7 ms·

Clicked for me recently that working hard is like driving in first gear. Necessary initially, but if you don't shift up into higher gears, you're probably not d

Clicked for me recently that working hard is like driving in first gear. Necessary initially, but if you don't shift up into higher gears, you're probably not doing it right, and not getting as far as fast as you probably should. If I'm tired, it's necessarily because I'm mismanaging my work and time, and that's a signal it's time to step back and figure out what's wrong. Some people are really good at that initial torque boost on projects and can sustain it longer than others, but if work doesn't get easier it's because you're doing something wrong. From a market-fit perspective, I think startups that drive around in first gear never get very far either. Things are only hard because we're being stupid. Nobody ever looks at a person driving a ferrari and thinks, "wow, they must have washed a lot of dishes to afford that car," and yet we still think "if I just wash these dishes hard enough I'll drive a ferrari one day." I'm guilty of this as much as anyone, but burnout is my body intervening to tell me I'm being stupid.

fakedang 6y ago
> Nobody ever looks at a person driving a ferrari and thinks, "wow, they must have washed a lot of dishes to afford that car," and yet we still think "if I just wash these dishes hard enough I'll drive a ferrari one day." I'm saving this quote to tell people this later on.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  the twist is to make others wash dishes obviously
  - rabidrat 6y ago
    dish-washing is a cost-center, not a profit-center, so really the solution is to cut costs by washing dishes as little as possible :)
    - tenebrisalietum 6y ago
      Sign up for my dishes-as-a-service subscription NetDish. Get clean dishes until you stop paying. Also check out my dishwasher-sharing service Dishdash.
      - motohagiography 6y ago
        We (royal/canandian we) have skipthedishes.com, who have already solved this problem, and were acquired for $110m. :) It's the difference between "hmm, washing dishes is hard, I will do it better until someone notices and rewards me," and "average person buys less than one dishwasher in their entire lives...but they have to eat every single day...they could skip the dishes altogether!"
      - fakedang 6y ago
        So if for some reason, you guys decide to block my account, I'm stuck with dirty dishes? And then I won't even be able to share with my friend who has working dishwasher? Ouch, that is hard!
      - nullsense 6y ago
        And your dishwashing based social media platform WashedUp
    - robotresearcher 6y ago
      Sodexo washes your dishes (etc) and has a $10.6B market cap.
      - taneq 6y ago
        Sodexo sources dish-washing people. They're recruitment / labour hire / logistics. Dish washing (or whatever other actual physical outputs) are just a side effect of their actual business.
        robotresearcher 6y ago
        I believe Sodexo is a contractor that offers kitchen services, among other things. Companies pay Sodexo to wash dishes.
  - taneq 6y ago
    Ideally build a machine to wash the dishes, then build a company to build and sell the machines.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      That loses your ability to charge them a recurring subscription plan. Maximize profit, acquire currency.
  - barrenko 6y ago
    "Caesar built a bridge" old saying, meaning others built one "for him".
outworlder 6y ago
> If I'm tired, it's necessarily because I'm mismanaging my work and time Is it though? What if you are (always) on call? What if you get a message from your boss late evening asking for stuff for early morning? What if you have late night meetings or very early morning meetings (and what if both are present)? What if coworkers from other timezones are messaging you outside work hours (if you even have defined work hours) with 'urgent' requests? Often, the time mismanagement is external.
- pjmorris 6y ago
  True. That's a case where 'change your organization or change your organization' applies. Like it or not, that decision is more in your own hands than in those of the external mismanagers.
  - AgentOrange1234 6y ago
    This is a good point. I’m trying to learn to push back more forcefully against unreasonable behavior by coworkers. It can be very socially stressful to stand up against powerful folks in the organization. But if they aren’t called out, it will just continue.
- TOGoS 6y ago
  In that case 'mismanaging my work and time' means 'not finding a different job[1]' :) [1] Or forming a union and demanding better conditions, but, y'know, programmers.
- WJW 6y ago
  That's still mismanaging your work and time, but indirectly. Find a better job where your colleagues respect your personal time.
  - outworlder 6y ago
    Fine. As long as we recognize that's a very privileged position. Many people on Hacker News have skillsets that are in high demand (across most geographical locations) so they have the luxury of moving on a whim. This is not the case for many (most?) people.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hansvm 6y ago
Counterpoint: If driving a fancy car is your highest priority then most places in the developed world you can skimp in other places (family, time off, apartment size, etc) and save for a few years to pay cash for one if you haven't drawn a particularly short stick in life. A brand new GT-R costs something like 5-10yrs savings for a slightly-above-full-time pizza delivery driver who avoids most other luxuries.
- DangitBobby 6y ago
  I would label this as "missing the point" instead of "counterpoint".
  - hansvm 6y ago
    Choosing to engage with the entire comment isn't necessary for a critical discussion on HN is it? They could've picked any example of an unattainable luxury (or better yet some notion of _easily_ affording such luxuries) they liked, but instead they picked an example that's so far within the realm of possibility that there are subcultures dedicated to it, and there seems to be general agreement that it's a good example to parrot back to others. It might be a workable or relatable point of comparison, but that doesn't mean we can't analyze it and try to do better.
bacon_waffle 6y ago
One of my first jobs was in retail, a backpacking outfitter located at the top of a scenic and winding road that's very popular among fast car folks. Summer weekends when the weather was good, we'd sell huge amounts of soda and trinkets from a gift shop in the front of the store. One day, a guy come in and ask for a jug of water for his car, which had overheated. It turned out to be a yellow Ferrari, I got him some water and he headed on down the other side of the gap. Neither the fancy car nor needing water for an overheated vehicle was too far out of the ordinary, but the combination was curious - a sports car should be able to handle that road easily. At the time, I lived with my dad. That evening, he mentioned that he had been in town and a yellow Ferrari had driven by with the engine revved way up like it was stuck in first gear...
- ehnto 6y ago
  Although I don't doubt someone might not understand how to shift gears, you may be overestimating the reliability of exotic cars!
- taneq 6y ago
  Having driven a sports car (nothing like a Ferrari, sadly) for many years, I can attest to the fact that being sporty makes cars less robust, not more so. Partly because they're designed with tighter tolerances and run closer to their limits, but more largely because they're lower volume and so tend to have less spent on their engineering, ironically, than cheap ultra-mass-produced vehicles.
scollet 6y ago
But everyone has to wash dishes anyways. Now we have machines for that. I want to use that analogy of endless busy work to break away from your analogy in saying that: Maybe there is a breakaway in replacing parts bit by bit to build the fast car you want that can shift into the gears you need at the moment. IDK, sometimes you're just going to be washing a lot of dishes.
Cancan82 6y ago
This is hard to do. I heard a quote from like 1950 that you should work all out until you have 100k, then relax. Was said by a billionaire in why he didn’t burn out. After that, he was less stressed and did things he enjoyed more, which happened to make money.

fakedang 6y ago

> Nobody ever looks at a person driving a ferrari and thinks, "wow, they must have washed a lot of dishes to afford that car," and yet we still think "if I just wash these dishes hard enough I'll drive a ferrari one day." I'm saving this quote to tell people this later on.

agumonkey 6y ago
the twist is to make others wash dishes obviously
- rabidrat 6y ago
  dish-washing is a cost-center, not a profit-center, so really the solution is to cut costs by washing dishes as little as possible :)
  - tenebrisalietum 6y ago
    Sign up for my dishes-as-a-service subscription NetDish. Get clean dishes until you stop paying. Also check out my dishwasher-sharing service Dishdash.
    - motohagiography 6y ago
      We (royal/canandian we) have skipthedishes.com, who have already solved this problem, and were acquired for $110m. :) It's the difference between "hmm, washing dishes is hard, I will do it better until someone notices and rewards me," and "average person buys less than one dishwasher in their entire lives...but they have to eat every single day...they could skip the dishes altogether!"
    - fakedang 6y ago
      So if for some reason, you guys decide to block my account, I'm stuck with dirty dishes? And then I won't even be able to share with my friend who has working dishwasher? Ouch, that is hard!
    - nullsense 6y ago
      And your dishwashing based social media platform WashedUp
  - robotresearcher 6y ago
    Sodexo washes your dishes (etc) and has a $10.6B market cap.
    - taneq 6y ago
      Sodexo sources dish-washing people. They're recruitment / labour hire / logistics. Dish washing (or whatever other actual physical outputs) are just a side effect of their actual business.
      - robotresearcher 6y ago
        I believe Sodexo is a contractor that offers kitchen services, among other things. Companies pay Sodexo to wash dishes.
- taneq 6y ago
  Ideally build a machine to wash the dishes, then build a company to build and sell the machines.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    That loses your ability to charge them a recurring subscription plan. Maximize profit, acquire currency.
- barrenko 6y ago
  "Caesar built a bridge" old saying, meaning others built one "for him".

outworlder 6y ago

> If I'm tired, it's necessarily because I'm mismanaging my work and time Is it though? What if you are (always) on call? What if you get a message from your boss late evening asking for stuff for early morning? What if you have late night meetings or very early morning meetings (and what if both are present)? What if coworkers from other timezones are messaging you outside work hours (if you even have defined work hours) with 'urgent' requests? Often, the time mismanagement is external.

pjmorris 6y ago
True. That's a case where 'change your organization or change your organization' applies. Like it or not, that decision is more in your own hands than in those of the external mismanagers.
- AgentOrange1234 6y ago
  This is a good point. I’m trying to learn to push back more forcefully against unreasonable behavior by coworkers. It can be very socially stressful to stand up against powerful folks in the organization. But if they aren’t called out, it will just continue.
TOGoS 6y ago
In that case 'mismanaging my work and time' means 'not finding a different job[1]' :) [1] Or forming a union and demanding better conditions, but, y'know, programmers.
WJW 6y ago
That's still mismanaging your work and time, but indirectly. Find a better job where your colleagues respect your personal time.
- outworlder 6y ago
  Fine. As long as we recognize that's a very privileged position. Many people on Hacker News have skillsets that are in high demand (across most geographical locations) so they have the luxury of moving on a whim. This is not the case for many (most?) people.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hansvm 6y ago

Counterpoint: If driving a fancy car is your highest priority then most places in the developed world you can skimp in other places (family, time off, apartment size, etc) and save for a few years to pay cash for one if you haven't drawn a particularly short stick in life. A brand new GT-R costs something like 5-10yrs savings for a slightly-above-full-time pizza delivery driver who avoids most other luxuries.

DangitBobby 6y ago
I would label this as "missing the point" instead of "counterpoint".
- hansvm 6y ago
  Choosing to engage with the entire comment isn't necessary for a critical discussion on HN is it? They could've picked any example of an unattainable luxury (or better yet some notion of _easily_ affording such luxuries) they liked, but instead they picked an example that's so far within the realm of possibility that there are subcultures dedicated to it, and there seems to be general agreement that it's a good example to parrot back to others. It might be a workable or relatable point of comparison, but that doesn't mean we can't analyze it and try to do better.

bacon_waffle 6y ago

One of my first jobs was in retail, a backpacking outfitter located at the top of a scenic and winding road that's very popular among fast car folks. Summer weekends when the weather was good, we'd sell huge amounts of soda and trinkets from a gift shop in the front of the store. One day, a guy come in and ask for a jug of water for his car, which had overheated. It turned out to be a yellow Ferrari, I got him some water and he headed on down the other side of the gap. Neither the fancy car nor needing water for an overheated vehicle was too far out of the ordinary, but the combination was curious - a sports car should be able to handle that road easily. At the time, I lived with my dad. That evening, he mentioned that he had been in town and a yellow Ferrari had driven by with the engine revved way up like it was stuck in first gear...

ehnto 6y ago
Although I don't doubt someone might not understand how to shift gears, you may be overestimating the reliability of exotic cars!
taneq 6y ago
Having driven a sports car (nothing like a Ferrari, sadly) for many years, I can attest to the fact that being sporty makes cars less robust, not more so. Partly because they're designed with tighter tolerances and run closer to their limits, but more largely because they're lower volume and so tend to have less spent on their engineering, ironically, than cheap ultra-mass-produced vehicles.

scollet 6y ago

But everyone has to wash dishes anyways. Now we have machines for that. I want to use that analogy of endless busy work to break away from your analogy in saying that: Maybe there is a breakaway in replacing parts bit by bit to build the fast car you want that can shift into the gears you need at the moment. IDK, sometimes you're just going to be washing a lot of dishes.

Cancan82 6y ago

This is hard to do. I heard a quote from like 1950 that you should work all out until you have 100k, then relax. Was said by a billionaire in why he didn’t burn out. After that, he was less stressed and did things he enjoyed more, which happened to make money.