For the sake of argument, I’m suspicious of some of the galaxy takes.
Excellent prioritization and execution on the most important parts. If you try to do either of those while tired, you can really fuck it up and lose most of the value
I think relatively few people advocate working to the point of sacrificing sleep, prominent hard-work-advocate (& kinda jerk) rabois strongly pushes for sleeping enough & getting enough exercise.
Beyond that, it’s not obvious working less hard results in better prioritization or execution. A naive look at the intellectual world might suggest the opposite afaict, but selection effects make this hard. I think having spent more time trying hard to prioritize, or trying to learn about how to do prioritization/execution well is more likely to work. I’d count “reading/training up on how to do good prioritization” as work
Fresh perspective, which can turn thinking about something all the time into a liability
Agree re: the value of fresh perspective, but idk if the evidence actually supports that working less hard results in fresh perspective. It’s entirely plausibly to me that what is actually needed is explicit time to take a step back—e.g. Richard Hamming Fridays—to reorient your perspective. (Also, imo good sleep + exercise functions as a better “fresh perspective” that most daily versions of “working less hard”, like chilling at home)
TBH, I wonder if working on very different projects to reset your assumptions about the previous one or reading books/histories of other important project/etc works better is a better way of gaining fresh perspective, because it’s actually forcing you into a different frame of mind. I’d also distinguish vacations from “only working 9-5”, which is routine enough that idk if it’d produce particularly fresh perspective.
Real obsession, which means you can’t force yourself to do it
Real obsession definitely seems great, but absent that I still think the above points apply. For most prominent people, I think they aren’t obsessed with ~most of the work their doing (it’s too widely varied), but they are obsessed with making the project happen. E.g. Elon says he’d prefer to be an engineer, but has to do all this business stuff to make the project happen.
Also idk how real obsession develops, but it seems more likely to result from stuffing your brain full of stuff related to the project & emptying it of unrelated stuff or especially entertainment, than from relaxing.
Of course, I don’t follow my own advice. But that’s mostly because I’m weak willed or selfish, not because I don’t believe working more would be more optimal
Yeah I agree that’s pretty plausible. That’s what I was trying to make an allowance for with “I’d also distinguish vacations from...”, but worth mentioning more explicitly.
For the sake of argument, I’m suspicious of some of the galaxy takes.
I think relatively few people advocate working to the point of sacrificing sleep, prominent hard-work-advocate (& kinda jerk) rabois strongly pushes for sleeping enough & getting enough exercise.
Beyond that, it’s not obvious working less hard results in better prioritization or execution. A naive look at the intellectual world might suggest the opposite afaict, but selection effects make this hard. I think having spent more time trying hard to prioritize, or trying to learn about how to do prioritization/execution well is more likely to work. I’d count “reading/training up on how to do good prioritization” as work
Agree re: the value of fresh perspective, but idk if the evidence actually supports that working less hard results in fresh perspective. It’s entirely plausibly to me that what is actually needed is explicit time to take a step back—e.g. Richard Hamming Fridays—to reorient your perspective. (Also, imo good sleep + exercise functions as a better “fresh perspective” that most daily versions of “working less hard”, like chilling at home)
TBH, I wonder if working on very different projects to reset your assumptions about the previous one or reading books/histories of other important project/etc works better is a better way of gaining fresh perspective, because it’s actually forcing you into a different frame of mind. I’d also distinguish vacations from “only working 9-5”, which is routine enough that idk if it’d produce particularly fresh perspective.
Real obsession definitely seems great, but absent that I still think the above points apply. For most prominent people, I think they aren’t obsessed with ~most of the work their doing (it’s too widely varied), but they are obsessed with making the project happen. E.g. Elon says he’d prefer to be an engineer, but has to do all this business stuff to make the project happen.
Also idk how real obsession develops, but it seems more likely to result from stuffing your brain full of stuff related to the project & emptying it of unrelated stuff or especially entertainment, than from relaxing.
Of course, I don’t follow my own advice. But that’s mostly because I’m weak willed or selfish, not because I don’t believe working more would be more optimal
This is a good response.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned here is vacation time and sabbaticals, which would presumably be very useful for a fresh perspective!
Yeah I agree that’s pretty plausible. That’s what I was trying to make an allowance for with “I’d also distinguish vacations from...”, but worth mentioning more explicitly.
Sorry I missed that! My bad