3 ms·

I'd separate hard work into two components: A. The rewarding part of your craft, e.g. the flow you get into when deeply programming all night. B. The sacrifice

I'd separate hard work into two components: A. The rewarding part of your craft, e.g. the flow you get into when deeply programming all night. B. The sacrifices your craft requires, e.g. the living in the unheated apartment. One thing the hard work people forget is that it isn't very impressive to just do type-A enjoyable work for sustained and or even super human periods. Other people would pay for that experience. I think this separation opens up a few interesting ways of viewing those who are "too lazy" to do the hard work. First, different people flow in different tasks and so even if you gave Peter Dinklage a chance to work for openAI on any project he wanted, he might find it tiring and burn out. This is obvious, but by induction, there's this whole class of school-type activities that many people seem to mentally resist. Second, there seem to be different expectations on how much of B-type work one has to do in order to get the A-type work they crave. I think people perceived as lazy are those who doubt that almost any amount B-work they contribute will earn them their goal, only more the same. This is excellent when it discourages the average thirteen year old from pursuing pro sports as a career, but I think it also might be the largest reduction to productivity in our economy we have today, as discouraged people tend to lower output and cause problems for their company. And that's only the economic side, the social side of hopelessness and lack of meaning is way worse!

phil21 10y ago
This is a very interesting comment, articulated better than I have been able to explain to others. I've always been fond of saying showing up to work on time and working your butt off is the low bar to success. All this does is buy you entrance to the ride, and opens up doors of opportunity for you which are worthless unless you take advantage of. Just working hard at some dead-end job 9-5 doesn't get it done, there are millions of people who can successfully do this and get nowhere in life. Finding someone who understands the 'B' work is by far the most important part of their career is rather rare. I've called the lack of motivation to do this from the vast majority of people "laziness in thought". It's much harder to gain discipline and do well in this part of your career than simply showing up and doing what you're told as well as you can. It also doesn't help that the school system more or less trains you almost exclusively for the "A" type work, and actively encourages ignoring the "B" and letting someone else handle it for you. This is a very hard attitude to break as taking control of your own path is rather scary.

phil21 10y ago

This is a very interesting comment, articulated better than I have been able to explain to others. I've always been fond of saying showing up to work on time and working your butt off is the low bar to success. All this does is buy you entrance to the ride, and opens up doors of opportunity for you which are worthless unless you take advantage of. Just working hard at some dead-end job 9-5 doesn't get it done, there are millions of people who can successfully do this and get nowhere in life. Finding someone who understands the 'B' work is by far the most important part of their career is rather rare. I've called the lack of motivation to do this from the vast majority of people "laziness in thought". It's much harder to gain discipline and do well in this part of your career than simply showing up and doing what you're told as well as you can. It also doesn't help that the school system more or less trains you almost exclusively for the "A" type work, and actively encourages ignoring the "B" and letting someone else handle it for you. This is a very hard attitude to break as taking control of your own path is rather scary.