If you're busy, you're doing something wrong

http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-youre-doing-something-wrong-the-surprisingly-relaxed-lives-of-elite-achievers/

by scott_meade • 13 years ago

131 48 13 years ago

calnewport.com

scott_meade2• 13 years ago

On isolation of work from leisure:

"The average players, they discovered, spread their work throughout the day. The elite players, by contrast, consolidated their work into two well-defined periods."

"This isolation of work from leisure had pronounced effects in other areas of the players’ lives. Consider, for example, sleep: the elite players slept an hour more per night than the average players."

humbyvaldes• 13 years ago

I dont buy it. Unless your wasting your time on pointless busy work like trying to decide what color a link should be, hard work has always worked for me.

guizzy• 13 years ago

The article doesn't say hard work doesn't work. But the study it describes shows that how and when that hard work is put in makes the difference between the elite and the "merely" successful.

RyanZAG• 13 years ago

It depends very much on the type of work you are doing. If you are building a brick wall, then spreading out the hours isn't going to make much difference - it takes 100 hours to build that wall or whatever. Music practice is very different though as simple hours are probably not enough - you'd need to really engage with and commit the music to muscle memory (I'm no musician, just guessing).

Something like making a CRUD web app is probably closer to building a wall than perfectly playing a concerto. If you're trying to build in a brand new feature into your web app that requires genuine creativity and a difficult algorithm, then you'll probably find that creating that feature in a single intense session while still fresh is going to work far better than trying to patch it together across a day of interruptions.

nicholassmith2• 13 years ago

Things like this bug me because it's taken on a small set of people and immediately categorises them out. In the big, bad real world super smart people still end up burning the candle at both ends at periods of time because they have to.

Look at our start up folk heroes, super smart geniuses who work 18 hours a day, network for 2 and sleep for 4. They're busy because they have to be busy. If you're busy it's because you're busy.

strait• 13 years ago

I think you are confusing "super smart geniuses" with elite achievers?

nicholassmith2• 13 years ago

I don't think I am, an elite achiever is a super smart genius, and a super smart genius is (generally) an elite achiever. I'm just being more flippant.

rjvin2• 13 years ago

Cool, but I don't know how this applies to things that aren't as measurable as musical ability. What about more intangible things like creative or critical thinking? Also, the violin hasn't changed in hundreds of years, which means the value of the time you spend getting good at it will never depreciate. How does that change with something like computer programming?

cwp3• 13 years ago

Huh? Musical ability is about as intangible as it gets. And programming, once you get past the noob stage of mastering syntax, doesn't depreciate either.

RougeFemme2• 13 years ago

I'm not a music guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't think musical ability is completely measurable. Well, yes the technical ability to read and play the notes and apply the other notation is measurable. And teachers can do that well. But I think the elite players go beyond that with their technique and, where appropriate, emotion.

rjvin2• 13 years ago

I guess what I was referring to was more that, if you wanted to measure someone's musical ability, you can look at the hours they practiced as something that correlates. Which is what the researchers did. For skills like creativity or critical thinking, what hard number would you look at? I don't know, and I have a feeling that if you looked at time spent, you wouldn't get these same results.

yakiv2• 13 years ago

Even if you can't measure someone's creative thinking ability very well, that doesn't mean that it can't improve with practice.

TheCapn• 13 years ago

I'm curious how this would work out if they had studied amateurs taking up a new craft from scratch instead of jumping into their established lives. Have a large group take some sort of test to measure starting ability then give them the journals and a set amount of time to learn.

When time is up (say a few months to year?) have them come back and review the progress objectively along with their scheduled journals to find patterns between relative progression and time utilization.

My completely subjective opinion is that in a strongly controlled study you'd never get such black & white results. There are people who have a better natural ability to learn certain tasks than others. While I played an instrument in school I was never phenomenal but I exceeded many kids who practiced several hours a week to my maybe combined time of an hour weekly.

Gaming is similar: get a group of friends to all pick up a new game and play it for an eve, judge who got better by the end and there will always be stand-outs. Some people will have adapted abilities and skills from other games/tasks to advance; others may pick a important subset of the overall skills and hone that for the time to develop a depth of knowledge while possibly lacking a breadth but the skill gap almost always develops and you can't contribute that to time invested so much as natural ability to adapt.

dvdt• 13 years ago

> ... the elite players were significantly more relaxed than the average players, and the best of the best were the most relaxed of all.

Presumably the best players also KNOW that they are the best--doesn't that make it easier to relax? How do you control for this?

thomasilk• 13 years ago

Additionally, they are probably more talented and therefore have a higher progress rate when they practice which leads to less frustation and more relaxation.

It's easy to be relaxed when you know that as long as you put in some hours you'll always belong to the best of the best while others are constantly struggling with trying to become one of those best of the best to be more successful, get a better paid job (especially in music),...

simonster• 13 years ago

The elite players are also probably more likely to be taking beta blockers: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/arts/music/17tind.html?pag...

dsego• 13 years ago

Not if you are afraid of failure.

lifeisstillgood• 13 years ago

I can see the glimmer of the lesson in here - but it is a slippery bugger.

I suggest that there are concepts and capabilities that the elite have that average do not. Let's call it complier design or writing prolog.

Writing an enterprises decision engine in Prolog can save time effort energy, maintenance and be worth a fortune in a competitive Market.

But if you are the Prolog programmer, being able to perform is like being Yehudi Menuhin out busking. The elite player needs an orchestra and a concert hall and ticket sales.

Start up founders usually are busy building the concert hall, handing out flyers and selling tickets. A very rare few also play the violin well. No major corporation is going to turn up on HN asking for Prolog devs to rewrite an engine.

evolve2k2• 13 years ago

How might deliberate practice translate into improving as a coder?

cwp3• 13 years ago

Could you clarify the question? Are you asking "What does deliberate practice look like for coders?" or "What would improvement look like for a coder?" or "How could practice lead to improvement?" or something else?

evolve2k2• 13 years ago

Oh probably "What does deliberate practice look like for coders?", as distinct from just writing code regularly.

ruswick• 13 years ago

The methodology used in this study raises some questions (which were exacerbated by the poor interpretation on the part of the writer) and makes me quite hesitant. First, the link between leisure time and "eliteness" is incredibly weak: free time is a product of a myriad things, and tends to be quite volatile. Moreover, the piece explicitly states that the two groups were destines for largely divergent career paths. Two people who do two different but related jobs likely still spend time in very different ways. For whatever reason, this person seems infatuated with conflating correlation and causation. Frankly, I just don't see how one can draw any conclusion between something as nebulous as free time and something as specific as musical ability. The author doesn't even attempt to prove me wrong.

Second, the author proceeds to extrapolates these results and asserts that everyone ought to adhere to this method of practice. Why? Is there any evidence whatsoever that sugests this is universal, or at the very least common to a few fields? All that is given is this research that is pertinent only to music students. It seems as though laborious, high-stress situations might be preferable to a casual but "deliberate" schedule in a lot of instances. Entrepreneurship and Academics are two domains that come to mind...

This piece is just a very poor interpretation and extrapolation of very specific correlative data. I don't buy these conclusions.

stephengillie• 13 years ago

If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong: The Surprisingly Relaxed Lives of Elite Achievers

We can start by disproving the assumption that the elite players dedicate more hours to music. The time diaries revealed that both groups spent, on average, the same number of hours on music per week (around 50).

Were they more relaxed when they were working hard?

Edit: for a less-sharp tone.

dclowd9901• 13 years ago

Not only that, but what if the more elite players felt more relaxed because they grasped new concepts more quickly because they simply had a greater base level of talent (genetics, brain make-up, et. al.)?

Let me find a study, breathtakingly misinterpret the results and write an article that has an overly applicative bait-y title and start ringing in the views. It's apparently that fucking easy.

WestCoastJustin• 13 years ago

I do believe this, but how did these elite develop this capacity? For me it is a juggling act right now. I am working full-time, in addition to side projects that I hope will take off. If I were to graph it, it would probably looks something like this, ▁▁▃▂███, in terms of hours/effort, in the years timescale. You start off small, working your 8-4 job, realize you need to develop this capability to work on side project, there is an uptick in hours/effort till you can transition to your next gig. Then it tappers off as you make the transition. I hope it will looks something like this in a couple years ▁▁▃▂███▃▂▂▂▂. Where you are in life also make a massive difference. If you have the wherewithal to just transition, and weather the storm, then you are probably much better off.

I like to race sailboats. It is amazing how mistakes/achievements can snowball quickly. Your goal is to get the snow ball going to the right direction ;)

cwp3• 13 years ago

Well, I'd start with "don't do side projects." Remember, these are full-time students. They've put aside all other pursuits to dedicate themselves to learning to play the violin. They work hard at practicing violin and relax when they're not practicing violin.

nostrademons• 13 years ago

Project selection is pretty key to making this work. Your day job should teach you something new and give you opportunities for deliberate practice. If it doesn't, you're wasting 8 hours of your day. Worse, you're tiring yourself out for those 8 hours so that you can't effectively practice in your side projects.

A coworker of mine described it as the "monkeybars" approach to career development: you hold onto the last skill you developed and use that as leverage to get you a position that will stretch you and teach you new skills. You're never starting from scratch - you can always provide value to your employer - but at the same time you're continually stretching your capabilities.

RougeFemme2• 13 years ago

Someone asked the question "how does this apply to coding?" Yes, how would "hard practice time" apply to coding. Is that the time when you're actually head-down writing code? What about the time when you're not head-down, in your hard work and, for example, mulling how to get past a point where you're stuck? And is there an analogous activity for musicians - when they are not "hard practicing" but working through something in their minds?

scott_meade2• 13 years ago

An interesting tidbit from the abstract of the study: "Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 yrs."

ryanmolden• 13 years ago

Innate talent just seems like a cop out "explanation". Oh so and so is good because he had an innate talent. One might as well say so and so is good because he has a frogelmonbal. Very few things are innate in humans and I highly doubt many of them matter except in comparing across deviations in some distribution.

Obviously, if you want to play professional basketball you likely better be pretty tall, and that is out of your control. The other skills necessary are definitely not innate, they are learned and improved through practice and competition.

I think people claim some things are innate simply because they don't see the struggle that went into building up the talent and thus it just seems inexplicable. That or they are the people with the supposed innate talent and like the adoration of people thinking they are "blessed by the gods", so to speak.

nhashem• 13 years ago

Here's my theory: the blocks of time the elite players spend is non-negotiable, because it's their "top idea in the mind."[0]

In the past when I've worked with friends on side projects, the conversation would sometimes go like this.

Me: "Hey, let's try and meet like three evenings a week for two hours to work on this. Let's start tomorrow?" Them: "Yeah -- wait, I have to meet a friend for dinner tomorrow. Can you do the day after?" Me: "Sure."

[two days later]

Me: "Hey, we're still meeting up tonight, right?" Them: "Crap, I have to work late. Let's meet on Saturday and just bang out some work all afternoon."

We're fucked. We're fucked before we've even started. If every "dinner with a friend" or "I have to work late" is going to sideline you, then how the hell are you supposed to do anything? Even if we do work for six hours on Saturday instead of three two-hour sessions during the week, it's just not the same. We'll have no cadence or rhythm and feel stressed and probably a lot like the people in the OP's study.

A few years ago I recognized this anti-pattern and so I don't really take on new projects or goals unless I'm literally willing to prioritize everything but the bare essentials (ie. family) above it. PG's "Top of Your Mind" describes what 'mental prioritization' looks like, and I think this study points describes what 'schedule prioritization' looks like.

I realize that my own conclusions are my projections completely based on own anecdotes, and I'm sure many people on HN won't hesitate to point out the logical fallacies for why that's dumb. But look back in your life and think about the times you've consistently said, "Sorry, I can't make it, I have to do X first." Did you eventually reach a level of achievement with X? I'm guessing you probably did.

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html

rohern3• 13 years ago

I do not think this is dumb at all. You have stated the problem very clearly.

I would like to ask a question that nags me every time I read an article like this: Why do we assume that we need "free time"? And to answer this, I have to ask another that occurred to me while reading the article: What do these elite players do during their free time?

This is an important questions for programmers and engineers, because we generally enjoy building things. In the context of the article, I take it as implicit that the one thing the elite players are not doing in their "free time" is playing music or that would obviously be a form of practicing.

So, then what is this free time that the elite have and how are they using it? Are they bumming in the front of the TV? Is the formula for success: work intensely for two short blocks and then veg?

j-g-faustus• 13 years ago

> Why do we assume that we need "free time"?

Two reasons:

* For better or worse, humans are not machines. We can only keep doing the same thing over and over for so long before we go crazy, somewhat like Chaplin in Modern Times [1]. Creative work is somewhat less tedious than assembly line work, but there's still a limit.

* Because "non-free" time is time you spend making somebody else happy: Your boss, customers, friends or family, or society at large, e.g living up to expectations that you ought to be successful. Somewhere in there you need to make room to make yourself happy as well, it's not possible to live a life merely by attempting to live up to other people's expectations.

> I take it as implicit that the one thing the elite players are not doing in their "free time" is playing music or that would obviously be a form of practicing.

That doesn't follow. The kind of practice that makes you better is the boring stuff - playing scales and working on your technique. Doing fun stuff like playing your favorite tunes may be part of the training, but it's not the kind of training that improves your skills.

To keep learning, you need to keep pushing yourself into new unfamiliar territory, and to stay focused on mastering it while you're there. And we generally can't stay that focused for more than a couple of hours at a time.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wENE7O-Y6ME

coldtea• 13 years ago

>I would like to ask a question that nags me every time I read an article like this: Why do we assume that we need "free time"?

Because we're not machines.

And because not everybody works on what he loves.

Sometimes, the things you love are not actual jobs (not rent paying ones, at least). Other times, they are very competitive and only few can land those jobs.

>This is an important questions for programmers and engineers, because we generally enjoy building things.

We also enjoy other things. I like programming at work. I like programming at home. I like reading about programming. I like participating in programming forums (well, it's kind of obvious, since it's Saturday night were I am and I'm on HN).

But I have tons of other stuff I'm interested in.

Not all if related to my work -- or even programming in general. And, yes, from time to time, I like to "veg in front of the TV".

mcartyem• 13 years ago

On free time, it may be that the body assimilates what was learned during practicing. One accomplished musician believes:

"Relaxation is necessary tension. Tension is unnecessary tension."

http://www.dgmlive.com/aphorisms.html

Zenst• 13 years ago

Many people will see the title, realise that if they actual were busy then they would not be reading about people who are busy. But worth a read though, just for a time out :).

ebbv• 13 years ago

This kind of attitude is so insulting to me. Go walk into any minimum wage job or factory job and say this to people there with a straight face.

This is privileged people mistaking their privilege for the reason for their success instead of a result of it.

Sindrome• 13 years ago

Every time I think I'm finally going to stop hearing the term tiger mom, it shows up again...

davidw• 13 years ago

If you're not busy, you should come look after my kids.

polskibus• 13 years ago

Good research although in my opinion the researchers stopped digging too soon. For instance their sleep patterns could've been examined more throroughly (as per the supermemo sleep article). Another point is that deliberate practice is good if you aim to be a good "worker", not necessarily a good entrepreneur or innovator.

ivanhoe• 13 years ago

This is about learning a very specific skill that requires a lot of practice and building a "muscle memory". To some extent this applies to students and some top sportsman, too. For the rest of us, however, most of the work related problems are not about us not being skillful enough, but about the amount of (fairly simple) things that need to be done. That's what's eating time for most of us: easy tasks, but lots of them, day after day...

FollowSteph3• 13 years ago

I think a lot of it also has to do with HOW you practice, so much that doing it in chunks just happens to be the result.

In other words, the focus on improving certain specific things which are better to do in chunks. Those that just repeat can do it in small bursts. Your technique of learning determines if your practice will be chunky or not, not the other way around.

zwieback• 13 years ago

1) Violin playing is maybe one of the most extreme examples you can study because it requires specific talent as well as extremely hard work. How many of the elite players start out with perfect pitch and perfect hand anatomy? Maybe the rigid work schedule evolves when you start out with a specific talent.

2) I've met a couple of kids that took a year off from everything else and followed a rigorous schedule as described in the article. Their goal was to see if they can make it as professionals but ultimately decided they just couldn't keep up with the elite.

I think following a strict practice schedule is necessary but definitely not sufficient to becoming elite. Probably the non-elites figure out pretty quickly where they stand and simply opt out of the rat race.

abc_lisper• 13 years ago

Is it okay, if I am busy setting that right?

It is disgusting to see all these half-baked, half-assed and half-minded articles that don't see the whole picture paraded as gospel here.

I don't mind what you do with your life.But the blood is on your hands, if some young kid takes this for advice.

If you're busy, you're doing something wrong

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