Hard Work

Originally written: September 19th, 2023

I am an admirer of hard work. I believe that getting to the 1% only requires hard work; more than that may require talent, but diligence, discipline, and metacognition can take one incredibly far.

Here are some videos that instill the value of hard work.

  • Andrew Ng's "Saturday Morning Problem": This is something I applied during graduate school. I devoted each Saturday morning purely to reading papers unrelated to my research area, and two papers a week for a year gave me a breadth of a hundred papers. Obviously, this "Saturday Morning Problem" doesn't need to be restricted to reading papers, but anything that requires hard work.
  • John Carmack: as you work longer, you will hit diminishing returns, but that doesn't mean you should stop.

This hard work applies to anything. Focusing just on their career isn't for everybody, but everybody has something difficult that requires hard work. Getting better at hobbies, building interpersonal relationships, staying fit, and even taking care of one's mental health may benefit from disciplined efforts.