>>So you take a few edge cases and make them the example for the main stream?
I could show you many more but why?
>>But chances are you are an average person and need to obey the rules of what makes average people happy
Yes, do what makes you happy and yes I am an average person but that doesn't mean that I cannot tell you that the sky is blue even if I were blind (I think you know what I mean). What I disliked is the blanket statement. In very competitive fields if you want to be top dog you have to work long hours and even that may not be enough. Of course, if you work on a sweatshop working long hours really makes no difference. Top dog against who? Lets just not make blanket statements.
Some people are happy working 40 hours others are happy working 80 hours. And if you are in a competitive field 40 hours will not do the job. Happiness is besides the point. If that doesn't make you happy don't do it. I'm not telling anybody to work 80 hours to be happy. I'm telling you not to try to convince other people that they should not work 80 hours a week because you don't like to work 80 hours a week.
I'm saying that if you want to stay ahead of your peers, say, athletics, academics, you better train more, study harder than the other guy. Is almost a self evident truth so I don't understand what we are arguing about. If I'm wrong please enlighten me.
But as a matter for fact we need to define the term 'Happiness', a lot of people measure happiness by how much minimum they can achieve(Which makes them happy) with how much minimum effort they put. For example, if you put in 5 productive hours of work a day and end up achieving a, what you describe as a happy life, you would consider that success.
But a lot of people tend to measure success in a different way. For example, Even though during atleast two days in a week I might have opportunity to go back early. I purposefully use the free time to check if I can do some extra work which will give an edge to my career. Generally its something like this, I check if I can add some feature that has a direct impact on revenue or some bug that I can fix or something I can read upon which will help me take more informed decisions later.
I was not a very brilliant kid in the school, nor in college nor during my engineering. In fact I was almost on border, but I would always make it. How? By multiplying effort over time. Most of my friends back in school when I meet them today, find it astonishing that I have made it so big in the industry, while even many high scoring folks haven't.
At work my philosophy is very simple, Seize every work opportunity as it comes. Ensure you multiply effort with time. Thereby, completely hedging for my low IQ by sheer work alone. Indeed as they say opportunity multiplies as you seize it. I also see a lot of high scoring people straight out of college who don't do it big in the industry. Because intelligent people expect, brilliance will make up for everything. But the fact is, Intelligence only acts as a catalyst in the path to success. The bulk of everything else is sheer hard work.
Apart from this its important to understand things like management. Especially time management. Its important to plan, review and track your life time, decade, yearly , monthly and weekly goals. Measuring your productivity is important. Reviewing it constantly, and course correction is the key.
The great thing is today you can achieve anything by sheer work. This gives me great hope for the future.
We're mixing things here a bit. Theres always merit in pushing and improving yourself, but the article was about putting in extra hours for other people, and the linked response was about over time being linked to bad process and decisions.
And hence in a sense chasing someone else's dream and not so much your own, and even worse putter a wager on the return of that extra effort.
I could show you many more but why?
>>But chances are you are an average person and need to obey the rules of what makes average people happy
Yes, do what makes you happy and yes I am an average person but that doesn't mean that I cannot tell you that the sky is blue even if I were blind (I think you know what I mean). What I disliked is the blanket statement. In very competitive fields if you want to be top dog you have to work long hours and even that may not be enough. Of course, if you work on a sweatshop working long hours really makes no difference. Top dog against who? Lets just not make blanket statements.
Some people are happy working 40 hours others are happy working 80 hours. And if you are in a competitive field 40 hours will not do the job. Happiness is besides the point. If that doesn't make you happy don't do it. I'm not telling anybody to work 80 hours to be happy. I'm telling you not to try to convince other people that they should not work 80 hours a week because you don't like to work 80 hours a week.
I'm saying that if you want to stay ahead of your peers, say, athletics, academics, you better train more, study harder than the other guy. Is almost a self evident truth so I don't understand what we are arguing about. If I'm wrong please enlighten me.