a degree, and others where doing that will at best leave you at the back of the pack.

It can be fun to be in a program where everyone is pushing hard but it can also be very stressful and not healthy for everyone who tries it. It is possible to live the rest of your life like that, but the vast majority of people I know who have tried it, aren't happy. The exceptions are outliers in several ways.

didip• 5 years ago

Yup, I reached the same conclusion. We even had that same "sick on the stomach" feel after playing video games.

I used to carry "working 80-90 hours/week" like a badge of honor. I was such a fool.

There are smart ways in making money that doesn't simultaneously reduce my lifespan.

user22• 5 years ago

Thanks for writing this. What you wrote describes me perfectly with the exception of the redemption at the end.

ambicapter• 5 years ago

"My heart is in the work" indeed.

lovecg4• 5 years ago

If you read his footnote, he’s talking about how these alarm bells go off on the order of days, not hours, and how taking vacations is good.

helen___keller3• 5 years ago

Thanks for pointing this out.

While I fundamentally believe I experienced the phenomenon PG writes about, there's something to be said about the scale of it. Taking a sufficiently generous interpretation of his essay, an admirable goal for self-growth is not to work hard all the time but to develop the self-discipline to work hard when you intend to be working (with the restraint to not be working when you intend to not be working, and the internal clock to help you schedule the two at whatever the correct balance is for your life).

Perhaps as a life goal as I enter my 30s, I should endeavor to revisit my love for mathematics and computer science (as opposed my work-life-balanced but frankly boring current career path), using both the restraint and discipline I've learned, so to not make the mistakes I made in my early 20s.

After leaving the work-always atmosphere of CMU, I moved in with my then-girlfriend (now-wife) and committed to working exactly 8 hours every day to keep work from taking over again. Trying to cram all the ambition and passion for work I once had into 8 hours of junior dev work basically turned me into a soup of anxiety, inferiority, and resentment[0] for some time. I thought I was wasting my career, after trying so hard in college. It took years to reorient my priorities (and also to reach a position that was a bit less meaningless than tech support for Matlab).

I think nowadays I could do better. Maybe next time a hip startup emails me with a job opportunity, I'll give them a call ;) thanks

[0] Anxious to try and find ways to work harder and achieve more in a bland corporate environment where the build system was more of an obstacle than the actual project, inferiority compared to the success that some of my still-overworked friends were experiencing in silicon valley (with opportunities I didn't have in Boston), and even occasional resentment towards my girlfriend, for whom I had chosen to restrain myself to 8 hours of work a day, because I felt I could do such great things without that limitation.

atty• 5 years ago

I had the exact same issue in my undergrad. I was suffering from pretty severe anxiety/depression during highs school, to the point where I dropped out in my junior year. I started “thriving” in my undergrad, if by thriving you mean busy and getting good grades, and my anxiety was much reduced. But the reason it was reduced was because I was going to school full time and working 40+ hours a week and I simply didn’t have time to stop and think. Whenever I had a vacation, or significant time off, I had extreme anxiety, to the point of panic attacks, about not getting anything “important” done.

Ultimately the overwork gave me a chronic neck injury that forced me to have quite a bit of time off work, and over the years I have become very happy with myself, to the point where I can sit and do nothing, be alone with my own thoughts, for days without the anxiety and self-loathing entering my mind at all. I’m not sure when exactly the switch flipped, but it made me a much better person. And I am much happier with myself, my life situation, and my work.

nonbirithm2• 5 years ago

I feel the same. I can hardly sit through an entire two-hour movie or play a video game without feeling like I should be doing something else. I cannot feel good about myself if I cannot sense that I'm making progress learning a skill, and am stuck for hours looking down at a blank page as a result.

But what's dangerous for me is that this alarm system does not trigger consistently. I might spend too much time on HN, for example, because my impression is that HN is a place to have intellectual discoveries. I might spend too much time on YouTube because I can't think of anything else to do. Ironically there is a wealth of knowledge contained in some games that would be more worthwhile than a bunch of highlights on YouTube, but YouTube is just too easy to go back to.

When I work on some of my programming projects, I come out with the feeling that I'm just using the act of constantly working on them as an excuse to not have to worry about the fact that my life outside of them is one-dimensional and currently stagnating. I work way too hard on such non-work projects and burn out only to stop and instead spend weeks anxious that because I'm not doing anything, I am not growing as a person. I still believe this is true; I don't think I am much different from the me of two years ago, except that I've made some progress on programming projects.

But it's weird because I enjoy programming. I think it is because I enjoy programming so much that I become blinded to things that I should have seen as more important. I think I am already good enough at programming to not need much more to learn, and am only applying the skills that I happen to have built up for years.

But when I turn back to the other hobbies I always told myself I wanted to spend my life doing, all I find is a void of interest, and I ultimately accomplish little.

I also believe this was a result of how I was raised and the coping mechanisms my upbringing/college ingrained in me.

iancmceachern• 5 years ago

Me too. I've been actively working to do the opposite. To build my outside of work life, give it priority and give myself the permission to have it be the main focus of life and stop running from the bear all the time.

rustyboy2• 5 years ago

Your description here, and others, eerily match my own angst with 'being productive'. As someone who has spent covid traveling the States in an RV i've come to realize that I don't know what I really like doing that's not work (for example I enjoy, but have no deep passion for, outdoors recreation). Instead I spend hours aggressively reading and writing reviews on books because that feeling, 'being productive' is the only somewhat satisfying feeling in my life.

Have you had any luck adjusting your thinking or finding other joys in life?

yonaguska• 5 years ago

I try to have hobbies outside of programming that still feel productive, either due to a social, health, or simply intellectual aspect.

BJJ hits all three for me.

devchix2• 5 years ago

I can hardly sit through an entire two-hour movie or play a video game without feeling like I should be doing something else.

One summer we rented a beach house, I had delusions of lazing on the beach under a big umbrella, drinks, books, dogs, netflix, music, a endless orgy of entertainment and sunny weather. I went stir-crazy in about half a day, there's only so much lazing about I can do, after 2 movies I thought meh, I'm wasting this day. I envy the people who say they're going on vacation and do nothing for a week, two weeks even. I can't seem to do that, and I don't know whether that's something intrinsic to who I am, or that's a toxic thought pattern I need to get rid of. When I'm back at home and at work I am so busy I have a tendency say "I wish I had some more time to unwind" a lot.

At the present, I'm trying to have focused and purposeful idle time. With intent, sit through a movie, read something, play a game, whatever, for a chunk of time, or deliberately do nothing at all. The last one is very hard for me, I don't think I've managed 15 minutes of it.

WalterSear7• 5 years ago

This is me. Though I didn't just learn this in my upbringing - I feel like my entire working life has been one of false promises and dehumanization, that has left me unable to enjoy anything.

I'm 47 now, have worked at 6 failed startups in a row, and can't face work, or looking for a job. I used to blame social media and hacker news, but I now recognize that too much delayed gratification and overwork have had a much greater effect.

At this point, I can't work, and can't not work. I do a lot of sitting quietly, with my mind almost empty of thought. All the processes and systems I have used in the past to overcome this are failing me. I feel exploited, betrayed and overwhelmed by alienation; genuinely broken.

catwind7• 5 years ago

I can relate to a lot of this. One thing I learned about myself recently is that I tend to default to programming because it practically guarantees that I'll feel good (dopamine from making things work, fixing bugs). Since I don't have many other hobbies that guarantee similar reward, there's not much of an incentive for me to do anything different whenever I'm feeling antsy about sitting around and not feeling productive.

one thing I've been doing with the help of some therapy recently that's somewhat helping is scheduling time (1 hour) to NOT program. No expectation of actually doing anything and accepting any uneasy feelings that arise. Just making sure that I make the time to tune in to feelings / thoughts without the option of picking up my computer as a sort of pacifier.

first time I did this, I just sat nervously for 30 minutes until I got bored and then looked for problems around my house to fix (which took 2 hours and was pretty satisfying). After a few rounds of this I noticed myself acting on small, non-programming interests outside my scheduled times.

just figured I shared in case others are feeling same and want something to try :)

tekkk• 5 years ago

Really well written, thanks. It's interesting to read how others have faced and are facing the same problems. I've found it's a question of comfort and social environment that pushes you regularly to do things you'd not normally do and forcing you to set aside the whatever programming or other "self-improvement" you were planning to do.

It's not necessarily a bad thing if you can diversify your targets of learning to multiple areas that are not as solitaire as programming. Music, anything with performing and socializing is great. Gym or a physical sport - very important. It doesn't have to be just programming. And I at least am more happy after having practiced music than having just played video games.

But I grant that even with multiple hobbies one still sits well inside their own bubble and it isn't really a life-altering experience to practice music instead of coding some npm library. What one needs is social connection to satisfy the basic primal desire for one's own tribe. It's weird how we are hard-wired like that, but if one stays alone inside programming something "useful" it does not really tick the boxes our biology craves.

In any way, my point is - do I have a point? Well, the problem is basically how to rewire our brains to react to certain input in a way we find the most pleasing. We all can't be rich, beautiful and famous so one should do with what they got. If chatting with friends makes you more happy than programming inside maybe you should focus on nurturing that. Not being content is a good start for development. I think some people really try to fool themselves to believe their current reality is 'ok' while in fact they are not happy. I guess taking responsibility for changing things is too much and they rather just forget they even had a chance.

v3np• 5 years ago

I don't have anything substantial to add to the discussion beyond another data point: I also relate to the feeling of wanting to be 'productive' most of the time and not really enjoying pure leisure time. I recently spent 2 weeks working remotely from a nice location in Italy and definitely would've enjoyed the time less if I couldn't have also worked from there. I also enjoy hobbies/free-time less when I believe it ultimately doesn't lead myself to becoming the person I want to be.

On the one hand, I think this is only natural if you are an ambitious person (this desire is imho exactly one of the things that allow a person to achieve ambitious feats); on the other hand, I am definitely struggling with finding enjoyable, non-work activities that recharge me.

brudgers• 5 years ago

I might spend too much time on HN

Maybe it is evidence of an interest in writing. I am pretty sure that is the case with me. There is no place more likely to produce quick direct and possibly thoughtful feedback.

Writing for pleasure is a thing that is hard to accept as worthwhile. It costs our lives. Hours we will never get back for imaginary internet points.

But…oops I did it again as they sing.

3vidence• 5 years ago

Really appreciate you saying this because it matches the way I'm feeling exactly.

I grew up poor, achieving and being productive made me stand out. Went to a good university got a job at FAANG and feel pretty empty, unable to relax because it feels unproductive, spend time working on side projects I don't care about because it feels productive.

fm2606• 5 years ago

This is pretty much me as well. Some things you touch on are definitely me while others not so much but I can relate to them none the less.

My interests are so varied and I can get bored so easily on anyone of them that nothing seems to ever get done, if I start on them at all.

But then at work everyone is super pleased with what I do. Little do they know that some days are much harder than others to do good work.

fragmede3• 5 years ago

I also believe this was a result of how I was raised and the coping mechanisms my upbringing/college ingrained in me.

It probably is. You deserve the chance to know. Wether it be through therapy, an ayahuasca ceremony, months long backpacking trip in a foreign country or nature to find yourself - whatever floats your boat - you're worth the effort. Dig deep into your psyche and unwrap the trauma that makes up your personality. You'll live better for it. Framed under capitalism, if a month off helps you better realize your potential, such that you earn twice as much money the next year, then the month off pays for itself in a year.

erisinger2• 5 years ago

I was the exact same way in college. I remember saying to a professor one time that whenever I was inside studying hard I would look out the window and say, "What am I doing? I should be outside in nature, enjoying the beauty of the world for the short time I have here." But when I would go outside, I would immediately say, "What am I doing? I should be inside studying so I can make something of myself and contribute to the world!"

No matter what choice I made, some other choice always seemed like the mature decision, and I was perpetually stuck in either a childish pursuit of good grades on paper, or a childish avoidance of work while I frolicked outside. I just couldn't win.

caymanjim4• 5 years ago

I'm closer to retirement age than the beginning of my career. Some of my age peer friends are already retired, and many of them could be if they wanted to. It's not even on the radar for me. I'm a bit envious, as I'd love the freedom to be done for life, and to be able to take or leave work as I please.

The flipside is that I've taken a lot of time off along the way. I've taken whole years off between many jobs, I've traveled a lot, and I've spent a lot of time just doing nothing. I have some minor regrets about not making better use of my time between jobs, but I don't have regrets about taking the time off. I would have gone insane if I had worked nonstop for 20-30 years, only taking a couple weeks of vacation a year.

If I were really passionate about the work--especially if I'd launched my own business--I might not have felt burnt out or wanted time off. But I never wanted to bust my ass just for the sake of working hard, or for some nebulous future goal (although that future is now my present). If health or something else prevents me from enjoying life as much in the future, at least I've got memories of the past.

CobrastanJorji• 5 years ago

You remind me of a coworker I had four a couple of years. He and his wife were both extremely competent and well-compensated programmers. Their lifestyle was basically "work for two years or so, save up a bunch of money, then quit and wander the world doing whatever they liked until the money ran out, repeat." I've thought about them several times. Some part of me is really, really uncomfortable intentionally living off of my savings for a prolonged period, but I also sometimes wonder if they haven't figured out something important that I haven't.

mumblemumble2• 5 years ago

Every personality has its problematic characteristics. I think that one of the more problematic, even toxic, ones shared by many Type A personalities is a need to try and make other people feel bad for not themselves being sufficiently neurotic.

(I realize the Type A/Type B personality theory is largely crap. I'm just using it here as a useful shorthand that many people will recognize.)

That paragraph the quote came from makes me feel kind of sad. It prompted me to mentally re-frame PG's life, not as one that is defined by material success, but one that is defined by near constant anxiety. The material success is apparently just a by-product of that anxiety.

On the other hand, at least he gets to have some excess material comfort to take the edge off a bit? I imagine things would be much harder for him if he had fallen into the presumable silent majority of people sharing the same kinds of productivity-oriented anxieties who haven't been so lucky in their business dealings.

On the other hand, maybe it doesn't work that way. Maybe it just raises the bar, so that your future accomplishments have to be even more spectacular before you're able to see them as genuine accomplishments. Which sounds to me like a bleak existence. A bit like that of an addict who's forever chasing the dragon.

xupybd• 5 years ago

It is possible that he is fueled by an anxious drive. Even probable, but there are a small group of people that find meaning in what they do. When the work towards that they get a buzz that is insatiable.

graeme• 5 years ago

I saw PG speak once. He didn’t strike me as the anxious type. And I do not think it was polish: he is a good speaker, but he also seems like the type of speaker who would be exactly the same after the speech.

It felt more like he was….excited. Like in a childlike way, in a positive sense. That’s how I’ve interpreted stuff like the paragraph you cited: he is like a big kid excited about his work and does not want to waste time getting distracted from it. The same way a kid might acutely have a sense of boredom if not doing what they thought was important. The key here is PG really seems to find meaningful work fun.

I’ve known anxious types and they’re all rather different. Beset by doubts among other things.

NalNezumi• 5 years ago

For me the similar thing was when I started to read HN, 3 years ago.

It wasn't until 3 month before graduation, when a guy at the lab that I admired suggested HN and all the hustle culture and the background stories of successes was available first hand, that I started to get truly anxious about the time I felt like I wasted/ was wasting during college. Playing games are really hard now, so is watching movies. My list of movies or clips that I'm supposed to see on downtime is filled with daunting "productive" materials.

Also created the bad habit of quitting (job) when I feel like I'm stuck or "not growing/improving" due stress. The mentality of having to "constantly be productive" also caused strain in my personal relationships.

layoutIfNeeded• 5 years ago

Frankly, all of this sounds pretty miserable.

RandomLensman• 5 years ago

This idea that work is required(!) and that rewards of it should not be wasted can be traced to some religious roots, for example. This view on work ethics has been given rise to interesting theory more than 100 years ago in the birth of economic sociology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...

Deeznutz93• 5 years ago

I also went to CMU and had a similar experience. I got into programming because of my love for video games and ended up thinking they were a waste of time. A few years after graduation, my friends tricked me into going to a PC cafe (telling me it was a hip bar) and I rediscovered my love for gaming.

xputer• 5 years ago

Very similar experience for me. I have a hard time spending time on hobbies at the moment, because it feels like I should put that time towards my PhD instead of "wasting my time and energy". Yet, I somehow have no problem spending hours every day on reddit, YouTube, hacker news etc. because I think I tricked my mind into believing that those things don't cost energy so it's ok. Unfortunately they don't really bring joy and fulfilment the same way hobbies do.

I think the real problem for me is that the work of my PhD is never fully done until I've defended and submitted my thesis. It means that even though I definitely don't get even close to doing 40 hours of actual work per week, it feels like I am working all the time, which is exhausting. It's bad feeling like you are not supposed to take a break and wind down. It's probably why people burn out all the time...

sjg0075• 5 years ago

I would just block those websites from your devices. They are a trap. The illusion of progress or social connection for karma.

beambot• 5 years ago

The most impactful activities I pursued during my PhD had absolutely no bearing on my research itself.

Here's one example: I created a robotics blog where I wrote about some of the new, interesting developments in the field that piqued my interest. It ballooned into one of the top 3 robotics websites on the web. I felt guilty about it for a long time... until I realized that the blog had a bigger impact & reach than any of my research -- I was known in the community; articles were cited on Wikipedia and in Congressional testimonies; and it established my credibility.

There are at least a half-dozen similar examples -- including just pursuing random intellectual curiosities. What really helped me come to terms with this is "Structured Procrastination":

http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

As long as you're doing & not just consuming, you will probably find value.

ska6• 5 years ago

This is absolutely a common feeling in PhD programs - I think partially because it is a transition out of structured programs and a more nuanced idea of "done". I wouldn't beat yourself up about it, part of the process is learning for yourself how to deal with finding the right balance of focus and exploration.

tylerscott2• 5 years ago

Years later, having tackled anxiety problems that had plagued me most of my life, I came to recognize that my relationship with hard work during my college years was not healthy and that this deep seated desire to do more work is not a positive thing, at least not for me.

This resonates with me.

I would often try to outwork depression, anxiety, grief...basically any difficult emotion. Work was my coping mechanism and all external signals were positive about that--i.e., "he's a real go-getter." The pathology of all this became apparent after, well, becoming a parent.

Fast forward to now, I still sometimes struggle with those "alarm bells" but for the most part I can solidly state that I am not defined solely by my productivity. Contentment is an active practice, I suppose.

agumonkey• 5 years ago

I had a similar realization. My inner desire had weird bits of fear and narcissism at its core. When that side of me cracked the desire to perform vanished. I did do some math after that (mostly to asses brain damage after health issues): i could do some new stuff, and did enjoy it.. but something changed, there need to be solid reasons: either aesthetical (a sudden epiphany that I need to study topology) or social for me to go into workhorse mode.

Another thing is that I also realized that crushing is not progressing.. so very often I understood things without any effort, what it took is for my brain to accept an idea more than anything else.. so I stopped forcing things, I simply walk around ideas and let things come and go.

All in all.. I also believe that is simply biology talking.. when young all you care is being the best, with age your focus spreads over other people (SO, kids, family)

Tycho6• 5 years ago

Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions here but there seems to be something obvious that you and others in this thread are overlooking: not all leisure activities are created equal. Some nourish the soul or the body, some are spiritual deserts.

Video games are in the latter category. Of course you’re going to feel bad about spending your time on them. But you could instead read a classic novel, play a sport, play some music, converse with friends, keep in touch with family, etc., any of which will help you develop as an individual in dimensions that will simply not happen otherwise. They connect you with the rich tapestry of life and human society.

Nursie6• 5 years ago

This is an outdated view, computer games are a cultural vehicle like others. They can even connect you with a rich tapestry of human life.

pnexk• 5 years ago

You're getting repeatedly downvoted but I think you have a point here that could have been articulated with less snobbery.

There's many folks here who grew up on videogames and most likely find it to have been a vehicle for meaningful experiences that are to some extent comparable to some of the things you've listed (for example, often videogames have social dimensions to them where lifelong connections are made).

I find you more agreeable with your emphasis on artistic value however towards developing a person. While it is true videogames are an artistic medium as well, the vast breadth of human art and knowledge/ wisdom lie in more established mediums that have been around for longer such as literature and music.

Videogames certainly have the potential to provide artistic value that is comparable to this long accumulated pile, but this is no easy task, pleasure and relaxation aside.

darkwizard42• 5 years ago

As someone who also did their undergrad at CMU, I can confirm that it was the hardest I've ever worked (even considering my 10+ years of professional experience). It was burnout level with how many units you had to carry and how difficult some of the advanced math and CS classes became.

We used to sit in the Tepper Faculty Lounge (always unlocked = free coffee) many nights from 10 PM - 4 AM to merely crank out a 6-question problem set...as a group.

I find that I can still get into the mode of "hard work" that CMU instilled but I also find myself generally disinterested in getting into a world where that becomes my life again...it was fun, but tiring, and I don't need to be tired/worn out to have fun anymore!

granshaw• 5 years ago

Yeah I went to a not-at-that-level-but-still-rigorous state school, and one of my first impressions of my internships and out-of-college jobs was... "WOW I get to get paid to code, and no homework? I can spend my evenings+weekends however I want!?"

Was a really lovely feeling :)

ska6• 5 years ago

Part of what makes programs like this work (there aren't a large number, but CMU is hardly alone) is the fact that it's a fixed time to create a pressure box in.

I know of an undergrad double honors program that was unreasonably proud of the fact that after inception it took something like a dozen (maybe fifteen?) years before anyone actually graduated from it; everyone dropped one or the other half to lighten the load. Trying to pitch something to almost-but-not-quite break you only works when there is a finish line.

tomrod2• 5 years ago

I feel you.

I think I was lucky in a way. I had my first experience with vertigo while working 80+ hour weeks for several years. In my dizziness I couldn't see my computer or cell phone screen to email or text my boss to let him know.

I was down for several days, literally only able to lie in bed and breathe. It was then that it dawned on me that if I died right then, I sure would miss a few things I'd been neglecting or putting off in life.

Vertigo has not returned yet (may it never!). It was a catalyst to a lot of meaningful change in my life.

Hobbies can be a very useful endeavor. So can volunteer work. I've been intrigued to learn more about the Civilian Air Patrol (US based, CAP) and how they help during disasters. Also fun to go up in planes and take pictures, either for training or in consequence of supporting disasters. They have more they do as well, but these things are fascinating to me. There are thousands of organizations with these kinds of opportunities.

You're not alone. Good luck in your hunt for meaning beyond output!

breadzeppelin__• 5 years ago

is it anxiety? I don't have a single hobby at this point that doesn't involve learning new stuff or having to work as part of it. I've totally stopped watching movies for enjoyment or playing video games because it feels so "unproductive"

markus_zhang6• 5 years ago

I spent all day every day at CMU either programming, doing mathematics, or thinking about one of those things (to great effect: often the trick to prove a theorem would pop into my head while showering or while taking a walk). I would fall asleep while programming in the middle of the night, dream about programming, then wake up and continue programming just where I left off.

This is such a great experience. I wish I could study at CMU on-site and experience all this. I'm an old horse still kicking :P

I've since reformed my ambitions, instead of looking to start a company or get a PhD in mathematics, I've decided that hard work is not the love of my life and instead I should focus on my hobbies while looking for a career path that can be simultaneously fulfilling but laid back.

Glad that you figure it out. Guess the study burned you out :(

helen___keller3• 5 years ago

This is such a great experience. I wish I could study at CMU on-site and experience all this. I'm an old horse still kicking :P

In truth, it was a great experience, it was just also the worst experience of my life. It's a little tough to explain but, in the end it comes down to personal expectations and mental health.

I often miss the work itself. A single problem set at CMU felt more interesting, impactful, and substantial than a multiple months-long project at a corporate job. Professors typically give you starter code that's ready to start working on "the meat" of the problem - here's a C++ project that loads a 3d geometry and renders it but the key function in rendering isn't implemented. Now go write a raytracer. Now go write a typechecker. Implement "malloc". Take this efficient sequential algorithm and design a parallel version that's provably more efficient, and implement it in functional code.

The big problem is that the pacing was brutal and inescapable and for many - such as myself - failure was not an option. When you don't get to sleep on sundays, wednesdays, and thursdays, every single week for a few months, all while dealing with the anxiety that maybe doing your best still isn't going to be good enough, you start to daydream that maybe you'll get hit by a car finally have an excuse to take a break.

rootusrootus• 5 years ago

I've since reformed my ambitions, instead of looking to start a company or get a PhD in mathematics, I've decided that hard work is not the love of my life

I 100% agree. Having just finished my masters (a bit later in life, I'm in my 40s now), I have concluded that I have exactly zero interest in pursuing any further formal education. I just don't have enough f*cks left to give for that.

But I do dream of starting my own company. But maybe it will stay a dream. And even if I realize it, I'm talking about a lifestyle business and not an attempted unicorn.

Kharvok• 5 years ago

I currently experience this. Every moment of downtime the last 4 years is plagued with these alarm bells that I'm not properly using my time. That I should be working on something productive. This even extends to avoiding home improvement projects because a more efficient usage of my time would be to continue to work on work/side software projects.

abhinavsharma3• 5 years ago

Having been through CMU and YC, I think while this piece makes sense for the average person, for someone who's been to CMU it's very easy to read this with a re-traumatizing reaction of stop-glorifying-working-to-the-bone.

CMU and YC were maybe the 2 hardest working environments I've been in, but CMU SCS was just plain more hours of staying awake, more implicit peer pressure, less mature peer support systems (mostly from being younger) in the median case of a class/batch.

You can get by (with a huge cost, as evidenced by the semi-regularity of suicide when I was there) with that intensity solving finite problems in semesters that come to an end but not tempering that attitude and knowing when to take strategic breaks in the infinite game that business is can really do harm.

CMU is a weird place, the kids that get in are very smart but often have their inferiority complex relative to say MIT or Stanford, which coupled with the uncompromising academics makes them work insanely, often unsustainably hard. I loved it there, but I'm very glad I had a training in balance going in.

abhinavsharma3• 5 years ago

I also bet that anyone who went to CMU will read this essay and go "duh, why did he spent this much time writing this obvious stuff"

AnimalMuppet6• 5 years ago

I didn't go to CMU. But to me, as I read this essay, that was balanced by the "quit when you're too tired to do your best work". That's not working-to-the-bone. That's working hard, and then stopping.

Now, someone who went to CMU may be too traumatized to hear that, but PG did say that...

jwuphysics• 5 years ago

I had exactly the same reaction, and I also went to CMU for undergrad (not SCS though). However I found that it didn't translate to long-term productivity during my PhD program, when I needed to think about my career goals 5 years in the future. There I needed to focus on sustainable work ethic and working "smarter" rather than "harder" -- for example, okay I got an A in my quantum field theory class, but who cares? Other students who took easier courses but were able to start writing papers probably got ahead in the long run.

an_opabinia2• 5 years ago

On these days I'd typically try playing a video game (my hobby before college)… wasting time… hard work was not healthy

It sounds like playing video games was your medicine, and denying it from yourself traded “wasting time” for something worse, like bad anxiety, which you don’t have to get into.

It’s obnoxious that the Paul Graham culture targets video games. The alternative medicine is always worse.

Of course, what he’s omitting isn’t some nuanced take on what is and is not wasting time. He’s omitting that he doesn’t give a fuck about hard work that isn’t about making money.

dharmaturtle• 5 years ago

Do you think he writes essays to make money?

maerF0x02• 5 years ago

I would fall asleep while programming in the middle of the night, dream about programming, then wake up and continue programming just where I left off.

This was almost always the case for me in group projects as we'd invariably do a waterfally style project management and each person would be 1 day late turning my 7 day window into 3... And worse yet usually what I got handed was crap and I'd just have to rewrite the project keeping only the barest clues of their work in place.

Not that much has changed 20 yrs later in my career.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

I did this, ended up at MIT due to work ethic, and thankfully ended up having a number of kids who are akin to a vector field with locally negative divergence (for these feelings).

There are always things to clean up from the chaos, and so much more meaningful than if I were doing it fit myself.

huachimingo• 5 years ago

Read Byung-Chul Han, he has some insights on this.

sn41• 5 years ago

Thank you for this suggestion. As an Asian, I have always found the American fetish for "passion for work" disconcerting. My passion is for poetry and grammar. Unfortunately, in Asia, you really can't feed your family on this. Your career is distinctly "what you are forced to do". So it is a sense of duty and self-sacrifice that forces me to work, and I would gladly avoid any unnecessary bullshit work and virtue signalling, so that I can read fiction and poetry.

brnt• 5 years ago

The protestant work ethic: it's a real thing, and it makes real victims.

skadamat• 5 years ago

I like Cal Newport's Deep Life framework here a bunch, highly recommend everyone check it out:

https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2020/04/20/cultivating-a-dee...

He has these alliterative buckets, like Craft, Community, Contemplation, and Constitution. Everyone's priority stack is different but generally speaking ... all humans need a bit of each.

ONLY craft ('work') isn't enough for a deep life!

jonmb• 5 years ago

a feeling at the core of my psyche that I have been wasting time and there must be something productive I should be doing or thinking about.

It's a little bit of relief to hear that others have experienced this issue. I've had this feeling when playing a video game, reading a book, watching a movie, etc. As if a part of my mind has trained itself to believe that the only worthwhile pursuit must be "productive" in some way. I've had to teach/remind myself often that it's healthy to relax, so keep playing. I think it's starting to sink in over time. :)

kovek• 5 years ago

Coding to sleep, dreaming of code, and waking up to coding - I burned out on that… I wonder how you did it

musicale• 5 years ago

this deep seated desire to do more work is not a positive thing

This, 100%. I got trapped in a work loop for several months this past year and am slowly recovering from it.

One of the most important rules for sustainable productivity that doesn't damage your health is having hard limits for the amount of time you spend working. It's very tough, especially when there are deadlines and other people encouraging you to exceed safe limits.

rasen58• 5 years ago

How do you motivate yourself to work hard if you feel like you're distracted and want to be lazy all the time?

matakozapanya• 5 years ago

find it hard to take life advice from some dude who got lucky in the dotcom, has done nothing of note since and actively supports sexist, racist people as "he's not a bad guy".

Find it even harder to take seriously a treatise on "work hard" when the underlying message is "make ME wealth, bitch ".

Paul can go fuck himself.

bloqs4• 5 years ago

No PG you are presenting speculative opinion as fact. Conscientiousness is a measured and well documented personality trait, it is also formed around age six. It also happens to be social in its construction.

Software engineers typically report lower than average Conscientiousness, because the more complex the task, the less it has an impact. It's also negatively correlated with IQ.

Suggesting it is a choice is demonstrably wrong. It is environmentally learned by the age of roughly 6.

bobobob4203• 5 years ago

Why do I have such low conscientiousness?

bloqs4• 5 years ago

Your childhood can be key. Your username makes me think you like to play with mind bending drugs that directly interfere with prefrontal cortical motivation.

tonyedgecombe3• 5 years ago

It's also negatively correlated with IQ.

That's surprising, I wonder why.

DoreenMichele• 5 years ago

Among other things, bright kids are often not challenged in school. Many of them learn to coast and not be too troublesome and do what little they have to do to hit the check marks the adults around them require while secretly pursuing some means to quietly also meet their own needs.

They can end up feeling like school work is pointless and like "a monkey could do this."

AnimalMuppet6• 5 years ago

Even if true, do you think that you are trapped by that? Personally, I think that you can choose to cultivate more conscientiousness, whether or not you have that as a personality trait. (This is true of other traits, too. You can also choose to cultivate, say, honesty. Or kindness.)

bloqs4• 5 years ago

Conscienciousness is the easiest dimension to change over time with incremental intervention, so yes. Trauma can also change personality, but either way you wont go from bottom 1th percentile to top 99th without the task consuming your life.

tgtweak• 5 years ago

This rhetoric furthered by Elon, Jack Ma and several others where working 7 days a week for 18 hours is "ideal" and that rest and relaxation are had at the expense of productivity/success is a real dangerous position.

You know what happens to the majority of people when they get to a state of anxiety when relaxing and not working? Stress and burnout.

Let's acknowledge that it may have been the path to success for SOME of the 0.1% who can work 18 hours a day nonstop for a decade with extreme natural ability and a fair amount of chance (confirmation bias aside) and not the end-all of being successful that everyone should strive for. Yes, there is certainly a correlation between working hard and being successful - regardless of your natural ability. Don't do it at the expense of living.

Take it to the extreme: what happens when EVERYONE works that hard? You're back at your normal level of relative productivity.

wtetzner• 5 years ago

Yeah, that's the thing. It can be good to work hard, but not necessarily long hours, or long stretches without breaks. I never feel more productive than when I just got back from a vacation.

cherrycherry98• 5 years ago

Some people do enjoy their work and can be said to live for it. Marissa Mayer had an interesting take that burnout wasn't necessarily about working too much but resentment that they'd rather be spending more time on something else (like family). To paraphrase a similar view someone once told me: there's no such thing as work/life balance, it's all just life.

That being said I think it's easier to live to work if you feel that your efforts are going to yield greater results. Putting time into study to get good grades and learn new skills, anticipating that this will yield better job opportunities? Sure! Working long hours on my startup that is taking off and could make me rich? Great! Having to work long hours and skip vacations to finish a project in a salaried corporate job? That'll burn you out because you're not directly benefitting from the sacrifice, which probably leads to some resentment towards your employer.

SlapperKoala3• 5 years ago

SOME of the 0.1% who can work 18 hours a day nonstop for a decade with extreme natural ability

I'm sceptical of whether they actually exist as described tbh. There's an obvious incentive for rich business people to emphasize the amount of work they put in, and I've not seen any independent verification of their supposedly high output

heavyset_go3• 5 years ago

Yeah, get back to me when someone is willing to put those claims to the most minimal of tests. It should be as simple as verifying claims of breatharianism, and the video evidence should be as entertaining, too.

dgb232• 5 years ago

This is discussed in the article closer to the end, when it explains the balancing act of continuously recognizing the difference of productive, interesting work and tired, harmful work for the sake of work and showing off.

PG also uses himself as an example of how the type of work can impact actual productive hours: about 5 for programming/engineering and almost a full day for coordination and communication.

bobobob4203• 5 years ago

This article is hot garbage and so is much else Paul writes. The comments were 10x better than the crap written in this article like seriously? You should write a motivation book too.

david9273• 5 years ago

This falls into the Malcolm Gladwell genre of arguments made on top of specious anecdotal data. Paul's not wrong, per se, but it's not a well-formed argument.

Bill Gates made his fortune by being in the right place at the right time with connections from his wealthy family, and software that he first sold and then went out and bought. If hard work helped him grow his empire, great, but I wouldn't use him as a great example of what hard work can bring you.

PG Wodehouse is considered by most to be a great "fun commercial fiction" writer. Comparing him to, say, Joyce, says more about Paul than about either of these writers.

For me, I prefer this quote by Calvin Coolidge: "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

shmageggy• 5 years ago

This falls into the Malcolm Gladwell genre of arguments made on top of specious anecdotal data. Paul's not wrong, per se, but it's not a well-formed argument.

That pretty much describes anything that he writes on his blog.

david9273• 5 years ago

Carrots are good for you. I had a friend who ate a carrots as a kid. He's a doctor now.

I wouldn't have even written my comment but this was just a big talking point after Gladwell's 10,000 hours book a few years ago (which also speciously and strangely used Bill Gates as an example of effort).

That Coolidge quote is 100 years old. I like us talking about things but let's endeavor to make it new things.

lanstin6• 5 years ago

And I think a strong argument can be made that if Bill Gates had taken a little time to look at the big picture in his early days, Microsoft might have had a more positive effect on the world, rather than become a company that valued crushing opponents over technical quality or real innovation. Imagine the quality of Linux with 10% of the money of Microsoft.

username904• 5 years ago

Or the fair play might have meant Microsoft would never have surpassed Intel so we would have no big corporation making hardware decoupled OS.

david9273• 5 years ago

Another strong argument is that, if you showed the place where Bill Gates actually worked hard, it was in crushing every single competitor in sight in such vicious terms that not only did those competitors shut down but none sprang up in their absence. Those small competitors were often wildly innovative. That all went away.

One often-cited reason why Europe did so well in the last half millennium, when it was far behind the Islamic world and the Far East, was not just the printing press but also that the various powers had reached a detente. There was not a single dominating, controlling power, and this spurred innovation.

Anyway, this whole argument Paul is proffering here is because people, especially the youngest generation, are seeing behind the curtain and realizing that their sweat drives the engines, and yet they're not benefiting from that the same way the wealthiest are. They're not going to "hustle" for a remote shot at millions. It's a crooked game and they don't want to play it. Good for them.

justinator2• 5 years ago

It's very shocking to read this and not even mention how supportive the privilege of starting out wealthy is. Hard work looks different if there's no where to go up or out.

throwawaygh• 5 years ago

Hard work looks different if there's no where to go

The essay assumes a lot about who the reader is and the type of work they're doing. This perspective on work is obviously utterly alien to a single parent who's a dental assistant, part-time wait staff, has two young kids, and is barely making ends meet. But that person works a hell of a lot harder than any startup founder I've ever met. For them, the answer to "how to do hard work" is simpler: remember your kids starve and go homeless if you don't. Then, get up, go to work, and do what you're told. Continue until you have enough to pay the rent, buy food, and pay the baby sitters. Remember how lucky you are to have a roof and food. Repeat.

On one hand, I understand exactly what PG is saying -- the sort of work that requires high productivity without anyone telling you to work feels way harder than straight forward wage labor. There's a reason people drop out of phd programs and intentionally seek out specifically boring & predictable engineering/sales jobs (see: the post from the cmu undergrad).

On the other hand, I completely understand how the idea that autonomy and ownership over your own labor makes work harder -- and bragging about working 7 days a week for two whole years -- must seem incredibly tone-deaf to someone who has no choice but to do long days for 7 days a week under abusive management for 18+ years, only to get a reprieve of merely working 8-10 hour days for the 25-30 years after the kids are grown up and move away.

But PG isn't writing to that audience. The primary audience for many of his essays are people like him: guys who grew up geeky in upper middle class suburbs. There's nothing wrong with writing for the audience, but he does a kind-of bad job at signposting the fact that his advice is utterly irrelevant to the 50+% of the population that never have the opportunity to invest in themselves.

justinator2• 5 years ago

If that's his audience, perhaps a better essay would be, "Look you've got it pretty easy in life already, don't blow it (and even if you do, you'll probably have a second/third/fourth chance)", not: "listen to me about how to work hard because I know", because I haven't been convinced that he knows.

No need for navel grazing.

magicloop• 5 years ago

"I never took a day off in my twenties" (Bill Gates) quote is a misnomer because what Bill Gates considers a day-off is something where you are just lying around doing nothing, such as lying on the beach. A two week sojourn into a set of books that interested him were not considered "days off". He did such activities yearly.

Bill Gates wasn't in the office working a 7 day schedule for his entire 20s. So that is not the impression we should get from the quote at all. His productive time away has merit, and I have followed that attitude to reading myself, and recommend it to others.

It would have been better if he had said "I never wasted a day in my twenties" which I think would be more accurate.

anthony_r• 5 years ago

He got a lot of speeding tickets, look up the famous old mugshots. That's not something easy to obtain from inside an office.

The man knew how to party, even if not too much :)

pydry• 5 years ago

Bill Gates wants to be the hero of his own story.

He's not going to claim that his success was the result of a few bets that paid off in spectacular fashion, strongarming OEMs and mommy being buddies with the CEO of IBM.

It's going to be hard work, spectacular insight, old fashioned grit, persistence in the face of adversity, etc. - all the things Hollywood slavishly worships with either a clichéd montage or a poignant scene. It's how our culture frames laudable and justified success - of course it's how he will tell his story.

Bill Gates more than most billionaires really wants to be seen as the hero, as a good guy. His charitable giving demonstrates just how much.

Joeri• 5 years ago

Well, who doesn’t want to be seen as the hero in their own story?

What I suspect is that it’s a case of “all of the above”. Yes, gates got lucky, but he was also talented, and he worked hard. To be an outlier you have to defy the odds, and luck, talent and grit are different ways of defying.

HWR_14• 5 years ago

Whereas Bezos goes the other way. He wants to claim that he was lucky at Amazon, not that he foresaw the chokehold he would be able to put suppliers in, built a company that encouraged people to burn out and ruthlessly pushed employees and partners.

There's always a blend of work, intelligence and luck that goes into success, so it's nice to have anyone emphasizing luck. But it's definitely supposed to distract from how he kept long term deferring returns on investment to go all tentacley into every business line.

(I should point out that however hard he pushed his employees, he seems to compensate them for it. If you worked in one of his warehouses from the jump his RSU-distributions would have netted you enough for a downpayment.)

moosey• 5 years ago

There is widespread statistical evidence that wealth is gained through luck. I imagine though that every billionaire thinks they are the one that got there through hard work.

ip26• 5 years ago

In a competitive field full of people working hard, luck isn't enough to win. Neither is working hard. You need both.

So when you look back, you can genuinely say you worked very hard, at least as hard as anybody else. Because it's true. It's just not the whole story.

jmrm• 5 years ago

Every time we read or hear that quote, we have to remember that Gates also lose and win a lot of money playing poker in university, so there was also time for non-work related tasks :-)

pauldickwin2• 5 years ago

Poker can be considered work. If you actually truly learn to play it, it teaches you a lot about people, emotions, thinking ahead several steps, probability, and risk and reward.

geocar2• 5 years ago

He was also the multi-millionaire son of a multi-millionaire at this point.

I think if that's you, then maybe his advice will help you, but if it's not you, it will probably just be confusing.

whoomp12342• 5 years ago

AMAF, this is wildly a stupid idea. Tired devs write tired codes

pauldickwin2• 5 years ago

Except that Bill Gates and people of that type don't get tired from it. They get energized.

sergiomattei4• 5 years ago

As someone in their early twenties struggling with burnout post startup failure, these bullshit hustle tropes NEED to end (like the Bill Gates quote).

I'm going to go against everything I was told and say: don't work hard in your early twenties, don't kill yourself over your work, don't fill your life with anxiety.

Phrases like "I wish I was like you in my youth" or keeping young people rolling in their hamster wheels just encourage the worst kind of personality damage in these developing years.

It is bullshit, it is harmful. Stop encouraging the young towards handing away their lives in a silver platter.

noduerme• 5 years ago

PG has turned a good profit selling the same pile of bullshit to two generations of CS grads and wannabe entrepeneurs now. I always thought the subtext was "and if you're really lucky, I can be your mentor/investor/boss and tell you why you're not trying hard enough." Nice to see he's still hustling too.

It always struck me as selfish, pompous and sanctimonious all at the same time.

He silently banned me from this site in 2012 for saying roughly the same thing - basically just made anything I posted invisible to 99% of others, so, yeah. Work harder, slaves!

[edit/addendum] The ban was never told to me. It was a hell ban apparently decided without consultation b/c he felt insulted. So for years I would post stuff and not know why almost no one saw it. Sneaky. As a sysadmin I wouldn't do that. Meanwhile, all his pseudo-self-help motivational speeches added up to one thing: Gaining authority and power over kids who were desperate to get a tiny bit of backing for a great idea. Money played a big role and everyone supposedly knew what they signed up for, but the personal power dynamic and control issues have always been near the surface. PG fronted as the ultimate "angel", but his interest in making money let alone helping anyone always appeared to take a backseat to having power to manipulate children's emotions and form a cult of personality to pander to him and sing his praises. All HN is essentially an outgrown version of his ego.

You have it right. Don't fall for this crap. It's just another iteration of the old company line, retreaded for the renter/gig generation - work hard til you retire, hope for a cash injection, then die early please. Nothing wrong with hard work, but you're right, it's better to spend your 20s living life. And question the source. [/edit /rant]

xwdv• 5 years ago

I gotta be honest, I hate working hard. At least for money anyway. I hate the amount of time and mindshare it takes and the way it's looked up to as some virtue by the rest of society; the hallmark of some truly good person.

I'm sure there will be knee jerk reactions to downvote this just because of how programmed it is into society that hard work is a noble endeavor, and perhaps it is, for a certain class of problems that humanity occasionally faces where there is no easy way to solve them except by working hard. But making money and living a good life should not be one of those problems.

You really don't know how pointless it is to work hard until you make easy money. It's not uncommon for my investment portfolio to have a gain or loss of $20-30k in a day, I've made over $200k in the past two months, not really doing anything. My job itself pays close to $200k a year, but I justify working it by the fact that it's fairly easy and really I only put in about 4 hours of solid work per day.

I feel fairly secure in not being a very ambitious person anymore. I used to be, back when I was young and hopeful and immersed in the whole startup scene with hopes of making it big and changing the world for the better. But no startup I was ever part of ever made it big. Worse, as I got to know the world I didn't see the point in trying to change it. It is what it is and that's all it will ever be.

So yea, I've accepted I'm not one of those people destined to save the world through hard work. Instead I'm here to savor the fruits of their hard labor, and my goal now is to live as richly as possible with the least amount of effort. There is so much to enjoy in life and not enough time to enjoy it if you spend all your time working hard.

Nothing makes me feel as good as working smart, or even not working at all, and yet still producing the same amount of results as someone who has worked very hard. It is intoxicating, and knowing that others would be doing the same if I was working hard right now makes it very unappealing to work hard myself. I am cursed in that I will never be able to work hard again.

sydthrowaway• 5 years ago

What is your investment strategy?

WhompingWindows• 5 years ago

Yet another Paul Graham stream of consciousness. He presents a thesis but forgets to support it as he streams out another essay. I take issue with this fundamental thesis: "There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort."

He doesn't distinguish between practice and effort. In my view, practice takes effort and effort occurs during practice, they are two dimensions of the same thing, which is really just "experience." You don't gain experience without effortful practice.

Furthermore, where is his mention of accountability to a team? One of the greatest motivators is having helpful allies who tell you what they want from you, provide tips how to do it (leveraging their experience), and then give you the keys you need to work hard and get great things done.

Another lackluster article from PG that rockets to the top of HN within an hour. There are much better writers out there, I'm not sure why his work is so lauded.

richardwhiuk4• 5 years ago

Because this website is pretty much centered around people who read/liked PGs essays.

r0s• 5 years ago

Yet another Paul Graham stream of consciousness.

Absurd to expect anything else. I missed the part of the essay where it pretended to be... whatever you seem to think it should.

You're not sure why it's popular and here you are responding to it, attaching to it and reacting, building on it. It sounds like you did in fact get a lot out of the essay, just like the rest of the peanut gallery.

tim3333• 5 years ago

rockets to the top of HN within an hour

He gets extra credit on HN for creating HN

whatdidinust• 5 years ago

This article has more than quadrupled my existing opinion that the concept of hard work is largely a fabrication designed to show off to other people.

If anyone’s seriously read this article end to end and didn’t conclude: “Wow, Paul is really struggling to back this up.” You might be in junior high.

The reality is that inflation and monetary policy combined with degradation of schools means you have to play a completely different life game to succeed now. And “working hard” while being a waiter or bartender isn’t going to get you there.

Paul is really trying to avoid the fact that unless you are gaining extremely highly valued skills in the exact right industry at the exact right schools at the exact right time, working hard is a complete waste of time. And everyone can feel it at a gut level.

People know when their work isn’t going to be rewarded. And in this era, you won’t be rewarded 90% of the time for Most skills or most efforts.

kaladin_1• 5 years ago

Nice one!

While you might not always agree with Paul but his writing usually reflects something that has been deeply thought out. I can almost see a man walking and thinking...

Sr_developer2• 5 years ago

It was similar with Lionel Messi. He had great natural ability, but when his youth coaches talk about him, what they remember is not his talent but his dedication and his desire to win.

This is not true, everyone who knows even just a little bit about football (I suppose not many people here) would know Messi was the preternatural talent (not like he has not worked hard, but his talent is by far his biggest asset), it is C Ronaldo in any case who is a totally dedicated person to training.

You dont do this at 8-10 because you are a "hard-worker", you do it because you won the genetic lottery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j9POXpurPU

As always, the Gell-Mann amnesia effect in full effect.

ultrasounder2• 5 years ago

@senordeveloper Have You seen the training viedoes of Messi training with Barca and ARG? This guys trains like a maniac. CR7 IS a good counter-point to Messi's natural talent, but that doesnt take away the fact that the guys trains by practicing free-kics with a Robot Goalkeeper. Now enjoy Your time sink of the day; https://www.google.com/search?q=messi+robot+goalkeeper&rlz=1...

Sr_developer2• 5 years ago

You cannot bring a variety-show video and be expected to be taken seriously. Messi is not sloth, but he has never ever distinguished himself for being a training freak like Ronaldo, Zanetti,Batistuta, etc, if anything when younger (18-23) he was very undisciplined in some aspects of his training, for example he had a crappy diet and was kinda weak and injury prone.

nvarsj• 5 years ago

Has hard work burned anyone else out? I spent my 20s working my ass off as an employee, and while it helped my career a lot, I am completely burned out now. All that creative work and effort which didn't end up amounting to much personally. Maybe the caveat to working hard is you should work hard for yourself and not others.

somethingAlex• 5 years ago

I see a very common arch of "I want to achieve" -> "Okay, life is about more than that, I'm going to practice balance" in these comments. I have also gone through it.

Around 19-24 years old I was working like a dog and making some great career progress. That helped me today, like you said, but I'm now the happiest I've ever been by enjoying this fine summer and working when I feel like working.

I look back on those years and truly wish I saw the other things life has to offer at the time.

kcatskcolbdi• 5 years ago

No mention of the near slave labor in our agriculture system. No mention of the parents working two custodial jobs to provide for their children. No mention of the vast quantity of individuals working hard every day who don't get to become billionaires.

skapadia2• 5 years ago

Exactly. There are millions of people that work hard to provide their family a roof over their heads, food on the table, and a chance to go to school. Perhaps PG's article wasn't meant for those people, but it's so incredibly tone deaf.

rmah• 5 years ago

When I was younger, for some odd reason I thought it was important to convince people that hard work was important. But today, the more people I see commenting that "hard work" is essentially a scam -- or something to that effect -- the happier I become. It just means that there is less competition. Feel free to do your own thing, relax, skate along and enjoy life.

fchu• 5 years ago

There is something fascinating about this article, and it's not the tips about how to properly work hard, which aren't new or particularly insightful (otherwise reasonable and well summarized).

It's the fact that throughout the article, hard work is an implied imperative in life, the main thing to do (otherwise it brings a "feeling of disgust"), without questioning if that's healthy, right, or so absolute. Maybe instead of the how, I was expecting something about the why, a reflection on the bad aspects of working hard too, and its associated costs on other parts of one's life, whether it's Paul, Patrick or Bill.

pornel• 5 years ago

pg runs a business that depends on young people wanting to work their asses off for startups.

IMHO the real "why" of this article is attracting the right people for Y Combinator.

dang4• 5 years ago

pg hasn't been running Y Combinator for over 7 years!

You've got your causality reversed. It's not that this essay exists because of YC, it's that YC exists because PG is obsessed with the idea of doing great work. (There are other reasons too, of course, but that was one vector.) He was that way long before YC.

tyrex2017• 5 years ago

The question you address is much more difficult to answer, if not impossible.

I read the article with the preface: Lets suppose workimg hard is desirable. How to do this?

This is the correct reading for me

balfirevic• 5 years ago

It's the fact that throughout the article, hard work is an implied imperative in life

That would be strange, as PG doesn't seem to believe that: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1404321931491430403

imgabe• 5 years ago

You should work hard if there’s something important to you that you want to achieve. If there’s nothing that you particularly want to accomplish then there isn’t much point in working hard.

asimjalis• 5 years ago

I have noticed that “what I work on” is more significant than “how many hours I spend working”. You have to be pointing the right way, not just going fast.

arduinomancer• 5 years ago

I feel like a big part missing from this essay is “Why should you work hard?”

It seems to assume that working hard is a good thing.

Are these essays implicitly aimed at startup founders?

Because for the average engineer working hard doesn’t have much of a benefit.

Optimizing for interviews is much more important than hard work.

lovecg4• 5 years ago

I’m guessing you’re new to PG’s writing? His whole thing is drop out, do a startup, work for yourself, work hard.

CamelCaseName• 5 years ago

This is the trait that I have found in successful people around me:

The most basic level of which is simply to feel you should be working without anyone telling you to.
Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful.

How does one cultivate this feeling?

manacit• 5 years ago

Have an anxiety disorder and a fear of failure - you'll always be worried that by not working, you are going to fall behind or something bad is going to happen.

I say this partly tongue-in-cheek, but I don't think it's altogether incorrect. Having a compulsion to work to the level of 'alarm bells' going off doesn't sound like fun to me.

cm2012• 5 years ago

Eh, I don't know. I came from a lower middle class background, but am now top 1% for my age and income + I probably have more wealth at this stage of my life than PG did.

I love idleness and leisure. I only work to get more of it in the future. I do have a drive to do a job well, but not for the sake of achievement itself shudder.

The idea of saying at age 13 "I hate leisure activities, its not productive" is really unsettling to me.

lovecg4• 5 years ago

It’s just not written for you. There’s a small percentage of people with whom this attitude resonates. This essay is advice on how to harness these personal tendencies in an effective manner, so it’s natural that it seems foreign to you if you don’t have this deep seated need to not be idle.

jedberg2• 5 years ago

The one precisely dateable landmark I have is when I stopped watching TV, at age 13.

It frustrates me when people brag about this like it's a universally good thing. Imagine 100 years ago someone bragging that they stopped wasting time reading books.

It's especially frustrating to see PG do it given that he's an artist (or at least used to be), basically putting down another art form.

TV has good and bad things. TV can convey information. TV can be an art form, consumed passively like a painting. And TV can just be a mental escape, like reading a novel.

TV is not good or bad, it's how you spend your time watching it that matters.

extraduder_ire• 5 years ago

TV sucks, I don't think anybody should watch it when a better alternative is available. Radio too.

There might be good things shown on it occasionally, but there are better ways to get at them nowadays. Ways that don't require you to synchronize your watching with availability.

Main appeal I see in TV/radio is the constant live-ish stream of content, and more access to hard-to-license content than competing livestreams.

criddell• 5 years ago

These days I think watching TV means includes streaming and other types of on-demand services. I watch TV whenever I can and it's never synchronized with a broadcaster's schedule, except for sports.

ryanSrich2• 5 years ago

This is because the word "TV" is essentially useless. It means different things to so many different people, and often "TV" is the word people use when they want to be critical of entertainment.

I can't remember the last time I watched a TV show through a cable provider. But I can tell you the last time I watched a YouTube series.

I'm betting PG only sees one of those as "TV".

_xnmw2• 5 years ago

It frustrates me when people bring out the "it depends" card and because then you can't condemn anything. I condemn TV, as it is a waste of time for most people. More importantly, it is a waste of headspace and mental energy. Obviously this doesn't apply if your work is to be a filmmaker. But PG addresses this point well: if that is not your deep interest, then it's a waste of time. Most people don't watch TV out of deep interest and high motivation, except perhaps people like Christopher Nolan.

jedberg2• 5 years ago

More importantly, it is a waste of headspace and mental energy.

What do you do for fun? Whatever it is, it is probably a waste of headspace and mental energy.

Furthermore, there are documentaries on TV. They are a great way to learn new information.

Don't be so critical when you've clearly not given it due consideration.

edderly3• 5 years ago

I find the mentions of Messi, Newton, Mozart and Wodehouse bizarre. The essay is similar to Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour theory, whether you agree or not, at worst Gladwell is writing a journalistic think piece.

Here though, is Graham credibly putting himself in the same category as Mozart? Dropping a reference to Patrick Collison, who no one outside of tech would have a clue who that is in the same breath as you namedrop Newton?

renewiltord• 5 years ago

The better interpretation is:

“I’m a successful businessman. This is how I acted. So did these other successful business people. And as a matter of fact, some of the greats of history in other fields also acted like this. Put together, I think that this behavior is conducive to success (in the way I define it).”

Personally, I find it much more useful to go into each of these reads to find some piece of something I can incorporate into my life.

I don’t think it’s particularly useful to disparage the author. In this case, I don’t think he has a megalomaniacal belief in his legacy as a luminary, but even if he did, I trust my ability to extract information from what he writes.

There’s also a meta-discussion here. In human speech a common technique is to use X_j (j=1..n) diverse objects that each have k (k=1..m) characteristics Y={Y_jk} where for each j, there exists some k such that you can form a subset Z of Y which has the property that for any y_1, y_2 in Z, |m(y_1)-m(y_2)|<d, for some interesting measure of the characteristic m, and some small number d to illustrate an idea.

Usually, the idea is that the diversity in X_j resulting in this form of Z points to some commonality among the elements of Z. The idea is usually not that all Y_jk are in an equivalence class but that the subset Z is in a single equivalence class.

To put it more plainly through illustration: Messi, the fifty year old drunk Sunday leaguer, and I all choose to warm up before games to avoid injuries. This indicates that perhaps the warming up is a good idea. What it does not indicate is whether Messi, dad, and I are equivalent across all our characteristics. In fact, the interesting part is that we aren’t but that we share this.

pcbro1413• 5 years ago

There’s also a meta-discussion here. In human speech a common technique is to use X_j (j=1..n) diverse objects that each have k (k=1..m) characteristics Y={Y_jk} where for each j, there exists some k such that you can form a subset Z of Y which has the property that for any y_1, y_2 in Z, |m(y_1)-m(y_2)|<d, for some interesting measure of the characteristic m, and some small number d to illustrate an idea.
Usually, the idea is that the diversity in X_j resulting in this form of Z points to some commonality among the elements of Z. The idea is usually not that all Y_jk are in an equivalence class but that the subset Z is in a single equivalence class.

Never change, HN. Lol.

edderly3• 5 years ago

Unfortunately Graham provides no data or references to back up his claims that the iconic figures I mentioned worked hard or whether that was a factor.

My criticism is that there is a risk about putting yourself or your buddies (I assume Collison is one) in the same frame as people who are exceptionally notable. Hence I will give Gladwell a break as a journalist just bombastically making claims to entertain people because he is talking about other people.

MetaWhirledPeas3• 5 years ago

There's nothing wrong with drawing comparisons at different scales. If you're talking about how to accomplish something it's fine to talk about famous works as well as mundane works and everything in between. If you're seeing it as a measuring contest you're missing the point.

edderly3• 5 years ago

Sure, but I would expect enough self reflection to indicate a logarithmic scale is being used.

defnmacro• 5 years ago

My personal take is working hard is a precondition towards being successful but not necessarily a guarantee.

Lots of normal people work very hard, many normal people I know outside of tech are working night shifts and a day job to just sustain their lives. Many of these people rarely have a full day off, rather they might scale back the night job in order to get rest, or rest whenever their scheduling allows for it. There probably working just as hard as a Bill Gates, but these people aren't exactly walking towards a path of riches. They're just sustaining and it's a very unfortunate reality of America today.

Really success comes from the prerequisite of hard work, the aptitude of the individual in regards to the task, and the ability of the resulting work to pay off in convexity, similar to a call option in finance. Generally non-convex pay outs are also associated with risk, perhaps alot of it. So really success comes from working very hard, being smart about it and taking on risk.

aroundtown• 5 years ago

It is too common to see the well off capitalists extol the virtues of hard work, usually as a means unto itself, ignoring the reward.

They often say, you peasants could be like me if only you understood how to work hard, while completely ignoring the fact that not everybody is fairly compensated for their hard work.

I wish I was in such a good position that I could spend 5 hours a day writing about whatever self-indulgent topics I'm feeling while being able to pat myself on the back and call it a hard days work.

nineplay5• 5 years ago

One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation, I never traveled outside the UI, I took days off reluctantly with a vague feeling that I was letting someone down.

"Later", I told myself. When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels. Then I can take a break and have the adventures I want.

My in-laws confirmed this attitude for me - they retired in their 50s and traveled the world. What a great life goal!

Guess what, life happened. Health issues. I'm never going to travel the world. All that time in my 20s in 30s - I was healthy, I was happy, I was carefree, and I didn't appreciate it and threw all that time away sitting at a desk looking at a screen. Today, now, that's about the only thing I'm fit to do.

Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.

herodoturtle• 5 years ago

I never traveled outside the UI

Beautiful typo :-)

guhsnamih2• 5 years ago

And I outside the terminal!

bhupy6• 5 years ago

Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.

Isn't there an in-between? My wife and I both delay a little bit of gratification with the expectation that we'll have a better life in our mid-30's or early 40's. In other words, we're choosing not to live the life we want to have right now, because we're trading that off for a potentially better life X years from now (where in our case, X = 5-10 years).

X can be whatever you want, and it's up to individuals (or families) to decide that for themselves. But once you do, delayed gratification is an important social concept; as evidenced by the marshmallow test administered in children. For adults, "rejecting the marshmallow" can mean working a little harder in your '20s, so that you may get 2 marshmallows when you're in your '30s — which for a lot of people is important as that's the age when they have children.

tidydata3• 5 years ago

Having children means sharing your marshmallows. It’s also a lot easier to chase a kid in your 20s than your 30s. It’s also maturing, enjoyable, and spending time with them is the best part of the day.

Not something many people say about work! Maybe when the work is truly meaningful (I wouldn’t know).

The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful. Spending the prime years of your life slaving to a computer is something I think a lot of people will regret.

So, no, I won’t listen to PG. My most fulfilling work is being a dad.

nineplay5• 5 years ago

It's not about YOLO, it's about looking at your life though a lens besides "work,work,work,save,save,save"

When I was 25 I had the time and the money to take a couple of weeks off and travel. I wouldn't have stayed in the nicest hotels or eaten in fancy restaurants, but I could have done it. It would have had no negative impact on my career and my current financial status.

What kept me from doing it wasn't a careful look at my life goals and the cost/benefits ratio, but a mental model that stopped at "Work hard now and you'll be rewarded I promise"

I didn't see any accounting for that in PG's essay. "Great Men Work Hard And Succeed" is the only message I got.

meheleventyone5• 5 years ago

If you get used to looking 5-10 years ahead are you sure you'll stop and starting living that better life? Or will there just be more goals another 5-10 years ahead?

I lost a whole bunch of friends in my 30s and nearly died myself a few weeks ago. Later on doesn't arrive for everyone.

I don't think that means you should never delay gratification but just don't put all your eggs in the future basket.

MetaWhirledPeas3• 5 years ago

Did you read the whole essay? He writes about finding out what's important. That doesn't have to mean (and probably doesn't mean) some mindless job. He also talks about constantly re-evaluating what the correct time commitment is for the given work, and that it's not the same for everyone nor for every task. Bill Gates not taking a vacation day wasn't trying to communicate that we all should be this way; it was evidence of the fact that big success requires hard work.

True he doesn't talk much about leisure and retirement, because that's not what this essay is about.

dgb232• 5 years ago

Your resonse is valid and interesting, even moreso without the first sentence!

I think one thing that could be added is that the metric of success is not necessarily monetary. Financial success often depends more on socioeconomic conditions, rather than hard work. But intrinsic satisfaction seems to be based on truly earned achievement.

samstave• 5 years ago

SAME exact experience. I wish I wouldnt have been so driven in my 20s/30s.

I made many millions *for other people* -- and as luck would have it, I left several companies a month or so before big aquisitions.

SI spent years as a consultant, where I was brought in to focus on a specific project and get-it-built - so I never got stock in those companies - just had a high paying hourly rate... which obviously life happens, and all the material bullshit I acquired meant nothing and is now all gone and I am pretty minimalist.

I worked with a guy once who would work for six months, then take six month off to travel - every single year. That was a good model...

Also, I became a manager WAY too early in my career - so I had to focus on people/people-skills, which actually took time away from me going deeper on some of my technical skills/creative interests.

colanderman• 5 years ago

I'd love to, but...

All my friends are like this too.

Time off from work is no fun when all your friends have glued themselves to a monitor. It's impossible to even convince my most sun-loving friends with secure jobs to take a beach day.

I don't find meaning in traveling alone so... drown myself in work it is.

hughrr2• 5 years ago

Find some new friends. Seriously. I know that sounds hard but your friendship choices always end up aligning with your work as you get older and that's not healthy. Literally you work to the work calendar. Eventually you get to the point that the first calendar you look at is the work one every time. At that point you are owned. Been there. Was stuck in the rut for about 4 years.

Meetup is a great place to do that. Just turn up at random events outside of your usual comfort zone outside of your usual calendar cycle. Amazing the variety of people out there who are interesting and friendly.

nineplay5• 5 years ago

Travel alone. Please. Everyone I know who has done it has found it worthwhile.

It's easy to find dozens of excuses to avoid going into the unknown. Don't let them control you.

nickd20013• 5 years ago

This is genuinely sad. Is there nothing you can do to prise them away from their monitors? Maybe you need to find some new friends too?

goodpoint• 5 years ago

drown myself in work it is.

This is physically unsustainable. Our bodies and our minds are not built to sit at a desk and work 60 ours a week.

Ignore that and you'll get all sort of issue ranging from back pain to mental illness.

We don't need lavish vacations in fancy places. We need to stretch every hour, go for a walk in the park every other day, some hours for cultural and social life every day.

mjfl5• 5 years ago

Traveling the world is a life goal for shallow people. It is a shallow experience.

arbitrary_name• 5 years ago

Perhaps you'd like to elaborate? I find the experience enormously enriching: learning new languages, making friends, gaining a new perspective. It's very valuable to me and I'd be curious to understand your position more, because right now it just comes across as sour grapes.

nineplay5• 5 years ago

I'll have to take your word for it because I'll never know.

i_haz_rabies• 5 years ago

I dunno about that, although it's certainly a selfish first world life goal that the planet cannot support (if you fly).

nimih2• 5 years ago

Probably not as shallow as not taking vacations so your boss can get some marginal % richer.

imilk• 5 years ago

Very strange attitude. Certainly less shallow of producing 1,000s of lines of code to achieve some meaningless business outcome.

caeril• 5 years ago

I sometimes have the same thought, but it may be more charitable to phrase it this way instead (which is more accurate):

"Traveling the world seems like a life goal for extroverts. It is an experience I don't understand the benefits of, personally."

librish• 5 years ago

Since you have a contrarian view I'd be curious to hear your take on some reasons I like to travel:

- Get a feel for life in a place. How do people live? Where do people eat? How do people move around? Where do people congregate? How does life ebb and flow throughout the day and week? Obviously each one can be expanded to more questions, but I like to experience these things and then compare and contrast. What do I like? Is this better or worse or just different?

- Try new cuisines. It can be really hard to get an "authentic" experience outside of a country for a variety of reasons

- Activities. Skiing can't be done everywhere

- Natural wonders. I find viewing certain nature scenes in person very satisfying

hughrr2• 5 years ago

Completely agree. I've seen a lot of people not make it to retirement or get utterly ruined before they get there and then live on scraps.

I had a near miss on this front which turned me. I'm a lucky one.

Also never listen to an ideolog. I haven't met one that isn't wrong yet.

austenallred• 5 years ago

Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.

It really depends on what you're working for. If your goal is retire in 50s that's pretty achievable without working terribly hard (for most engineers).

If your goal is to be as good at soccer as Lionel Messi probably not so much.

Define what your goals are really well, then you can figure out what level of work is required to get there, then decide if that's a sacrifice worth making to you or if you want to adjust your goals.

Of course, there's some unknown in there, but if you don't want to be incredibly rich and change the world it doesn't take the same inputs.

DantesKite• 5 years ago

I understand what you mean by health problems, because I too have health problems that limit my ability to work and play the way I dreamed of.

But Paul Graham never recommends mindlessly working on things that don't interest you for the sake of some imagined tomorrow.

He even recommends not to do it:

"...if you think there's something admirable about working too hard, get that idea out of your head. You're not merely getting worse results, but getting them because you're showing off — if not to other people, then to yourself."

That's a strawman version of what Paul is suggesting.

" Are you really interested in x, or do you want to work on it because you'll make a lot of money, or because other people will be impressed with you, or because your parents want you to?"

"The best test of whether it's worthwhile to work on something is whether you find it interesting"

"Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11. It's a complicated, dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point. You have to understand the shape of real work, see clearly what kind you're best suited for, aim as close to the true core of it as you can, accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of and how you're doing, and put in as many hours each day as you can without harming the quality of the result. This network is too complicated to trick. But if you're consistently honest and clear-sighted, it will automatically assume an optimal shape, and you'll be productive in a way few people are."

"It's good to go on vacation occasionally, but when I go on vacation, I like to learn new things. I wouldn't like just sitting on a beach."

Listen to PG kids. Not some misinterpretation of what he's saying.

But I hope you can find the peace you're searching for. I really do.

I understand the agony of not being able to get what you want.

nineplay5• 5 years ago

FTA

One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll have to work very hard

This is such a narrow definition of "great things" that it is useless. Great things in PG's eyes maybe, but I hope no one's life goal is to impress him.

"I never took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one."

That quote makes me sick to my stomach.

xyzzy_plugh• 5 years ago

"It's good to go on vacation occasionally, but when I go on vacation, I like to learn new things. I wouldn't like just sitting on a beach."

There are few things I enjoy more than just sitting on a beach. When you go on vacation, actually go on vacation. Turn off your phone. Leave your laptop behind. Bring some fiction, or maybe select non-fiction (biographies are great). Put sunscreen on. Get a cold beverage. Fall asleep with the book on you.

I recommend learning new things while you're on vacation! But learn about the place you're vacationing at. Learn about the culture, the people, the history, the geography. Expand your horizons and waste time.

forinti• 5 years ago

A nice compromise would be to get a job in Europe.

I know I wish I had done that when I was young.

gentleman112• 5 years ago

You can be unhireable in your 40s in tech. What do you do to face age discrimination later?

danlugo92• 5 years ago

Freelance

caymanjim4• 5 years ago

I've heard this trope for decades, but the only time I've seen it manifest is when the 40+ people haven't learned anything in 20 years. Are there people in their 40s who've kept their skills up and still aren't getting hired?

jcims4• 5 years ago

If you build your life around this assumption, you're going to be unpleasantly surprised when you see how easy it is to get a job in your 40's. I was hired by a FAANG at 43 with a high school diploma, quit and hired on again non-FAANG (at 45!) and have since nearly doubled my TC in that role over the past five years. In that time I've applied to three jobs just to keep fresh, two FAANG and one at a specialist company in my domain and got offers for two of the roles.

If you face obvious age discrimination, put them on blast and keep looking.

M2772• 5 years ago

Genuine question, what if you're too poor to live the life you want in your 20s?

pwinnski3• 5 years ago

Then your best bet is most likely to adjust your expectations. Otherwise there's a good chance you will never have enough to live the life you want until it's too late to enjoy it. Figure out how to live happily now, is my advice.

You don't have to be rich to enjoy your life while you're young. Not every experience worth having is expensive!

asauce3• 5 years ago

PG briefly touches on it here, but one of the biggest factors on being able to consistently work hard is reward.

PG mostly talks about intrinsic reward in this article. We should work on stuff that is interesting to us, and brings us fulfillment. However, I believe that Paul is missing a huge component here, and that is extrinsic reward.

Extrinsic reward complements intrinsic reward. Extrinsic reward allows us to push through the hard, difficult work that we might not be interested in, because we know the work will be rewarded. It is the light at the end of the tunnel for difficult work. PG, and Bill Gates were able to work so hard because they had internal belief that there was an extrinsic reward for all the work they were doing.

In a perfect world, we would all be completely self motivated to work on every task, but this just isn't realistic. Especially in today's working work. People like PG, and Bill Gates are able to fully credit intrinsic reward, but fail to mention that the extrinsic reward ($$) validated the hard, gritty work they put in.

steaknsteak• 5 years ago

This is something I struggle with, as someone who worked really hard in school but has become less productive as a professional. In school there are well-defined deadlines and discrete tasks with extrinsic rewards in the form of grades. Even though the rewards were "fake" in a sense, people cared about them so I was motivated to earn those rewards, partially due to competitive drive.

In my professional life, that motivation has all but disappeared for me. I already have the comfortable salary I hoped for, and individual achievements aren't directly rewarded with more money in the short. So what else is left as an extrinsic reward that can provide that drive on a daily basis?

I haven't found the answer to that yet myself. Sometimes I feel like I've been given too much too soon and that's removed my hunger to work. That plus existing in a collaborative environment instead of a competitive one.

Godel_unicode3• 5 years ago

Investing your time is just like any other kind of investment; you are taking a variety of risks which have a variety of rewards. Pick the ones which line up best with your preferred balance of risk tolerance and goals.

Don't over index on high-consequence/low-likelyhood risks, but keep them in mind as part of your overall strategy.

lanstin6• 5 years ago

Time is what you are made of. Money is a number in a database. Your sentence makes no sense to me. You have no idea what will happen because you almost touched the butterfly in your garden, or struck up a conversation with a stranger at the cafe. Your life is just process, just pure flow. Each moment lives on its own.

csomar2• 5 years ago

when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels

I think that's where you went wrong. The backpacking at hostels is the best (as long as you pick hostels and fellow travelers that do not look like your typical backpacker haha). The thing is, now that I'm 30, I feel it's probably out of fashion. But these nights I spent in big-city hostels had the most fun, stories and affairs.

Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.

You can do both. The thing is, you can backpack 1 month per year and still work really HARD for 11 months of the year. 1 month is enough to visit 3-4 countries, and have 20 something night out. Over 15 years, that's over 300 night out. Way too much. And you still worked very hard for most of your youth.

sbaildon• 5 years ago

Certainly not out of fashion. I’m approaching 30, and I’ve spent 2 and a half years in and out of a hostel in London. Fantastic life experience

bradlys4• 5 years ago

You can do both. The thing is, you can backpack 1 month per year and still work really HARD for 11 months of the year. 1 month is enough to visit 3-4 countries, and have 20 something night out. Over 15 years, that's over 300 night out. Way too much. And you still worked very hard for most of your youth.

Wat. 300 nights over 15 years is way too much? That is utterly insane to me. That means on average, you only went out 1 night every 2 weeks. If you had kids, I'd understand but for someone in their youth - that is nearly shut-in status.

What you're thinking about doing over the period of 15 years, I've done in about the span of a year. Life is too short to spend it inside working. You won't get your youth back - once it's gone, it's gone.

saiya-jin2• 5 years ago

30 is the next 20 :) I've started seriously backpacking when 27 and 29 (2x3 months in india&nepal) and continued till current age of 40. Life changing experiences.

The only thing that stopped me was having kids, so the best reason possible. Corona would just mean closer travels and more mountains rather than people if we didn't have them.

I see no reason to stop unless your body or mind can't handle it anymore. Which with taking good care of oneself (and a bit of luck) can be easily 75, met quite a few of those.

RhodoGSA2• 5 years ago

He's got an audience that he is writting too. He's talking about building great things, not how to live a full and happy life.

While working at Tesla, we definitely all built great things but that's all we did. I left, took a 70% paycut to start my own consulting business and work 4-5 hours a week while being a 'Digital Nomad'. I've never been happier and guess what, that nagging feeling of 'I'm not doing real work' or finding 'idleness distasteful' goes away when you don't feel like the whole team has a gun to your head.

tempson3• 5 years ago

Bingo. Author is writing for his audience. On one hand I don’t care how his followers are following his words. On the other hand, I’m concerned that few years down the road, these founders/leaders will end up imposing these expectations on their employers.

horns4lyfe• 5 years ago

How many of those founders will actually do something great, and how many will do the supposedly “great work” of building something designed to siphon off as much of people’s money and attention as possible in the pursuit of getting rich?

csharpminor• 5 years ago

I think you and PG are actually in agreement on this: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1404321931491430403

It depends on what your life goals are. If you want to travel the world, do that. If you have big ambitions™ then work hard. Either is OK.

This essay is not a call for everyone to work hard, it is a guide for those who choose that path.

mmcgaha• 5 years ago

There is room in the world for all kinds of people. If you love going to work every day, do that. If you love making something great happen, do that. If you love backpacking around the world, do that. Only two rules: don't let anyone tell you that your choice is wrong and don't second guess the decisions that you made in the past.

sethammons• 5 years ago

My brother in law said: I have two feet and they are working now, not sure about later. Quit his job, and my sister did the same. They sold their house and staring working at a wildlife refuge in Alaska in summers and traveling by camper in the lower 48 in winter.

matwood• 5 years ago

One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s.

In my 20s I was similar. A 'long' vacation was a long weekend in Vegas with friends. Fun, but not much of a vacation. I was fortunate to meet my wife in my early 30s who pushed me to slow down a bit and take at least 2 consecutive weeks off a year (sometimes even twice) in a time zone that made work near impossible. We've been to many places across Europe spending 3-4-5 days in a single location, which is long by American standards.

when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels

There is a lot of room between staying in hostels and traveling in style. It's possible to travel relatively cheaply and still be comfortable. I know some hostels are nicer than others, but tbh nothing about staying in a hostel sounds vacation like to me.

Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.

It's hard to know. If I didn't work as hard in my 20s would I be in the position to take off 2-4 weeks/year since then? IDK. Hindsight and all that...

Finally, I think the most important thing people can do is learn to enjoy the day to day. Even if you're working hard, learn to appreciate those fun moments with your co-workers or those moments with your dog when you come home. Not everything has to be about the big adventure. As I get older I'm learning to find happiness in all sorts of mundane things, even something as simple as sitting the backyard with the sun on my face.

maigret• 5 years ago

In most countries in Europe everyone gets 5-6 weeks a year plus public holidays and often flexible days off. You don’t have to “work hard“, just work. I spent my twenties learning skills and working well but not too much. Could have gone a bit further in my career by working harder but not that much further. Looking back I think that was the right compromise. As developers we are fortunate to have a lot of choice for interesting and well paid jobs, so there should be space for an interesting life besides that.

eloff10• 5 years ago

I feel like you could be talking about me. I'm 37, and I worked very hard through my twenties and thirties. I kept telling myself there was time to live later, when it accomplished my goal of starting a software company. That still hasn't worked out, although I haven't given up.

When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels.

That's the exact line I've been telling myself.

My wife and I want to travel for a couple years before we have kids (and it's getting to the point where we have to stop delaying that.) We've set a year from now as the hard deadline to start. Because otherwise we'll just keep pushing it back until we're too old to enjoy it or something happens and the dream becomes impossible.

alfalfasprout• 5 years ago

I have to echo this. I know HN is full of people obsessed with a very different lifestyle but frankly... I think this piece misses the mark entirely.

PG I suspect and many others derive intrinsic happiness from the grind. From achievement. Yet this is a very myopic way to live that for the vast majority of people will result in a fair amount of unhappiness.

A far healthier and happier way to live is to live a balanced life. Work efficiently when you need to work, and be focused on your objectives. Don't waste time on stuff that doesn't matter. You can still be successful, grow yourself, etc. but without killing yourself in the process.

And for the love of god... take time for yourself to enjoy the finer things in life. Take a walk and try to find the beauty in things. Go travel somewhere new! Enjoy some you time and treat yourself.

I cannot disagree more with PG here, sadly. But that's all it is... a disagreement. Everyone gets to choose what life they want to live.

megameter• 5 years ago

I think on some level, barring the "stuck-in-bed depression" cases, we all work hard, but the work is nothing like a startup or a coding challenge.

It's more often things like going on a walk and identifying the birds, going to the bar and getting better at telling stories or playing pool, seeing patterns in watching daily traffic or weather. Things you absolutely could go deep on, but just can't justify as "character building exercise" because they won't directly lead to you acquiring property or power.

And that's where the alarm bells start to come in; if you get anxious about that, you can get stuck on the idea of work and cut yourself off from a balanced set of interests, and this hits young people especially hard because they don't know what the balance could look like, or they observe media(including HN) where the balance is clearly defined towards one extreme, think "I will become that" and treat it as a masochistic exercise. I believe this to be a deep affliction of the online world particularly since, without trying you can stumble into media containing the "best" of everything.

quickthrower24• 5 years ago

I feel for you there as I’m sick myself in a way that means even working is a challenge.

My suggestion for you and possibly advice for myself is if you can’t “travel” then move.

For me I imagine working 2 years from New Zealand outside of a city, somewhere beautiful to be a cool thing to do. You need to travel to get there but then you can stay put for the most part, doing short trips when it suits.

I think world trips are overrated. I did some backpacking in SE Asia and in some ways it feels like IKEA: a bunch of sheep following the same path around doing the same things trading money for a buzz. It’s interesting to see places but boring at the same time, everyone wants to “party”

If I had the time again I’d trade those 3 months travelling for a year in NZ, Tasmania, some parts of Eastern Europe or US and very slowly travel while working remote. Really wish I could have had that idea planted in my head.

Final thought: if you are a coder it can feel quite bad looking back on your years because most of the code you write has probably been replaced! So I cope with this by thinking of it like I am a gardener and most of my veggies have been eaten. So what? My work was useful and helped people.

jelsisi• 5 years ago

I feel incredibly grateful that as a 20 year old I get to read these comments.

canada_dry• 5 years ago

natural ability, practice, and effort

I'd argue that perseverance (vs practice) is a better partner in that combination.

Practice suggests doing the same thing over-and-over.

Perseverance is never giving up when there are road blocks.

guhsnamih2• 5 years ago

Am I the only one who is having to work hard to understand the article?

tester756• 5 years ago

Consistency is a key

That's what games taught me, weird.

cwhittle• 5 years ago

Someone needs to write a compelling article on "Why to work hard". Just because you should isn't a good enough.

zdbrandon4• 5 years ago

That answer is different for everyone. Maybe the article should be “How to determine whether you should work harder”, but at the end of the day I’m not sure anyone can be convinced by an article.

If you don’t have any anxieties based in the lack of having attained something specific, then you probably won’t (and maybe shouldn’t) work hard at all.

abxytg• 5 years ago

The older I get and the more I read this stuff... I just think man PG... your priorities suck!

adv0r• 5 years ago

This is the first essay by PG which I find somehow misleading. It took me a couple of years after quitting my frenetic goal-driven life to be able to sit back and enjoy. I was the kind of person that have a task on Trello to shave and shower. If you feel that doing nothing is wasting time, I feel there is a good chance you need to look deeper within yourself and see what your REAL drive is. Why you do what you do? Why you can't sit in peace? Why do you have FOMO? Why looking at the TED talk by 10-year-old-genious millionare makes you feel miserable? You try to compensate by keep moving, never stopping, and sedate your anxiety and fear with a ... job. Something you can be very good at, something that can be meaningful, yet you are in autopilot.

If you can't turn it off because you feel discomfort, well, maybe you are missing out on your inner voice. You can go by probably for decades ignoring it, and actually use ""FOCUS"" as mean to procrastinate/getting distracted from thinking about your human condition.

But I'm just me and he is PG.

So maybe listen to him

ryanSrich2• 5 years ago

- Working on a computer all day, from the comfort of my house

- Being able to tend to work issues from my phone

- Getting intellectual stimulation from my work

- Getting to work with really really smart people

- Getting to see the joy customers get from using a product you helped build

These may not seem like much. They might even seem like a burden to some. But I've worked horrendous jobs in the past. Not just brutal manual labor, but mindless factory jobs that practically turn your brain into mush.

Working on things I actually enjoy, in an enjoyable environment, for 12-16 hours per day is a life I'd take any day of the week over life's I've lived in the past.

I'd say overall, working hard pays off if you have a strong impact on the business and own a good chunk of it. If you're working at BigTechCoFaang I'd slack absolutely as much as possible. Just riding the border between hired and fired.

jp42• 5 years ago

While going through the comments on this thread, I remembered a chapter in language textbook while I was in school, the name of the chapter was 'Charchasatrat hawaraleli mhatari'. It was about people discussing a well known parable. This chapter portrayed how people discussed everything except the message of the parable.

Similarly, I feel majority of the comments in this thread talking everything except message PG trying to convey.

triceratops• 5 years ago

P. G. Wodehouse would probably get my vote for best English writer of the 20th century, if I had to choose.

The guy who wrote about a hapless nobleman and his butler is a better writer than Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Arthur C. Clarke, George MacDonald Fraser, or John Le Carre?

Veen• 5 years ago

It's the writing not the subjects. Wodehouse is hugely admired by other writers. I bet if you'd have asked each writer you name whether they thought they were better prose writers than Wodehouse, they'd say no. George Orwell was friends with Wodehouse and a great admirer. John Le Carre often named Wodehouse as one of his most important influences.

prettycolors23• 5 years ago

I think "natural talent" is sort of a false concept. After time, hard work and practice often turn into talent. When you train hard at something and improve your skills enough, an outside observer will label you as talented. The better your skills, the more talented. You are the only one that knows you didn't start with those skills.

I wrestled competitively for 20 years. By the end of my career, people would talk about how naturally talented I was. But I knew that everything they were talking about came about through two decades of practice. People talked about how fast I was. But I spent years doing plyometrics. I was slow before that. People talked about how strong I was; I was doing pushups and pull ups every day with my dad starting at 8 years old. People just saw the results of 20 years of practice, and didn't see where I started out, so they called it talent.

I think to be extremely successful at something, you don't need talent. You can build talent in yourself. There is something to be said about people who are naturally very bad at something. Those people might never appear talented at something they are naturally very bad at. But then again, given enough practice over time, they might.

If you look at anyone who is a true master of a skill, their mastery lies not in their natural talent, but through their years of practice, their drive and their passion for what they are doing. Talent plays a small role over time. It mostly plays a role in the beginning.

For something like sprinting or weight lifting, I will give that natural ability is important. There are only so many people that can be as fast as Usain Bolt. But for sports that are more skills based, like martial arts, or other activities that are skills based, like coding, talent only takes you so far. After a certain point, talent becomes insignificant compared to all of your hard work.

burntoutfire2• 5 years ago

I think "natural talent" is sort of a false concept.

You've never heard of child prodigies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_prodigy)? They clearly possess natural talent.

etherio• 5 years ago

The attitude of feeling guilty when you're not working can be useful to motivate yourself, but I think it s also something to be careful of.

Indeed, sometimes this time of pressure can grow so pervasive it becomes impossible for you to relax, and humans aren't endlessly working robots: we need to also have time where we calm down, which PG explained.

However, he didn't warn of developing too much of a work ethic to the point relaxation itself is something you don't enjoy.

cryptica• 5 years ago

These days, it's not difficult to create products that are far better than your main competitors' products in every respect. The hard part is merely getting the attention of customers so that they know that your product exists...

It's extremely difficult to create this scenario whereby a prospective customer will actually compare your product against a competitor's product. If people were more open to experiment, it would be easy but network effects are just too strong. Likely propped reinforced by endless money printing.

Infinite money printing just allows the economy to maintain its structure forever. The winners always get bailed out so they always stay winners and the losers always have their competitors bailed out so they always stay losers.

skapadia2• 5 years ago

Maybe PG should include some draft reviewers who are hard working but not rich. Seems like an echo chamber to include the reviewers he does. Unbelievable.

tempson3• 5 years ago

Created this account to reply to this thread.

In my opinion, this article could be much better if it accounted for few additional perspectives.

1. There are people in this world who do better with consistency over volume. Dedicate 1 hour every day on your subject of interest. You are bound to get really good at it in few years. The challenging part is “1 hour every day.”

2. Work-centric life shouldn’t be celebrated to this extent. It just doesn’t do good at the end.

rllearneratwork• 5 years ago

Very few people regret on their deathbed that they simply did not work hard enough. What they typically regret is not trying things and not spending time with family. Yes, trying things could mean work very hard, like starting a startup but it also often means not backpacking in Europe, not sailing around the world, not opening their own bakery, etc.

dougb5• 5 years ago

Today's Ezra Klein podcast has an excellent interview with James Suzman who gives a historical perspective on why we work hard: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...

gxs2• 5 years ago

To me this article describes how to get on target.

Once on target, I do think you go balls to the wall as long as it's sustainable while getting good results.

On a side note, I really dislike this style of writing where it tries to be psuedo technical and even uses psuedo technical terms. I realize this isn't necessarily Paul's shortcoming, but rather my own subjective preferences.

tempson3• 5 years ago

Really happy to read that most readers are critical about this article. This article is extremely shortsighted! Kids don’t fall for this trap. Life is about people and relationships.

p.s. Steve Jobs is already forgotten. Bill Gates will be joining that list too. Now that we know his dirty secrets, fastet than expected.

janj2• 5 years ago

I took extra classes and worked hard in college to get a CS degree because I loved it. I was so excited to start a career because the internships were fun and exciting. I graduated in 2001 right after everything dried up. The only place hiring was Raytheon, there was no way I'd step foot back in that place to work on weapons. I asked a friend what to do, "Why don't you move to MT and snowboard", so I did. Seven years of my 20's in MT, the first five snowboarding and climbing, the last two figuring out how to get back into tech while snowboarding and climbing. I'm now in my 40's married to someone I met in MT with two beautiful kids and good career in tech. I don't spend much time thinking about what I might've been able to achieve had I spent those years in my 20's working hard in tech. I'm just very grateful things ended up the way they did. We need people who want to achieve great things, especially now with the urgent problems we've created for ourselves. But it's just fine to not be one of those people.

leafmeal• 5 years ago

Thanks, this is inspiring to read. Booking my ticket now... ;)

jeffbee• 5 years ago

Reminds me of my intern at Google. PhD CS, had been an intern at Google 9 summers in a row. Spent remainder of year skiing. Smart and contributed a lot, also seemed happy.

wanderer2323• 5 years ago

Stories like your intern skiing for 9 years or the GP ‘5 years snowboarding’ usually omit describing rich parents in the background picking all sort of tabs.

throwaway123qq• 5 years ago

What ability is required at a factory, you know, these useless workers producing means of subsistence, like food, homes, equipment? I think these workers make awesome things, well, because I need food, etc for living. It is only thanks to them you able to do what you want - what you call work, while they work 12 hours a day for very little. There is huge difference between their work and what you do. With all respect, but I will recommend you changing the subject to something else, but not "hard work". May be "making profit hardcore XXX.".

andagainagain• 5 years ago

So many things annoy me about this sort of self-help guru vagueness.

"One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll have to work very hard" - this is not true. You have to work, but the "hard" part implies that stress is important. Stress is incidental - everyone experiences stress regardless of work. I learned years ago that high achievers don't experience more stress... an in fact they tend to rephrase problems to give them LESS stress. They work, but they purposely make those things less stressful. The work itself, from their perspective isn't "hard" at all.

"There are three ingredients to great work: natural ability, practice, and effort". These aren't separate things! Natural ability is learned just like anything else. It's a set of skills that you develop through building your own ways of thinking. You get those through practice. And for some, that effort is often negligible for one reason or another - experiences and thoughts that they have because of emotions or places they grew up or what context they relate to. I could go on for hours about this specific topic.

"And yet Bill Gates sounds even more extreme. Not one day off in ten years?" - A surprising number of people do this anyways. If it's not stressful to them, it's not effort... it's just what you do. By the way, most of these people don't become rich. Why? It's not because of "natural ability" or "lack of practice and effort". It's because their daily work covers things that aren't, directly, money. "Cows got to get fed" or "lawn has to be mowed" or "kids need to be watched" or "spend a bit of time on something that I actually like". For Bill Gates, that "just what you do" was probably "work on microsoft". And if it failed, he's publically said that yeah, his backup plan was to go back to Harvard, becuase that was of course an option for him. Relatively speaking, it wasn't a super high risk decision.

"Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful". This sounds, honestly, quite unhealthy. It's "feel pain now because reasons. I have multiple theories on how this sort of thought process comes around. For example, When we can't relax during our downtime, or we don't actually get the rewards of our labor.

But you notice that outside of constructed work environments (like school, or any job where you have a direct boss), this doesn't happen. Those who practice violin practice until they're done practicing, then they relax, then they come back later and practice some more. They don't half-ass practice, because there isn't a point to that. If you're practicing, it's not "so that I can work hard, and if I don't I feel guilty". Instead it's "I need to polish this one part of the song" or "I'm struggling with my fingering here" or maybe even "I'm going to play with this section of the song, it seems fun". Note - it's not pointless work. So "I'm working, but not working hard" just... doesn't happen. Because why would it? That doesn't make the song better, it doesn't make you better.

The more I go through the article, the more I just think the goals are getting tripped up by a combination of external forces that take up mental resources, and a mental model where the stress of the situation determines the quality of the product.

I have tons of suggestions (I trimmed this comment down and rewrote it 3 times already). The big one though I think is learning to roll with what matters. Do everything you're doing, and then take a break, and then do it again. Honestly, unless you get into the nitty gritty details, It's really a lot simpler than people think.

rakhodorkovsky2• 5 years ago

I admire pg; I don't admire his essays, even though in broad strokes I agree with them. I feel his choice of style works against him; that's where I disagree.

Write like you talk, but if you talk like pg writes you lose your audience. His essays check out line by line, paragraph by paragraph, but they fail to drive at some deeper, more subtle point that can capture the imagination of an audience. I'm sure pg is nothing if not imaginative, but his essays aren't.

Another comment criticizes this essay as just another pg stream of consciousness; I feel it's the opposite: short on many of the details, digressions and emotions that can make an essay come alive, that can give you sense of the author and his world. Often when I read an essay that's what I'm interested in most and I don't think I'm alone in this.

I think I understand why pg has chosen his style; the principles and aesthetic sensibilities that went into his choice and I agree with them. Nevertheless I think it's a poor choice. I hope pg reads this and reconsiders. Innovate!

personlurking• 5 years ago

In the past I read a lot of his essays but I can no longer stomach his obsession with (high) school. He overanalyzes it and relates almost every essay to how things are in school and I'm certain someone has made it into a drinking game by now. Sadly, my tolerance for that kind of game is quite low these days.

Due to having enjoyed his essays 5+ years ago, I still open the new ones and start reading them but I can't help but preface that desire by skimming them for school references now. Additionally, if they're congratulatory of people similar to himself - which they often are - then I also have to say 'no, thanks'.

mabub24• 5 years ago

In the last 20-30 years, American parents and adults have put an enormous amount of focus and pressure on students for educational achievements as indicators for future successes. It's likely because of inequalities in the quality of education between schools, and inequalities of opportunities from schools. Get to a good school -> get good job because went to good school-> get good life. Otherwise, you're a failure. Education is seen as the lynchpin in social mobility.

The lack of social safety net, and a desire for their children to become successful, creates an all or nothing focus on educational achievement.

alliao• 5 years ago

if you or your parents dedicated a large chunk of resources on said asset (education) it's hard to be detached from it... Ancient China achieved relative stability by pretending thus coercing intellects of the society that the only way out is by studying and become part of government. So yeah, it's quite a sound crowd control mechanism.

mapgrep2• 5 years ago

I had to learn what real work was before I could wholeheartedly desire to do it. That took a while, because even in college a lot of the work is pointless; there are entire departments that are pointless.

In other words, "the work I want to do is real but the work you want to do is trivial and pointless."

I really genuinely have enjoyed Paul Graham's writing over the years but moments like this seem arrogant and tend to spoil some of the enjoyment. I'd be genuinely curious to know what departments he finds pointless, and why, in the grand scheme of things, they have no "point" in comparison to computer science or whatever.

While it's true that computer science can be used to enable, for example, much cheaper air travel, or important forms of cancer diagnosis, it's also true that a great many computer scientists work on less crucial problems like optimizing ad targeting or enabling scams.

Similarly, while many English lit majors may end up contributing little most of us find valuable in that field, there are some who will become authors who genuinely help other humans find more meaning in life and feel less alone, and others who will shed new light on history and thiis contribute to the understanding of our present.

I'm not saying fields can't be compared. Maybe the average engineer's college studies help society "more" (for some definition) than the average humanities major's studies do. Fine. What I'm saying is - it takes a lot of arrogance to cast aside entire college departments as worthless.

rakhodorkovsky2• 5 years ago

Perhaps arrogance should be added to what it takes to be successful.

I'm only half joking; I do think a certain kind of arrogance is conducive to success. Not the kind that screams insecurity and turns off your teammates, rather the kind that goes: "Perhaps I really am the first person who can do this." and then does it.

AnimalMuppet6• 5 years ago

I think your reading is not just uncharitable, but wrong.

In other words, "the work I want to do is real but the work you want to do is trivial and pointless."

No, "the work you want me to do is trivial and pointless". And the context is college, and even more so high school. It's not a news flash that the work they want you to do in school isn't "real". It's exercises designed to teach you, not actual work that needs done.

Similarly, while many English lit majors may end up contributing little most of us find valuable in that field, there are some who will become authors who genuinely help other humans find more meaning in life and feel less alone, and others who will shed new light on history and thiis contribute to the understanding of our present.

Given that Wodehouse was one of PG's positive examples, this also seems to me to be missing the point of the essay.

mapgrep2• 5 years ago

No, "the work you want me to do is trivial and pointless". And the context is college, and even more so high school.

You choose your college and you choose your major, and you choose to go to college in the first place, so I'm not clear what you are referring to here. What entire college department exists to somehow force people to study its subjects? If someone's university is assigning work they don't work to do, they can transfer elsewhere. (They tend not to, because the educational institutions for adults that are strictly focused on a single topic lack prestige. Even a relatively technical "good" school like MIT will try to round out the academic experience of its students.)

chevill• 5 years ago

PG takes a lot of peoples' claims for granted when they are probably exaggerations.

Gates: >I didn't take a single day off in my 20s.

Most likely this is only technically true because its almost certain he took multiple days off in his 20s. We'd have to look at what Bill means here by working every single day. If he counts spending at least a couple minutes on something work related every day its far more believable than him spending approximately 3650 consecutive days working 8-12 hours or more.

Wodehouse: >with each new book of mine I have, as I say, the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature. A good thing, really, I suppose. Keeps one up on one's toes and makes one rewrite every sentence ten times. Or in many cases twenty times.

This claim is even more unbelievable. I'd bet the average sentence he wrote wasn't rewritten at all, let alone 10-20 times. I think what he actually means is that sometimes he would have to re-write a sentence 10-20 times.

jthornquest• 5 years ago

There are a lot of very good notes in these comments about our relationship with "work" and excellence. I currently operate from the perspective of creating something I'm proud of for myself, and I'm relearning the joy of leisure. My own life isn't defined by my greatness, my productivity, or my output. I've learned to realize that the "alarm-bells" that clattered in my head were more of an anxious, awful self-perception that my value was tied to my output.

A few weeks ago, I found a bit of recent scientific learning that gave me a renewed context around passion and pursuit. It turns out that research is showing that bodies and brains don't typically begin to degrade in their capacity for training muscle-memory skills until our sixties. For someone like me, who is anxiously accounting for how to try a lot of different pursuits (music, illustration, and especially relevant here, a constantly tenuous relationship with computers) this is a comfort. I was so motivated by a rush to get my foundations down by the time I was thirty, because the capitalist culture I'm steeped in says that's my deadline.

I had it ingrained that my teenage or twenty-something years were the time to plant the seeds, and it's all downhill after that. Besides the wisdom shared on the contrary (both in these comments and elsewhere), dipping this wisdom in research I didn't know about before empowered me further.

I appreciate that Paul adds a bit about how our focus doesn't often become clear until we're older, that our childhoods tend to distill topics in ways that can initially bland them to our taste. Nevertheless, I want to stress that you've got a lot more time to do something to your best ability. Even as you age beyond sixty or seventy, I've seen so many folks brush off the bit of extra physical or mental challenge that they face, and do great things anyway.

Your twenties won't make or break you. You have so much more time.

zz865• 5 years ago

Does PG ever spend time with his children? I always feel I should be working harder which makes spending time with family difficult.

dang4• 5 years ago

He is an extremely dedicated father. Much of his Twitter feed is about things he does with his children.

tptacek• 5 years ago

He should let much more of that into his writing, because he could have written this post in 2007 and it would mostly read the same, and he's not the same person he was back then. Also, in sort of the same way that pg-writing-about-lisp is one of the harder pg's to dislike, dad-mode pg is probably his most likable and persuasive mode.

hundt• 5 years ago

One possibility is that he "works hard" at that, too, e.g. by consciously thinking about what the best things to do with them are and endeavoring to spend as much as possible doing them. Perhaps if you internalize the idea that spending time with your family is in fact work, of a different but also valuable nature, then you will not find it as difficult.

MarcelOlsz• 5 years ago

I worked hard in my 20's with nothing to show for it. Not born into connections or money. I know almost nobody that has a degree. Spent years on my own startup with my ex-ceo being a code monkey for him whos richer and more connected than me. Poof, 4 years of income and work gone. Now I can't even find a job. How exactly, am I supposed to "work hard"? It is a complete meme. Also funny he uses Gates as an example, a man born into wealth.

I tried working hard and wasted 100% of every day of my 20's. No memories formed, no money made, just "working hard".

Here's how you work hard: grow up in a stable life with money and connections and win the mental health lottery.

TameAntelope• 5 years ago

This feels like the kind of essay describing a thing that, if you have to be told about it, you don't have it.

I'm on HN during my work day. People who "work hard" probably aren't. They probably only know about pg through direct connections, not through idly scrolling the Internet bored one day.

asdfman1232• 5 years ago

The thing about finding motivation is that you don't actually find it.

There are certain things you want out of life as a human being, and if believe your work is aligned with that, you'll pour your soul into it.

On the other hand, if you see work as a distraction from the rest of your life, working will be an uphill battle. I guess it's important to find work you care about, or find a deeper, more meaningful reason to do work.

bachmeier3• 5 years ago

It was similar with Lionel Messi. He had great natural ability, but when his youth coaches talk about him, what they remember is not his talent but his dedication and his desire to win.

I can assure you, there are many kids that practice harder than Messi did when he was young. He is not a great player because of hard work, he is a great player because of luck. I know the VC thing about the importance of hard work. They love to promote hard work because that's how they make money. It's just plain silly to attribute Messi's greatness to anything other than luck - both his physical abilities and the environment that taught him how to fine tune his abilities.

Hard work is useless without that special precise knowledge of which work you should be doing. Few young soccer players know how to practice in a way to become Messi, even if they have the right body to do it. It's useless without being in the right environment too.

Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful.

That, my friends, is what a VC would love for you to believe. There's nothing sincere when someone in his position writes something like this. Because hey, if you're the 0.1% of the time that it works out, he gets rich. And if you're the 99.9% that wastes their time (like all the kids that never play soccer at the highest levels) he loses nothing.

I used to enjoy PG's writings. He's crossed a line where he believes that the only thing good in the world is what is best for VCs.

eloff10• 5 years ago

PG says:

There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard.

I think that's the fundamental secret to success at anything. If you want to compete at the top level you have to have all three. It's not sufficient to just work hard, or just have natural ability. You need to fully apply yourself aligned with your natural talents.

Hard work is a necessary but not sufficient requirement.

bachmeier3• 5 years ago

Without luck, you will not get to the level of Messi. Without knowledge, you will not get to the level of Messi. Without living in the right environment, you will not get to the level of Messi.

The "natural ability" thing is just a spin on the same idea. Work hard to recognize your natural ability. Be realistic about it. In that view, natural ability is not a matter of luck. It is still a story about doing the right things so that you deserve all the credit if you are successful, and more importantly, so that you can blame those that didn't.

RivieraKid3• 5 years ago

Fundamental secret? I thought this is obvious. Imagine the following simple model. People have 3 normally distributed attributes: luck, talent and laziness, their sum determines succcess. If you generate 1 million people and sort them by success, the top 1000 will be good at all of the 3 attributes

ultrasounder2• 5 years ago

howdy. as someone who has followed his career trajectory for the last 15 yars, I can assure You that "Luck" or serendipity or however You want to normalize his abilities has nothing to do with his abilities. Its Sheer Hard-work and Will to win. Being lucky is scoring 50 goals one season and 10 the second. This guys averages 50+ every season. So You might want to read up on it before You hypothesize. Like Spock famously said, "there is no such thing called miracles".

karpierz• 5 years ago

GP isn't saying that he is lucky each game, he's saying he was lucky to be born with the body he has and he was lucky to get the coaching opportunities that came with that.

luffapi29• 5 years ago

In what way did PG work hard? His job seems incredibly cushy to me. He even had the leisure to write his own lisp! VCs don’t work hard. They sit there and watch people grovel.

edanm• 5 years ago

Putting aside the fact that the article explicitly agrees with you that just hard work isn't enough, here's the part of your comment I don't understand:

I know the VC thing about the importance of hard work. They love to promote hard work because that's how they make money.

Why would they promote hard work if hard work didn't matter? And if it does matter, then what exactly is your problem with what pg is saying?

bachmeier3• 5 years ago

the article explicitly agrees with you that just hard work isn't enough

It does not in any way agree with me. I am saying luck is important. If that's anywhere in there, I missed it.

Why would they promote hard work if hard work didn't matter?

Hard work is not the distinguishing characteristic. Luck is. Why promote hard work? Because someone else is working hard for your benefit.

imtringued• 5 years ago

Hard work matters exactly as much as the dozen other factors but when you are busy working hard you don't think about those. It goes both ways. If those factors are in your favor you don't talk about them, when they are not, you pretend that they don't matter because hard work is above everything else.

obstacle1• 5 years ago

Why would they promote hard work if hard work didn't matter?

Hard work matters. But it isn't enough. Luck is needed to transform hard work into wealth. Line cooks work very hard.

Incidentally, YC's business model positions it extremely well vs. other VCs to take advantage of this calculus. Fund 1000s of startups full of maniacally hard working kids, and you can expect a few to also get lucky just by sheer volume. Whereas if you're only funding a few startups they may work equally as hard and never run into the luck required to succeed.

pm904• 5 years ago

Why would they promote hard work if hard work didn't matter? And if it does matter, then what exactly is your problem with what pg is saying?

Hard work doesn’t matter (at least to the extent pg posits) and they promote it because (surprise!) they’re not all knowing entities but humans with flaws (yes even successful people can hold views that are not correct).

vl5• 5 years ago

Of course hard work matters, but when VC tells you to work hard, take it with the grain of salt, because this is how VC is going to make money off your work. What is missing from this advice is what is sacrificed. If and when 10-20 year later you cash out, what else are you going to have beside money? Family, friends, health? If you can make this trade-off consciously - good for you, but most people just go with the flow and don't think about it until it's too late.

Double irony of this advice is that many VCs are one of the most laid-back people you can meet. Usually they are already rich, so they don't exactly have to hussle anymore, and can choose when to do so.

sbierwagen4• 5 years ago

Why would they promote hard work if hard work didn't matter?

Telling someone else to work harder costs nothing. They're not the one putting in 16 hour days.

going_ham• 5 years ago

In fact there is a good video from Verassium [1]. One can't discount luck. There is no such thing as hard work. It's just the feeling of being in flow and whatever one does to make you re-live that flow, it's totally worth it.

Instead of working on hard problems, it's best to prioritize on optimum problem and get the best out of your situation. With optimum problem, I mean the problems that allow you to maximize your living, instead of believing on moonshot dream.

It's okay to dream, but putting expectations on dream is losing touch with reality. Sure in an ideal world, essays like this would be perfect motivation, but you are living in a world ruled by billionaires and plutocrats. So, as long as you get enough share of the pie, I don't think one should pursue the moonshot dream.

Rather invest this time on working on job (whole-hardheartedly) only during office hours, and actually try living a life outside of it. You don't have to be a superstar to live a life because humans have already lived for so long.

Stop believing these bullshit VC ideas. The real essence of this essay is understanding the flow and noticing the events that triggers flow. [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I&t=12s

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354. Flow

luffapi29• 5 years ago

I’ve been feeling great dread lately with the direction our industry is going (has always been going tbh). This conversation gives me some sort of renewed hope though. Hundreds of people admitted hard work burned them out; seeing VCs ask to sacrifice your life for their bottom line. Realizing the role luck plays in success.

Maybe covid pushed a significant number of people past their breaking point and now their eyes are wide open. I cannot say, but I’m glad to see so many people are speaking the truth.

irajdeep• 5 years ago

That video from Verassium is spot on.

mkl• 5 years ago

*Veritasium. His tag line is "An element of truth", since "veritas" is Latin for truth and most element names end in "ium". I recommend the whole channel!

jodrellblank4• 5 years ago

There was a long article linked on HN a while back, about how you can't start a company or invent something unless it's the right time, you can't rush innovation just because you try hard. It was gwern-style detailed and full of references and citations, not just a top of the head opinion piece.

Anyone have a clue what it was or where?

ceilingcorner8• 5 years ago

Your comment about VCs makes no sense. If a VC wants you to work hard because that’s how a VC gets rich, that means that working hard leads to building a successful company. If it were purely luck, why would the VC care if you worked hard or not?

luffapi29• 5 years ago

If VCs knew what made companies great, they wouldn’t fail 9 out of 10 times. More than any profession I can think of, VC is almost pure luck + how much wealth you already have, which attracts deal flow, which increases your odds to get lucky. PG blogs because he thinks it increases his deal flow (or he wants attention). Just because he’s saying it, it doesn’t make it true, even if he believes his own story.

fogetti• 5 years ago

Because most VC founded companies are not about results. They are about virtue signaling to attract even more capital. Profitability has been thrown out of the window long time ago. Success is measured in the stupidest KPIs you can imagine. That's why 9 out of 10 VC founded companies fail. So you need to indoctrinate your minions to make them act accordingly.

emodendroket3• 5 years ago

I think the criticism is not so illogical. Let's just assume your company has a 5% chance of wild success and you can double it by working insanely hard (I think these numbers are likely generous, but easier to take round numbers for the sake of argument). It is in this case simultaneously true that it's in VCs' interest to convince you to work very hard and also that it's probably not in your interest. It only makes sense for them to promote because the one or two lucky groups will make up for all the duds.

swman• 5 years ago

Okay, but nobody is going to become anywhere close to Messi without working hard. That's the point. Do you think someone could become Messi by putting in barely any practice or effort? You might get into a team, but you won't be a Messi lol. Be honest with yourself.

Obviously luck plays a role, but most people (>90% I'll bet) who are successful in the end get there due to hard work.

I could sit on my butt and do nothing all day, and suddenly my doge coin are worth a million bucks. I basically don't know anyone IRL who got mega rich off these things. I know a lot more people IRL who are mega rich because they work hard to this day.

luffapi29• 5 years ago

It’s important to recognize physical activity is very different from mental, creative or social activities. If you can convince people of things, you can be wildly successful. They may listen to you because you speak well, they may listen to you because you’re telling them what they want to hear or they may listen to you because you’re rich. None of which require the rigorous practice of a professional athlete.

Same goes for creative endeavors. I can be much more creative (and successful) if I’m well rested vs. grinding.

Contrary to you, the most successful people I know didn’t work hard at all. They either inherited cash and a network or they invented something that got huge and they sold it.

kentosi• 5 years ago

The parent's comment wan't implying that luck was everything, but to point out that luck is also an important factor.

There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort.

And luck, Paul. Don't forget luck.

Hard work is only sustainable when you occasionally get that carrot at the end of the stick, before moving onto the next bit of hard work.

Cederfjard• 5 years ago

Sure, hard work is often a requisite (unless you luck out in the extreme). But for the most part, it’s not enough, it’s not a guarantee, and it’s not the hardest worker who necessarily becomes the most successful. The point is that you shouldn’t look at the rich and the famous and think ”wow, the reason they’re there and the rest of us aren’t is because they’re so much more virtous and hardworking”.

Obviously it’s all a matter of degree, I’m assuming we’re talking really well off here. A lot of people are in the position where hard work is likely to yield moderate success and a decent life at least.

ZephyrBlu4• 5 years ago

Correlation vs causation.

Just because they "worked hard to this day", doesn't mean that's what caused them to be mega rich.

People just don't like to think that maybe they didn't do anything special to deserve their success.

OpieCunningham• 5 years ago

Put it this way: if you’re lucky and work hard, you could be like Messi. If you’re very very lucky and don’t work hard, you may still be like Messi. If you’re unlucky and work hard, you won’t ever be like Messi.

Just ask Babe Ruth, he didn’t work hard like Messi. He was very very lucky to be born with phenomenal talent.

Luck is the critical factor, hard work is secondary, though beneficial in that it decreases (but can never eliminate) the required amount of luck.

asdff• 5 years ago

Messi was one of those kids like Tiger Woods and Steph Curry who had a dedicated parent coach who got them into the game at an extremely young age, and into the hands of the best trainers they could throughout their childhood. Most kids who are born into that situation end up at the tops of their sports.

juanre• 5 years ago

He is talking about doing great work, not about becoming rich or successful. You do need luck for your great work to take you places, but your own agency counts for much of your ability to do great work. Plenty of great work will not reap great rewards; it is done because someone feels that it has to be done.

s1artibartfast2• 5 years ago

You are arguing a completely different point than PG.

PG is talking about the ingredients for "doing great things" and "great work".

You are talking about getting rich. Sometimes these are aligned, and sometimes they aren't.

It seems like you are looking for a predictive model of who succeeds in society and who doesn't, while PG is offering life advice on the value of hard work (something within an individual's control) - a different topic.

dempsey• 5 years ago

You have to put yourself in a position to get lucky. Doesn’t mean that you will.

koonsolo2• 5 years ago

If you want to be the best, you will have to work very hard.

Claiming that anyone who is at the top of their game isn't working hard, is just plain lying.

This doesn't mean that only working hard will get you there. But it does mean that not working hard will not get you there.

RivieraKid3• 5 years ago

Well to be the best in a very large group of people, you need to max out all of the main factors: luck, talent, hard work. That's just statistics.

I agree with you though. I find it annoying when people play down the role of luck in their success, it's kind of narcissistic. Unconsciously, they like the feeling that they are better than others, and by achieving success, they prove it to themselves. Giving luck too much credit would break this line of reasoning.

Also, one very important but overlooked factor of hard work is that it's highly correlated to the expected reward. It's much easier to work hard at a quickly-growing startup that you co-own, compared to working hard at a regular job that you don't find meaningful. The hard-workers in the former example then think they "deserve" the success because they've been working harder than others, when in fact, they were just lucky.

tim3333• 5 years ago

He's crossed a line where he believes that the only thing good in the world is what is best for VCs.

I don't think he thinks that at all. Check out his article on VCs http://www.paulgraham.com/venturecapital.html

asdfman1232• 5 years ago

Paul Graham has really good stuff to say about things he knows about.

(And really bad stuff to say about things he doesn't.)

SerLava• 5 years ago

Billionaires absolutely love talking about zero work life balance. Makes it seem like having rich parents, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of computing time, committing federal crimes, abusing patent law, and blatantly violating antitrust weren't the important parts.

Because they only want you to do the overwork part.

GeorgeTirebiter• 5 years ago

Interestingly, also published today: Why Do We Work So Damn Much https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...

"...hunter-gatherer societies like the Ju/’hoansi spent only about 15 hours a week meeting their material needs..."

didibus3• 5 years ago

I hate this obsession with "hard work".

"hard" is a weasel word, it means nothing concrete, it's not quantifiable, and even as a quality it's unclear, what is the emotional feeling attached to it?

"work" has two meanings:

1. activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result

2. a task or tasks to be undertaken; something a person or thing has to do

So what are we even talking about when we say "hard work"?

If you take the first definition, adding the "hard" qualifier makes no difference, because what makes an activity "hard" is that it requires mental and/or physical effort to accomplish. So in that sense, work is inherently effortful, and thus "hard". Maybe what people mean when they say "hard work" is sustained effort exertion?

If you take the second it makes more sense, but then it would imply that "hard work" is about the choice of task you undertake. If you choose to do harder tasks, you'd be "hard working". The issue here though is that it's not clear what makes a task "hard". I think the risk of failure is possibly the best way to qualify it here. If you're likely to fail the task, it is thus "hard" to you. But is that really what people mean when they evangelize "hard work"? To always work on tasks you are likely to fail at?

Since PG's example was how Bill Gates took no vacation in 10 years, I'll conclude that he's trying to suggests that "hard work" means have a "high rate of work per week".

So he seem to imply "hard work" is when most of your week is spent exerting mental or physical effort towards a result or purpose.

And that's where I hate the framing of "hard work", it's just "work", adding "hard" is just a pretentious qualifier.

P.S.: I really doubt Bill Gates success is attributable to not taking 15 days of time off per year for 10 years. That is not a lot of time, maybe if he worked 80 hours week, but as research shows, real physical and mental effort is unsustainable beyond some level, and rest is needed.

dimitrios1• 5 years ago

how to work toward goals that are neither clearly defined nor externally imposed.

This is the crux of the entire article, in my opinion. Still haven't figured this out after all these years.

How?

zdbrandon4• 5 years ago

The framework that I have for myself, is to figure out which letter from MAPS [1] is missing from the work, and then figure out how to fill it. I’ve found that if I have all 4, then it’s much easier to work hard without asking myself “why” every day.

[1] Usually known as CAR, but I find MAPS more helpful:

Mastery: Do you enjoy geeking out about the subject matter? When others correct you, or show you a better way to do something, are you annoyed or delighted? If annoyed, this may be something you should be delegating if you can.

Autonomy: Do you feel sufficiently powerful enough to accomplish the tasks you deem necessary for your goals, and in the way you want to accomplish them?

Purpose: Is this goal helpful to anyone? Is anyone counting on you to accomplish this?

Social Interaction: Do you enjoy spending time with the people you’re working with?

amelius• 5 years ago

For most people, the challenge is not how to work hard. The challenge is how to work hard and get compensated for it properly.

HellDunkel• 5 years ago

This is some next level clickbait and we all fell for it. With „hard work“ he is touching on somthing we all can relate to. So we read the thing. What he is trying to get across is: a) i know hard work, that is why i „made“ it. b) it takes hard work to make great things c) this proves i made great things. This is not a philisophical reflection. It is marketing BS. I am not a hater. Just trying to give name to the elephant in the room.

didibus3• 5 years ago

What I'd like to see first is:

"Why work hard"

To me, it seems that if we've put ourselves in a society that requires hard work, we've failed somewhere along the way, when do you run a business and value making things harder for customers? So if we've made societal success hard, we've kind of failed as a society in my opinion.

zdbrandon4• 5 years ago

“Societal success” in this sense is relative to others’ performance, and as such will always be “hard”, because the person aiming for this success is by definition aiming to be a statistical outlier.

didibus3• 5 years ago

“Societal success” in this sense is relative to others’ performance

That's only true because we failed to offer something better. Societal success should mean: "economic security and independence, and the pursuit of happiness", where happiness is defined as one's wellbeing. And that shouldn't require hard work.

If it was the case, than people could choose to work as hard or as easy as they want to achieve anything grandiose and ambitious, but they wouldn't have too, they'd be free to choose too or not.

At least it is my opinion that a society should try to eliminate the need for physical and mental exertion from its citizens, while providing them with their needs met, and thus setting them free to do as they please. What they please to do could be to work on extra hard problems, or to put hard work 24/7 on some goal, even if it's a stupid one, like a world record at cherry pit spitting.

The way it is now, "societal success" comes from being an outlier in being able to have this freedom to choose to continue to work hard or not. People basically aspire to achieve societal success by performing better then others financially and getting themselves into a position of inequality where they hold the big end of the stick. And the messaging is that to achieve this privileged position, you need to put in "hard work". And I feel this is the wrong outcome of society.

fierro• 5 years ago

Reading this makes me think of the quite "If you're so smart, then why are you unhappy?"

coldtea2• 5 years ago

One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll have to work very hard.

Says the guy who made it big in his 32th year by selling a company he had just founded 2 years before.

An aspiring message to single mothers working two jobs and barely making rent and all other kind of working stiff working their arse off to keep the lights on, the buildings clean, the power running, the cables installed, the food served, the minerals for the PCs mined, and so on, in the backbone of the "digital" economy...

Bill Gates, for example, was among the smartest people in business in his era, but he was also among the hardest working. "I never took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one.

Well, that's because he never "worked" the way 99.9999% of the people he is lecturing do: he did what he wanted to do, running his own company, bossing other people below him, and making billions whole at it.

If Bill Gates tried working as an employee on someone else's business, with BS bosses and middle managers running you around, and not making anything to write home about, we'd see how fast he would have wanted a day off...

(Not that there's any reliable way to cross-check whether he really "never had a day off" in his 20s, or what his work day actually amounted to)...

agomez314• 5 years ago

The correlation between working hard and being successful is a necessary but not sufficient cause.

theptip• 5 years ago

I think the Hamming piece that circulates here infrequently is very insightful:

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office!
What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question about this.

On the other hand, I would also recommend caution here -- I strongly believe that some people simply have a much higher capacity/tolerance for work. John Carmack appears to have been able to sustain 80-hour weeks without burning out. I can't. I don't feel bad about this gap. This observation is pretty mundane; it's exactly the same way that the average person's psyche or physique simply can't tolerate the training workload of an olympic athlete.

"Work harder" might be the right advice for someone who has excess capacity that they are not using. It might be terrible advice for someone who is already trending towards burnout working 50-hour weeks when their capacity is 40-hour weeks. There's an element of self-knowledge required to honestly evaluate yourself and determine exactly how capable you are. (Of course -- push yourself sometimes. You might surprise yourself. I personally think it's a good experience to have pushed up against burnout on a project I care about, to know what my limits are. But I don't aspire to ride that line in perpetuity.)

ttiurani• 5 years ago

[E]ven in college a lot of the work is pointless; there are entire departments that are pointless.

I find it interesting PG thinks that dismissing entire branches of science without specifying which ones nor justifying why, is a) a good take or b) makes his essay better.

void_mint4• 5 years ago

I came here to rip apart this post and PG for propping up hustle culture bullshit, but am actually pleasantly surprised at his takes. I would reword most of his post to be more about "being engaged" instead of "working hard", because "work" has so many flavors and misconceptions.

My limit for the harder types of writing or programming is about five hours a day. Whereas when I was running a startup, I could work all the time. At least for the three years I did it; if I'd kept going much longer, I'd probably have needed to take occasional vacations. [5]

Most programmers don't have the ability or scope to be engaged in the way that he's talking about wrt his startup, so most programmers should stop working as soon as they're at their "productivity threshold" throughout the day and have fulfilled their remaining busywork duties. I really wish tech "influencers" like PG would post more about that - when to put the mouse down and go for a walk or watch a movie.

I actually think the "best" take would be "Every individual should work exactly as hard as they believe they should". I think it's a reality, in that most people are unwilling to work any harder than they want to, but also I think context is probably the most important factor in terms of "work", "output" and "success". If you don't feel like you should work hard, or don't need to, you're either working on something that isn't worth your time, or you don't feel engaged at all. Both are fine, but both also signal you should move on.

This post turned into kind of a ramble. Apologies.

joe_the_user• 5 years ago

Just quoting Gates as model is swallowing gallons of the "Koolaid" in my opinion. Other have gone into that in more detail here.

When asked the secret of his success, An insider who leveraged a monopoly position to get more of a monopoly position, said "hard work, relentless hard work, nothing but hard work!"

quickthrower24• 5 years ago

Yes and the other problem is using Gates as an example is the problem of extrapolation from an outlier.

Taking a survey of 100 YC participants would be more interesting.

pm904• 5 years ago

This is a beautifully written post and definitely not a ramble, thanks for sharing this.

I would take this a bit further that being happy or feeling fulfilled is really the best way to have an open mind to do things differently. If you're stressed out from working all the time, you have little chance of appreciating "problems" as more than things that must be dealt with rather than as opportunities for learning.

plantsbeans• 5 years ago

It’s a frustrating essay, because it comes close to having a helpful message. A phrase like “being engaged” seems closer to what he tries to get across, but a lot of young people will probably mostly take from this essay that they need to hustle, which is the kind of useful advice you’ll hear from a high school guidance counselor.

void_mint4• 5 years ago

One must not forget that PG has an agenda to push just like every other influencer. I believe he was specifically aware of his use of hustle culture language.

oriettaxx• 5 years ago

in Italy you would say: "ma va in miniera!"

rendall• 5 years ago

Meh. This isn't a guide on how to work hard, tbh, unless "wake up at 13 with the will to work hard" is a guide. "Be like Bill Gates" is no guide.

Give me a guide by someone who grew up a slacker, fucked off deep into adulthood and then learnt or taught themselves the hard lessons on working hard. What to do when you want to sleep in, when you want to stay out late, when you have such aching, gnawing anxiety about going to class that even looking at the textbook is ... hey look, Witcher Season 2 is on. A person who had been through that shit can talk about "how to work hard"

kaimorid• 5 years ago

wow

ipnon5• 5 years ago

pg's writing is still improving. That's impressive for someone who has been writing as long as him.

innagadadavida• 5 years ago

I'm not qualified to give advice to someone like PG. But millionaires and billionaires need to get some perspective and get out of their bubble before spouting nonsense advice to common people. For most normal people, it is about surviving and finding a profession that can pay the bills. At least acknowledging your role and place in society before focussing on some rarefied advice will be more useful (not to mention may also generate more clicks).

So as a challenge to PG: if you believe in yourself so strongly, prove it. Just freeze your billions and mansions for 6 months. Downgrade your life to live like a normal person. Get some perspective and write again. You'll probably become even more successful in the process (not that you care for it).

sjg0075• 5 years ago

The other thing that I found interesting was this:

"What can one do in the face of such uncertainty? One solution is to hedge your bets, which in this case means to follow the obviously promising paths instead of your own private obsessions. But as with any hedge, you're decreasing reward when you decrease risk. If you forgo working on what you like in order to follow some more conventionally ambitious path, you might miss something wonderful that you'd otherwise have discovered. That too must happen all the time, perhaps even more often than the genius whose bets all fail."

I'm not sure the things we view as safe, such as, medical/law/grad school/mba are really hedges.

You could go to medical school as a safe path but be interested in tech. I thought about this but the medical gate keepers didn't value the tech when I was applying ... Today we see ambitious medicine/tech convergences which arguably present a path there.

I think there is a bigger issue is that we don't know what the jobs of the future will be. But we do know they will be organized around disciplines but not exactly what they are. They will most likely have a technology component because tech is what enables growth.

mgh22• 5 years ago

There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort.

There is one essential factor that if someone does not have, everything else mentioned here does not matter: luck or provision (scientifically speaking, luck does not exist). Every entrepreneur knows that no matter how hard they work, at the end of the day if they are not in the right place, at the right time, with the right people, success is not guaranteed.

This view is biased towards certain kinds of people. Yes, these three ingredients might increase your success chances, especially in the US (being born is the US is luck). This is why so many 3rd world country people want to emigrate, for better opportunities. Even with this premise, you probably know of someone who worked incredibly hard only to be screwed by their boss, or the privileged kid who got a foot in the door at an Ivy League or a job.

People in Silicon Valley and tech live in a bubble - the danger of this is to attribute your success to hard work, when in fact everything was given (yes, even your opportunity to work hard or ability to be self-motivated was provided). Examples of SV's bias: "Everyone should learn how to code" (not everyone has a coder's mindset). "Universal Basic Income" (pandemic checks, people become lazy)

With this said, it is still our responsibility to work hard at everything we do.

It comes partly from popular culture, where it seems to run very deep, and partly from the fact that the outliers are so rare.

As an outlier, you are the lucky few, don't forget that.

Perhaps the greatest myth in American popular culture comes from the belief in free will, which makes hard work seem like the most plausible explanation for someone's mis/fortune: https://m-g-h.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale-4fecf80...

zdbrandon4• 5 years ago

Would it have soothed you if he began the article with: “Though the advice in this article is necessary, it alone is not sufficient to achieve success. Luck also plays a large factor. You need both. You will also need to obtain financial leverage. Hard work at McDonald’s is not the type that this article addresses.”? It seems unnecessary to me, particularly because he’s already written articles on these subjects. [1] [2]

Also, as another person that doesn’t believe in free will, I find it interesting that you thought it necessary to critique the way PG handled this subject matter, as if he had any choice.

But then again, neither did you.

Edit, forgot to link the articles. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html

mgh22• 5 years ago

Context - PG on luck: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/1tbxab/paul_g...

JGM_io• 5 years ago

I'm a bit wary of this essay even though I'm a fan of PG.

With neoliberal rhetoric like this:

  "Like most little kids, I enjoyed the feeling of achievement when I learned or did something new. As I grew older, this morphed into a feeling of disgust when I wasn't achieving anything."

I wonder if we're not forgetting to just chill. Can he just chill?

I dunno, something that's been on my mind

nathan_compton• 5 years ago

Huge surprise that the quintessential capitalist _just so happens_ to write an essay suggesting that you should never stop working at any moment of your entire life.

umvi• 5 years ago

It's one thing to learn how to work hard on tasks you love to do.

It's quite another to learn how to work hard on tasks you hate to do (but still need to be done). I suspect a lot of people that "work hard" programming would not be able to work hard doing manual labor (i.e. digging sprinkler trenches or painting a fence in the hot sun) and would quickly rationalize hiring someone else to do it for them.

mdoms• 5 years ago

Every person I've ever met who claims to be one of these hard workers who puts in 70 hours a week and never takes time off always seem to be taking mid-week holidays to Bali, golfing on sunny Tuesday afternoons etc. It's all a big show.

burlesona• 5 years ago

Knowing what you want to work on doesn't mean you'll be able to. Most people have to spend a lot of their time working on things they don't want to, especially early on. But if you know what you want to do, you at least know what direction to nudge your life in.

This is the hardest part for me. The stuff I dream about, my deepest “deep interest,” I don’t think I could make a meaningful dent in without substantial capital. And I didn’t come from a background with any kind of money. In my early twenties I spent years, largely wasted, chasing these dreams with the idea that I could find a less capital-intensive path or somehow get someone to invest in me. Eventually I realized it just wasn’t going to happen, and I needed to find an alternate interest that could feed me and my family.

At this point I see it as, if my alternate career pays off then perhaps I can circle back to my dreams in (hopefully early) “retirement,” when I have enough resources that I could live for a long time without income - or, better, enough capital to invest directly, but that seems unlikely.

Until then, I just do my best to enjoy the challenges of my alternate career path.

pm904• 5 years ago

Some of the best work is done by people who find an easy way to do something hard.

This is a pretty good insight. Every time I’ve been somewhat successful it’s been because I discovered a different approach which made the problem approachable.

When I tried to understand math by rote memorization it was boring. When I understood it as a tool to make predictions about systems, it seemed much more useful. Learning the equations became a side effect of another thing I was trying to do.

imafish2• 5 years ago

This post was too long compared to its substance.

tldr: To do great things, you need to be both hard-working and smart.

aerosmile• 5 years ago

A common tension we experience with PG's recent essays is that they make you wonder if you fit into his world (the way that Patrick Collison, Kyle Vogt, Sam Altman and other well-known founders do). Those stories usually contain elements of above-natural raw talent combined with insane amounts of hard work and the foresight to channel all that talent and effort into development of highly valuable skills. There are a good amount of people like that out there, and his writing deeply resonates with them. At the same time, there are many more people out there who quickly discover that their lives have very few overlaps with PG's narrative.

For example, perhaps they started a startup and got burned (contrary to PG's narrative). Or they never cared for any skills that one traditionally needs to build a digital product (primarily programming, design, and the intercept between the two in form of a well-rounded PM). Or worse yet, their career took them into the analog world, with all the pros and cons of that universe. Last but not least, perhaps they just simply value the benefits of starting a family and providing for them with a low-to-moderate but predictable and stable income.

If you belong to that latter group, no way that PG will resonate with you, similar to how Karl Marx won't be a favorite author for a monarchist or Rush Limbaugh for a Democrat. Or those people right or wrong? It depends on who you ask. It's the same with PG - we just have to come to understand that the startup world is a polarizing ideology that works for some and not for others. I bet you that any founder out there that made money with a startup is quite likely to like PG's writing. Conversely, if you tried and didn't succeed (or never even wanted to give it a shot), it would be more difficult for you to align your thinking with PG's.

theshadowknows• 5 years ago

There’s that line from COD that I’m sure is from somewhere else - amateurs practice until they can get it right, professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong. That’s sort of how I look at it. It’s served me well so far.

fleddr• 5 years ago

The article isn't wrong or incorrect in itself, but since the definition of "doing great things" once again centers on extreme Bill-Gates-level success, I take issue with two points:

In these extreme examples (Gates, Bezos, Musk, etc) the environment is the true differentiator to go from success to extreme success. Not talent, not working hard. Doing the right thing at the right time in the right environment creates the snowball effect. It still requires hard work, but hard work is not rare or unique. Bezos is about a 100.000 times richer than a "plain" successful millionaire, so surely hard work is not the game changer here.

Success requires hard work, extreme success requires luck or foresight. In the case of Gates clearly luck, as he pretty much missed every single tech trend in the decades to come. He has zero foresight, but I'm sure he worked hard in his most energetic years, like pretty much everybody.

I protest against leaving out the luck factor as these people and their admirers truly believe they are some god-like character, a 1000 times smarter than everybody else.

There has been an entire industry trying to replicate the success of Jobs, for example. As if you can replicate that. You can't replicate any of these outcomes as they are time-bound. You can do exactly what Jobs did and the outcome would be shit, no matter your talent or how hard you work.

The second part of my protest is completely leaving out the enablers of your success: workers. 99.9999% of your wealth in the case of extreme success is delivered by them, not you. Not even mentioning that is classic hero admiration. And this doesn't even go into how often the relation is highly exploitative. We know the issue with Amazon workers, as well as the true reason of Microsoft's success: the merciless elimination of competitors in criminal ways.

rgifford20• 5 years ago

I worked my way through college as a mover (and came out the other side with high 5-figure debt). Many of the older guys I worked with had drug habits. I worked 16-hour days with those guys. They'd get on me for not running up stairs, for packing with too little paper around glass, for setting things down more than once. None wrote articles entitled "How to Work Hard." None knew Warren Buffet as a child (see Gates). None attended the most expensive schools, if they had they certainly wouldn't have chosen to drop out because they got bored or were unfulfilled (see Graham and Zuck). Take a look at the top 10 highest valued YC startups. All their founders came from schools with less than 10% acceptance rates.

Privilege is what I'm getting at. Having an income 300:1 your lowest paid employee is disturbing. Making millions or billions off speculative, debt-fueled VC is disturbing. Proselyting your brand of success is disturbing. Recommendation: every time a founder, investor or businessperson starts to wax poetic on virtue, look for an angle. Why do founders want to appear virtuous and hardworking? Why do we need that from them? How else can they justify making sometimes up to 50% of their companies entire payroll? How emotionally satisfying must it be for Graham and his ilk to tell you why they got what they have?

What if most of serious wealth and success is decided at birth?

CheezeIt3• 5 years ago

It isn’t, obviously, because look at the example of Bill Gates: starting a business as a 20-year-old college dropout puts you at a big disadvantage compared to people with more life experience.

selfmodruntime4• 5 years ago

The difference being that gates was never in any real danger. His credits didn't disappear. He lived in a paid for apartment. He did not have to worry about money, and if he chose, he could've gone back to college at any time. It only puts you at a 'disadvantage' in business circles, because there's a slight chance that people with more experience will not take you as seriously

rgifford20• 5 years ago

Take a look at the faces on the Forbes list and get back to me. Just how white, male and western are they exactly?

It's not that Gates wasn't smart or hardworking. It's just that it's easy to be hardworking and ambitious when you had books growing up, proper nutrition, when your parents stayed together, when you're in good health, when you got tutors and went to great schools, when you were engaged in extracurriculars, when you lived in an affluent society, when your parents were well connected, and on and on and on.

Are his contributions to humanity worth 60B+? Scientific discovery springs up in a bunch of places simultaneously and organically. I have to assume his contribution to society would've too, maybe with a smaller amount of value extracted to his personal fortune?

He's a philanthropist now, so that's good. I would be too the way social and political tides are turning. Funny how philanthropic the wealthy become. Even Epstein.

RC_ITR5• 5 years ago

The Bill Gates Mythology in this essay is a bit odd though. No doubt a hard worker, but the claim

"Bill Gates, for example, was among the smartest people in business in his era, but he was also among the hardest working. "I never took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one."

doesn't align with the facts that have recently emerged about him. [1] Maybe PG should examine selection bias and self-reporting bias a bit more before making the claim he does here.

[1]https://nypost.com/2021/05/10/bill-gates-womanizer-held-nude...

ipnon5• 5 years ago

Not all hardworking and talented people become successful, but all successful people are talented and hardworking. Some people are born with better chances than others, but we should strive to make a society where at least most people are born with a good chance.

rgifford20• 5 years ago

...all successful people are talented and hardworking.

I doubt it. Most measures of economic mobility show this is becoming less and less true -- if it ever was. I think believing it is important though.

mattacular• 5 years ago

but all successful people are talented and hardworking.

Citation needed.

selfmodruntime4• 5 years ago

What if most of serious wealth and success is decided at birth?

There is no 'what if'. It's just a fact. You can pretty accurately predict what a child will be able to attain in life by looking at their zip code.

emadabdulrahim• 5 years ago

While I'm not naive to not see that life is inherently unequal, I completely disagree with you.

I know plenty people, including myself, who not only had the wrong zip code, they didn't even have a zip code. Somehow they made it. You can get lucky after you're born. And if you work hard, you can increase your luck odds.

Also, why zip code is the axiom here? I'd say having good parents is more significant than being born in the right zip code. Who's to say?

SilverRed2• 5 years ago

It's not even really material inheritance or gifts. It's that successful parents teach their children how to be successful.

When I reflect on my life I realize that pretty much everything went right because my parents had explained all the steps. I followed my parents advice to learn programming, I followed my parents advice on how to get a job, I followed my parents advice on how to negotiate how to negotiate higher pay and when to put the squeeze on management.

And now I'm doing pretty well for myself. I did work hard but I could have worked just as hard in the wrong direction and got nowhere. But I was already shown the path by my parents.

digislave6• 5 years ago

PG talks about that in other essays, on how you should probably move to the right location. He compares Milano to Florence - it is unlikely people in Milano were less intelligent, but all the famous painters emerged in Florence.

Nevertheless I think your claim about the zip codes is too broad. Most people will have average lives. I suspect even in Silicon Valley only a small fraction of kids grow up to be successful entrepreneurs.

varispeed3• 5 years ago

Having an income 300:1 your lowest paid employee is disturbing

I can imagine how and why communist revolutions were so "successful". This ratio simply shows theft from the workers. Probably, if we don't get a regulation in that area, so that let's say the maximum ratio could be no more than 10:1 and heavily tax capital gains, dividends and other means that privilege class use to extract value without having to work for it, this history will repeat itself. In some western countries, extreme left parties gain huge support, because people are simply fed up of reading that e.g. Amazon got another record year while they themselves have to sleep in a tent because they cannot afford paying rent.

ipnon5• 5 years ago

The Russian communist revolution succeeded because Tsarist Russia was brutal and despotic, and the brutal and despotic Bolsheviks were merely the lesser of two evils and better fighters. The Chinese communist revolution succeeded because the Chinese Communist Party waged a guerilla war while the Nationalist army fought the Japanese invasion by themselves. Once the invasion was defeated the Chinese Communist Party fought a brutal conventional war marked by long sieges where 100,000s of city dwellers starved to death.

I think political and military factors are underrated as explanations for the success of communist revolutions compared to social and economic factors.

KerrickStaley• 5 years ago

Take a look at the top 10 highest valued YC startups. All their founders came from schools with less than 10% acceptance rates.

This is not true. AirBnB is the top valued company that went through YC [1]. AirBnB was founded by Brian Chesky among others. Brian Chesky went to the Rhode Island School of Design [2]. The RISD had an acceptance rate of 20% in 2020.

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Chesky [3] https://www.risd.edu/about

easton• 5 years ago

I'm not going down the list because I don't have time at the moment, but #2 is DoorDash, and the two founders with Wikipedia pages went to Berkeley and Stanford. Both schools with lower acceptance rates.

j2kun• 5 years ago

Your point is not very well taken, because RISD is an extremely prestigious design school.

jdross• 5 years ago

I was a mover and then I ran a moving company. I love movers and the culture of people who work with their hands. They tend to be much funnier than office workers.

I realize yours is a common reality, but it's not been my experience. I always felt surrounded by underdogs, and our privilege mostly came from former underdogs choosing to bet on me.

My parents are middle class New Yorkers. I went to a public high school, ran track, skateboarded and played with computers and programming for fun.

I went to Wash U in St Louis on financial scholarship. A great school but not the ones that tech companies recruit aggressively from. My freshman year I bootstrapped a moving company and a custom apparel company, and I worked constantly at both on top of a full course load for a double major and social obligations. I probably couldn't do that today, but it didn't feel like work then. It was fun. Both of those companies did well enough that I got introduced to Joe Lonsdale as he was starting Addepar, and I made enough money from them to pay off all debts and enter adult life with over 150k in savings.

I joined Addepar my sophomore summer. It was me, Joe, a CMU dropout, a Berkeley grad who was working at Yahoo, a snowboard apparel designer, and a santa clara grad. We hacked it out, and now that company is worth over a billion dollars. Joe was a Stanford graduate, the rest of us made it with equity.

While at Addepar in SF I met Keith Rabois, who tried to recruit me to Square. I turned him down because I wanted to graduate school, but we became close friends and eventually started Opendoor together with Eric Wu, the child of immigrants who went to University of Arizona. We recruited a great team, and now Opendoor is a 10 billion dollar public company.

There are a million and one privileges I've enjoyed, but they were mostly people being willing to bet on me. And most of the money I made was in equity. I never had a six figure salary until my last 6 months at Opendoor, and I didn't take any money off the table until year 5.

rgifford20• 5 years ago

I appreciate you sharing your story! It's cool to hear about your success and I definitely understand that it's different than some might think of it. Congrats! I'll try not criticize your narrative or how you frame it and focus on sharing how I think about mine instead.

I'm American, white, male, and got into an American college. I studied economics in school, got super stressed about my debt and income inequality. So I came to SF after college, doubled down on my debt with a bootcamp, and got a high paying engineering job. It was a big, stressful risk and paid off. I paid all my student debt off in a few months. My life has been an absolute dream since. I would never, never in a million years say this:

...our privilege mostly came from former underdogs choosing to bet on me

From working with those guys at the moving company I can tell you, seemingly small missteps lead to irreversible stagnation in traditional measures of success (career, achievement, wealth, etc). Let's cast all that aside though and just focus on demographics. Americans represent ~4% of the world's population. About 32% of Americans have graduated college. ALREADY I'm part of ~1% of the world's population and we haven't even included white/male. And I bet you like what half of SF engineers and YC founders fall in that population? Just incredibly disproportionate.

During the Great Depression stocks didn't rebound for 20 years. Over the last 20-40 years interest rates have steadily declined, ROI across the board has shrunk, and VC funds have proved highly profitable. All of that means that the last 20 years have been gangbusters for VC funding, SF, and software engineering. Had the next long protracted economic crisis hit during my job search, what would've happened? I was job searching for 6 months before I got my first job offer at a doctor's salary. What even is that!?

I worked hard, I was lucky, and I was successful. I don't even pretend to understand the cause and effect there.

unishark• 5 years ago

All their founders came from schools with less than 10% acceptance rates.

This says they were overachievers in prior pursuits too. Universities may not do a perfect job of it, but their admissions is primarily based on merit. In fact the kind of person that will make a big impact on society is precisely what they look for in addition to grades and test scores. Perhaps they are just pretty good at it.

rgifford20• 5 years ago

Why are they overachievers though? What factors -- over which they had control -- formed their psychology, intellectual capability, access to resources and education?

I'm guessing zip code predicts "overachiever-dom" depressingly well. I'm also guessing it's not everything, life is noisy.

ookdatnog5• 5 years ago

I think this 12-minute video by Veritasium provides one of the most concise and nuanced takes on the role of luck in success I have encountered.

https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I

Aeolun• 5 years ago

What if most of serious wealth and success is decided at birth?

You don’t get to decide how much wealth you end up with.

You do however decide how much you do not end up with.

Gatsky3• 5 years ago

Note that everyone on this forum is prima facie remarkably privileged compared to someone in this world. 'We' all went to some kind of school as opposed to no school. 'We' all have amazing technology at our finger tips, as opposed to lacking basic nutrition and sanitation and personal safety.

The difference between 'us' and the abject poor is much greater than the difference between 'us' and PG or Bill Gates. The abject poor can't even post on here to point this out.

My point is that privilege tagging is hypocritical, and not useful. As such, I simply read this essay calmly for what it is, knowing that I too was born with more than enough luck. Yet I constantly fail to honour that most essential fact about my life.

rgifford20• 5 years ago

It's an article called "How to Work Hard" that doesn't once mention luck, psychology, or basic human needs.

What do you get from the success how-tos of multi-millionares? Do you really not see it as self-serving? Disclose survivorship bias, incredible privilege, and impossible odds and I'm in... I think? At that point I'm still unclear why the rich have something useful to say here that Maslow or other academics don't.

digislave6• 5 years ago

Your story doesn't actually demonstrate that you have to know Warren Buffet as a child and attend an expensive school to become successful.

I don't think anybody here claims that working hard automatically makes you successful, either, just that it is difficult to become successful without it.

Also your movers could probably afford to work less if they dropped their drug habits.

Tycho6• 5 years ago

Every time pg puts out a new essay, we get into this privilege bingo stuff. It’s always irrelevant. There’s a huge audience of people who don’t care if their CEO is 300x better paid than they are, or that they didn’t go to an elite school, or that they didn’t have prestigious family connections: what they want to know is how did he work, what can we do to unlock our productive potential, how can we create things that we can be proud of in the same way. That’s who Graham is writing for.

TrackerFF• 5 years ago

Maybe the way he worked is also a product of his environment, and could thus be dependent on things like wealth, family/genetics, upbringing, network, etc.?

willhslade• 5 years ago

I am not going to engage with most of this topic, nor am I disputing that Bill Gates had advantages most of the world didn't : mom on numerous boards, dad a successful lawyer, got into Harvard, etc. However, I will dispute that Warren Buffet knew Gates as a child. In a YouTube video Gates describes his first meeting, as an already wildly successful tech entrepreneur. https://youtu.be/VBIiy5CnTiY

nverno4• 5 years ago

Then we would be living in an alternate dystopian reality.

Has privilege just come to be a catch-all to explain any difference in outcomes? I mean you mention Buffet first, kinda ruins the point you are making here.

As a software engineer, I fail to see what is so impossible about any of the people's origin stories. With a little programming knowledge, a somewhat novel idea, and a laptop anyone could become the next Zuck. They aren't royalty, no special blood requirement anymore.

aabajian• 5 years ago

Paul Graham makes a few points that show why medical training needs reform. There's a disconnect between hard work and income in medicine:

i. You work hard throughout residency, yet your salary is fixed. The hardest-working neurosurgery resident gets the same check as the coasting primary care trainee.

ii. Trainees are praised for their academic knowledge and their academic output, yet the highest-earning physicians are in private practice.

iii. Physician jobs in desirable areas are scarce, and they pay the least. Hard-work improves your chances of getting a job in a competitive market, but at a lower salary.

Aerroon• 5 years ago

Is the ability to work hard also a "talent"?

ADHD seems like it impairs most of the (useful) hard work somebody could dedicate themselves to. Could there also be a scale of this that's unrelated to ADHD?

danielmarkbruce2• 5 years ago

Is anyone else surprised there isn't more discussion of focus? I know many people (myself included) who work hard but on too many things simultaneously and the results aren't as good as folks who seem to just keep plodding along on one thing. Two of my friends who are extremely successful seem less interested in the field they are in, and while intelligent not outrageously so, and don't work super hard. But they just keep at one thing without distraction. Over 10-15 years it's added up. And it's not an easy thing to do. Sticking at one thing 50 hours a week for 10 years is intolerably boring for many people.

varispeed3• 5 years ago

Sometimes I have an ability to hyper-focus on some task and make it in one or two days rather than weeks, but after that I feel so exhausted mentally, that I cannot do anything sensible for a week or two. What I am getting at, is that often it doesn't matter.

danielmarkbruce2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure I follow - what doesn't matter?

mjh2539• 5 years ago

It's like the Protestant work ethic, but denuded of any religious connotations.

fellowniusmonk• 5 years ago

For people with my upbringing its even harder, because hard work often does not pay rewards, so you have to intentionally reject the feedback loop that nature and reality is throwing in your face.

There is a whole class of incredibly hard working people that never receive, are actively denied reward or are effectively punished for their hard work.

Hard work without dopamine reinforcement takes extreme mental toughness.

hindsightbias• 5 years ago

Live-to-work or work-to-live.

There are probably few on HN (in the US) who don’t have either option. Figure it out now or let your boss decide for you.

And if you think you can do a startup and work-to-live, you’re an idiot. So start over now.

fungiblecog• 5 years ago

The problem with these kind of essays is that - like the whole 10,000 hours thing - people take away the "Work" part but miss that the "work" has to be intentional. There's no point putting in 14 hour days on busywork that gets you nowhere. Unfortunately that's where a lot of people end up.

quickthrower24• 5 years ago

Username checks out

deeblering4• 5 years ago

How to write an article best displayed at 640x480

crossroadsguy• 5 years ago

Duh. This is just a “hard work propaganda” piece. Some parts just read like “Believe in Jesus or your limbs will start melting away!”. Just like that.

Is this how venture capitalists have always functioned, or is it a new kind of initiative? Is there some kind of threat they perceive seeing many people, organisations, and even some nations talk about work-life balance (et cetera)?

Besides, is this what pg essays are all about? So much brouhaha for this? I have read one more of these 1-2 years ago or so and it was the same feeling. No wonder I’ve never encountered these writings or talk about them anywhere out of the HN.

contingencies• 5 years ago

It all boils down to motivation and what you want out of life. Compound interest is great but health and youth never return, and the opportunities of today are not always here tomorrow.

(That said, I have been at it since 4:30AM today and working on a single venture for six years in extreme adversity. Anything else would be boring!)

maerF0x02• 5 years ago

One meta comment I would like to make is that taking the advice of people looking backwards can be terribly misleading as people re-encode memories as they recall them, often to highlight the positives and to move goal posts towards what actually happened.

Someone who says "I'm so happy I moved to <place> in my 20s because <life event> happened" fails to highlight 2 things. 1) What were they aiming at and did they accomplish _that_ and 2) what were the multitude of true opportunities they turned down and would they actually be materially happier had those happened. Not would their current self prefer it, but if we could some how numerically rate the happiness of folks who go through alternate universes...

The good news is that there's a good chance you'll look back on your life events with mostly good feelings, regardless of what happens, because you'll heal and move on from the bad parts ...

redisman• 5 years ago

I just started reading Fooled by Randomness and Taleb makes this exact point. People just make up a story afterwards about why they were successful but it’s completely meaningless fiction and Cherry picking

neilv• 5 years ago

If this piece had section headings, I would've read more of it.

Perhaps I missed the meta, and PG wanted the reader to work hard to read it?

momirlan• 5 years ago

People might really believe that this is all it takes. However we know there's a secret sauce : luck. You can work as hard as you want, if luck is not on your side you won't get far.

quickthrower24• 5 years ago

Just want to comment to say it’s totally ok not to work hard (nebulous definition but let’s say hard = forgetting your mum’s birthday hard)

I think articles like this imply (whether intentional or not) that our existence need to be driven towards some big goal.

Reading a lot of this worldview on HN and other similar places can make one feel that living a normal life is somehow not enough. That’s the trap I hope people don’t fall into.

Don’t cargo cult bill gates! If you want to work like a dog, fine, but as long as it’s an internal decision not to please the expectations of others.

Sophistifunk• 5 years ago

When people like PG give this advice, it serves two purposes; makes them feel a little better about everybody they ignored growing up, and makes you feel like maybe you'll be a billionaire one day if you just put in 80 hour weeks for this other billionaire.

You won't.

hellbannedguy• 5 years ago

I think Paul Graham is a brilliant programmer. This site coded in Lisp is unbelievable. I'm being honest. One of my current goals is wanting to learn Lisp, and I thank Paul for that.

He's a C writer though. (We all can't be good at evertyhing. Personally, I have never met a person from a wealthy upbringing who could write well.)

It's too long, and I'm still not sure what he is saying?

I can offer this, but it's for ambitious poor/middle class people.

Work hard at getting ahead. I worked through school, and got out with a B average.

If you are poor getting through college, or starting a business, will not be as easy as the guy who has the wealthy sympathetic father, or mother who sits on the company Board of Directors when they are buying your company. (Easy shot a Bill Gates?)

What am I saying? If you are poor, life will be harder.

You know it already. You know you can't make too many mistakes early on.

You know there will be no one to help when the chips are down.

You won't be offered jobs, or perks in life because of your family name.

You know you will need to work harder than Biff, or Charles.

I did everything I was suspose to do in college. I made every class count, even though I knew most of it was a joke.

I then had a nervous breakdown.

Looking back, I think I should have concentrated on socializing a bit more. I should have networked more too.

In all honestly, I didn't like kids from wealthy families. I found them boring, and unimaginative.

Those wealthy kids usually become wealthy adults though, and those connections will be important later on. I still want to upchuck even thinking about using a person to get ahead though.

adverbly• 5 years ago

Good read! Great points Paul!

Thanks for taking the time to write this up and share your thoughts :D

As someone who leans towards "Work Smart, Not Hard", I had the following thoughts while reading this:

Bill Gates... Lionel Messi...

These are very interesting examples, and I don't think I actually would have said that either of them actually did any "great work". What they have in common is what they are both "top of their field" in fields which are highly competitive/winner-take-all, and therefore get an insanely disproportionate amount of compensation.

When I think "Great Work", I think of scientists and inventors. Interestingly enough, many scientists and inventors were "all over the place" with their careers - many of them being polymaths who pursued a number of diverse hobbies. They often also spent time "idle", or "thinking"(Feynman was a good example of this), which is how I find that I do my best thinking as well. I see creative work as benefiting significantly from "not work" activities such as idleness. Steve Jobs had a similar line of thinking:

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

In summary, although hard work can capture more value in winner-take-all environments, I think creative work creates more value, and creative work requires taking frequent breaks, and yes, a healthy amount of idleness.

mohanmca• 5 years ago

Since many comments mentions that hard-work alone doesn't matter.

According to Daniel Kahneman, mere hard-work doesn't click unless we have access to expert feedback in the domain we work. He used to compare hard working f1-formula-driver without any input from past drivers vs driver with input from expert.

Hard work without mentor won't click. Environment and people around us also matter as much as the hard-work we do.

human• 5 years ago

“ Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful.”

I recognize this feeling, but oh god, it’s a perfect recipe for a burnout.

graycat• 5 years ago

It appears to me that Graham's essay is missing information and emphasis on one more crucial input to doing "great work" or being successful at all. That input is the importance of and good approaches to

===>>> Good Problem Selection <<<===

including good initial problem selection.

codeisawesome• 5 years ago

Mods are doing a good job these days putting up two articles talking about opposite-ish viewpoints on the front page it feels very intentional and it is interesting.

lugged• 5 years ago

Please stop using invisible grey.

silviot• 5 years ago

As others have already pointed out this will go down in history as the "Let them eat cake" of our times. The disconnect with the real life of billions of people is astonishing.

nickd20013• 5 years ago

I think this is a fantastic discussion, one of the best I ever read on HN. :) Its a provocative article, for sure! Very good for people to ask whether they should work hard, why they should work hard, and at what. A good recent example I feel of someone who works extremely hard and its 100% worth it, is Prof Sarah Gilbert, the person behind the Oxford-Astra-Zeneca covid vaccine, which BTW has a Malaria vaccine on the heels of it which would be amazing.

oolonthegreat• 5 years ago

urgh all this "working very very hard" glorifying talk makes me feel nauseated. science and creativity stems from leisure and idleness. not working very very hard.

danielkyne• 5 years ago

PG never misses

silent_cal• 5 years ago

The "hard work" meme always made me feel awful, and I never knew why until I read "Leisure: the Basis of Culture". It's a philosophical book that explains the origin of this impulse to work for work's sake. It's a modern phenomenon, and it's not good.

jodrellblank4• 5 years ago

I often think about this The Onion article[1]: https://www.theonion.com/97-year-old-dies-unaware-of-being-v...

A tragedy that she never discovered her violin talent. All that life and she never wowed audiences or had a TV show special or met the Pope. All she had were these poxy supportive family, friends, and community experiences.

Who could be satisfied with merely that?

[1] it's fictional/satire, just to be clear.

doublejay1999• 5 years ago

america has a chronic work fetish

ok_coo• 5 years ago

I do not dream of labor.

peter_d_sherman• 5 years ago

I would like to start out by saying that I am a great fan of Paul Graham, his work, his essays, YCombinator, HN, etc., etc.

However, I have to sharply, and I mean sharply disagree with this one essay...

You see, I will put this essay against one from antiquity, and that one is the 5th Labor Of Hercules:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/stables.html

"Hercules went to King Augeas, and without telling anything about Eurystheus, said that he would clean out the stables in one day, if Augeas would give him a tenth of his fine cattle.

Augeas couldn't believe his ears, but promised. Hercules brought Augeas's son along to watch. First the hero tore a big opening in the wall of the cattle-yard where the stables were. Then he made another opening in the wall on the opposite side of the yard.

Next, he dug wide trenches to two rivers which flowed nearby. He turned the course of the rivers into the yard. The rivers rushed through the stables, flushing them out, and all the mess flowed out the hole in the wall on other side of the yard."

PDS: See, King Augeas was expecting that Hercules would clean up the stables the old-fashioned way -- by using his strength to clean them out manually.

King Augeas was expecting that Hercules work hard for him.

Hercules did work hard, but additionally, Hercules also worked smart -- by digging only what was necessary to direct the river or rivers -- and letting the flowing water, letting nature itself -- do all of the work!

Now compare this to MapReduce.

Compare this to Jeff Dean of Google, and all that he does.

Jeff Dean and MapReduce leverage computation power (think of them as the streams of water) -- to do all of the "Heavy Lifting".

They work hard -- but they also work smart.

They utilize an infrastructure (Hercules with the water from a river, Jeff Dean wtih the power from distributed computing/distributed queries/MapReduce, etc.) which when skillfully directed, at their hands, performs all of the hard work for them...

They work smart.

Now this being said, I'll close by saying that I am Paul Graham's greatest fan -- I think he is one of the greatest intellectuals in the world today! And I agree with 99.44% of everything else that he has so wisely and eloquently said or written in the past!

And I love his essays, YCombinator, HN, etc., etc.!!!

But we slightly disagree -- on this one! <g>

In a friendly way, of course! <g>

jstrebel• 5 years ago

I am always amazed at how well-received Paul Graham's blog entries are here on Hacker News, despite their thinly veilled underlying message: "Start a company, work hard, get rich". All of his writings center around this topic in one way or another and glorify it in various way.

I always take his writings with a big grain of salt, because I know that his sweet message might not be right for me.

sunstone• 5 years ago

Think of how astonishingly amazing it is to be a sentient being in a universe of 100's of billions of galaxies! What could anyone ever do to come close to justifying such a privilege? Sure, work hard if you like but don't forget what an astounding trip existence is.

Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water.

adminscoffee• 5 years ago

i might need to read how to relax

amai2• 5 years ago

Rich people who work hard are the exception. Most of them just inherit hard ( or marry hard ).

amai2• 5 years ago

Professional athletes often train 30 hours a week. They cycle between easy and hard training days.

If they would workout hard every day their performance would stall or even plummet.Nutrition and sleep is also very important for them . I don't understand why the lessons from pro sports are not taken into account also for work. In both cases it is about performance after all.

simonebrunozzi• 5 years ago

Any discussion about hard work should have a mention of "in praise of idleness" [0].

In addition to that, let me tell you this.

The famous writer Andrea Camilleri [1] (author of Inspector Montalbano, an Italian TV series which became an international success [2]), in an interview years ago recalled when as a kid, spending Summers in his native Sicily would entail things like spitting on a coin and waiting for hours until a fly would get stuck in the saliva - essentially, being idle.

And this idleness, in his view, had a tremendous value.

Praise hard work, sure. But don't think that you can escape the big questions about life, or that hard work is the only way to achieve greatness.

[0] https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_Montalbano_(TV_serie...

tony2016• 5 years ago

I have a wide screen. His left side smaller width articles are freaking annoying!! Inconvenient to read.

How to Work Hard

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