10 ms·

To Become Wise, Do Less

137 points by maverickJ 4y ago

IceDane 4y ago
I gotta say, articles(to use that term loosely) like this are really starting to grind my gears. There are so many of them. Every person and their dog is trying to become some sort of popular culture icon by sharing with us their incredibly profound inner dialogue. They all have advice for how to live our lives, and none of them can agree. If you take the sum of their advice, you have to do everything at once. Gotta grind for that success. But don't grind too much. Also, remember to meditate. Disconnect from the internet. But don't become too disconnected, because you have to stay up to date on current events, because otherwise you can't keep up with the twittersphere. Which you should avoid, because it's toxic, by the way. But not too much, because important people say important things there! This article is particularly bad. It's only a few paragraphs, and it still manages to be so self-contradictory that if you actually read it through, you're literally no wiser in the end, because the advice boils down to "Sometimes you need to relax, but you can't relax all the time." Gee, thanks. Pretty ironic, considering the subject of this article.
- lajisam 4y ago
  Agree, far too many of them here at HN.
- mms__ 4y ago
  > They all have advice for how to live our lives, and none of them can agree. If you take the sum of their advice, you have to do everything at once Well yeah, different people have different views of how to accomplish stuff. You should have to reason a bit about what you read to figure out your own approach
  - nudgeee 4y ago
    Agree, after years and years of being inundated with self-help messages, platitudes, and coming-of-age teachings, I find most of it comes from a good place — however the messages are so context specific that it probably doesn’t apply to you in your current juncture in life right now. I find what is crucial when it comes to taking advice, is figuring out when advice makes sense to you — and try to synthesize it as food for thought within your world view (or not).
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  And so much of it is rehashed ancient philosophy, such as "moderation in all things". So much of is basically the Tao Te Ching, or astrology. That is to say, it's not true! but over millennia, humans have found it to be useful. Try not to get annoyed by writing that isn't meant for you (assuming you don't get any value out of it, it's a tautology that you are not the intended audience.)
  - sifar 4y ago
    >> So much of is basically the Tao Te Ching, or astrology. I am having difficulty parsing your comment. You are equating Tao Te Ching and astrology in the same bucket ? One is a philosophy, a way of looking at life - the other I don't know what to call it. And if you say that both are ways of looking at the world then we can apply that yardstick to everything and it doesn't get us anywhere. >> That is to say, it's not true! but over millennia, humans have found it to be useful. What part of core ancient philosophies about how one should conduct oneself are not true but useful ?
    - mayankgoel28 4y ago
      Something like "Let go of all attachments". Sure, it's great advice, but being attached to some things is life, even though they can potentially have negative effects (such as attachment to a SO, family, job, body-part).
      - sifar 4y ago
        As with many ancient sayings, they are pretty information dense, have multiple interpretations and need to unrolled in context specific cases and not be taken literally. >> Let go of all attachments. You find this in Hindu, Buddhist and even some stoic philosophies. It doesn't mean you literally don't feel for any thing/objects in life, leave every thing and become an ascetic. In fact it is the opposite - immersed in your life, you recognize the attachment you have towards the person/object, feel the joy/sadness(and everything in between) that you derive from it, yet don't be consumed by it, don't make it the center of your life. Don't get attached to being reciprocated or the results as these are out of your control. Learn to let it go if it is not part of your life anymore. Life finds a way, as Dr. Malcolm would say. At least that is how I see it.
- tapvt 4y ago
  I mostly agree with you, but I did find some value in the quotation (paraphrased, because I’ve closed the article) “Focus on doing the right things rather than doing things right.”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lysergia 4y ago
  I think the gist of the article is: Sometimes (not always) the winning move is not to play. I have experienced this phenomenon before where my best ideas are had in the shower, or a software bug is resolved after going for a walk in nature. Another way of putting this is: avoid the target to hit it.
- chocolatemario 4y ago
  I think articles like this just don’t belong on hackernews. This seems like a train of thought turned blog post. Maybe this guy thinks he is a guru, but it seems like it’s simply an attempt to formalize his musings. I’ve no qualms with this as a post, but it’s why I’m on this forum.
drannex 4y ago
To become wise, do everything, fuck up on most of it, and know what works and doesn't by direct experience. I am a minimalist (Essentialist) by choice, but a maximalist regarding knowledge and experience. Try and do everything you can, that way you know what does and doesn't work. Done. Anything else is overly reductive. You can't know how to do anything if you do or experience close to nothing. Leisure is good, I am a ferverent advocate of Veblen philosophy, but if you want to be wise use your leisure to do the maximum you can and want to do with that time. Leisure is different for everyone, reading, gaming, sitting on the beach, making art, but if you want to be /wise/ with your leisure you have to do everything you want to do! Focus a lot, or focus a little, you just have to do everything possible to fuck up as much as possible.
- lanstin 4y ago
  If you are too busy, you will not think of the optimal solution to your intellectual problem. I don’t know about other people, but I often have the experience of banging away at some problem for a few hours, then going away and not thinking about it for a while then a simple resolution pops into my mind without much effort. Continuing to push hard when you aren’t getting any where on an intellectual puzzle isn’t always the best approach. And there are some fields of inquiry where deep concentration and deep knowledge is useful. For instance, rather than recreating all the knowledge by your own trial and error you can read and then make truly novel mistakes.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    When programming, and stuck, down time rarely gives me a technical solution but very often a “why the hell ya even working on that!” kind of solution. Which is often better!
    - Tostino 4y ago
      That's often the best kind of insight you can gain from having a little distance between you and the problem.
lotsofzots 4y ago
_8j50 4y ago
To appear wise, say less.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/
  - at_compile_time 4y ago
    Takes one to know one
    - klez 4y ago
      Looks like people flagged this without knowing what it was referring to[0] and thought it was insulting gp instead [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URWLnOJ25uA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URWLnOJ25uA
      - BLKNSLVR 4y ago
        It's definitely an underrated response, referring to one of those genius moments that were in abundance on The Simpsons of old. Capturing irony in all it's glory takes planning.
  - tveyben 4y ago
    Fascinating site - and the linked article especially as it cites the tv show QI as a reference. QI is a true gem…
  - helpfulmandrill 4y ago
    If you care about not being a fool, rather than just not looking like one, remaining silent is not good advice.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
PikachuEXE 4y ago
To become wise, think more, do less Which actually means practice (or perform) thinking more and probably reduce "less meaningful" work (not just "meaningless") Increasing efficiency & accuracy in thinking and performing actions Above are my very rough thoughts.
keeptrying 4y ago
Because Elon, Gates, Carmack, Eintstein , Feynman, Bezos, Sheryl Sandberg, Buckminister, Darwin did less. Right.
- braymundo 4y ago
  They are certainly incredibly productive and I admire all of them for different reasons, but are they wise?
  - dmje 4y ago
    Or (in my humble opinion, a more important question), happy…?
- sharkbird2 4y ago
  To become wise, not to become rich or famous. Elon Musk is obviously an extremely intelligent, knowledgeable and capable man, but I don't think he's necessarily very wise.
  - keeptrying 4y ago
    Read to the end of the list. /smh
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  They didn’t do the maximum, because they didn’t die from working. So there must be some restraint. Even if they look supersonic from our perspective.
- butterNaN 4y ago
  Wait, do people actually think these billionaires are _wise_? They look absolute fools to me. Their status is a result of luck (and a in a lot of cases, no obligation to morality).
Thursday24 4y ago
To become wise, get beneficial results without compromising quality of life to a great extent. Much better, do this not only for yourselves, but those around you as well. Prime example worth studying: Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore
padheyam 4y ago
Wisdom is such a loaded term. I think the article conflates wisdom with productivity - "To become more productive, do less!" could have equally been an apt title. On wisdom, I am reminded of the Serenity Prayer- "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer)
- the_omegist 4y ago
  Came here to say the same thing. Wisdom is linked to a life-long experienced person. No one can be said to be "wise" at 15. And doing random things expecting to get "wise" is like moving frantically and randomly your limbs & expecting to learn kung fu.... Time has to make things decant.
limaoscarjuliet 4y ago
To become rich, play lottery - worked for some! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
koonsolo 4y ago
To become wise, life has to beat the shit out of you. That means you will have some battle scars, and encountered yourself a few times. Thinking alone won't get you there. That will turn you into an "Intellectual Yet Idiot", as Nassim Taleb calls it.
- xcambar 4y ago
  I think it's hard to contradict this, yet it's a hardly accepted lemma. I don't know why, maybe because we perceive knowledge as a pure thing, that can be shared, embraced and understood out of thin air, that we can be pure minds or something along those lines. Yet, from personal experience, being taken down from your high horse and beaten down to earth by life itself (ie, this 0.0001% probability event that is 100% for you), well... It takes more than a fool to not take a learning out of it.
valprop1 4y ago
I do agree with the content in the article but I struggle to see the line in between doing less and being intentionally lazy. I could make an argument that I am not doing something or probably doing the tasks slowly to make the best of the situation. Now doing something while taking some good time might be helpful in order to avoid errors but again how do find the sweet spot of taking your own sweet time versus just being lazy to do something.
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
It's like their are two extremes, be a hustler waking up at 3am to do barbell squats and work on your startup or be an idler wandering in the park waiting for some socratic revelations of wisdom. Why can't we just be in the middle. Use your common sense to choose where best to focus your limited time and energy, listen to yourself and not others.
- april_22 4y ago
  Exactly, especially since every person is totally different. Just find what suits you best.
- snarf21 4y ago
  Or maybe the real answer is spaced repetition because that is how we learn. It would be interesting to try a work week that was say 3 10s on MWF and the other days off. Logistically it would suck but I'm curious about what our productivity would be.
- simonswords82 4y ago
  > Why can't we just be in the middle. Or adapt to what the current situation demands of us. Sometimes I do want to get up early, go for a run and work a 12 hour day. Sometimes I want to stay in bed until 9am and mooch around not getting much done. No two days have to be identical.
mark_l_watson 4y ago
Another take, from Yogananda: put your energy into accomplishing things in the world but when your work day is done turn off your working engine. At 71 (I am still working) I have had an unusual career. Since I was 25, for the most part I stopped working full time, capping my work at 32 hours a week. I was able to do this at some great companies working in great teams. My boss from 40 years ago visited me [1] from out of town 6 weeks ago and I apologized a little for causing him any hassles because of this. He laughed and said that while it was true that I was missed in my no work Mondays, that I was the easiest person he ever managed because I really focused on my 4 work days. [1] so far this year, I have had 4 visits from old coworkers who traveled to my town, ranging from working together 1 year ago to 40 years ago. I like to keep in touch with people.
- akudha 4y ago
  This is awesome. How did you manage to convince your employers, of 4 day work week? I was just thinking about it, I don't think there is any chance that I can convince my own employer of it :(
  - tpxl 4y ago
    You can try for shorter work days (5x6hr), and once that proves to work, go for 4x8hr?
  - mark_l_watson 4y ago
    I read the employee handbook, in its entirety. It said that in order to get all fringe benefits, a salaried employee must work a minimum of 30 hours a week. Another section said that if full time salaried employees worked less than 40 hours a week, then their paycheck would be prorated. I did give up 20% of my salary and occasionally when there was an emergency and everyone showed up Saturday morning to make a delivery, I would also show up and not bill for those hours. This only happened a few times a year. If you don’t ask for stuff, you are unlikely to get it.
  - karl42 4y ago
    I managed to convince my last five employers to let me work a four day week or less. Usually, I asked for it during the interview and accepted the job offer where they said "yes". That will rule out some jobs, but overall I can recommend the approach, as long as you don't have trouble finding jobs even without that requirement.
deleted 4y ago
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lysergia 4y ago
I think the gist of the article is: Sometimes (not always) the winning move is not to play. I have experienced this phenomenon before where my best ideas are had in the shower, or a software bug is resolved after going for a walk in nature. Another way of putting this is: avoid the target to hit it.
danielam 4y ago
"Wisdom generates insights which can lead to breakthroughs that creates immense productivity." It is important to emphasize that while this may be a consequence of wisdom, it is not what leisure is for the sake of. To reduce leisure and wisdom to instruments of productivity is to miss the whole point. We do not make leisure so that we may work, so that we may be more productive; we work so that we may make leisure. Wisdom is an end in itself. Work is not. "Productivity" is not. Work exists for the sake of leisure, not the other way around. (We must also not confuse recreation with leisure.) Josef Pieper's book "Leisure: the Basis of Culture" makes exactly this point. Something Pieper covers in the first chapter and worth noting here is that the word "school" comes from the Latin schola which in turn is derived from the Greek σχολή (skhole) which is the Greek word for "leisure" (indeed, the absence of leisure characteristic of work was defined negatively, askholia in Greek and negotium in Latin). Modern education may make this difficult to comprehend, but this is more discernible in classical education. Similarly, the "liberal" in "liberal arts" refers to the freedom to pursue leisure, and these are opposed to the so-called servile arts. And lastly, Pieper draws attention to the prevalence of religious feasts during the Middle Ages whose essential function wasn't to stuff your face with food and drink yourself under the table, but leisure. What could be more "leisurely" than religion, that which is, after all, concerned with the ultimate end and the highest good? We moderns live in what Pieper called the world of total work (he was writing this book in the postwar period, so this affliction is nothing new). To be sure, we must toil and till the field in which wisdom will grow, but we do not live to till the field; we till the field so that we may live. What is it that we live for, that we ought to live for? Perhaps it is our modern nihilism that frightens us enough to invert the relation between work and leisure, leading us to lose ourselves in work to avoid the realization.
- deleted 4y ago
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- moneytide1 4y ago
  > What could be more "leisurely" than religion, that which is, after all, concerned with the ultimate end and the highest good? "... blindly raging industriousness brings riches and honour but at the same time deprives the organs of refinement that make it possible to enjoy the riches and honour; also, that this chief antidote to boredom and to the passions at the same time dulls the senses [0] and makes the spirit resistant to new attractions. (The most industrious age - our own - doesn't know how to make anything of all its industriousness and money except still more money and still more industriousness, for more genius is required to spend than to acquire! Well, we'll still have our 'grandchildren'!) If education is successful, each virtue of the individual is a public utility and a private disadvantage with respect to the highest private end - probably involving some deterioration of the spirit and the senses or even a premature demise: consider from this standpoint the virtues of obedience, chastity, piety, and justice." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 21. To the teachers of selflessness The title of the article describes the merit of deliberate inaction to gain the virtue of wisdom. Wikipedia (universal standardized knowledge database edited by verified "wise" people?) defines it as the "ability to contemplate and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight." I agree with the author, Jideofor Onwugbenu, that there is utility in the pensive reflection required to digest the broad spectrum of memories accumulated throughout each period of labor. But he/she has produced other articles with titles such as "Tactics to Accelerate your Career" and "Pensions, Exponential Growth, and Investing" which seem to promote the concept of restlessness. Mr/Mrs Onwugbenu claims that he/she "labors" in yet another remotely located "financial technology" startup which is a synonym for "banking" which is the sector that rides the ("Leverage") waves generated by productive societies. Ever since I saw my tax dollars swallowed by the bloated "financial sector" after failure to enforce restraint among it's mortgage lending "talent" in 2008 (followed by the American coin mint authorization to spend even more of my tax dollars to change the back of the penny, stamping dies used for only one year), I've had to develop a necessary skepticism of any information broadcasted. It makes sense that a person on a computer all day is going to arbitrarily advise us to "do less" [1]. "... a Soviet scientist, Shafarevich, who has nothing to do with religion - he is a computer scientist - did a very intensive research on the history of socialist countries. He called socialist, or communist, any country with a centralized economy and the pyramidal style of power structure. He discovered (actually he didn't discover - he just brought to the attention of his readers) that civilizations like Mohenjo-daro (in the river Indus area), Egypt, Maya, Incas, and Babylonian culture collapsed&disappeared from the surface of Earth the moment they lost religion. As simple as that - they disintegrated. Nobody remembers about them anymore (well, distantly). The ideas moving society and keeping mankind as society of human beings. As intelligent, moral agents of God. The facts, the truth, the exact knowledge, all the sophisticated technology and computers will not prevent society from disintegrating and eventually dying out... " [2] After I made the decision to spend my limited attention reading what a banker has written about the merit of idleness, I see that the Convenient Almighty Recommendation Algorithm has projected the option to play-back footage of Bishop Fulton Sheen telling me that "Most of us live below the level of our energy, and in order to be happy - we have to do more. Now, we can do more, spiritually and every other way than we are doing as is proven by hypnotism..." [3] But the pocket computer is a statesman's dream: gps/microphone/camera/accelerometer in every pocket? Yes please. The SysAdmin(s) Among You that desire to play God seek omniscience. And with "helpful" Youtube videos showing how to "employ" surplus devices [5] - you too can add [6] to the chaos of moral dearth by getting paid (wide net indirectly cast via venture capital fueled dot-com-bubble-2.0, transponder switched off [7]) to pretend to be the guiding hand of the calculated opinions of millions of "real" people. A list linking you to digital profiles (proof) "who" have clicked "like" is not available to the user, unlike any stage performer who spends "all this time running around" personally inspecting the "legs and limbs, millions of eyes [8]" - instantly accessing their user base by gazing upon a sea of movement. Fake (virtual) engagement can raise or lower the reception metrics displayed next to the content of both your impressionable children and their teachers - this is the closest thing to centralized hypnotism. Since the most funded organization of Sol-3 is the United States Military, global hegemony can be challenged by circumventing it's strike capability. Subvert their civilian labour via the shiny trojan horse pocket device: "... if an enemy is bigger and heavier than yourself, it would be very painful to resist his direct strike... the Chinese and Japanese judo art tells us what to do. First, to avoid the strike, then to grab the fist and continue his movement into the direction where it was before. Until the enemy crashes into the wall... in every society there are people who are against the society. Simple criminals ideologically in disagreement with state policy, conscientious enemies, psychotic personalities that are against anything, and finally there is a small group of agents of a foreign nation (bought, subverted, recruited). The moment all these movements will be directed in one direction - this is the time to catch that movement and continue it until the movement forces the whole society into collapse and crisis... We don't stop the enemy - we help him to go into the direction we want him to go." [9] It would be "wise" to destroy the conditions that led to the availability of "Rosie the Riveter", that is, the dutifully disciplined daughter descended from strong family values, with her meticulous/patriotic/productive precision operating the industrial equipment providing the steady stream of reliable asset reinforcement to be operated by her beloved man with his high pain threshold staged throughout multiple theatres of engagement. "... to take advantage of these movements, to capitalize on them... religion, education, social life, power structure, labor relation unions, and Law&Order. These are the areas of application of subversion. In case of religion - destroy it, ridicule it. Replace it with various sex cults [10] which brings peoples attention away from the purpose of religion - to keep people in touch with a supreme being..." [11] Promote sexual promiscuity disguised as "revolution" across a few decades. The cinema, mass produced televisions, and those that curate their broadcasted content could be considered thrifty foreign military assets because the "useful idiot" does the bulk of the subversion work for free by responding to where the money flows and what the traditionally reliable institutions are projecting. "... We think a subverter is a person who is going to blow up our beautiful bridges. No - a subverter is a student who comes for exchange, a diplomat, an actor, an artist, a journalist like myself... " [12] Since the men will eat the apple of "knowledge" because their women insist, then they are aiding their own subversion by having their Goddess Bound by ideology delivered by the voice who moves slowly therefore undetected: "It's everywhere, it's everything, it's everyone, It's anywhere, its anything, it's anyone , It's a neighbors saving face, by saying grace, Today for yesterday's behavior" [13] "... Education - distract them from learning something that is constructive, pragmatic, efficient. Instead of mathematics, physics, foreign languages, chemistry - teach them history of urban warfare, natural food, home economy, your sexuality, anything that takes you away..." [14] A "painless" genocide in slow motion - gender swapping sterilization will be your own "revolutionary" idea, a combination of post-surgery anesthesia and infinite "news" scroll sedating your natural reaction to this final blow. Put it in the credit card commercials, corporate literature circulation, entertainment screenplay dialogue, elevate it to the top of news feeds by social engineering internal FAANG operators via high salary - the bribe to turn the blind eye of the state official is a small price to pay, but an unnecessary expense when a pocket device can show 40k+ zip codes the same story of "progress". [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28821762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28821762 [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/568877-i-choose-a-lazy-person-to-do-a-hard-job https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/568877-i-choose-a-lazy-pers... [2] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=3542 https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=3542 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e5oPIHnHQs&t=210s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e5oPIHnHQs&t=210s [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THJfNJk08ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THJfNJk08ds [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_leaflet_propaganda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_leaflet_propaganda [7] https://youtu.be/2yV3Uj8qbCU?t=51 https://youtu.be/2yV3Uj8qbCU?t=51 [8] https://youtu.be/GQ9MnaocJvk?t=929 https://youtu.be/GQ9MnaocJvk?t=929 [9] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=663 https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=663 [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe [11] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=788 https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=788 [12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9TviIuXPSE&t=229s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9TviIuXPSE&t=229s [13] https://youtu.be/PIUaU2sWteU?t=92 https://youtu.be/PIUaU2sWteU?t=92 [14] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=869 https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=869

137 points by maverickJ 4y ago

I gotta say, articles(to use that term loosely) like this are really starting to grind my gears. There are so many of them. Every person and their dog is trying to become some sort of popular culture icon by sharing with us their incredibly profound inner dialogue. They all have advice for how to live our lives, and none of them can agree. If you take the sum of their advice, you have to do everything at once. Gotta grind for that success. But don't grind too much. Also, remember to meditate. Disconnect from the internet. But don't become too disconnected, because you have to stay up to date on current events, because otherwise you can't keep up with the twittersphere. Which you should avoid, because it's toxic, by the way. But not too much, because important people say important things there! This article is particularly bad. It's only a few paragraphs, and it still manages to be so self-contradictory that if you actually read it through, you're literally no wiser in the end, because the advice boils down to "Sometimes you need to relax, but you can't relax all the time." Gee, thanks. Pretty ironic, considering the subject of this article.

lajisam 4y ago
Agree, far too many of them here at HN.
mms__ 4y ago
> They all have advice for how to live our lives, and none of them can agree. If you take the sum of their advice, you have to do everything at once Well yeah, different people have different views of how to accomplish stuff. You should have to reason a bit about what you read to figure out your own approach
- nudgeee 4y ago
  Agree, after years and years of being inundated with self-help messages, platitudes, and coming-of-age teachings, I find most of it comes from a good place — however the messages are so context specific that it probably doesn’t apply to you in your current juncture in life right now. I find what is crucial when it comes to taking advice, is figuring out when advice makes sense to you — and try to synthesize it as food for thought within your world view (or not).
edmundsauto 4y ago
And so much of it is rehashed ancient philosophy, such as "moderation in all things". So much of is basically the Tao Te Ching, or astrology. That is to say, it's not true! but over millennia, humans have found it to be useful. Try not to get annoyed by writing that isn't meant for you (assuming you don't get any value out of it, it's a tautology that you are not the intended audience.)
- sifar 4y ago
  >> So much of is basically the Tao Te Ching, or astrology. I am having difficulty parsing your comment. You are equating Tao Te Ching and astrology in the same bucket ? One is a philosophy, a way of looking at life - the other I don't know what to call it. And if you say that both are ways of looking at the world then we can apply that yardstick to everything and it doesn't get us anywhere. >> That is to say, it's not true! but over millennia, humans have found it to be useful. What part of core ancient philosophies about how one should conduct oneself are not true but useful ?
  - mayankgoel28 4y ago
    Something like "Let go of all attachments". Sure, it's great advice, but being attached to some things is life, even though they can potentially have negative effects (such as attachment to a SO, family, job, body-part).
    - sifar 4y ago
      As with many ancient sayings, they are pretty information dense, have multiple interpretations and need to unrolled in context specific cases and not be taken literally. >> Let go of all attachments. You find this in Hindu, Buddhist and even some stoic philosophies. It doesn't mean you literally don't feel for any thing/objects in life, leave every thing and become an ascetic. In fact it is the opposite - immersed in your life, you recognize the attachment you have towards the person/object, feel the joy/sadness(and everything in between) that you derive from it, yet don't be consumed by it, don't make it the center of your life. Don't get attached to being reciprocated or the results as these are out of your control. Learn to let it go if it is not part of your life anymore. Life finds a way, as Dr. Malcolm would say. At least that is how I see it.
tapvt 4y ago
I mostly agree with you, but I did find some value in the quotation (paraphrased, because I’ve closed the article) “Focus on doing the right things rather than doing things right.”
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lysergia 4y ago
I think the gist of the article is: Sometimes (not always) the winning move is not to play. I have experienced this phenomenon before where my best ideas are had in the shower, or a software bug is resolved after going for a walk in nature. Another way of putting this is: avoid the target to hit it.
chocolatemario 4y ago
I think articles like this just don’t belong on hackernews. This seems like a train of thought turned blog post. Maybe this guy thinks he is a guru, but it seems like it’s simply an attempt to formalize his musings. I’ve no qualms with this as a post, but it’s why I’m on this forum.

drannex 4y ago

To become wise, do everything, fuck up on most of it, and know what works and doesn't by direct experience. I am a minimalist (Essentialist) by choice, but a maximalist regarding knowledge and experience. Try and do everything you can, that way you know what does and doesn't work. Done. Anything else is overly reductive. You can't know how to do anything if you do or experience close to nothing. Leisure is good, I am a ferverent advocate of Veblen philosophy, but if you want to be wise use your leisure to do the maximum you can and want to do with that time. Leisure is different for everyone, reading, gaming, sitting on the beach, making art, but if you want to be /wise/ with your leisure you have to do everything you want to do! Focus a lot, or focus a little, you just have to do everything possible to fuck up as much as possible.

lanstin 4y ago
If you are too busy, you will not think of the optimal solution to your intellectual problem. I don’t know about other people, but I often have the experience of banging away at some problem for a few hours, then going away and not thinking about it for a while then a simple resolution pops into my mind without much effort. Continuing to push hard when you aren’t getting any where on an intellectual puzzle isn’t always the best approach. And there are some fields of inquiry where deep concentration and deep knowledge is useful. For instance, rather than recreating all the knowledge by your own trial and error you can read and then make truly novel mistakes.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  When programming, and stuck, down time rarely gives me a technical solution but very often a “why the hell ya even working on that!” kind of solution. Which is often better!
  - Tostino 4y ago
    That's often the best kind of insight you can gain from having a little distance between you and the problem.

lotsofzots 4y ago

_8j50 4y ago

To appear wise, say less.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/
- at_compile_time 4y ago
  Takes one to know one
  - klez 4y ago
    Looks like people flagged this without knowing what it was referring to[0] and thought it was insulting gp instead [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URWLnOJ25uA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URWLnOJ25uA
    - BLKNSLVR 4y ago
      It's definitely an underrated response, referring to one of those genius moments that were in abundance on The Simpsons of old. Capturing irony in all it's glory takes planning.
- tveyben 4y ago
  Fascinating site - and the linked article especially as it cites the tv show QI as a reference. QI is a true gem…
- helpfulmandrill 4y ago
  If you care about not being a fool, rather than just not looking like one, remaining silent is not good advice.
aaaaaaaaata 4y ago

PikachuEXE 4y ago

To become wise, think more, do less Which actually means practice (or perform) thinking more and probably reduce "less meaningful" work (not just "meaningless") Increasing efficiency & accuracy in thinking and performing actions Above are my very rough thoughts.

keeptrying 4y ago

Because Elon, Gates, Carmack, Eintstein , Feynman, Bezos, Sheryl Sandberg, Buckminister, Darwin did less. Right.

braymundo 4y ago
They are certainly incredibly productive and I admire all of them for different reasons, but are they wise?
- dmje 4y ago
  Or (in my humble opinion, a more important question), happy…?
sharkbird2 4y ago
To become wise, not to become rich or famous. Elon Musk is obviously an extremely intelligent, knowledgeable and capable man, but I don't think he's necessarily very wise.
- keeptrying 4y ago
  Read to the end of the list. /smh
quickthrower2 4y ago
They didn’t do the maximum, because they didn’t die from working. So there must be some restraint. Even if they look supersonic from our perspective.
butterNaN 4y ago
Wait, do people actually think these billionaires are _wise_? They look absolute fools to me. Their status is a result of luck (and a in a lot of cases, no obligation to morality).

Thursday24 4y ago

To become wise, get beneficial results without compromising quality of life to a great extent. Much better, do this not only for yourselves, but those around you as well. Prime example worth studying: Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore

padheyam 4y ago

Wisdom is such a loaded term. I think the article conflates wisdom with productivity - "To become more productive, do less!" could have equally been an apt title. On wisdom, I am reminded of the Serenity Prayer- "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer)

the_omegist 4y ago
Came here to say the same thing. Wisdom is linked to a life-long experienced person. No one can be said to be "wise" at 15. And doing random things expecting to get "wise" is like moving frantically and randomly your limbs & expecting to learn kung fu.... Time has to make things decant.

limaoscarjuliet 4y ago

To become rich, play lottery - worked for some! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

koonsolo 4y ago

To become wise, life has to beat the shit out of you. That means you will have some battle scars, and encountered yourself a few times. Thinking alone won't get you there. That will turn you into an "Intellectual Yet Idiot", as Nassim Taleb calls it.

xcambar 4y ago
I think it's hard to contradict this, yet it's a hardly accepted lemma. I don't know why, maybe because we perceive knowledge as a pure thing, that can be shared, embraced and understood out of thin air, that we can be pure minds or something along those lines. Yet, from personal experience, being taken down from your high horse and beaten down to earth by life itself (ie, this 0.0001% probability event that is 100% for you), well... It takes more than a fool to not take a learning out of it.

valprop1 4y ago

I do agree with the content in the article but I struggle to see the line in between doing less and being intentionally lazy. I could make an argument that I am not doing something or probably doing the tasks slowly to make the best of the situation. Now doing something while taking some good time might be helpful in order to avoid errors but again how do find the sweet spot of taking your own sweet time versus just being lazy to do something.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

It's like their are two extremes, be a hustler waking up at 3am to do barbell squats and work on your startup or be an idler wandering in the park waiting for some socratic revelations of wisdom. Why can't we just be in the middle. Use your common sense to choose where best to focus your limited time and energy, listen to yourself and not others.

april_22 4y ago
Exactly, especially since every person is totally different. Just find what suits you best.
snarf21 4y ago
Or maybe the real answer is spaced repetition because that is how we learn. It would be interesting to try a work week that was say 3 10s on MWF and the other days off. Logistically it would suck but I'm curious about what our productivity would be.
simonswords82 4y ago
> Why can't we just be in the middle. Or adapt to what the current situation demands of us. Sometimes I do want to get up early, go for a run and work a 12 hour day. Sometimes I want to stay in bed until 9am and mooch around not getting much done. No two days have to be identical.

mark_l_watson 4y ago

Another take, from Yogananda: put your energy into accomplishing things in the world but when your work day is done turn off your working engine. At 71 (I am still working) I have had an unusual career. Since I was 25, for the most part I stopped working full time, capping my work at 32 hours a week. I was able to do this at some great companies working in great teams. My boss from 40 years ago visited me [1] from out of town 6 weeks ago and I apologized a little for causing him any hassles because of this. He laughed and said that while it was true that I was missed in my no work Mondays, that I was the easiest person he ever managed because I really focused on my 4 work days. [1] so far this year, I have had 4 visits from old coworkers who traveled to my town, ranging from working together 1 year ago to 40 years ago. I like to keep in touch with people.

akudha 4y ago
This is awesome. How did you manage to convince your employers, of 4 day work week? I was just thinking about it, I don't think there is any chance that I can convince my own employer of it :(
- tpxl 4y ago
  You can try for shorter work days (5x6hr), and once that proves to work, go for 4x8hr?
- mark_l_watson 4y ago
  I read the employee handbook, in its entirety. It said that in order to get all fringe benefits, a salaried employee must work a minimum of 30 hours a week. Another section said that if full time salaried employees worked less than 40 hours a week, then their paycheck would be prorated. I did give up 20% of my salary and occasionally when there was an emergency and everyone showed up Saturday morning to make a delivery, I would also show up and not bill for those hours. This only happened a few times a year. If you don’t ask for stuff, you are unlikely to get it.
- karl42 4y ago
  I managed to convince my last five employers to let me work a four day week or less. Usually, I asked for it during the interview and accepted the job offer where they said "yes". That will rule out some jobs, but overall I can recommend the approach, as long as you don't have trouble finding jobs even without that requirement.

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lysergia 4y ago

I think the gist of the article is: Sometimes (not always) the winning move is not to play. I have experienced this phenomenon before where my best ideas are had in the shower, or a software bug is resolved after going for a walk in nature. Another way of putting this is: avoid the target to hit it.

danielam 4y ago

"Wisdom generates insights which can lead to breakthroughs that creates immense productivity." It is important to emphasize that while this may be a consequence of wisdom, it is not what leisure is for the sake of. To reduce leisure and wisdom to instruments of productivity is to miss the whole point. We do not make leisure so that we may work, so that we may be more productive; we work so that we may make leisure. Wisdom is an end in itself. Work is not. "Productivity" is not. Work exists for the sake of leisure, not the other way around. (We must also not confuse recreation with leisure.) Josef Pieper's book "Leisure: the Basis of Culture" makes exactly this point. Something Pieper covers in the first chapter and worth noting here is that the word "school" comes from the Latin schola which in turn is derived from the Greek σχολή (skhole) which is the Greek word for "leisure" (indeed, the absence of leisure characteristic of work was defined negatively, askholia in Greek and negotium in Latin). Modern education may make this difficult to comprehend, but this is more discernible in classical education. Similarly, the "liberal" in "liberal arts" refers to the freedom to pursue leisure, and these are opposed to the so-called servile arts. And lastly, Pieper draws attention to the prevalence of religious feasts during the Middle Ages whose essential function wasn't to stuff your face with food and drink yourself under the table, but leisure. What could be more "leisurely" than religion, that which is, after all, concerned with the ultimate end and the highest good? We moderns live in what Pieper called the world of total work (he was writing this book in the postwar period, so this affliction is nothing new). To be sure, we must toil and till the field in which wisdom will grow, but we do not live to till the field; we till the field so that we may live. What is it that we live for, that we ought to live for? Perhaps it is our modern nihilism that frightens us enough to invert the relation between work and leisure, leading us to lose ourselves in work to avoid the realization.

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moneytide1 4y ago
> What could be more "leisurely" than religion, that which is, after all, concerned with the ultimate end and the highest good? "... blindly raging industriousness brings riches and honour but at the same time deprives the organs of refinement that make it possible to enjoy the riches and honour; also, that this chief antidote to boredom and to the passions at the same time dulls the senses [0] and makes the spirit resistant to new attractions. (The most industrious age - our own - doesn't know how to make anything of all its industriousness and money except still more money and still more industriousness, for more genius is required to spend than to acquire! Well, we'll still have our 'grandchildren'!) If education is successful, each virtue of the individual is a public utility and a private disadvantage with respect to the highest private end - probably involving some deterioration of the spirit and the senses or even a premature demise: consider from this standpoint the virtues of obedience, chastity, piety, and justice." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 21. To the teachers of selflessness The title of the article describes the merit of deliberate inaction to gain the virtue of wisdom. Wikipedia (universal standardized knowledge database edited by verified "wise" people?) defines it as the "ability to contemplate and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight." I agree with the author, Jideofor Onwugbenu, that there is utility in the pensive reflection required to digest the broad spectrum of memories accumulated throughout each period of labor. But he/she has produced other articles with titles such as "Tactics to Accelerate your Career" and "Pensions, Exponential Growth, and Investing" which seem to promote the concept of restlessness. Mr/Mrs Onwugbenu claims that he/she "labors" in yet another remotely located "financial technology" startup which is a synonym for "banking" which is the sector that rides the ("Leverage") waves generated by productive societies. Ever since I saw my tax dollars swallowed by the bloated "financial sector" after failure to enforce restraint among it's mortgage lending "talent" in 2008 (followed by the American coin mint authorization to spend even more of my tax dollars to change the back of the penny, stamping dies used for only one year), I've had to develop a necessary skepticism of any information broadcasted. It makes sense that a person on a computer all day is going to arbitrarily advise us to "do less" [1]. "... a Soviet scientist, Shafarevich, who has nothing to do with religion - he is a computer scientist - did a very intensive research on the history of socialist countries. He called socialist, or communist, any country with a centralized economy and the pyramidal style of power structure. He discovered (actually he didn't discover - he just brought to the attention of his readers) that civilizations like Mohenjo-daro (in the river Indus area), Egypt, Maya, Incas, and Babylonian culture collapsed&disappeared from the surface of Earth the moment they lost religion. As simple as that - they disintegrated. Nobody remembers about them anymore (well, distantly). The ideas moving society and keeping mankind as society of human beings. As intelligent, moral agents of God. The facts, the truth, the exact knowledge, all the sophisticated technology and computers will not prevent society from disintegrating and eventually dying out... " [2] After I made the decision to spend my limited attention reading what a banker has written about the merit of idleness, I see that the Convenient Almighty Recommendation Algorithm has projected the option to play-back footage of Bishop Fulton Sheen telling me that "Most of us live below the level of our energy, and in order to be happy - we have to do more. Now, we can do more, spiritually and every other way than we are doing as is proven by hypnotism..." [3] But the pocket computer is a statesman's dream: gps/microphone/camera/accelerometer in every pocket? Yes please. The SysAdmin(s) Among You that desire to play God seek omniscience. And with "helpful" Youtube videos showing how to "employ" surplus devices [5] - you too can add [6] to the chaos of moral dearth by getting paid (wide net indirectly cast via venture capital fueled dot-com-bubble-2.0, transponder switched off [7]) to pretend to be the guiding hand of the calculated opinions of millions of "real" people. A list linking you to digital profiles (proof) "who" have clicked "like" is not available to the user, unlike any stage performer who spends "all this time running around" personally inspecting the "legs and limbs, millions of eyes [8]" - instantly accessing their user base by gazing upon a sea of movement. Fake (virtual) engagement can raise or lower the reception metrics displayed next to the content of both your impressionable children and their teachers - this is the closest thing to centralized hypnotism. Since the most funded organization of Sol-3 is the United States Military, global hegemony can be challenged by circumventing it's strike capability. Subvert their civilian labour via the shiny trojan horse pocket device: "... if an enemy is bigger and heavier than yourself, it would be very painful to resist his direct strike... the Chinese and Japanese judo art tells us what to do. First, to avoid the strike, then to grab the fist and continue his movement into the direction where it was before. Until the enemy crashes into the wall... in every society there are people who are against the society. Simple criminals ideologically in disagreement with state policy, conscientious enemies, psychotic personalities that are against anything, and finally there is a small group of agents of a foreign nation (bought, subverted, recruited). The moment all these movements will be directed in one direction - this is the time to catch that movement and continue it until the movement forces the whole society into collapse and crisis... We don't stop the enemy - we help him to go into the direction we want him to go." [9] It would be "wise" to destroy the conditions that led to the availability of "Rosie the Riveter", that is, the dutifully disciplined daughter descended from strong family values, with her meticulous/patriotic/productive precision operating the industrial equipment providing the steady stream of reliable asset reinforcement to be operated by her beloved man with his high pain threshold staged throughout multiple theatres of engagement. "... to take advantage of these movements, to capitalize on them... religion, education, social life, power structure, labor relation unions, and Law&Order. These are the areas of application of subversion. In case of religion - destroy it, ridicule it. Replace it with various sex cults [10] which brings peoples attention away from the purpose of religion - to keep people in touch with a supreme being..." [11] Promote sexual promiscuity disguised as "revolution" across a few decades. The cinema, mass produced televisions, and those that curate their broadcasted content could be considered thrifty foreign military assets because the "useful idiot" does the bulk of the subversion work for free by responding to where the money flows and what the traditionally reliable institutions are projecting. "... We think a subverter is a person who is going to blow up our beautiful bridges. No - a subverter is a student who comes for exchange, a diplomat, an actor, an artist, a journalist like myself... " [12] Since the men will eat the apple of "knowledge" because their women insist, then they are aiding their own subversion by having their Goddess Bound by ideology delivered by the voice who moves slowly therefore undetected: "It's everywhere, it's everything, it's everyone, It's anywhere, its anything, it's anyone , It's a neighbors saving face, by saying grace, Today for yesterday's behavior" [13] "... Education - distract them from learning something that is constructive, pragmatic, efficient. Instead of mathematics, physics, foreign languages, chemistry - teach them history of urban warfare, natural food, home economy, your sexuality, anything that takes you away..." [14] A "painless" genocide in slow motion - gender swapping sterilization will be your own "revolutionary" idea, a combination of post-surgery anesthesia and infinite "news" scroll sedating your natural reaction to this final blow. Put it in the credit card commercials, corporate literature circulation, entertainment screenplay dialogue, elevate it to the top of news feeds by social engineering internal FAANG operators via high salary - the bribe to turn the blind eye of the state official is a small price to pay, but an unnecessary expense when a pocket device can show 40k+ zip codes the same story of "progress". [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28821762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28821762 [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/568877-i-choose-a-lazy-person-to-do-a-hard-job https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/568877-i-choose-a-lazy-pers... [2] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=3542 https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=3542 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e5oPIHnHQs&t=210s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e5oPIHnHQs&t=210s [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THJfNJk08ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THJfNJk08ds [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_leaflet_propaganda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_leaflet_propaganda [7] https://youtu.be/2yV3Uj8qbCU?t=51 https://youtu.be/2yV3Uj8qbCU?t=51 [8] https://youtu.be/GQ9MnaocJvk?t=929 https://youtu.be/GQ9MnaocJvk?t=929 [9] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=663 https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=663 [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe [11] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=788 https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=788 [12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9TviIuXPSE&t=229s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9TviIuXPSE&t=229s [13] https://youtu.be/PIUaU2sWteU?t=92 https://youtu.be/PIUaU2sWteU?t=92 [14] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=869 https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=869