Working Hard Is Required to Do Great Work

Although it sounds like a truism, working hard is required to do great work. In practice, it is difficult to apply because one must recognize the quality of the work they are doing, the effort they are putting in, and being honest with oneself about the results they are getting.

In Paul Graham’s essay How to work hard, he argues that talent only gets you so far and that hard work is almost always required. However, personal interest in what you are working on makes it feel less like hard work and is a good way to guage whether or not you are working on something important.

(The comments in the HN thread follow a typical Contrarian dynamic—criticism of the essay that privilege is the primary way to achieve an outsized outcome and those arguing that they earned what they achieved because they worked hard and got lucky.)

See also:

• Richard Hamming’s lectures on You and Your Research also describe the tactics for ‘doing important work’
• The most effective people care a lot and it’s hard to compete if you don’t care
• The dispassionate developer argues the opposite

Links to this note

• How to Live an Asymmetric Life (Literature Notes)

  In How to Live an Asymmetric Life, Graham Weaver talks about how to confront fear and get the most out of your life to a class of soon-to-be business school graduates.

• Low Psychosocial Safety Is Associated With a Threefold Increase in Risk of Major Depression

  A study performed on Australian workers that looked at contributing factors to developing major depression symptoms found that low pyschosocial safety climate was associated with a threefold increase in risk of development major depression symptoms.

• Do the Hard Work, but Remove the Struggle

  I tend to work hard and take my work seriously. When things aren’t working exactly as planned, I take it personally. When the work is difficult I internalize it and it becomes more difficult.

• What Would This Look Like If it Were Easy?

  A question that Tim Ferriss uses to think about problems in different ways is to ask, “What would this look like if it were easy?” We tend to overcomplicate things and make them bigger in our head. Sometimes, interupting this by asking if it were easy, dispels that tendency.