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Comment by papito | Hacker News Reader

Do they enjoy it or do they THINK they enjoy it? Many people realize that they wasted their lives on being in the office after they retire.

This TED talk can be a revelation: https://www.ted.com/talks/bj_miller_what_really_matters_at_t...

And the Bill Gates thing? PLEASE. Yeah, I agree with the previous comment. A horrible example.

Bill Gates was one of the most lucky sons of bitches in the history of the planet. Born to wealthy parents, he was impossible to deal with, so they took him to a therapist (again, a lucky pick) that advised them to set Gates free. They put him in this prep school with other privileged kids, and like a meteor made of pure gold, by luck, it had a computer. Almost no schools had a computer at the time.

Hard work is only part of the equation. You have to be at the right place, at the right time. Most people never are.

Might as well read the next article on "Ten morning habits of billionaires". Luck. Is. A. Factor.

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also it was his mom's connection with IBM that made him a billionaire, but the rest helped as well. Bill was also able to secure a contract because a competitor Gary Kildall did not show up. Luck is the factor.

Well said! I came here to say this. Founders of successful businesses usually are not exceptional geniuses. They often happen to be in the right place at the right time, or they steal ideas from other people when the business is too young to be worth litigating over. See, e.g., Microsoft, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. Or they get government assistance at a critical time. E.g., Elon Musk. There are so many species of selection bias at work here; I totally agree with your comment about reading "Ten morning habits of billionaires."

Also, the idea that one should be "constantly judging both how hard you're trying and how well you're doing," _while_ trying to try hard and trying to do well, is insane. You can't be the CEO and the ditch-digger at the same time. You have to be able to inhabit both perspectives as _separate_.

That said, it was an interesting read, albeit a self-consciously unhelpful one. It was helpful and humbling to read that you just think some things are easy for you because they were taught at a low level in school. I can adapt that same logic to suggest that this author isn't imparting serious, deep knowledge about the true nature of hard work and success.

Where is the evidence that people who regret working hard would have not regretted working less hard?

Some people are biochemically unhappy.

Isn't it funny that all these people with incredible luck - every single one - also work their asses off?

It's necessary but not sufficient. What if you work hard all through your 20s, not a day off, and it doesn't work out (which it doesn't, in the billionaire sense, for most people)? How do you get back the first flush of youth?

This essay from Paul reminded me once again how relatively blinkered he is. He has his mental model of a good life - for obvious reasons, it's one which is somewhat similar to his own - and he doesn't question his assumptions. What is his utility function? Is it a universal utility function, or is it actually just his preferred, locally, personally optimal way of increasing its value?

Dismissing whole departments at college is part of that. You might not see value in the philosophy - PG is on record as dismissing it - but philosophy has changed the world more than almost anything else. It's at the foundation of science, law, government and politics, and most of the wars of the 20th century were fought, ultimately, over philosophy. PG knows this, maybe he views it differently - he studied it in college after all - but in his shoes, I wouldn't be so dismissive.

>it's necessary but not sufficient.

not even necessary if you inherit it

In my opinion, no, not really. Hard work could be necessary but not sufficient, or contingently necessary. Or the success criterion could be defined in a way that obscures the link to hard work. This is from a review of Taleb's The Black Swan:

As Cicero pointed out, we all suffer from 'survivorship bias': that is, we confine our evidence to that adduced from those few who succeed or survive, and ignore the silent evidence of all those who didn't make it. The graveyard is silent, the awards ceremony is noisy.

[1] https://sunwords.com/2009/08/24/to-understand-success-and-fa...

I've heard hard work described as increasing your luck "surface area". So imagine you're trying to catch luck "raindrops" and you're Bill Gates - sure you're busting your ass but you're starting off with a football stadium sized bucket in monsoon season. A poor kid from Baltimore with divorced parents could work as hard and end up with the analogy-equivalent of a coffee cup in Death Valley

Hard work is just a prerequisite. Tons of people work just as hard as Gates/Musk but don't get the lucky breaks for whatever reason.

I would posit that luck is THE differentiator between these people, not hard work.

The Chinese say "luck is a combination of preparedness and opportunity". You have to be prepared for an opportunity - but it may never come.

Yes, Tim Ferris tells us we should work harder to have what he has.

Next time, I will be sure to be born in the Hamptons. He made the right first choice.

Warren Buffet's son didn't.

in a generation or 2 we are going to be seeing the forbes 50 list full of bezos and musks kids. yeah hard work indeed

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