Just Finish Everything

http://statspotting.com/2012/12/just-finish-everything/

by npguy • 14 years ago

35 30 14 years ago

statspotting.com

ajpatel• 14 years ago

Oh, the grammar...it hurts...

npguy3• 14 years ago

Thanks, fixed where we could, except the actual quote.

zinssmeister• 14 years ago

"if you are less than 40 and aren’t working at least 15-18 hours a day you are not working enough" I find this to be very bad advise. Nobody should work 18 hrs every day.

npguy3• 14 years ago

That is a really good point. I think the number was probably just mentioned to just show how important it is to work hard.

npguy3• 14 years ago

But I do think that the point on tripling your effort towards the finishing line is a great piece of advice.

dscrd2• 14 years ago

Calculating childcare and housekeeping into the equation, I'm probably doing about 15 hours per day. 18 hours per day would mean that you would get 6 hours absolute maximum of sleep per night, and anyone who does that for longer periods of time is an idiot comparable to a drug abuser.

acuozzo• 14 years ago

I get __severe__ headaches if I sleep for more than six hours per night.

My physicians(s) have no explanation and, I assure you, I've seen several of them in an effort to address this.

It's comforting to know that I'm "an idiot comparable to a drug abuser", however. Thanks.

nthj• 14 years ago

The danger for many (or most) people on Hacker News is not that they're going to slack off and only work 25-35 hours a week, but that they're going to work 60-80 hours a week on the wrong things.

And sleep deprived people are really, really crippled at deciding what the wisest thing to work on is.

bcbrown• 14 years ago

What I have learned from individual athletic competition is that the person who wins is usually the person who is willing to sacrifice the most in order to win - free time, hobbies, family and social relationships, health. I think that's probably true for anything. This is only possible for something that is a deeply held passion.

At the same time, by making an inviolable commitment to myself that I was going to enter a certain competition, and accepting as a given that I would be making certain sacrifices in my social and personal life from the training effort required, it made that commitment into something that I just did, without thinking about whether it was something I wanted to do at that moment. And removing that decision, that "do I really want to do this chore?", it's possible to have the consistency of effort necessary for performance at an elite level.

So I think it's valuable advice, to say start small, attempt surmountable obstacles, and develop the habit of consistent practice. And I think it's valuable to let people know that if they have an ambition to be an "iconic computer person", they will have to make large sacrifices.

I know that I'm not willing to sacrifice everything else in my life for programming. And I'm alright with that. But I don't criticize the people who have the drive to spend 15-18 on their passion. It's certainly not advice that's widely applicable, though.

diminish• 14 years ago

"Working hard and more than your peers" is shown by many great people as the keys for their success. For example, the German singer Dieter Bohlen of Modern Talking, in his classical first book (best-seller) says also that, his secret for success is, working when others are not.

adrianhoward• 14 years ago

Indeed. Working longer hours != doing more work.

In fact once you get much about 40 hours a week the opposite happens in my experience.

nmcfarl• 14 years ago

And there is actually research in that says this - productivity plummets after 40 hour on the job, and > 60 leads to less work being done, than in a 40 hour work week, because of high error rates.

sergiotapia• 14 years ago

Completely agree with you. Last week I worked 17 hour days, combining my day job and my freelance jobs (2) and I will never do that again if I can help it.

It broke my sleep schedule (which is fixed now thank God!) and really took a toll on my mood and motivation.

Completely not worth it.

Osmium• 14 years ago

Couldn't agree more. We all only have one life, and to burn our best years solely on work seems like such a shame. There's a lot to be said about the value and satisfaction of good, hard work, and I'm sure no one here would disagree with that, but there's more to life than work. So much more...

JoeAltmaier• 14 years ago

I flashed on a fantasy where we all retire during our 20s-30s, then work like slaves until we die. Strangely distopian; strange correspondence to what we do now anyway.

ww520• 14 years ago

Finishing something is definitely a huge competitive advantage. Anyone can have an idea and start a project. Only some are able to finish them.

nakedrobot2• 14 years ago

I decided, 6 years, ago, that to succeed in my field, above everyone else, it would be necessary work 4x harder to get 2x ahead (not "work 4x more" - "work 4x harder"). That's what I told myself. And I think this is the case in most lines of work. If you want to get ahead, you have to work a great deal harder than everyone else around you. Unless you happen to be exceptionally gifted and able to accomplish more than anyone else simply by showing up, it means that you really have to bust your ass continuously.

Generally this strategy and form of motivation has worked. I may not be the best at anything I'm doing, but I have accomplished a lot.

thirdtruck• 14 years ago

The research in "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport factors into this observation.

If we want to get ahead in a field, we have to seek out the hard problems, those that put us great mental strain to tease apart and comprehend. This might not require 80 hours of effort a month, but even 20 hours of such deep effort will feel like 80.

In other words, we have to do the weight-lifting equivalent of several reps every day that go just beyond our weight limit. Many others exhaust themselves on a hundred reps of a comfortable weight, but that will never increase their strength.

andrepena• 14 years ago

I didn't finish to read this article

szany• 14 years ago

This is stupid. Perseverance ≠ finishing everything. Not every project is worthy of being finished.

chimpinee• 14 years ago

No no no. This is unkind.

'Finish everything.' Everything? No way. Abandon stuff which is unfruitful or superseded or published. Just don't abandon stuff lightly: have a good explanation why (which is not a personal excuse).

Make progress with things that have meaning to you. Go slowly and keep returning to them. This is the fastest way. Don't force yourself to work when you're sick or bored or have other commitments. Your mind would not be engaged anyway.

Two more points. Valuable works are never truly finished. They are abandoned. Things can always be improved!

Also, don't worry about being competitive. Life is not a competition. There's infinite room for everyone to form a niche. Read up on comparative advantage.

Competition engenders a false sense of lack and zero-sumness which causes much harm to the world. It fosters greed.

gte910h2• 14 years ago

This is horrible. Flagging it

Jach• 14 years ago

I've observed a correlation between people who say things like "I could do X if I wanted to", motivation problems, and confusion about free will. I'm glad he calls that phrase out as crap. Unfortunately:

> If you aren’t 10x smarter than everyone now, how will you compete in 10-20 years? Imagine the math, physics, computer science, nanotech, biotech, etc. that will be common then — thus, you better get crackin! ... if you are less than 40 and aren’t working at least 15-18 hours a day you are not working enough, you simply can’t compete with the best in the world unless you are willing to throttle it that much

is also crap. (I think it's obviously so.) Some ways in which it's crap, without really elaborating further: you don't need to compete with the best, the best work smarter not harder, the best aren't necessarily working on problems where competition is needed for financial success, there are more domains to work in than those mentioned plus at least math and CS (I lack experience to say the same about the others) have so many branches either unexplored or lightly tread that you can pretty easily get into a niche without competition, the fundamentals in CS 20 years ago aren't that different from now, the Singularity might happen in 20 years and make all your effort moot (unless you're working on making the Singularity happen!), humanity's progress might stall for the next 20 years, it might grow linearly instead of the usual exponentially, even with exponential growth it may not look radically different under the surface anyway, what does "10x smarter" even mean, why not recommend the Uberman sleeping schedule that gives 22 hours of conscious work a day?

Here's a quote from the late Erik Naggum (from http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3141310154691952@naggum....):

> ... if you think in terms of the imminent end of the world, _everything_ is soon food for the great garbage collector in the sky and whoever is not scrambling in panic looks like they aren't moving and have been passed by or are dying.

> the problem I see is not that Bill Gates has shaped the world of useless trinkets in software, but has also managed to spread his competitiveness and his personal fear of losing to imaginary competitors to businesses and homes everywhere, so now everybody is _afraid_ of losing some battle which isn't happening, instead of getting about their own lives. like, if you aren't using today's fad language in the very latest version of the IDE, you'll be left behind. aaaugh! but it's good that some people run like they are scared out of their wits. if they suddenly disappear over the edge of a cliff, a good number of people will notice in time and _not_ follow them. those are the ones that matter.

It's amusing to me that the author has replaced the fear of not being able to finish with the fear of losing. Fear is the mindkiller.

daemon13• 14 years ago

Excellent advice - of course everyone is sifting it through their own personal lences hence everyone perceives this advice differently.

Rather then debate the merits of working long hours, what I really liked is this

>> Lack of motivation fundamentally comes from fear — you are afraid to do things since you don’t think you can do them internally — which is 99% true.

I think that using this as starting point everyone shall ask thyself what projects has he started but not finished/abandoned and why - and look into the mirror...

Just Finish Everything

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