Hard workers vs gifted (but lazier) people

[Nygma7]

"Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard."

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."

[Spectral]

I don't really see any reason to think one is "better" than the other. Smart people that work hard almost universally succeed though.

[Deleted]

At the end of the day exams and well "intellect" as a whole is just remembering whatever it is you're supposed to be.

Some people remember after having been told once, at the lecture.
Other people read the book 5+ times and study real hard to remember.

[zorkuus]

There is no such thing as a "gifted but lazy" person.

Yes there is. I should know, I am one. I may be a hard worker but it doesn't come natural to me, I force myself to get shit done and overcome my laziness.

[Spectral]

Yes there is. I should know, I am one. I have to force myself to overcome my laziness to get shit done.

Right, I'm pretty damned lazy, but succeeded academically by any measure. I suppose it depends how we define "lazy" though. I don't really like doing shit, but I'm pretty good at doing what I need to.

[Pitkanen]

Right, I'm pretty damned lazy, but succeeded academically by any measure. I suppose it depends how we define "lazy" though. I don't really like doing shit, but I'm pretty good at doing what I need to.

I think the biggest issue is need to tease out the difference between:
-Effort placed
-Variations in results due to effort

There is a guilt associated with rushing through things quickly while everyone else works and works to complete/learn them. But this isn't laziness in my eyes, laziness is when something negative or less good happens because of a lack of effort. Sometimes the marginal gains for effort start kicking in so at some point one man's "Laziness" is another man's "Waste of time".

[Venant]

Seems like both of these traits are heavily modified by the level of effectiveness enjoyed by the methods which are used. School is different from real life because there is usually a clear 'track' which you move along in school, where as in real life you often must determine your own best path. When you are in a controlled environment like school, pure hard work is incredibly effective because it is easy to determine the near optimal path you need to take. In the real world, you might expend huge amounts of hard work only to learn that you pursued a dead end.

[Repefe]

Hard work all the way. I know a lot of stupid ppl who succeeded simply by being disciplined and working hard.

[Spectral]

We can look at which one does better in the absence of the other though.

I don't know if we can. The fuzziness of intellect measurements are pretty infamous and it seems even harder to measure work ethic. I mean, we know that disciplined people fare really well, but that's not quite the same as being hard working.

[Eduardo]

For Sales and Marketing I want Hard Working
For Engineering I want Smart Mostly
For Product Managers I want smart and hard working

[Varabently]

There is no such thing as a "gifted but lazy" person.

You're statement is that in the entirety of humanity there is no people who have high intelligent, but low urgency and work ethic? That's quite a statement that's clearly untrue.

I think I tend to fall in this category, but you have to really explain what you mean by "lazy." Is that just people who don't have a work ethic? what about people who are easily distracted from work? I'm certainly in the latter or I wouldn't be posting here. They could get equally little amounts of work done.

[AnEvilForce]

I can't speak for academics, but in a professional carreer I've found being "gifted and lazy" to be more productive. I consider myself clever and lazy rather than "gifted", which makes me do a whole lot more in less time than it takes others and leaves me (quite a lot) more time to socialize or just chill out at work. On the other hand I see those "hard workers" often spend more than twice the amount of time on the same tasks, because they just stick to what they learned in training. My dad has spent the better part of his life in logistics, management roles or consultant and he agrees that laziness comes in handy.

That being said, I do notice that most people I work with have to think about a solution to a problem, whereas I just see a solution instead of a problem. I could be more productive if I used the time I saved on actual work, but I'm not gonna do more work than anyone else simply because I can. I have done that and that just results in me getting even more work than others (sometimes even too much).

So all in all I guess it evens out on the workfloor. I'm guessing I could make more of a difference in a more managing position, but since I dislike having to take responsibilty for other people's actions, I'm not going to find out.

[Afrospinach]

As you get on in life, skill becomes determined far more by effort and work put in than raw talent.

Indeed. Coupled with the fact that I am rather good at wrote learning and I went from UK highschool to NZ highschool when I was 14 (sort of like going back to kindergarten) I coasted my way through it and come university time when they actually start to challenge you I really payed for it with my complete lack of work ethic. There is a lot to be said about hard work and when reality bites it is really the only way things get done.

Somewhat related, a former bandmate of my always held on to this belief that musicians just run off and get wasted and magically produced good music as a side effect. Being the one that was always busting ass for perfection at guitar I always found this view of being "naturally gifted" frustrating. Now days when we have access to things such a wikipedia and whatnot a lot of these "whimsical" artists are somewhat laid bare and it turns out that most of the people my friend looked up to like John Frusciante or Julian Casablancas did a lot to develop what the have now, they didn't just fall into a nice warm pile of talent on a good trip as he really wanted to believe. It really doesn't matter what your discipline is there is only one way to develop consistently.

[Total Crica]

We can look at which one does better in the absence of the other though.

the lazy man does twice the work to stay lazy...

why else do you think man-made tools exist?

so man could stay lazy...

the wheel, for example...because man was getting tired of carrying stuff themselves and wanted to be "lazy"...being lazy bears the fruit of genius

imo, boredom, laziness, sickness and pleasure are the four "legs" of all ingenuity - without any of those "legs", there would be no motivation for ingenuity

[God8010]

One mans hard work can be the inspiration of a gifted mans idea that passes to a normal hard working son that saves millions of lives only to die alone and sad when later his work is expanded on, kills millions in horrible drug testing and bank billions for that new link in the chain. It really comes down to what measurement scales we're using? From a personal aspect?

Hard work can function without a dream in someone else's dream. Hard work with a dream is self sufficient to certain extents. Lazy work with a dream can fall through the cracks unless somewhere hard work steals the dream for his own. Kinda why we accept "A good artist creates, a great artist steals." It's was already more work for him.

[Valort]

I have found that the hard working fellows tend to have better exam grades on average, however they do weaker in those subjects where you have to think for yourself, come up with new ideas and express your thoughts.

Usually, a pack mule will carry the pack nicely to the destination, but unless someone unwilling to carry a pack leads it, it wont move.
Society needs the hard working pack mules... But, in a balanced way, needs people to lead them.
The problem is, lately, most of the mules started thinking they are people, and not only stopped carrying their loads, but have also mislead the remaining mules astray.

[Deleted]

Maybe hard work will get you a better career, but I think being smart and lazy will get you a better life. You simply won't fall for the obvious pitfalls in life as easily.
Ideally you have a healthy dose of both though.

There is no such thing as a "gifted but lazy" person.

So, if you're gifted it's suddenly not possible to be lazy anymore? They are mutually exclusive?
Just because there are people who say they are gifted and lazy while in truth they're simply not as gifted and use it as an excuse for being an underachiever, that doesn't take away that there are some who actually are like that. It would be EXTREMELY weird if the two were mutually exclusive.

Having said that, I think the higher up you go the less you can rely on your gift to do all the work for you. At some point you WILL need both intelligence and hard work to compete with the best of the best.

But as long as you don't reach that high, you can be lazy and get away with it because you're gifted. It's just a matter of asking yourself if that's enough for you in life, maybe you don't want to be the best you can be? And I think quite a lot of people (at least in the western world, although that seems to be slowly changing) would be content with that as long as they make a decent salary and don't have a lot of stress.

[Itisamuh]

There is no such thing as a "gifted but lazy" person.

I'm living proof that you're wrong, and so are many other people. I've always been intelligent and good at basically anything I try. That doesn't mean I care enough to try. Anyway, I'd say in academics the gifted person has the edge (depending on just how lazy he is, of course; if he flat won't do anything then obviously he won't do well.) The hard worker will usually do better in life, though. It really doesn't take much intelligence to get through college or stick with a job for years until you get promoted, just commitment.

[Total Crica]

You're excluding curiosity.

oh yeah...i dont have that so i forgot it sorry!

[Melt]

I'm living proof that you're wrong, and so are many other people. I've always been intelligent and good at basically anything I try. That doesn't mean I care enough to try. Anyway, I'd say in academics the gifted person has the edge (depending on just how lazy he is, of course; if he flat won't do anything then obviously he won't do well.) The hard worker will usually do better in life, though. It really doesn't take much intelligence to get through college or stick with a job for years until you get promoted, just commitment.

No, you're just a living proof that people will come up with anything to validate their existence. Be it religion, or inner beauty or in this case being "gifted". I've met countless people that go with this attitude: "I could totally get anything I want, but I just don't want to do anything". I'm the perfect example for this myself.

Surely anybody dedicated enough can get through university, but this applies to every type of knowledge. If you invest 10000 hours into learning mathematics, no matter how stupid you are, you will understand shit. There is no thought that is to complex or unique that only a couple of people can understand it. Everybody can learn music, physics or sports if he invests enough time in it. On the other hand, if you never invest in anything and end up being only able to count to 10, you are not gifted, you are lazy.

Gifted people invest obscene amounts of time into the subject of their interest. THAT'S why they excel at things. They don't waste time arguing on forums or looking for made up attributes to use for themselves. They want to know something, so they go and figure it out.