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Write? Write. Sleep? Sleep. Read? Read. Don't fight it.
- khafra 17y agoA Zen student once asked his teacher, "Master, what is enlightenment?" The master replied, "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep."
- bitwize 17y agoCounterpoint: "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." There are plenty of things you just have to do if you want them to get done, enlightened being or not.
- unalone 17y agoCountercounterpoint: "There are two ways to wash the dishes. You can wash the dishes so the dishes or clean. You can also wash the dishes to watch the dishes." The moral I got from your koan when I first read it is what the difference is not in reality, but in the mind. That doesn't mean working when you don't feel like working. It means feel like working, or don't work.
- joshu 17y agoNo. You have to work, every day, whether you are too tired or not. You must push yourself, every day, and have discipline. Extraordinary results require extraordinary efforts.
- khafra 17y agoConsidering that Joshu was a famous Zen master, perhaps I should defer to your judgement. I will say that in my own life, I am often tempted by immediate action or inaction that suddenly becomes unattractive when I remember my longer-term goals.
- joshu 17y agoI don't know much from Zen. I'm the opposite, if anything. I appear to be attempting to achieve a state of complete Worry. That said, I DID build something while also working at a gruelling day job. So I know a bit about how to do this.
- ellyagg 17y agoYeah, for some people, the advice in this article will lead to disaster. For example, I would rather be reading than doing, all the time. Reading is pure candy for me, instant gratification. To become (reasonably) successful, I had to stop reading.
- mattm 17y agoI recall a study where researchers wanted to see how "natural" work was. They took a class of young children and told them they can do whatever they want. So the first day they all ran around outside and had fun. I think by the third day they were all begging to have class again and have some work to do.
- ellyagg 17y agoThat reminds me of a portion of a letter Ben Franklin wrote to Peter Collinson: "The proneness of human Nature to a life of ease, of freedom from care and labour appear strongly in the heretofore little success that has attended every attempt to civilize our American Indians. . . . They visit us frequently and see the advantages that Arts, Science and compact Society procure us; they are not deficient in natural understanding and yet they have never strewn any inclination to change their manner of life for ours, or to learn any of our Arts. "When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and makes one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return. And that this is not natural [only to Indians], but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho' ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet within a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of Life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them."
- coffeemug 17y agoIs there a published collection of letters you're quoting from? I'd love to read it - what book is this from?
- joez 17y agoReminds me of http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html about 15 mins in. You have to show up to work everyday and if your muse doesn't then you did your part.
- aditya 17y agodo you care to share your tricks for doing that, when all you really want to do is read/sleep? how do you discipline yourself so that you don't constantly need inspiration?
- joshu 17y agoMy technique was: Just get one thing done. Even if it's an easy, small thing. Get started and do it now. Especially if you don't want to. Having done it, try to do another; it'll be a great deal easier.
- timr 17y agoNo. Some people need to do that. Others are workaholics, and need to take a break to inspire creativity. Others work because they're doing what they love, and do not need discipline because they're passionate about something. Others are usually passionate, but need momentary discipline to work through a tedious spot. Everyone is different. One size does not fit all. This is a good place to apply the Paul Bucheit quote: "Limited life experience + Overgeneralization = ADVICE"
- joshu 17y agoThe question was "How do I work when I don't feel like it." Workaholics don't ask this. People who are doing what they love and don't need discipline because they're already doing it don't ask this. If you want to make the the world march to your beat, you need to start with your body/self.
- timr 17y ago"People who are doing what they love and don't need discipline because they're already doing it don't ask this." Even passionate people go through periods when they don't feel like working, or they're working on some boring task, or whatever. The answer is not always to self-immolate, but to be self-aware, and to figure out why you're not motivated. Sometimes discipline is appropriate; sometimes rest is the better prescription. The world marches to your beat because your beat is inspiring, not because you beat your drum harder than everyone else.
- thaumaturgy 17y agoI think there must be a nice middleground between your position and Sivers'. Even workaholics have periods where they need to spend a day reading a book or a weekend camping. In their case, they're just burnt-out somewhat, and need some "recharge" time. They know that they'll be ready to work again soon. Others are lazier by nature, and would spend the majority of their lives doing little or nothing -- and that might include traveling, gardening, reading, playing video games -- and they do need to push themselves if they're going to accomplish anything ... if they want to accomplish anything.
- unalone 17y agoI have a problem with this phrase have to. I don't have to do anything. There is no proven formula that works for anything. Winston Churchill was a lazy, lazy man who succeeded because he was capable of brilliance for the short bursts of time he worked. Brian Wilson spent the infamous three years high in his bedroom, then returned with a series of masterpiece albums. Ricky Gervais was a disc jockey until he was 39, then made possibly the best television show of all time despite being lazy and disruptive both while writing and directing it. Marcel Duchamp spent how long making his fountain? It became the most famous piece of art of the century. While I don't disagree that extraordinary efforts are required to produce things, I don't agree that "extraordinary" means hard work. Sometimes it means a willingness not to work unless the work means something.
- joshu 17y agoI didn't say that you just work hard at any random thing. it's important to do the right things. (I think of myself as very lazy as well; I tend to grind on ideas for months or years until they are simple enough.)
- unalone 17y agoIn that case I misinterpreted you.
- neilc 17y agoWinston Churchill was a lazy, lazy man who succeeded because he was capable of brilliance for the short bursts of time he worked Do you have a reference for that? My impression was that Churchill had a fairly intense work schedule. For example, http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-cohen061802.asp http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-cohen061802.as... : "Churchill, far from being an aristocratic lounger, was a glutton for work ... His working hours were, it is true, hard on his subordinates, extending as they frequently did into the small hours of the morning."
- unalone 17y agoChurchill had a lopsided schedule. He would wake up, work from his bed for a few hours, then sleep through lunch and wake again in the afternoon. He was criticized for not working a proper workday, but he insisted that taking a break in between kept him sharper for longer periods of time. So he wasn't lazy in that he did nothing—he wrote a series of histories and was one of Britain's most influential prime ministers—but he worked a unique schedule.
- yesimahuman 17y agoI wish I had time to read and learn new things, but I feel antsy when I read books anymore, like I could be making things and pushing my product. Seriously, I feel like I only deserve to read when I'm on the toilet and can't really do anything else. I think I need to relax a bit.
- UncleOxidant 17y agoFor the sake of argument, I'm going to ask why? I mean why do we work hard and push ourselves? We're all going to end up as worm food eventually anyway. So why push yourself? Why not just enjoy life? Now, of course, I push myself for various reasons: I want income, I want to make the world a better place, I want to learn, etc... but in the end are those reasons for working hard any better than the person who says they want to have a happy life and thus don't work hard or push themselves?
- edw519 17y agoThis isn't good advice. It's self-gratification. You have work to do. Do it. Sitting at the terminal, but not sure what to type? Turn off the terminal, grab your source listings, scratch pad, and red and black pens and go to the other room. Or the library, Or starbucks. Work the problem that way and soon enough, you'll be dying to get back to the terminal. Sitting on the sofa and analyzing that function with pencil and paper until you've worked yourself into a logic freeze? Get up and turn on your computer and code the simplest case. Before you're done, you'll find some enlightenment. Have trouble doing either? Review old code, examine apps written by others, refactor something (you always have something to refactor, right?). But do what you feel like? No.
- timr 17y ago"You have work to do. Do it." Oh, come on. Says who? You only "have work to do" to the extent that you need to survive. Beyond that, it's optional. It's equally bad advice to suggest people should force themselves to work when they don't want to, simply because they "have work to do." The only insightful comment you can make here is that one-size advice doesn't fit everyone. Some people are workaholics, and should try harder to take breaks. Others are complete daydreamers, and maybe need more discipline. There's no one right recipe. The world is not binary.
- kwamenum86 17y agoI like the sentiment but this does not really work for us "normal" (non-self-employed) folk. If I sleep/work/eat/learn whenever I feel like it then something will surely suffer.
- daveungerer 17y agoThis reminded me of a great quote of John Carmack, which says the opposite: Putting creativity on a pedestal can also be an excuse for laziness. There is a lot of cultural belief that creativity comes from inspiration, and can't be rushed. Not true. Inspiration is just your subconscious putting things together, and that can be made into an active process with a little introspection. Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.
- d3d2 17y agoI don't consider Carmack to be an expert on creativity, of all things. His game ideas can be summarized thusly: DOOM. The best id game, the original Quake, had both John Romero and American McGee as designers, among others, AND Trent Reznor on sound effects. Without them, id did... DOOM 3. What Carmack is really referring to is the gruntwork of things like writing multiple rendering pipelines to support the nightmare hodgepodge of consumer 3D hardware, trying out WELL-KNOWN rendering techniques (invented for film) in games as hardware improves, and so forth, which sometimes is just tedium and sometimes requires hackery like fast stencil shadows/sqrt/bit-twiddling tricks. Trying a bunch of methods to see what works on limited hardware is a process of discovery. You cannot brute-force creative ideas in general in that manner.
- username 17y agohttp://lifehacker.com/5037175/musician-ryan-adams-success-secret http://lifehacker.com/5037175/musician-ryan-adams-success-se...
- daveungerer 17y agoHe is an expert on creative problem solving. I doubt you are in a position to dispute that. And how long do you think consumer 3D hardware has been mainstream? Carmack's career spans a lot longer than that. I wonder if you would accuse an artist who spends lots of time exploring dead end ideas of doing grunt work? Would you dismiss an artist as adapting WELL-KNOWN ideas if they allowed you to view someone else's work in a brand new, unexpected light?
- petercooper 17y agoI lived (and sorta still do live) by this advice. It's good, if you have the lifestyle and means to support it, except for the sleep advice: But if you're tired, don't fight it. Sleep. This worked out to be an absolute disaster for me (if you take it to its logical conclusion, if you're not tired, don't go to sleep, etc). I ended up free wheeling around the clock, sometimes getting up at 7pm, sometimes 2am, sometimes 11am.. it was nuts. And that sort of sleep pattern really messes with your head after a while.
- warp 17y agoThis works fine for me, but my body has this habit of waking up when the sun is up -- even if I've only gone to sleep a few hours ago. That also isn't a problem in itself, as I will fall asleep around 16:00 on those days and catch up whatever I missed the previous night, and still be tired enough in the evening to go to bed at a normal hour. It's a sort of built-in automatic circadian rhythm reset mechanism which kicks in after just one late night coding session.
- snitko 17y agoI have a feeling most people here saying it's a bad advice, didn't get it in the first place. I think the key is that you got to give yourself a little freedom in the short distance, but be disciplined in the long run. For example, I think I'm going to get some sleep now and work in the morning, not tonight. But I'm still going to do the job. The only difference is: I'd be more productive. It's like (a + b) is still the same thing as (b + a). But because 'a' is the first letter of the alphabet (for most of us) it's more natural to put it first. And another short thought that I think is relevant: discipline is not about forcing yourself to work when you don't want to, but it's about managing the time and finding the best spots for your work to be done. Of course, self-employment is best for this.
- TrevorJ 17y agoThis completely abstracts the mind from the concept of self-control, and that's a logical fallacy. Conscious executive decision making originates in the mind as well. The reason you go do something is because you made the choice to do it. Period. Sure, we do things we don't 'want' to do in a narrow sense, but in the broader sense when we choose to do an unpleasant task we have decided, based on outside forces that this task is what we need/want to do. This isn't to say that there is no merit in working with your mind and being productive when your mind is ready, but the notion that you must not bring willpower to bear on any task is taking things a bit too far.