3 ms·

Article adds that they walked to office at 10-11, walked home FROM office at 1-2 (so they spent at most 3 hours at the institute) and in effect this took up 30%

by calf 2y ago

Article adds that they walked to office at 10-11, walked home FROM office at 1-2 (so they spent at most 3 hours at the institute) and in effect this took up 30% of Einstein's workday. If anything, it's subtle "do what you love" propaganda.

Rinzler89 2y ago
99% of working population doesn't have Albert Einstein's brilliance in order to provide the same kind of value with 3h of "office work" per day. Plus I think Albert Einstein and other scientists like him were constantly working in their heads anyway, constantly thinking about how to solve that problem, regardless of how much time they spent in an office. So trying to deduct some kind of productivity metric between his office time and results would be pointless (it's pointless for most knowledge jobs, but especially for his.)
pvaldes 2y ago
Counting the number of hours in science does not really matter. This work is full of incredibly productive eureka minutes in the middle of unlucky boring days or weeks of stunted progress. Scientists don't stop thinking on the problems when they go home. Some significant advances happened even by scientists while dreaming. In some cases sleeping time definitely should count as hours on office, having in mind the results. If we could remove the bureaucracy load from them, scientists could work even less hours without losing productivity or even increasing it (See: Stephen Hawking).
- calf 2y ago
  I initially lived for 2 years a mere 200 m. from Einstein's house as all Princeton PhD students are required, so I know what you're trying to convey, but the broader problem is in the interpretation of this anecdotes for nonacademic work and how it gets exploited to tell tertiary industry / knowledge workers to find what they love so that it doesn't count as labor.

3 ms·

Article adds that they walked to office at 10-11, walked home FROM office at 1-2 (so they spent at most 3 hours at the institute) and in effect this took up 30%

by calf 2y ago

Rinzler89 2y ago
99% of working population doesn't have Albert Einstein's brilliance in order to provide the same kind of value with 3h of "office work" per day. Plus I think Albert Einstein and other scientists like him were constantly working in their heads anyway, constantly thinking about how to solve that problem, regardless of how much time they spent in an office. So trying to deduct some kind of productivity metric between his office time and results would be pointless (it's pointless for most knowledge jobs, but especially for his.)
pvaldes 2y ago
Counting the number of hours in science does not really matter. This work is full of incredibly productive eureka minutes in the middle of unlucky boring days or weeks of stunted progress. Scientists don't stop thinking on the problems when they go home. Some significant advances happened even by scientists while dreaming. In some cases sleeping time definitely should count as hours on office, having in mind the results. If we could remove the bureaucracy load from them, scientists could work even less hours without losing productivity or even increasing it (See: Stephen Hawking).
- calf 2y ago
  I initially lived for 2 years a mere 200 m. from Einstein's house as all Princeton PhD students are required, so I know what you're trying to convey, but the broader problem is in the interpretation of this anecdotes for nonacademic work and how it gets exploited to tell tertiary industry / knowledge workers to find what they love so that it doesn't count as labor.