Good read! Great points Paul! Thanks for taking the time to write this up and share your thoughts :D As someone who leans towards "Work Smart, Not Hard", I ha

Good read! Great points Paul! Thanks for taking the time to write this up and share your thoughts :D As someone who leans towards "Work Smart, Not Hard", I had the following thoughts while reading this: > Bill Gates... Lionel Messi... These are very interesting examples, and I don't think I actually would have said that either of them actually did any "great work". What they have in common is what they are both "top of their field" in fields which are highly competitive/winner-take-all, and therefore get an insanely disproportionate amount of compensation. When I think "Great Work", I think of scientists and inventors. Interestingly enough, many scientists and inventors were "all over the place" with their careers - many of them being polymaths who pursued a number of diverse hobbies. They often also spent time "idle", or "thinking"(Feynman was a good example of this), which is how I find that I do my best thinking as well. I see creative work as benefiting significantly from "not work" activities such as idleness. Steve Jobs had a similar line of thinking: > Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. In summary, although hard work can capture more value in winner-take-all environments, I think creative work creates more value, and creative work requires taking frequent breaks, and yes, a healthy amount of idleness.