[killerswan]

Accomplishment is nice, but there's a lot more to it than simply working hours. A consistent thing: long hours without consideration of whether you could do even better with a change in process are always a mistake.

If you're doing the work in a situation where adding staff or changing commitments really will not help you, by all means, continue to work, and find whatever tricks you need to stay focused in that time.

Edison had a whole company helping him do his work, and I bet the best of piano players have a cleaning lady, a chauffeur, and a specialist in tuning pianos all helping them to spend more time mentally preparing (including via sleep) and with hands on keys.

[felipemnoa]

If yo want to work 9 to 5 that is fine. Is your choice. But I think is unfair to claim that working 9 to 5 will increase your chances of success. Now, whether you don't care for that is another matter. Fine with me if you are happy. Working long hours in a sweat shop is bad obviously. Working long hours practicing in athletics, music, academics is necessary. If you don't do it somebody else will. Assuming you want to reach the top else why even discuss it.

[killerswan]

That is not what I said. I think you will agree that working on the right things is more important than just volume of work.

[mattm1]

No long hours are not necessary. The study written about in this thread - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2900301 - is about how the best violin players only practice for 4 hours per day but the good players actually practice more.

[felipemnoa]

Here is a very nice counter point to your study.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertai...

The link claims that one of the best violinists in the world would practice 7 hours a day. The complete opposite of what you are citing.

From the link:

>>Such dedication is also apparent in musicians. Maxim Vengerov, 34, is one of the world’s greatest violinists. He was born in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and, after being given a miniature fiddle at the age of four, displayed outstanding aptitude.

His talent was matched by an immense work ethic. He practised seven hours a day, giving his first recital at the age of five and winning his first international prize at 15. Vengerov said: “My mother would get home at 8pm, cook dinner and then teach me the violin until four in the morning. As a four-year-old boy it was torture. But I became a violinist within two years.”

<<

Also, different professions probably have different definitions of long hours. Four hours practicing on the violin must be pretty exhausting since it is a physical exercise. Therefore you must also take that into account. Four hours playing the violin and four hours programming are not the same thing. Four hours for a violin player is already long hours. Four hours for a programmer sitting in front of a computer is nothing. Specially if you are debugging code, you could easily spend more than 24 hours debugging a problem, I doubt a violinist could do the same.

Another example is marathon runners. Running two hours everyday is already long hours. You cannot equate two hours running a marathon with two hours of programming right.

So my point still stands, you have to put in long hours. The definition of long hours changes by profession.

An easier way to see it is that you have to put in more hours than what your average peer puts in. Of course, you also have to do it smart.

-Edit This is a tangent but I just thought of this and seems important enough to share. Even though the runner and the violinists are practicing they are not really being productive because they are not producing anything that the world can use. A programmer in the same amount of time is being productive because he is actually generating things that can be used by the world.

[corin_]

Interestingly I never found playing the cello exhausting - well, very occasionally if I had been playing a lot (several days running of a couple of hours practise, many hours rehearsing, couple of hours performing). On the other side, singing could be very tiring (though again, all-day sessions, always standing up).