5 ms·

What if hard work felt easier?

67 points by kiyanwang 1y ago

fighterhao 1y ago
[flagged]
wry_discontent 11mo ago
This seems naive to me. There are plenty of things I work hard on because I like them, but there are also lots of things I have to work hard on because they need to get done. I have similar feelings about Ikigai, the overlap of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Those things don't really overlap for me.
timenotwasted 11mo ago
"It’s to help people find work that feels easy for them — not necessarily work they already know how to do, but work that feels obvious for them to get done by whatever means possible" Having worked across the spectrum of big co. and startups this is much easier to do from a startup/small co. perspective. The larger the company gets the less likely this is going to be the case even for the ones that are more amenable to shifting folks around regularly. The Venn diagram of fulfilling work and the team that you're on gets further spread the larger the company you're on and will change rapidly on you.
throwaway13337 11mo ago
Lack of autonomy is the most draining thing. Not many have the luxury to do what they think makes sense. I've been running my own small business for years. It's lonely to not have coworkers but work is extremely enjoyable. The author, too, had autonomy but doesn't seem to make a point of that. The system that we've built is why people aren't enjoying their work. The bigger the organization, the less autonomy an individual has. Markets are beautiful things when they work. They allow individuals to offer their services to the world in exactly the way they find best. Which feels good. And is great for a positive sum society. The amount of people employed in small businesses or self employed is shrinking and has been for a while. The rules are too complex to start a business. In tech, there is no common protocol to speak. You are a surf of the platform you find yourself on. They extract the value. To help people find meaning in their work, we must first force open protocols, interoperability, and regulations that are gradual by business size.
- hypeatei 11mo ago
  > In tech, there is no common protocol to speak. You are a surf of the platform you find yourself on. Can you expand on this statement? It's a bit ambiguous and I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly. Other than that, I agree with your comment. Even doing independent contracting on the side seems like a minefield w.r.t. quarterly tax payments, estimated tax, etc.. in the US at least. I'm sure I could figure it out but just earning income for some side work seems like a liability and a big headache.
  - jonas21 11mo ago
    > Even doing independent contracting on the side seems like a minefield w.r.t. quarterly tax payments, estimated tax, etc.. in the US at least. I'm sure I could figure it out but just earning income for some side work seems like a liability and a big headache. It's really not hard -- it takes maybe 15 minutes per year, and if you own any stocks outside a 401k, you probably already need to make quarterly estimated payments. If it's too much trouble, you can just hire an accountant to take care of it for you. At any rate, it shouldn't be a significant obstacle to contracting.
    - stronglikedan 11mo ago
      > it takes maybe 15 minutes per year It takes at least four times that per quarter, really. And especially if you're small enough to not be able to afford an accountant just yet.
      - SoftTalker 11mo ago
        The shortcut I always used was to take my effective tax rate from last year's return (i.e. total tax owed / gross income), multiply my self-employment income for the past quarter by that rate, maybe round it up somewhat, and pay that. It usually worked out to be close enough that I didn't owe any penalty for underpayment of estimated tax and it was much easier than using the IRS suggested calculation.
    - hypeatei 11mo ago
languagehacker 11mo ago
"What if I farmed everything out to an AI and felt like I accomplished something"
van_lizard 11mo ago
[dead]
andrewrn 11mo ago
Not to be that guy but PG has a great one on this: https://paulgraham.com/love.html https://paulgraham.com/love.html And here's another great one about how ease, and not grind, arguably led to some of the biggest discoveries ever, like General Relativity: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/on-thinkers-and-doers https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/on-thinkers-and-doers I am currently doing a masters degree at Carnegie Mellon and I gotta be honest, this place is so dehumanizing for the exact reasons discussed in the link. It's just a grind pit here. And its harder to swallow this pill when you realize that university campuses are one of the few remaining venues well suited for exploring new ideas and having intellectual serendipity. When you're in a job, you can't easily just find a biology expert or economics expert and chat with them. When students are assaulted with work, they lose the ability to take advantage of that unique quality of the university environment.
- titanomachy 11mo ago
  Why do you think it’s such a grind? Do you think there’s somewhere else that wouldn’t be? I’ve been interested in doing more school as well, but I took a class in-person at a top school and it seems like CS students at least are so career-focused that there’s very little room for curiosity or joy. I guess it’s a big luxury to be a mid-career person doing it mostly out of interest.
  - all2 11mo ago
    I worked adjacent to many masters and PhDs when I was going to school. It was a trope that 'if you aren't mentally ill, you aren't working hard enough', as if the expectation was to destroy any enjoyment or wonder in your work. Or something.
    - andrewrn 11mo ago
      Ah so its just that way everywhere huh. Very frustrating because as the article says, its genuinely less productive to engage in the grind. This feels true to me.
  - andrewrn 11mo ago
keybored 11mo ago
What if work felt easy? > I felt like I should catch up to stay relevant in the changing tech landscape, but that feeling just didn’t translate to action. > Then, a few months ago, I had this silly idea for a Trader Joe’s snack box builder. It made me smile to think about it existing in the world. So I downloaded Cursor, and built and shipped a basic version in two hours. And what if AI was what made it feel easy? > That tiny spark of joy reminded me how much I love to build. A few weeks ago, I got pulled into building a Community Library app — something I’d been noodling on for months as a shared Google Sheet. Once I had the idea for a real site, it just made sense to build it. What if all your problems could be solved with AI? Visualize it. Find that tiny spark of joy. Magnify it.
- switchbak 11mo ago
  > What if all your problems could be solved with AI? Well, that's a big question and I think the answer is "no". There's probably not a single person in this world whose entire set of problems could be solved with AI. It can be useful in some narrow (digital) domains, sure. Is it going to fix your grumpy neighbour, your IBS or your Mom with dementia? No. And in fact, one of my main problems these days is dealing with the side effects of other's over-exuberance with AI. And shockingly, rubbing more AI on it only makes it worse.
BrenBarn 11mo ago
I mean the missing link here is can you make money with it. There are plenty of people out there for whom the "easy" work is something like building hyper-detailed models of obscure railway bridges, or painting 5,000 pictures of their cat, or tending their vegetable garden. But their ability to indulge in that is limited because they have to support themselves with some other kind of work. I don't think the hard part is finding something to do that fulfills you and feels easy. The hard part is meeting your material needs while still having enough time and energy to do that stuff that fulfills you and feels easy.
zkmon 11mo ago
When I was child, I observed how peasants worked on their own small farms. Get up at around 4:30 am (with rooster call), be at farm by 6 am. short break at 10 am, lunch at farm around 2pm, back home 6pm, have dinner and back at farm until 9 or 10pm. Any travel to other villages would be mostly during all night by walk, preferably under moonlight. We usually reach destination by 6am. Basically, work stops only for food breaks and sleep of about 6 hrs. Ofcourse, this is seasonal, with summers having more free time, due to lack of crop work. But summers would have different types of work such as spinning fiber for cot threads or ropes, mending home roofings, repairing farm tools, carts, fixing irrigation systems, having marriages and festivals etc.
- korse 11mo ago
  Out of curiosity, roughly where are you from?
  - zkmon 11mo ago
    South India
- deepsun 11mo ago
  Same thing I observed (Eastern Europe). As a city dweller I was astonished how little free time people had in village, almost every second they were doing something. PS: The difference was though winters were "less" work, because everything is under snow. But they're still preparing for future all the time (the huge part of it is logging and wood chopping, which is easier in winter than summer).
quirkot 11mo ago
I'm not trying to throw shade, but the approach as described is very short sighted. > That tiny spark of joy reminded me how much I love to build Well, yes. That's the fun part. The hard part is the "bug fixes on that community library site you built 8 years ago, has 2k loyal users, and will never make you a dime." This approach, as liberating as it feels, only makes the "who fixes the toilets for the utopia" problem harder.
ngriffiths 11mo ago
There's a certain kind of work that's productive and doesn't take much "effort," at least not in the sense of that super annoying voice in your head that says "I really should focus... I didn't get much done yesterday, gotta make up for it now! Other people are working, look at how smart and productive they are! I need coffee, just one coffee then I'll have enough energy to do this." Used to happen all the time playing piano in a concert or just an intense practice session. I'd notice that I had been incredibly focused, shockingly focused, like my brain had decided this random sound making activity was its One True Purpose and if it didn't work hard enough it would probably shrivel up and die. And thinking back it hadn't felt strenuous, it felt weirdly calm in the moment, but I think "ease" is totally the wrong word here. It was obvious that I had been working extremely hard, it was as intense as it was calming (? somehow?), and after I'd be totally exhausted. I think the article really means "what if hard work didn't feel incredibly annoying at the same time?" On the other hand there's "what if work that feels relaxing isn't also nearly useless"? Because there's a great way to make hard work feel easy, which is to just stop worrying, man. Take it one step at a time, it's probably the right step. There's no rush, slow down, you'll probably get there at the same time as you would by stressing yourself out and stopping for more coffee all the time. Here, use this easy framework...
TrackerFF 11mo ago
I've experienced both hard physical and mental work, both sucks but physical sucks worse. But for mental work, it depends on what you're working on. Some mental work you can just put away, and sleep on, like trying to solve difficult problems. But when you add in time constraint and urgency, that's when things really begin to suck. When I worked in the military I sometimes had double shifts (15-16 hours) where I'd track objects non-stop, doing trying to piece together a puzzle, and update reports on the go. You're so mentally drained afterwards, that you can't do anything but go home and sleep / turn off your brain.
NickM 11mo ago
I think this is a dangerously half-true way of thinking. Yes, there are times when hard work feels great, and it's absolutely worth seeking out this kind of work. But any serious endeavor is going to have times that are a slog, and your ability to stick with it through the bad times will very directly dictate your ability to get back to the good times.
- BeetleB 11mo ago
  > But any serious endeavor is going to have times that are a slog You misspelled "many" :-)
snozolli 11mo ago
The article seems to boil down to, "I found a way to do the part I like." Obviously, the really unpleasant work on a product is usually down the line. Bugs, technical debt, keeping documentation relevant, and integrating new features. This site used to talk all the time about Minimum Viable Products. The focus of startups was to get the MVP out the door so that you could see if there's even a market for it before you invest in further development, scaling, etc. I'm surprised that I haven't seen more posts here specifically about using AI to get an MVP out the door, with the awareness that there will be a lot of human labor down the line.
atleastoptimal 11mo ago
hard work is 1000x easier when I know that I'm contributing to something worthwhile, and more importantly, I have strong assurance that my work will make a positive impact. Working at something you suspect you're redundant or bad at is demoralizing and a recipe for burnout.

67 points by kiyanwang 1y ago

[flagged]

This seems naive to me. There are plenty of things I work hard on because I like them, but there are also lots of things I have to work hard on because they need to get done. I have similar feelings about Ikigai, the overlap of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Those things don't really overlap for me.

timenotwasted 11mo ago

"It’s to help people find work that feels easy for them — not necessarily work they already know how to do, but work that feels obvious for them to get done by whatever means possible" Having worked across the spectrum of big co. and startups this is much easier to do from a startup/small co. perspective. The larger the company gets the less likely this is going to be the case even for the ones that are more amenable to shifting folks around regularly. The Venn diagram of fulfilling work and the team that you're on gets further spread the larger the company you're on and will change rapidly on you.

throwaway13337 11mo ago

Lack of autonomy is the most draining thing. Not many have the luxury to do what they think makes sense. I've been running my own small business for years. It's lonely to not have coworkers but work is extremely enjoyable. The author, too, had autonomy but doesn't seem to make a point of that. The system that we've built is why people aren't enjoying their work. The bigger the organization, the less autonomy an individual has. Markets are beautiful things when they work. They allow individuals to offer their services to the world in exactly the way they find best. Which feels good. And is great for a positive sum society. The amount of people employed in small businesses or self employed is shrinking and has been for a while. The rules are too complex to start a business. In tech, there is no common protocol to speak. You are a surf of the platform you find yourself on. They extract the value. To help people find meaning in their work, we must first force open protocols, interoperability, and regulations that are gradual by business size.

hypeatei 11mo ago
> In tech, there is no common protocol to speak. You are a surf of the platform you find yourself on. Can you expand on this statement? It's a bit ambiguous and I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly. Other than that, I agree with your comment. Even doing independent contracting on the side seems like a minefield w.r.t. quarterly tax payments, estimated tax, etc.. in the US at least. I'm sure I could figure it out but just earning income for some side work seems like a liability and a big headache.
- jonas21 11mo ago
  > Even doing independent contracting on the side seems like a minefield w.r.t. quarterly tax payments, estimated tax, etc.. in the US at least. I'm sure I could figure it out but just earning income for some side work seems like a liability and a big headache. It's really not hard -- it takes maybe 15 minutes per year, and if you own any stocks outside a 401k, you probably already need to make quarterly estimated payments. If it's too much trouble, you can just hire an accountant to take care of it for you. At any rate, it shouldn't be a significant obstacle to contracting.
  - stronglikedan 11mo ago
    > it takes maybe 15 minutes per year It takes at least four times that per quarter, really. And especially if you're small enough to not be able to afford an accountant just yet.
    - SoftTalker 11mo ago
      The shortcut I always used was to take my effective tax rate from last year's return (i.e. total tax owed / gross income), multiply my self-employment income for the past quarter by that rate, maybe round it up somewhat, and pay that. It usually worked out to be close enough that I didn't owe any penalty for underpayment of estimated tax and it was much easier than using the IRS suggested calculation.
  - hypeatei 11mo ago

languagehacker 11mo ago

"What if I farmed everything out to an AI and felt like I accomplished something"

van_lizard 11mo ago

[dead]

andrewrn 11mo ago

Not to be that guy but PG has a great one on this: https://paulgraham.com/love.html https://paulgraham.com/love.html And here's another great one about how ease, and not grind, arguably led to some of the biggest discoveries ever, like General Relativity: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/on-thinkers-and-doers https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/on-thinkers-and-doers I am currently doing a masters degree at Carnegie Mellon and I gotta be honest, this place is so dehumanizing for the exact reasons discussed in the link. It's just a grind pit here. And its harder to swallow this pill when you realize that university campuses are one of the few remaining venues well suited for exploring new ideas and having intellectual serendipity. When you're in a job, you can't easily just find a biology expert or economics expert and chat with them. When students are assaulted with work, they lose the ability to take advantage of that unique quality of the university environment.

titanomachy 11mo ago
Why do you think it’s such a grind? Do you think there’s somewhere else that wouldn’t be? I’ve been interested in doing more school as well, but I took a class in-person at a top school and it seems like CS students at least are so career-focused that there’s very little room for curiosity or joy. I guess it’s a big luxury to be a mid-career person doing it mostly out of interest.
- all2 11mo ago
  I worked adjacent to many masters and PhDs when I was going to school. It was a trope that 'if you aren't mentally ill, you aren't working hard enough', as if the expectation was to destroy any enjoyment or wonder in your work. Or something.
  - andrewrn 11mo ago
    Ah so its just that way everywhere huh. Very frustrating because as the article says, its genuinely less productive to engage in the grind. This feels true to me.
- andrewrn 11mo ago

keybored 11mo ago

What if work felt easy? > I felt like I should catch up to stay relevant in the changing tech landscape, but that feeling just didn’t translate to action. > Then, a few months ago, I had this silly idea for a Trader Joe’s snack box builder. It made me smile to think about it existing in the world. So I downloaded Cursor, and built and shipped a basic version in two hours. And what if AI was what made it feel easy? > That tiny spark of joy reminded me how much I love to build. A few weeks ago, I got pulled into building a Community Library app — something I’d been noodling on for months as a shared Google Sheet. Once I had the idea for a real site, it just made sense to build it. What if all your problems could be solved with AI? Visualize it. Find that tiny spark of joy. Magnify it.

switchbak 11mo ago
> What if all your problems could be solved with AI? Well, that's a big question and I think the answer is "no". There's probably not a single person in this world whose entire set of problems could be solved with AI. It can be useful in some narrow (digital) domains, sure. Is it going to fix your grumpy neighbour, your IBS or your Mom with dementia? No. And in fact, one of my main problems these days is dealing with the side effects of other's over-exuberance with AI. And shockingly, rubbing more AI on it only makes it worse.

BrenBarn 11mo ago

I mean the missing link here is can you make money with it. There are plenty of people out there for whom the "easy" work is something like building hyper-detailed models of obscure railway bridges, or painting 5,000 pictures of their cat, or tending their vegetable garden. But their ability to indulge in that is limited because they have to support themselves with some other kind of work. I don't think the hard part is finding something to do that fulfills you and feels easy. The hard part is meeting your material needs while still having enough time and energy to do that stuff that fulfills you and feels easy.

zkmon 11mo ago

When I was child, I observed how peasants worked on their own small farms. Get up at around 4:30 am (with rooster call), be at farm by 6 am. short break at 10 am, lunch at farm around 2pm, back home 6pm, have dinner and back at farm until 9 or 10pm. Any travel to other villages would be mostly during all night by walk, preferably under moonlight. We usually reach destination by 6am. Basically, work stops only for food breaks and sleep of about 6 hrs. Ofcourse, this is seasonal, with summers having more free time, due to lack of crop work. But summers would have different types of work such as spinning fiber for cot threads or ropes, mending home roofings, repairing farm tools, carts, fixing irrigation systems, having marriages and festivals etc.

korse 11mo ago
Out of curiosity, roughly where are you from?
- zkmon 11mo ago
  South India
deepsun 11mo ago
Same thing I observed (Eastern Europe). As a city dweller I was astonished how little free time people had in village, almost every second they were doing something. PS: The difference was though winters were "less" work, because everything is under snow. But they're still preparing for future all the time (the huge part of it is logging and wood chopping, which is easier in winter than summer).

quirkot 11mo ago

I'm not trying to throw shade, but the approach as described is very short sighted. > That tiny spark of joy reminded me how much I love to build Well, yes. That's the fun part. The hard part is the "bug fixes on that community library site you built 8 years ago, has 2k loyal users, and will never make you a dime." This approach, as liberating as it feels, only makes the "who fixes the toilets for the utopia" problem harder.

ngriffiths 11mo ago

There's a certain kind of work that's productive and doesn't take much "effort," at least not in the sense of that super annoying voice in your head that says "I really should focus... I didn't get much done yesterday, gotta make up for it now! Other people are working, look at how smart and productive they are! I need coffee, just one coffee then I'll have enough energy to do this." Used to happen all the time playing piano in a concert or just an intense practice session. I'd notice that I had been incredibly focused, shockingly focused, like my brain had decided this random sound making activity was its One True Purpose and if it didn't work hard enough it would probably shrivel up and die. And thinking back it hadn't felt strenuous, it felt weirdly calm in the moment, but I think "ease" is totally the wrong word here. It was obvious that I had been working extremely hard, it was as intense as it was calming (? somehow?), and after I'd be totally exhausted. I think the article really means "what if hard work didn't feel incredibly annoying at the same time?" On the other hand there's "what if work that feels relaxing isn't also nearly useless"? Because there's a great way to make hard work feel easy, which is to just stop worrying, man. Take it one step at a time, it's probably the right step. There's no rush, slow down, you'll probably get there at the same time as you would by stressing yourself out and stopping for more coffee all the time. Here, use this easy framework...

TrackerFF 11mo ago

I've experienced both hard physical and mental work, both sucks but physical sucks worse. But for mental work, it depends on what you're working on. Some mental work you can just put away, and sleep on, like trying to solve difficult problems. But when you add in time constraint and urgency, that's when things really begin to suck. When I worked in the military I sometimes had double shifts (15-16 hours) where I'd track objects non-stop, doing trying to piece together a puzzle, and update reports on the go. You're so mentally drained afterwards, that you can't do anything but go home and sleep / turn off your brain.

NickM 11mo ago

I think this is a dangerously half-true way of thinking. Yes, there are times when hard work feels great, and it's absolutely worth seeking out this kind of work. But any serious endeavor is going to have times that are a slog, and your ability to stick with it through the bad times will very directly dictate your ability to get back to the good times.

BeetleB 11mo ago
> But any serious endeavor is going to have times that are a slog You misspelled "many" :-)

snozolli 11mo ago

The article seems to boil down to, "I found a way to do the part I like." Obviously, the really unpleasant work on a product is usually down the line. Bugs, technical debt, keeping documentation relevant, and integrating new features. This site used to talk all the time about Minimum Viable Products. The focus of startups was to get the MVP out the door so that you could see if there's even a market for it before you invest in further development, scaling, etc. I'm surprised that I haven't seen more posts here specifically about using AI to get an MVP out the door, with the awareness that there will be a lot of human labor down the line.

atleastoptimal 11mo ago

hard work is 1000x easier when I know that I'm contributing to something worthwhile, and more importantly, I have strong assurance that my work will make a positive impact. Working at something you suspect you're redundant or bad at is demoralizing and a recipe for burnout.