Step 37: Hard Work Does not Pay Off ~ Olve Maudal
This is the 37th Step towards gaining the Programming Enlightenment series. If you didn’t learn the 36th Step, read it.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” ~ Abraham Lincoln.
Hard work does pay off, but it can pay even more if we add focused productivity to it.
Spending long hours on a bug or a feature doesn’t necessarily mean we are doing more work and hard work. Donkey does hard work, no one want’s to have Donkey’s life.
“Focus on being productive instead of busy.” ~ Timothy Ferris. We should be focusing on solving the problem rather than accumulating long hours of work with caffeine intake.
Even monkey can write complete works of William Shakespeare if they keep hitting keys at random on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time. That’ hard work too. (Infinite Monkey Theorem)
How to do productive hard work?
- At times a simple chat with fellow colleague for a bug might solve the problem you have been trying to solve for the last few hours.
- If there’s manual repetitive work, then probably investing few extra hours in doing automation will save you from doing menial work and increase productivity as you can now focus in other work.
- Separate few hours to learn new books, go to meetups, conferences, experience the new techniques that seasoned professional are doing. Follow great developers in twitter or blog or medium.
- Always ask question what, why, how? You will be amazed how many different solutions appear.
TL;DR Be productive in doing hard work. Putting in long hours doesn’t mean you will accomplish more work.
Go to 36th Step
Go to the 38th Step.
References:
- 97 things Every Programmer Should Know ~ Git Book
- 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know ~ Paperback
- Why doesn’t hard work bring success ~ Sadhguru blog
- 4 hour work week ~ Timothy Ferris
