Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist who teaches at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has authored a guest column for the New York Times that opens up, for the umpteenth time, an ethics topic that makes me uncomfortable. His subject is the cultural delusion shared by many in American society that rewarding effort is just as important as rewarding success, and perhaps moreso. He writes in part:
“….we’ve taken the practice of celebrating industriousness too far. We’ve gone from commending effort to treating it as an end in itself. We’ve taught a generation of kids that their worth is defined primarily by their work ethic. We’ve failed to remind them that working hard doesn’t guarantee doing a good job (let alone being a good person)…..[W]hat worries me most about valuing perseverance above all else: It can motivate people to stick with bad strategies instead of developing better ones…What counts is not sheer effort but the progress and performance that result. Motivation is only one of multiple variables in the achievement equation. Ability, opportunity and luck count, too. Yes, you can get better at anything, but you can’t be great at everything.”
I’m sure the column will raise several questions as it did for me, though maybe not the same ones. For one thing, I don’t see a lot of evidence that students or adults in general are knocking themselves out to demonstrate initiative, diligence and persistence. In fact, I see the opposite. Service in establishments has never been worse: when I see someone obviously working hard since the pandemic struck I almost always mention it now, because the individual stands out from the rest, not only in that locale, but just about everywhere else. (Note to Jack: You didn’t give little Christmas gifts to the great staff at the local 7-11 this year.) Students expect A’s for showing up, not just for showing up and “busting their hump” (Note to Jack 2: Find out what that strange expression refers to…)
Yesterday DOGE maven Vivek Ramaswamy set up an intense debate among the “Americans are the best workers and this is the greatest country in the world” gang by accusing the nation of valuing “mediocrity over excellence.” On Twitter/”X” he blamed a culture that has de-emphasized earned success over automatic rewards on the tech industry’s practice “choosing to hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans.” “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote. “A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers.”
I don’t know why MAGA is in an uproar over these comments: It seems obvious that he is correct. We’ve just seen the results from a Presidential team consisting of a man who has always presented himself as a “plodder” and his back-up who has been handed most of her advancements based on her physical characteristics rather than her actual performance and being in the right place at the right time. I don’t know why Vivek is so fond of Screech, who was an idiot, but I’ll let that one go.
On a personal note, the Times column reawakened my conviction that I have been a lazy, under-achieving flop my whole life. Looking back, I have accomplished a lot in a lot of diverse areas from an objective point of view, but I should have, dammit: I’ve had so many advantages that most people don’t have, including, before this year, a record of almost constant good fortune that included good genes, good health, great parents, and good fortune in finding mentors, allies, friends and a support network. Misusing or squandering the advantages life hands you is unethical, to focus on the mandatory topic here.
But this is my conundrum: my dissatisfaction with my own legacy in some respects flows from my gut feeling that being successful at endeavors that come easy or natural are less admirable than achievements I could have obtained if I was more willing to engage in tasks that I didn’t find interesting or didn’t enjoy. When I directed Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus,” I found myself sympathizing with Salieri’s resentment of Mozart who seemed to be successful effortlessly, because he was brilliant. Poor Salieri worked so much harder but achieved much less because he was a mediocre talent, and knew it.
On the other hand, I’m more innately talented at many things—all due to luck and opportunity—than Shaffer’s Salieri was at anything. My problem hasn’t been that you can’t be great at everything: I haven’t been willing to focus sufficiently and put in the work to be great at anything. I know this, and have always known this but the self-knowledge wasn’t sufficient to get me to change my pattern. My role models from a young age have been “Renaissance men”: Aristotle, Da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt, Paul Winchell, Michael Crichton, Danny Kaye, many others. They were special, however: they managed to be great at many things, and seemingly never stopped working. My other class of heroes has included icons like Ted Williams, who drove himself to greatness by settling on one goal and working obsessively to accomplish it, and creative workaholics like Shakespeare, Paul McCartney and Bill James.
(Final note to Jack: Oh stop whining. Everything isn’t about you.)
Enough about me: that way madness lies. Read the essay. (Gift link!)
Ethics Alarms 
Also worth nothing that Zach got a higher SAT score than both Jessie and Screech so there’s that.
But on a more serious note, I think in terms of ethics it should be what you do, no matter what the outcome, is what that matters. Everything after that is just hindsight bias. Showing up isn’t just the right thing. Sure, its a start, but if you’re going to show up and do nothing, you’ve waisted my time and yours. If you work hard and don’t improve, then again you’re assisting time. Always seeking to move forward in correct ways, while improving is what humanity should stive for. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but it helps put you (and humanity) hopefully on the better path.
Well Jack, you’re certainly one hell of an essayist. The modern-day Michel de Montaigne. Unlike Mike, you may not have invented the essay, but you’ve certainly mastered it, in spades.
I do a lot of “what if-ing” myself. It’s a fool’s errand. Seems to be endemic at a certain age among a certain demographic. Charles Dickens nails the phenomenon in perhaps his greatest book, “Great Expectations,” my second favorite after “David Copperfield.”
While not always succeeding, I’ve tried to live my life by thinking for myself, making the choices which resulted, and living with the consequences.
I never had any children of my own, (putting off marriage ’til 47’ll do that) but I’d have raised them to follow that same path.
I’d have also made sure they realized that the most important judgement they can make is the one they make on themselves; self-esteem.
If you genuinely (NOT the de rigueur Post-Modern-Neo-Lefty everyone’s special/emotionally gratifying bull$#!t) like what you see when you look in the mirror, measuring up to others, or what they think, will be secondary.
PWS
To “bust one’s hump” appears to come from an Arabic expression” that refers to a camel, which water in the hump. The more the camel has to work, the camel has to drink more of its water from its hump. That means its hump get smaller and smaller. If there is no water left, you have “busted the hump.”
jvb
I think it is a bit of both. My wife teaches middle school in an upper middle class area (less than 1% of students get any government food assistance). Many students (and their parents) express the belief that good grades should come from trying, not achieving. Who cares if they got the wrong answer on the test, they tried their hardest. I believe this is a natural extension of pushing “equity” over equality. However, on the flip side, these students really aren’t trying their hardest. Most refuse to do simple things like double check their work to make sure they answered all the questions or proofread an essay they wrote. And I, like you, encounter more and more professionals who seem to give minimal effort. It feels like I spend more and more time dealing with mistakes made by these “professionals” because, like the kids, they couldn’t be arsed to check what they were doing or actually give a crap about doing a good job.
On the point about personal achievement, I believe too much emphasis is placed on economic and career achievement over quality of life. There are too many workaholics celebrated for valuing career over family / life satisfaction. I recently turned down a promotion because it would shift into more of a political role from my current managerial role and I hate dealing with politics. Further back I left a Fortune 500 corporate role leading an international team to shift to the world of higher education. I currently make 25% less than I did in 2010 and do work that is more challenging in some ways, but I am massively more satisfied with what I do now.
I am not sure what planet or decade this guy is from. One of the biggest problems with today’s youth is that they have no work ethic. They give up at the slightest problem. They feel that if you are talented, you shouldn’t have to work.
When they say ‘I worked hard’, it is usually just an excuse. When I ask what they mean by that, I am met by an “I don’t know” or “I spent a whole hour on the problem”. I have students analyze their studying and preparation after an exam. One student wrote that he spent 1 hour total preparing for an exam that covered 150 pages of a chemistry textbook. He proposed increasing this to 2 hours because he received an F on the test. I called him in to tell him that 2 hours would not be sufficient, that he needed to spend at least 8 good hours/week on the class and spend an additional 10-20 hours studying for an exam. He said “But I said I was going to double my effort. How can you ask for more than that?”. He wanted to be a cardiologist. He dropped my class.
it typically takes a full semester to train college freshmen how to put in college-level effort into their courses. I think this guy is just making stuff up.
Not to solve your problem, but maybe I can make it clearer.
The distinction between effort and outcome is very basic. The Stoics observed that you have complete control over your effort, but no control over the outcome of those efforts. As a result, you can control how much effort you put into something, but it will not guarantee success. (Nietzsche kind of flipped this around and said that the great man is the one who could make reality to conform to his will. Maybe that is what a ton of effort, tenacity, and luck will get you. I am sure you can find examples of that in the lives of the Presidents.)
It is also embedded in the Declaration of Independence. Happiness is not an inalienable right; you only are guaranteed the right to pursue happiness. That is, you have the right to decide what you think will make you happy and pursue those goals, as long as they don’t infringe on the rights of others to do the same.
We are not a communist country, where your pursuits are assigned to you based upon your skills and aptitude. It is not even like a lot of Europe, where your choices are limited by a number of social constraints. Don’t even get me started about the caste system in India. We value the ability to choose our path. What we seem to have forgotten is that Happiness is not guaranteed; failure is always a possibility. (That may be what is behind this essay; I have not read it yet.)
Remember what Aristotle said: there are things that a person is good at and there are things a person enjoys. The happy person will be good at the things he enjoys. If all you have managed to do, Jack, is some things you enjoy that you were also good at, you are doing pretty well.
When I went to law school, I thought I would make a very good judge. I still think I have the skills to be a very discerning and prudent judge. But, then I sit in a Monday morning cattle call on the bail calendar and I realize how dreadfully tedious the job is. I think I would be very good at deciding questions of evidence at a trial, but then I realize that you are doing the same repetitive voir dire and jury instructions every time.. Now, the only thing that inclines me to pursue the judiciary is taking away that position from some candidate who simply seeks the position for its prestige, something that barely interests me.
Yes, legal work can be equally tedious and repetitive. But, it has given me control over my schedule (to a degree, says the guy who had to appear remotely in Minnesota from Tennessee because my associate got food poisoning last night). I could make more money if I worked for someone else, and I would not like it, my wife would not like parts of that trade-off, and my children would like it less. And, regardless, I can point to the fact that the work I do helps people solve problems they have (usually). Am I putting my skills to their highest and best use. Probably not. But, I would say I am doing pretty good anyway. There is always a trade-off.
I am not guaranteed, but I am doing what I think will make me (and those around me) happier.
-Jut
Thanks. Helpful perspective. Easy Comment of the Day.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while; I may try my hand at a longer essay if and when I can pull my thoughts into something coherent. Until then, I offer an anecdote.
Our theatre department was in the first year of an exchange program with a well-respected English conservatory. It soon became clear that we needed a separate acting class for our British students: they’d spent a year in an acting-heavy program, so they were more advanced than our Beginning Acting students, but they didn’t have the vocabulary or training in our more Stanislavsky-based system so they didn’t really fit in our more advanced classes, either. The opportunity to have students learn the techniques employed on the other side of the Atlantic was one of the rationales for the exchange, after all.
All of our “acting teachers” were already overloaded, so I ended up teaching the new class. In those days, there was enough money in our respective budgets that faculty from one school could visit the other during the academic year to check in. So it was that I was having lunch in a local restaurant with the head of their program about 2/3 of the way through the semester. He went through his list of students, asking how each was doing. When he came to one student, I said that I thought that young man honestly believed he was working hard. My counterpart smiled and said he thought that was the best assessment he’d ever heard.
There’s effort, there’s self-perceived effort, and there’s success. Three different things.
(For the record, the student in question became one of my favorites; I shared a meal with him more than once when I was in London.)
Wow, this topic is really up my alley… as I am an industrial-organizational (I/O) psychologist. So to start with let’s break down what an I/O psychologist is. There are two sub-specialties to the discipline, industrial psychology and organizational psychology. The sub-specialty of “industrial psychology” focuses on measuring work (e.g., tasks), includes topics such as selection methods, and is heavy on statistics. Conversely, the sub-specialty of “organizational psychology” focuses on workplace climate and culture and often involves conducting focus groups, establishing cultural practices, etc. I/O psychologists typically are trained in both parts, but choose to specialize based on preference (guess which one is more common and which one pays more on average). So why is this important when taking into account what Dr. Grant wrote? It provides insight into likely why he approached the subjects of effort and success the way he did.
While effort and success are correlated, effort is not the reason for success, this is where meritocracy comes in. There are other factors such as talent and opportunity that play heavily in success. However, we in the West and in the US, in particular, have had a mantra for decades, that it is about your effort and if only you work hard you WILL achieve your dreams, this is a lie by omission reinforced by participation trophies.
Stating “… I don’t see a lot of evidence that students or adults in general are knocking themselves out to demonstrate initiative, diligence and persistence,” portends to two issues when it comes to success and especially effort. First, our own personal observations are a sample size of one and not generalizable in a more scientific, methodologically sound process (if anyone is interested just look up the theory of generalizability). By generalizing our personal observations we are submitting ourselves to various biases, including confirmation bias. The US is still ranked as having the most productive workers in the world (https://www.aei.org/articles/explaining-the-recent-productivity-gap-between-the-us-and-europe/), but we need to also consider productivity is a composite of different factors (e.g., processes, effort). Two, it is in human nature to identify the less optimum, because less optimum carries additional risk, which humans try to avoid.
Now with Vivek, he is somewhat correct, but his ability to identify the reasons is subpar. When compared to other peoples, Americans have comfortable lives, even our poor are not really poor compared to those in other countries. One of the prime reasons for other peoples to put in extra effort comes down to trying to improve their lives. Other peoples are often pushed by their families and cultures to work “extra hard” for the family. The former was also common in the US prior to the 1970s, now US culture tolerates people who are aimless more so than in previous decades. Couple cultural tolerance to aimlessness with a push to make all jobs “living wage” jobs and you are coming up with a perfect storm. At this stage, Vivek is looking to put on a tourniquet to stop a nosebleed. This not to say that Vivek is an idiot, but he is way outside of his expertise. So far I have not seen a business person who understands how to build a solid workforce, they often achieve a good workforce more through luck than skill. If you disagree with me, I am a sample size of one, but I would also point to how much sports team spend on selection and how little companies spend on HR which does selection.
Insofar as “misusing or squandering the advantages life hands you is unethical…” we should focus on the individual’s capability for critical thinking (my definition involves metacognition), which should include a lot of self-reflection. As with a lot of things in life hindsight to 20/20, but at least with critical thinking we can mitigate some of the biggest issues with “wasting opportunity.” However, we do not teach critical thinking, and critical thinking, like other endeavors in life, some people have a talent for it while others do not. *As an important note here, there is a specific reason I define critical thinking as meta-cognitive, because, in most cases what people call critical thinking is really just decision making.
Regarding Salieri, the historical evidence we have is that he had a cordial relationship with Mozart. This is important to realize that Salieri reached a pinnacle of success that others at the time and even in the present day can only dream of. The unethical, in my assessment, is even in implying Salieri was a mediocre talent (if he really was he would be unknown today). As Dr. Grant wrote “… working hard doesn’t guarantee doing a good job…” and that is especially true in performing arts such as music where hard work and even genius can be swept aside for popular mediocrity.
As a researcher, I can write with confidence that comparing oneself to others such as “… Aristotle, Da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt…” is not a fruitful pursuit. To do a reasonable comparison would require controlling for factors such as competition, resources, etc. That is not to say to not look up to others, just realize that often there are many reasons why we know certain names while others have turned to dust.
That’s just my $.02, take it for what you will.
BTW Jack, my intent was not to attack you, so I hope that you don’t look at my diatribe that way.
Of course not. Excellent observations.
One note: I should have been clear that my comments about Salieri involved the character in the play, not the real historical figure. (I made a tiny edit just now to make that clearer. Thanks.) I don’t recall much about the real one, although I researched him before doing the play. I know that he was considered a skilled teacher if a mediocre composer, at least in comparison to his pupils, and that his name was, ironically, kept alive to some extent because of the rumors that he had killed Mozart, which were clearly ridiculous. I also listened to some of his compositions, which are pedestrian, at least compared to Mozart. But its easy to see how someone like Salieri, who knew his craft and could teach it, would also be frustrated at a genius like Mozart, who could do so effortlessly what Salieri couldn’t match despite working at it so diligently. (“How can we keep losing when we’re so sincere?” lamented Charlie Brown regarding his baseball team.) The ideas underlying Shaffer’s play and his speculation about what someone like Salieri might have felt, but never expressed, by seeing in a pupil the genius he could never muster are valuable both as drama and as human understanding.
I figured that you were referencing the Salieri from the play, which is a similar character to the one in the movie Amadeus.
Wash your mouth out with soap! I would never use a movie of a play over the play (which I directed in one of my favorite productions.)
“Americans have comfortable lives, even our poor are not really poor compared to those in other countries.”
While traveling in Africa a while back, a friend of mine was chatting up a cabbie who had told him he was saving up to go to America.
Asked where he was going to go, he didn’t know; asked what he was going to do, he didn’t know; but when asked why he wanted to go to America:
“Because even your poor people are fat.“
PWS
Busting my/your/their/one’s hump took me down some interesting rabbit holes, including a series of listing for Russian escort services. I didn’t click on any of the search results, so I have no idea why I was getting those. (Thanks, Google, I guess.)
The story about an Arab busting the hump of a camel has the feel of a folk etymology. I can’t say it’s not the source of the phrase, but it seems unlikely. The citations I found for it were online question/answer forums like answers.com. No print publications.
My best guess is that it started as slang among the military in Vietnam. “Humping the boonies” and “Operation Hump” were both phrases from the war. The second one was a joint US/Australian search and destroy operation. I can find references to “my hump” from the Vietnam era, but nothing about “busting my hump” until the ’70s. Google Ngram starts returning a lot of results from the late ’70s on in magazines and newspapers. A couple of the more interesting (but unhelpful in figuring out the source) mentions in books were in “Magic” by William Goldman and Hank Williams Jr.’s autobiography.
After going down numerous rabbit holes and still not finding that wascally wabbit, my best guess is military origin, possibly Australian, but it definitely is a euphemism for “my ass”. (The Black Eyed Peas got it right – my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps.)
Single word etymologies are so much easier than phrases (although that’s probably because the work has already been done for me by others, all I have to do is look it up). My favorite is cloud.
I would suggest that the phrase may date back to World War 2’s Southeast Asian Theater.
Starting in 1942, the United States committed to supply China’s armies under Chiang Kai-Shek. When the Japanese blocked the land route via the Burma Road, it was assigned to the Army Air Force. They flew vast quantities of supplies from India to China. The eastern end of the Himalayan mountains, over Burma, were referred to as “The Hump”.
The AAF delivered something like 650,000 tons of supplies over a 42 month period, losing nearly 600 planes and over 1600 men during the campaign. The air route over the mountains was extremely hazardous both due to weather conditions (like monsoons) and the mountains themselves (The Hump). As well, the Japanese were there to interfere and harass the Allied operation.
This wing of the Air Transport Command was the first non-combat unit to be awarded a Presidential Unit Citation by Roosevelt in January, 1944.
I saw a list of some of the people involved in flying The Hump: A few names that I recognized were Barry Goldwater, Robert McNamara, Thomas Watson, Jr. of IBM fame, Gene Autry, among many others.
I would assume that this operation in particular gave the Air Force a lot of institutional memory on running a massive airlift — which I am sure came in quite useful for Berlin.
I did not find the phrase in the article I read, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was used in connection with this operation.
I realize that I am very late to this party. However- Many a year ago, I read a book from the Imponderables series, in which the writer tries to answer somewhat weird questions. One was why there was no grade of E in schools; grades go from D to F. The guess, if you are curious, is that in a day when many parents had little schooling, it was too easy for children to convince their parents that E stood for Excellent. F unambiguously stood for Failure. If memory serves, though, he did mention that apparently at least a few schools had two failing grades. The first was failed, but showed up, turned in homework, gave honest effort, and the other was failed- didn’t even try. In short, failed because stupid, and failed because lazy. I sometimes find myself wondering which is the worse sign. Pretty much everyone I talked to thinks that failed- lazy is worse. But laziness can be fixed, stupid is harder. Would returning to multiple failing grades address some of this?
And there are people who are stupid but smart enough to pretend that they are lazy.
Regarding the expression “Busting my hump” I asked chatgpt.
First I asked: give the meaning of the expression “busting my hump”.
Chatgpt answered with,
Next I asked: what is the origin of this expression?
Chatgpt answered with,
Seems plausible to me.
I only have the time to jot down summary thoughts on this (despite my head swimming with deeper expositions). Nor did I have time to see if someone else commented on this.