Mental Model: Difficult Problems vs. Hard Work
> there are problems that are solvable by throwing a lot of human-hours at it (“Hard Work”), and problems that are not a function of raw work hours, but rather require dealing with ambiguity (“Difficult Problems”)<p>There's also the 3rd category of the <i>hell</i> of work that is easy, ambigous, but just uses up a ton of mental space to work through that mushy ambiguity. I'd solve difficult problems all day, can stomach doing hard work when its requirements are clear, but god keep me away from the hell of "death by a thousand papercuts" in the marshes of easy-but-mindspace/time-sucking quai-ambiguous problems...<p>Clarifying ambiguous requirements at least is rewarding when you achieve that clarity and help people understand what they actually need. But there's hellish work that is just unclarifiable before doing this, you just have to crawl to that mud of trivial but not-so-trivial-that-you-can-think-about-something-else-while-doing-them... 100% better to work a garden or serve in bar than that!