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Especially for creative work, work time doesn't correlate with output. Being a top physicist/mathematician/whatever is pretty unrelated with "working harder." I

by ivalm 8y ago

Especially for creative work, work time doesn't correlate with output. Being a top physicist/mathematician/whatever is pretty unrelated with "working harder." It's related with having a somehow "better" connected brain. You can't work your way into being very smart.

AQuantized 8y ago
I completely disagree with this. It's obvious that the top contributors to those realms are incredibly talented - Einstein, Newton, Euler, whatever. At the same time, they all put in an absurd amount of work, and their most well known contributions typically come from periods of almost exclusive focus on their chosen problem - Newton stuck inside working on gravitation because of a plague outbreak, Einstein's obsessive work in the years leading up to his Annus Mirabilis papers. Innate talent may be a prerequisite for creative work, but it's seldom sufficient without putting the time and effort in.
manigandham 8y ago
Getting a better connected brain is often the outcome of just working harder at a problem. You'd be surprised at how much creative progress is due to steady effort rather than some brilliant epiphany. Just because its intellectual work doesn't mean it can’t be solved by grinding it out.
barry-cotter 8y ago
This isn’t true and there’s no evidence of it being true. Total productivity doesn’t drop as a function of hours worked until somewhere between 40 and 60 hours a week[1]. We know that creativity is more or less constant in individuals so those who produce more do more good work[2]. [1]http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf The Productivity of Working Hours, John Pencavel [2]https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/abb5/02a8b01b50790a44cf5438f01f9f5ac9bf42.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/abb5/02a8b01b50790a44cf5438... Creative productivity: A predictive and explanatory model of career trajectories and landmarks. Dean Keith Simonton For a popular audience https://jamesclear.com/equal-odds https://jamesclear.com/equal-odds
haihaibye 8y ago
You need both. From Hamming's You and your research: ``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.

by ivalm 8y ago

AQuantized 8y ago

I completely disagree with this. It's obvious that the top contributors to those realms are incredibly talented - Einstein, Newton, Euler, whatever. At the same time, they all put in an absurd amount of work, and their most well known contributions typically come from periods of almost exclusive focus on their chosen problem - Newton stuck inside working on gravitation because of a plague outbreak, Einstein's obsessive work in the years leading up to his Annus Mirabilis papers. Innate talent may be a prerequisite for creative work, but it's seldom sufficient without putting the time and effort in.

manigandham 8y ago

Getting a better connected brain is often the outcome of just working harder at a problem. You'd be surprised at how much creative progress is due to steady effort rather than some brilliant epiphany. Just because its intellectual work doesn't mean it can’t be solved by grinding it out.

barry-cotter 8y ago

This isn’t true and there’s no evidence of it being true. Total productivity doesn’t drop as a function of hours worked until somewhere between 40 and 60 hours a week[1]. We know that creativity is more or less constant in individuals so those who produce more do more good work[2]. [1]http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf The Productivity of Working Hours, John Pencavel [2]https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/abb5/02a8b01b50790a44cf5438f01f9f5ac9bf42.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/abb5/02a8b01b50790a44cf5438... Creative productivity: A predictive and explanatory model of career trajectories and landmarks. Dean Keith Simonton For a popular audience https://jamesclear.com/equal-odds https://jamesclear.com/equal-odds

haihaibye 8y ago

You need both. From Hamming's You and your research: ``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.