3 ms·

I've always been a sort of lazy high achiever and very puzzled about this. I was always a near-top (but not top) student in schools, got a PhD and am now worki

by vjk800 3y ago

I've always been a sort of lazy high achiever and very puzzled about this. I was always a near-top (but not top) student in schools, got a PhD and am now working in a high paying job in a bank. Besides one or two years during my university years, I've always been extremely lazy. On the other hand, in all of these institutions there have been many people who have been very serious hard workers and perhaps even at the time been ahead of me in whatever metrics the institution happened to use to measure success. However, over time I've noticed that these sort of things sort of even out. People who worked very hard in the high school or during my PhD are not more successful than me anymore. I don't know if it's just that life is so random that the effect of hard work gets washed out by random life choices or what. It's also plausible that working hard just puts you in a very non-creative mindset and creativity is what gets most of the work done in a complex environment in the end. For many people, hard work often seems to be an end to itself and it matters less to those people where the work is directed at. As a result, people end up working crazy hours doing stuff that could be done in one tenth of a time by using a bit of creativity or just waiting the problem to somehow become irrelevant.

quickthrower2 3y ago
You might just have higher IQ or whatever. Some people work hard because they can get 60% instead of 50% and get more money than they would have got had they not worked hard. Your test score and profile is irrelevant to them.
karmakurtisaani 3y ago
My story is fairly similar to yours. I felt that I always had limited energy to really focus on the "important" things that turned somewhat boring after a while, and my peers who were able to keep going went further in academia. I got easily distracted by more "fun" problem solving and looking around rather than going really really deep in a given topic. If only I had had that energy to go the extra mile, I could now be in temporary academic position in some city with worse quality of life making one third of the money they pay for coding. Oh well, sometimes you just have to take what life gives you I suppose.
- atemerev 3y ago
  I returned to the academia after 15 years in the industry. Copying protobufs for an ad company (or worse) will not get you any meaning of life.
  - karmakurtisaani 3y ago
    How was going back? I'm assuming the field must be somewhat applied? I did theory, and once you leave there's just no going back. I still try to keep up with the more fun stuff occasionally, because it is indeed much more interesting.
  - _zoltan_ 3y ago
    your work is not you? find meaning outside of work. my kids fill all my non work hours with extreme joy.
pbmonster 3y ago
> I don't know if it's just that life is so random that the effect of hard work gets washed out by random life choices or what. It's also plausible that working hard just puts you in a very non-creative mindset and creativity is what gets most of the work done in a complex environment in the end. Don't overestimate how much actual work is getting done by "hard working" people. They put in the time, but procrastination doesn't stop just because you work hard. And that certainly includes the types of "productive" procrastination that doesn't look/feel like procrastination, like making Figures/Powerpoints more pretty or doing another rewrite on a piece of text nobody is ever going to do more with than glance at. Seriously, otherwise intelligent people can spent an hour re-writing a single email.
prmoustache 3y ago
I think a lot boils down to motivation as well. I was kind of lazy in my studies, and hated being teached several times the same things and most of the stuff we were doing was mostly theoric. Once I ended up in the workplace it felt to me my actual work had more value and I naturally put more energy to it and got more successes. And the same thing happen between different kind of companies. When I work for private companies whose products/services do not mean anything to me and where I feel the main goal is to satisfy shareholders, I have less motivation and energy than for instance when I was working for a public hospital. Some people don't care and their ultimate reward is the paycheck, some people want their work to have a meaning and a real value.
jemmyw 3y ago
I want to echo this because you had other replies agreeing and I feel that my anecdotal experience of this might actually have meaning. I was extremely lazy through school and college and was usually at or near the top of every class until I hit some point where lazy could no longer cut it. But that just narrowed subjects down until I was able to be very lazy at uni and still do well. If I hadn't had a couple of incidents (bike accident and unrelated health issue) I probably would have scored a higher degree and been motivated to stay in academia. In work I feel like I've drifted into roles that are fantastic compared to my friends at school + uni who worked really hard, and I expected the opposite to happen. The moment that comes back to me particularly is when I visited a friend who was doing an astrophysics degree at another uni in their 2nd year. I attended the lectures with her and my casual knowledge from reading on the subject had covered what they were learning. I thought it was interesting and followed along just fine. Talking with her and her group of friends afterwards, they were really struggling. Thing is, although she was a really hard worker, she didn't have much interest in the subject. She just chose it because she did well in physics at school. She only did OK, so a middling degree in astrophysics setting up well for a career in admin.

by vjk800 3y ago

quickthrower2 3y ago

You might just have higher IQ or whatever. Some people work hard because they can get 60% instead of 50% and get more money than they would have got had they not worked hard. Your test score and profile is irrelevant to them.

karmakurtisaani 3y ago

My story is fairly similar to yours. I felt that I always had limited energy to really focus on the "important" things that turned somewhat boring after a while, and my peers who were able to keep going went further in academia. I got easily distracted by more "fun" problem solving and looking around rather than going really really deep in a given topic. If only I had had that energy to go the extra mile, I could now be in temporary academic position in some city with worse quality of life making one third of the money they pay for coding. Oh well, sometimes you just have to take what life gives you I suppose.

atemerev 3y ago
I returned to the academia after 15 years in the industry. Copying protobufs for an ad company (or worse) will not get you any meaning of life.
- karmakurtisaani 3y ago
  How was going back? I'm assuming the field must be somewhat applied? I did theory, and once you leave there's just no going back. I still try to keep up with the more fun stuff occasionally, because it is indeed much more interesting.
- _zoltan_ 3y ago
  your work is not you? find meaning outside of work. my kids fill all my non work hours with extreme joy.

pbmonster 3y ago

> I don't know if it's just that life is so random that the effect of hard work gets washed out by random life choices or what. It's also plausible that working hard just puts you in a very non-creative mindset and creativity is what gets most of the work done in a complex environment in the end. Don't overestimate how much actual work is getting done by "hard working" people. They put in the time, but procrastination doesn't stop just because you work hard. And that certainly includes the types of "productive" procrastination that doesn't look/feel like procrastination, like making Figures/Powerpoints more pretty or doing another rewrite on a piece of text nobody is ever going to do more with than glance at. Seriously, otherwise intelligent people can spent an hour re-writing a single email.

prmoustache 3y ago

I think a lot boils down to motivation as well. I was kind of lazy in my studies, and hated being teached several times the same things and most of the stuff we were doing was mostly theoric. Once I ended up in the workplace it felt to me my actual work had more value and I naturally put more energy to it and got more successes. And the same thing happen between different kind of companies. When I work for private companies whose products/services do not mean anything to me and where I feel the main goal is to satisfy shareholders, I have less motivation and energy than for instance when I was working for a public hospital. Some people don't care and their ultimate reward is the paycheck, some people want their work to have a meaning and a real value.

jemmyw 3y ago

I want to echo this because you had other replies agreeing and I feel that my anecdotal experience of this might actually have meaning. I was extremely lazy through school and college and was usually at or near the top of every class until I hit some point where lazy could no longer cut it. But that just narrowed subjects down until I was able to be very lazy at uni and still do well. If I hadn't had a couple of incidents (bike accident and unrelated health issue) I probably would have scored a higher degree and been motivated to stay in academia. In work I feel like I've drifted into roles that are fantastic compared to my friends at school + uni who worked really hard, and I expected the opposite to happen. The moment that comes back to me particularly is when I visited a friend who was doing an astrophysics degree at another uni in their 2nd year. I attended the lectures with her and my casual knowledge from reading on the subject had covered what they were learning. I thought it was interesting and followed along just fine. Talking with her and her group of friends afterwards, they were really struggling. Thing is, although she was a really hard worker, she didn't have much interest in the subject. She just chose it because she did well in physics at school. She only did OK, so a middling degree in astrophysics setting up well for a career in admin.