That's so dumb. Of course you need to work on the right thing. I'm actually confused. She mentions Edison and how he has tried so many experiments and fails, suggests that he worked hard, yet seems to imply that his hard work was somewhat irrelevant. He was successful because he found the right thing. I am puzzled as I am wondering whether she thinks that her readership is ten years old or have no common sense at all.
You need to work hard to understand the little things and incrementally advance towards the solution, or the right thing. You might discover something on a day in which you did little work, but surely you have been working for many years perhaps to arrive to that day.
Working hard is if anything underrated as society puts more emphasis on talent and innate ability. It is hardly over rated and as our society becomes complex by the day, it will perhaps never be overrated.
“If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.
I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.” -- Nikola Tesla
Edit: Please note that I have quoted Edison many times when encouraging people to not give up in the face of failure. So I am not against the idea that one needs to keep working at some things. But the idea of "keeping at it" can be a trap that prevents you from reassessing your approach and finding something better.
I think we can have an intelligent debate without having to call her post 'dumb'. I'm surprised this comment was voted so high.
This is the quickest way to lose any debate...
and besides: it's often the most obvious that escapes us. Smart people fall into these kinds of traps all the time. I found the post to be enlightening in that regard.
It waters down the expectations that a writer should have of their readership however and the expectations that a reader should have of an article.
Personally I would not mind reading some of pg's articles as although some may contain obvious information, they usually have been thought through and synthesised to create new knowledge. This article however is simply stating the obvious as much as an article suggesting that you should eat everyday would be suggesting the obvious. I do not think it has escaped by anyone the fact that they need to work on the right thing, nor as the above comment suggests, that sometimes they may be 'traped' by focusing too much on a certain thing. If the article was about research findings on how to organise your time, how to manage tendencies towards perfection, how to recognise when you are spending time on something you should not, then perhaps the reader would have learned something. The article however is superficial and typical of a wider trend on the internet where opinions are the norm and currency rather than imparting knowledge on the readership.
Perhaps to suggest that what the article contains and the one who wrote it is dumb - within the confines of this specific article - might be perceived as derogatory and uncivilised, yet I do not think that one should refrain from speaking their mind. I found the article dumb, I could have said pointless, yet I thought dumb describes it better because it is so obvious, the title is misleading and hardly supported in the article and the article itself has not been thought through at all, let alone the title. If the writer wants me to hail her as a beacon of truth then she should try much harder rather than think that she is having a chat with her friend while drinking a coffee about what she thinks of hard work.
Serious question: I am wondering if you aren't American. American culture puts a lot of emphasis on "work ethic". Someone in the comments section of the article indicated they were British but living in America and generally appalled at how we "flog ourselves to death" constantly. Perhaps this observation is more "obvious" to people from other cultures? But for most Americans it probably merits repeating (very regularly even).
You need to work hard to understand the little things and incrementally advance towards the solution, or the right thing. You might discover something on a day in which you did little work, but surely you have been working for many years perhaps to arrive to that day.
Working hard is if anything underrated as society puts more emphasis on talent and innate ability. It is hardly over rated and as our society becomes complex by the day, it will perhaps never be overrated.