The title is just flame-bait. The message is: (a) being lazy will kill your startup, (b) smart people are lazy.
But, well, all you really need to kill a startup is (a), and we already knew that. The next possible conclusion is that maybe smart people underestimate the challenge of starting a startup, but I think everybody does. What's more critical is how people react when they realize they're in over their heads.
My original article was 6 pages long, this is an abridged version. So I was not able to convey all the concepts I would have liked to as clearly as possible. That said, let me throw myself into the fray.
It's not about "being lazy". I know people who come in by 7:30 and leave by 9pm. They are not lazy. They work really hard. But they will never be CEO of the company.
It's about challenging yourself. Becoming better. Training. When you can do stuff good, then you have to find stuff you can't do as well that is even harder.
If I am a Django programmer, after 6 months the challenge in Django is minimal. I can work 10 hours a day on Django and it's not really a challenge anymore.
So it's not about laziness really. It's about not being complacent in your current abilities.
I agree with you to some extent, though I see the post in a different light given this (loosely) related discussion from a few days ago:
...parents that say to a successful child, "Wow, you're so smart" undermine that child's ability to muscle through tougher challenges later on in life. These kids believe they are intrinsically better than their peers, so they don't keep putting effort into themselves. Eventually they encounter a challenge that exceeds their initial abilities and they give up since they don't understand their performance is in their control, not baked into their God-given make-up.
You observe that most great scientists have tremendous
drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell
Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or
four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey
was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and
I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's
office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much
as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put
his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said,
"You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know
if you worked as hard as he did that many years."
I simply slunk out of the office!
What Bode was saying was this: "Knowledge and productivity
are like compound interest." Given two people of approximately
the same ability and one person who works ten percent
more than the other, the latter will more than twice
outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you
learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more
you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much
like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate,
but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly
the same ability, the one person who manages day in and
day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be
tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took
Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my
time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I
found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like
to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect
her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect
things if you intend to get what you want done. There's
no question about this.
The entire essay is well worth reading and makes many excellent points. It's been mentioned many times here on HN, and is one of the essays on PG's site:
For me, this is the money quote as I pasted it into my fortune file
I knew there were a lot of other people as
intelligent as I was, and who had all [the
same] advantages [as me]. The only way to be
successful then would be to gain a slight
advantage over them - I had to work and
train harder than they did, I had to get to
know more people than they did, I had to
learn more about more things that they did.
We started off equals, but at some point all
the effort I put in started to pay off, and
where they stopped improving themselves, I
continued, and I got better and better.
Where they were afraid to try new things
because they would fail, I tried and I got
better and knew more, till I was good enough
for the job I hold now.
I recently figured out that compounding interest works for personal development and business just as well as it works for money.
It's true that currently, some intelligent people can fail to develop a work ethic because they've found things easy.
However, this is not an inherent problem of intelligence; this is an inherent problem with one-size-fits-all schooling.
They found things easy because the difficulty level of their challenges were well below them, but that's hypothetically easy to fix; you make their challenges a little above their current level. Practically, though, it's more of problem.
Seems like a good problem for a more software oriented learning approach.
I remember daydreaming in class wishing I could just go through the book myself and be finished with a grade in a few weeks. I did get this experience in math for a while when I was living in Texas. You didn't have to take any topic upon which you could pass a pretest, and then you got to take a test on a topic as soon as you were ready for it. I was able to zip through multiple grades until I reached some material where I needed instruction. Of course, once I moved up to the next school, I was back in the standard classes, daydreaming.
people often come out of school thinking that life will apportion its challenges to meet their skill level. after all, that's the sort of designed environment they've been in since they were 5. intelligent people get caught in the trap of relative comparison: thinking that they're awesome simply because they were better than their immediate peers.
this is one of the big benefits of going to a "good" school. not that you're receiving a qualitatively better education, but because you're thrown together with some of the best and brightest. this resets your scale at a much higher level.
of course the most successful people tend to put in a supreme effort constantly without reference to any artificial scales.
That Israeli soldier had balls to take on a guy with a knife. I thought it was kinda funny and ironic that he used that situation as an analogy for intelligence.
The intelligent thing to do would have been to hand over the money and NOT risk being sliced open lol.
I disagree with you assessment, the individual could have intelligently reasoned that disarming the man would make him think twice before confronting another individual. If more individuals took that tack robbers would give more though to what used to be an easy crime. No to mention in certain parts of South America the punishment for robbery can be as sever as murder so if you are going to do it you might as well not leave witnesses. There are a lot of variables that go into the decision to fight and making the decision to do so does not necessarily mean that you have made a foolish or less intelligent choice.
> The intelligent thing to do would have been to hand over the money and NOT risk being sliced open lol.
Not for the Israeli soldier. Consider: he must have been confident in his ability to disarm the guy (based on his assessment that he did not know how to handle the knife). The other option of co-operation gives control to the thief, that's not a good thing if you can avoid it.
You completely missed the point. The soldier was using the knife as an analogy for intelligence, not his dodging/punching. The robber had the knife, which gave him a false sense of superiority, but he didn't know how to use the knife, so he ended up losing the fight.
Yeah, the intelligent thing is to surrender and give more power and money to the robber.
If people with weapons assault you in Somalia, give them millions of dollars and make it stronger, so they can kill more and assault more people.
If someone kidnaps someone of your family, give all the money you earned all your life to them, so they can buy more weapons, and kidnap more people, and make society better.
Your ego will boost as you acknowledge that you are not able to fight against other men under any circumstances, that you could always surrender and let them sodomize you if necessary.
It probably depends on the culture. IIRC in the US you only have a 20% chance of being seriously injured if you cooperate with a robber. I wouldn't be surprised if the odds were different in other countries.
Ofer was a trained Isreli soldier dodging the knife of some local 2-bit thief...probably child's play for him. Though I think he reached a bit with the whole knife-intelligence analogy, I get what he was saying.
I think this is why Steve Blank talk so much about founders 'getting out of the building'. The first instinct of a highly intelligent tech nerd when faced with the challenges of a startup is to bury their head in code and not engage directly with the customer at all, i.e. focus solely on improving the product and not testing if there is a market for the product in the first place:
This was posted on HN recently enough, and it's brilliant. It sums up the entire Customer Devlopment roadmap quite nicely. I'd still recommend buying the book too though, also excellent.
Intelligence is hardly a knife. One can put a knife aside and try training without it to better improve the "other" skills, same is not true for intelligence. And also, isn't true intelligent people are more inclined to self-improving?
I think that declining your experiences is NOT intelligence.
I disagree that you cannot put intelligence (which in this context means mathematics and language skills, hence 'IQ') aside and practice other skills. Developing a sense of empathy and charm can have almost nothing to do with how intelligent you are. Selling a product has almost nothing to do with this version of 'intelligence'. And building a decent level of physical fitness, learning a musical instrument, learning a trade or craft such as carpentry or painting a picture have almost nothing to do with intelligence as defined here.
Lots of mathematicians, scientists and academics are hard-working, 'intelligent' people who are completely underdeveloped otherwise - there's an argument for saying that I am one... - so I think that this analogy holds better than you give it credit.
I can't help but think that you are using the word 'intelligence' in a different manner to that intended by the post. The trait that you are talking about, applying your intelligence to as many situations as you can, is closer to wisdom, I feel.
I disagree that this is about IQ or intelligence. A truly intelligent person understands how little they actually know. It is only those who think they are intelligent who have they ego to think that things will always come easy.
"A truly intelligent person understands how little they actually know"
This is one of those statements that really bother me, almost as much as someone telling me I need to prove the non-existence of God if I want to be an atheist. Yes, intelligent people should have a good understanding of how big and complex the universe is and how little they know compared to the total amount of knowledge available. And given that they are aware of such, it wouldn't make sense for them to walk around claiming they are a big deal. However, people do not always act rationally, even geniuses. There is no negative-correlation between claiming to be smart and being smart, in spite of the obvious contradiction. Claiming to be smart and being cocky about it, it's just a personality trait. Think about this: you IQ is defined and practically unchangeable by the time you are a young teenager, but your personality continues to develop for many more years after that. So there is no way your personality can affect whether you are smart or not.
This is definitely me, though I'm sure I'm not the only one. My laziness didn't come from simply being intelligent, but from everyone always telling me how smart I was. As a result, I was terrified to fail and disappoint. Straight A's were effortless, but I never tried anything 'risky'.
This all changed when I started doing start-ups. I learned to fail many, many times, but instead of quitting, I just kept trying again and again. I actually kicked my 20-something year old habit of being lazy, because the reward that comes with doing all the hard work is much greater than the fear of failure.
Sigh... this is why including an interesting and memorable anecdote often isn't a good idea. The OP has an interesting article about the relative power of innate gifts (intelligence in this case) vs hard work and effort. It's one of the major focuses of Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, and certainly a worth topic of discussion on HN...
But all anyone seems to want to talk about is the damn knife fight story. Sigh.....
To extend the metaphor, you must also keep the knife sharp. It's not enough to just practice and work hard and be intelligent. We must also be insightful into our own lives as humans. At least in my life, my emotional and physical state impact my productivity more than anything else. Sometimes you will see a very dedicated, intelligent person flame out or they get into personal drama and cannot focus like they used to. For me, the answer is to workout 5 days a week and make time for family and women.
To extend it to a number of recent articles about kids (summarized):
--------------------
Kids who were told "you must be smart" when they succeeded were less likely to take on harder tasks later because they might fail, and seem stupid.
Kids who were told "you must have worked hard" when they succeeded tackled harder problems later and ended up learning better, because they perceived greater reward for doing better, not looking better.
--------------------
If you're smart, but you don't do anything you can fail at, you won't learn. Try. Fail. Try again.
I do not see a correlation of level of intelligence and ability to work hard, especially it cannot be said of verse correlation. I do not believe that Intelligence cases man to be lazy and less prepared for challenges. On the contrary, intelligence helps man to cope with challenges and problems if he chooses to do so and has a strong character and mostly important desire and ambitions. Intelligence helps dealing with challenges efficiently and successfully.
generally , peoples who fight to get everything done in life are more successfull than the rest, they learn really early, that life's hard, and you have to fight for everything, so meeting difficulties is just an everyday business, at the other side, peoples who always have access to everything will struggle when the first problems show up, and they just tend to give up.
[+] [-] wheels|16 years ago|reply
But, well, all you really need to kill a startup is (a), and we already knew that. The next possible conclusion is that maybe smart people underestimate the challenge of starting a startup, but I think everybody does. What's more critical is how people react when they realize they're in over their heads.
[+] [-] maxklein|16 years ago|reply
It's not about "being lazy". I know people who come in by 7:30 and leave by 9pm. They are not lazy. They work really hard. But they will never be CEO of the company.
It's about challenging yourself. Becoming better. Training. When you can do stuff good, then you have to find stuff you can't do as well that is even harder.
If I am a Django programmer, after 6 months the challenge in Django is minimal. I can work 10 hours a day on Django and it's not really a challenge anymore.
So it's not about laziness really. It's about not being complacent in your current abilities.
[+] [-] ochiba|16 years ago|reply
...parents that say to a successful child, "Wow, you're so smart" undermine that child's ability to muscle through tougher challenges later on in life. These kids believe they are intrinsically better than their peers, so they don't keep putting effort into themselves. Eventually they encounter a challenge that exceeds their initial abilities and they give up since they don't understand their performance is in their control, not baked into their God-given make-up.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1139309
[+] [-] RiderOfGiraffes|16 years ago|reply
http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=229067
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=852405
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=915515
http://searchyc.com/you+and+your+research+hamming?sort=by_da...
Unsurprisingly, it's all over the 'net:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22You+and+your+research%22...
[+] [-] dschoon|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sukotto|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] araneae|16 years ago|reply
However, this is not an inherent problem of intelligence; this is an inherent problem with one-size-fits-all schooling.
They found things easy because the difficulty level of their challenges were well below them, but that's hypothetically easy to fix; you make their challenges a little above their current level. Practically, though, it's more of problem.
[+] [-] mattmcknight|16 years ago|reply
I remember daydreaming in class wishing I could just go through the book myself and be finished with a grade in a few weeks. I did get this experience in math for a while when I was living in Texas. You didn't have to take any topic upon which you could pass a pretest, and then you got to take a test on a topic as soon as you were ready for it. I was able to zip through multiple grades until I reached some material where I needed instruction. Of course, once I moved up to the next school, I was back in the standard classes, daydreaming.
[+] [-] nazgulnarsil|16 years ago|reply
this is one of the big benefits of going to a "good" school. not that you're receiving a qualitatively better education, but because you're thrown together with some of the best and brightest. this resets your scale at a much higher level.
of course the most successful people tend to put in a supreme effort constantly without reference to any artificial scales.
[+] [-] coryl|16 years ago|reply
The intelligent thing to do would have been to hand over the money and NOT risk being sliced open lol.
[+] [-] kls|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErrantX|16 years ago|reply
Not for the Israeli soldier. Consider: he must have been confident in his ability to disarm the guy (based on his assessment that he did not know how to handle the knife). The other option of co-operation gives control to the thief, that's not a good thing if you can avoid it.
[+] [-] endtime|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xcombinator|16 years ago|reply
If people with weapons assault you in Somalia, give them millions of dollars and make it stronger, so they can kill more and assault more people.
If someone kidnaps someone of your family, give all the money you earned all your life to them, so they can buy more weapons, and kidnap more people, and make society better.
Your ego will boost as you acknowledge that you are not able to fight against other men under any circumstances, that you could always surrender and let them sodomize you if necessary.
[+] [-] AngryParsley|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brlewis|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrDynamite|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickk|16 years ago|reply
I think this is why Steve Blank talk so much about founders 'getting out of the building'. The first instinct of a highly intelligent tech nerd when faced with the challenges of a startup is to bury their head in code and not engage directly with the customer at all, i.e. focus solely on improving the product and not testing if there is a market for the product in the first place:
http://startup-marketing.com/the-startup-pyramid/
Fortunately, Steve Blank has designed his 'Customer Development' roadmap to mitigate against this. For a brief, free synopsis, see:
http://www.socrated.com/courses/4?home=1
This was posted on HN recently enough, and it's brilliant. It sums up the entire Customer Devlopment roadmap quite nicely. I'd still recommend buying the book too though, also excellent.
[+] [-] alexro|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nagrom|16 years ago|reply
Lots of mathematicians, scientists and academics are hard-working, 'intelligent' people who are completely underdeveloped otherwise - there's an argument for saying that I am one... - so I think that this analogy holds better than you give it credit.
I can't help but think that you are using the word 'intelligence' in a different manner to that intended by the post. The trait that you are talking about, applying your intelligence to as many situations as you can, is closer to wisdom, I feel.
[+] [-] pedalpete|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iBercovich|16 years ago|reply
This is one of those statements that really bother me, almost as much as someone telling me I need to prove the non-existence of God if I want to be an atheist. Yes, intelligent people should have a good understanding of how big and complex the universe is and how little they know compared to the total amount of knowledge available. And given that they are aware of such, it wouldn't make sense for them to walk around claiming they are a big deal. However, people do not always act rationally, even geniuses. There is no negative-correlation between claiming to be smart and being smart, in spite of the obvious contradiction. Claiming to be smart and being cocky about it, it's just a personality trait. Think about this: you IQ is defined and practically unchangeable by the time you are a young teenager, but your personality continues to develop for many more years after that. So there is no way your personality can affect whether you are smart or not.
Just a thought though.
[+] [-] char|16 years ago|reply
This all changed when I started doing start-ups. I learned to fail many, many times, but instead of quitting, I just kept trying again and again. I actually kicked my 20-something year old habit of being lazy, because the reward that comes with doing all the hard work is much greater than the fear of failure.
[+] [-] theBobMcCormick|16 years ago|reply
But all anyone seems to want to talk about is the damn knife fight story. Sigh.....
[+] [-] btilly|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keefe|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Groxx|16 years ago|reply
--------------------
Kids who were told "you must be smart" when they succeeded were less likely to take on harder tasks later because they might fail, and seem stupid.
Kids who were told "you must have worked hard" when they succeeded tackled harder problems later and ended up learning better, because they perceived greater reward for doing better, not looking better.
--------------------
If you're smart, but you don't do anything you can fail at, you won't learn. Try. Fail. Try again.
[+] [-] nkohari|16 years ago|reply
Seriously though, while I think the metaphor is a little weak, the article makes some good points.
[+] [-] keefe|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dimas|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brandnewlow|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Concours|16 years ago|reply