[jimmywanger]

This is a horrible article.

It seems to be emphasizing an external locus of control. Which is unuseful. Sometimes things won't turn out the way you want. But you still have to put the effort and time in.

The way she's writing she seems to dismiss effort and time as useless.

[nnq]

That was a horrible comment :)

The author is clearly saying "We have to put in our best efforts and then give ourselves permission to let whatever happens to happen". And then that after we've put in our best effort, we must accept that some things are out of our control and impossible to accurately predict: things like timing!

She doesn't dismiss effort or time: she just says that you can't rely on them to produce predictable results at specific times. You will work hard, and you will succeed most of the times you work hard at something. But probably not when you predicted you will succeed. And maybe not always at the thing that you initially wanted to succeed at. And accepting lack of control doesn't mean loosing motivation. Even her points about motivation I read them as saying something along the lines of: "don't try to pump up yourself with artificial willpower and motivation, just persist at working in your natural rhythm, and things will work out fine, even if you can't control when they will work out fine".

It's very biased towards the "accept the lack of control" part, indeed. But the bias is necessary to counterbalance the pov of people like you that keep throwing up the "work harder, work more" (or "just put more time, more effort") mantra to everyone they meet! This kind of advice is useful for some people. But horrible for others! Some need more to find a "a natural rhythm" and "let things happen", and unfortunately you rarely see this advice. Others may indeed call what I would say it's "my natural rhythm", something like "extremely hard work and perseverence", and maybe these kinds of people need your kind of advice.

...and there are also those that are simply "born to be lazy", and throwing the "work harder, work more" thing at them will only viciously turn them against whoever yelled that at them, transforming them from harmless slackers into people that will instead steal or kill or be corrupt and spread corruption, or otherwise sabotage the system just for the "fun" (read "revenge for being bothered") of making others suffer simply because some self-righteuous know-it-alls couldn't simply "let them be".

[jimmywanger]

The article doesn't even mention personal responsibility until roughly halfway through it.

And you comment about "born to be lazy" holds no water. If you want to be lazy, you have to accept that you won't have opportunities non-lazy people will have.

If you're "born to be lazy", that's fine unless you want to be somewhere that non-lazy people are. If you're sitting on your butt cause the inspiration for your novel hasn't come along because it isn't time yet, you're not working hard enough.

[nnq]

> If you're sitting on your butt cause the inspiration for your novel hasn't come along because it isn't time yet

I'm not a writer, but I assume that a writer can simply go on with his life, doing other useful things, and postpone writing that novel until true/natural inspiration comes to him/her. I've read enough crappy writings imbibed with the stench of "synthetic/forced-through-work inspiration" that the only advice I could give to writers is: wait until you have something to truly write about, and wait until you actually get the right perspective of things, and the "inspiration", and only then go and work hard to inflict your literary masterpiece upon the world.

The world is full of "forced art", "forced architecture" and "forced industrial design" made through "working hard enough" instead of actually exploring around until you bump into a "good perspective".

And about:

> If you want to be lazy, you have to accept that you won't have opportunities non-lazy people will have

In the real world things don't work like this at all. Maybe all I want is to sit around in my hut in the rainforest... maybe I'm even content and at peace with the fact the only one of my two children is statistically likely to reach adulthood because malaria or whatever... and being ok with this I just do the bare minimum hunting and enjoy living in nature... until some "hard workers" show up with chainsaws or mining equipment. I'm not a lazy person, but I sympathize with the people that just want to "live their life in their own natural rhythm", but end up being forced out of it by some who worked hard enough to buy the property of the land underneath them, or worked hard enough to make the money to fully "buy off" the government of their peaceful tropical country and then start exploiting it.

As an engineer I love hard work. But when it comes to art or politics I think we need less of it. Less bad art and literature. Less dehumanizing enterprises.

[jimmywanger]

I think you're inferring something different from what I'm saying.

If you're a writer and you're not inspired to write, you're not going to write your magnum opus. However, you still have to write something or another - spend 3 hours writing uninspired writing just to practice your skills. If you're a musician and you're not inspired to compose, you'll still have to practice your scales and do little throwaway compositions to get better at it. Thinking that inspiration can flourish when you don't have practice with structure, realistic dialog is unrealistic. In fact, the more you force yourself to write the more easily you can recognize when real inspiration comes along, and the more you won't waste it.

As for your second example, we're seeing it all over the place in San Francico right now. A lot of people didn't optimize their financial situation, working as artists or painters and social workers, and now are being forced out by people who did optimize their financial situation, the programmers. Is that right? That is personal opinion, but the fact of the matter is had you been prepared with more money from savings or a more lucrative job or a cheap home somewhere else that you bought, you have options that you currently don't have.

[solipsism]

There's a core component of the article that's good, though. The part about not getting hung up on the fact that you're not where you're "supposed to be", or that you're not as far along as you perceive others to be. This is an important point.

But I agree, encouraging constructive action is better than complacency.