I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.
The sentiment is correct (diligence may be more important than brilliance) but I think “all amusements and other employments” might be too absolute an imperative for most people to even try to live by. Most people will break down if they try to work too hard for too long, and changes of activity can be very important in keeping people fresh.
I think that both you and Mr. Franklin are correct.
To wreak great changes one must stay focused and work diligently on one’s goal. One needn’t eliminate all pleasures from life, but I think you’ll find that very, very few people can have a serious hobby and a world changing vocation.
Most of us of “tolerable” abilities cannot maintain the kind of focus and purity of dedication required. That is why the world changes as little as it does. If everyone, as an example who was to the right of center on the IQ curve could make great changes etc., then “great” would be redefined upwards (if most people could run a 10 second 100 meter, Mr. Bolt would only be a little special).
I’ve heard this a lot, but it sounds a bit too convenient to me. When external (or internal) circumstances have forced me to spend lots of time on one specific, not particularly entertaining task, I’ve found that I actually become more interested and enthusiastic about that thing. For example, when I had to play chess for like 5 hours a day for a week once, or when I went on holiday and came back to 5000 anki reviews, or when I was on a maths camp that started every day with a problem set that took over 4 hours.
Re “breaking down”: if you mean they’ll have a breakdown of will and be unable to continue working, that’s an easy problem to solve—just hire someone to watch you and whip you whenever your productivity declines. And/Or chew nicotine gum when at your most productive. Or something. If you mean some other kind of breakdown, that does sound like something to be cautious of, but I think the correct response isn’t to surrender eighty percent of your productivity, but to increase the amount of discomfort you can endure, maybe through some sort of hormesis training.
Playing chess for 5 hours a day does not make chess your “sole study and business” unless you have some disorder forcing you to sleep for 19 hours a day. If you spent the rest of your waking time studying chess, playing practice games, and doing the minimal amount necessary to survive (eating, etc.), THEN chess is your “sole study and business”; otherwise, you spend less than 1⁄3 your waking life on it, which is less than people spend at a regular full time job (at least in the US).
just hire someone to watch you and whip you whenever your productivity declines
In my model this strategy decreases productivity for some tasks; especially those which require thinking. Fear of punishment brings “fight or flight” reaction, both of these options are harmful for thinking.
My very tentative guess is that for most people, there is substantial room to increase diligence. However, at the very top of the spectrum trying to work harder just causes each individual hour to be less efficient. Also note that diligence != hours worked, I am often more productive in a 7 hour work day than an 11 hour work day if the 7-hour one was better-planned.
However I am still pretty uncertain about this. I am pretty near the top end of the spectrum for diligence and trying to see if I can hack it a bit higher without getting burn-out or decreased efficiency.
Generalizing from one example much? Maybe there are some people who are most efficient when they do 10 different things an hour a day each, other people who are most efficient when they do the same thing 10 hours a day, and other people still who are most efficient in intermediate circumstances.
Agreed; most people, me included, would probably be more productive if they interleaved productive tasks than if they did productive tasks in big blocks of time. I was just saying that in my experience, when I’m forced to do some unpleasant task a lot, after a while it’s not as unpleasant as I initially expected. I’m pretty cognitively atypical, so you’re right that other people are likely not the same.
(This is of course a completely different claim than what the great-grandparent sorta implied and which I mostly argued against, which is that “Most people will break down if they try to work too hard for too long” means we shouldn’t work very much, rather than trying to set things up so that we don’t break down (through hormesis or precommitment or whatever). At least if we’re optimizing for productivity rather than pleasantness.)
Here’s a vaguely-related paper (I’ve only read the abstract):
Participants learned different keystroke patterns, each requiring that a key sequence be struck in a prescribed time. Trials of a given pattern were either blocked or interleaved randomly with trials on the other patterns and before each trial modeled timing information was presented that either matched or mismatched the movement to be executed next. In acquisition, blocked practice and matching models supported better performance than did random practice and mismatching models. In retention, however, random practice and mismatching models were associated with superior learning. Judgments of learning made during practice were more in line with acquisition than with retention performance, providing further evidence that a learner’s current ease of access to a motor skill is a poor indicator of learning benefit.
It’s possible that what Franklin meant by “amusements” didn’t include leisure: in his time, when education was not as widespread, a gentleman might have described learning a second language as an “amusement”.
Except when when the great change requires a leap of understanding. Regardless of how diligently she works, the person who is blind in a particular area will never make the necessary transcendental leap that creates new understanding.
I have experienced this, working in a room full of brilliant people for a period of months. It took the transcendental leap of understanding by someone outside the group to present the elegantly-simple solution to the apparently intractable problem.
So, while many problems will fall to persistence and diligence, some problems require at least momentary transcendental brilliance … or at least a favorable error. Hmm, this says something about the need for experimentation as well. Never underestimate the power of, “Huh, that’s funny. It’s not supposed to do that …”
-- Benjamin Franklin
The sentiment is correct (diligence may be more important than brilliance) but I think “all amusements and other employments” might be too absolute an imperative for most people to even try to live by. Most people will break down if they try to work too hard for too long, and changes of activity can be very important in keeping people fresh.
I think that both you and Mr. Franklin are correct.
To wreak great changes one must stay focused and work diligently on one’s goal. One needn’t eliminate all pleasures from life, but I think you’ll find that very, very few people can have a serious hobby and a world changing vocation.
Most of us of “tolerable” abilities cannot maintain the kind of focus and purity of dedication required. That is why the world changes as little as it does. If everyone, as an example who was to the right of center on the IQ curve could make great changes etc., then “great” would be redefined upwards (if most people could run a 10 second 100 meter, Mr. Bolt would only be a little special).
Further more...Oooohh...shiny.…
I’ve heard this a lot, but it sounds a bit too convenient to me. When external (or internal) circumstances have forced me to spend lots of time on one specific, not particularly entertaining task, I’ve found that I actually become more interested and enthusiastic about that thing. For example, when I had to play chess for like 5 hours a day for a week once, or when I went on holiday and came back to 5000 anki reviews, or when I was on a maths camp that started every day with a problem set that took over 4 hours.
Re “breaking down”: if you mean they’ll have a breakdown of will and be unable to continue working, that’s an easy problem to solve—just hire someone to watch you and whip you whenever your productivity declines. And/Or chew nicotine gum when at your most productive. Or something. If you mean some other kind of breakdown, that does sound like something to be cautious of, but I think the correct response isn’t to surrender eighty percent of your productivity, but to increase the amount of discomfort you can endure, maybe through some sort of hormesis training.
Playing chess for 5 hours a day does not make chess your “sole study and business” unless you have some disorder forcing you to sleep for 19 hours a day. If you spent the rest of your waking time studying chess, playing practice games, and doing the minimal amount necessary to survive (eating, etc.), THEN chess is your “sole study and business”; otherwise, you spend less than 1⁄3 your waking life on it, which is less than people spend at a regular full time job (at least in the US).
In my model this strategy decreases productivity for some tasks; especially those which require thinking. Fear of punishment brings “fight or flight” reaction, both of these options are harmful for thinking.
My very tentative guess is that for most people, there is substantial room to increase diligence. However, at the very top of the spectrum trying to work harder just causes each individual hour to be less efficient. Also note that diligence != hours worked, I am often more productive in a 7 hour work day than an 11 hour work day if the 7-hour one was better-planned.
However I am still pretty uncertain about this. I am pretty near the top end of the spectrum for diligence and trying to see if I can hack it a bit higher without getting burn-out or decreased efficiency.
Generalizing from one example much? Maybe there are some people who are most efficient when they do 10 different things an hour a day each, other people who are most efficient when they do the same thing 10 hours a day, and other people still who are most efficient in intermediate circumstances.
Agreed; most people, me included, would probably be more productive if they interleaved productive tasks than if they did productive tasks in big blocks of time. I was just saying that in my experience, when I’m forced to do some unpleasant task a lot, after a while it’s not as unpleasant as I initially expected. I’m pretty cognitively atypical, so you’re right that other people are likely not the same.
(This is of course a completely different claim than what the great-grandparent sorta implied and which I mostly argued against, which is that “Most people will break down if they try to work too hard for too long” means we shouldn’t work very much, rather than trying to set things up so that we don’t break down (through hormesis or precommitment or whatever). At least if we’re optimizing for productivity rather than pleasantness.)
Here’s a vaguely-related paper (I’ve only read the abstract):
It’s possible that what Franklin meant by “amusements” didn’t include leisure: in his time, when education was not as widespread, a gentleman might have described learning a second language as an “amusement”.
Except when when the great change requires a leap of understanding. Regardless of how diligently she works, the person who is blind in a particular area will never make the necessary transcendental leap that creates new understanding.
I have experienced this, working in a room full of brilliant people for a period of months. It took the transcendental leap of understanding by someone outside the group to present the elegantly-simple solution to the apparently intractable problem.
So, while many problems will fall to persistence and diligence, some problems require at least momentary transcendental brilliance … or at least a favorable error. Hmm, this says something about the need for experimentation as well. Never underestimate the power of, “Huh, that’s funny. It’s not supposed to do that …”
Brian