Doing great work is a depth-first search whose root node is the desire to. So if you don’t succeed, either try again, or backtrack and then try again. Corollary, never abandon the root node.
My takeaways from How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. For interactive reading, click here to visit the Hepta-ed version.
In this article, PG talks about the definite shape of the intersections of all the great works. The four steps of doing great work: choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier, notice gaps, explore promising ones.
What I really like about Paul Graham is that he talks about his findings like an innocent child, even though he is a successful founder and investor who has talked to thousands of founders. He is so genuine and unpretending in his writing, perhaps that’s what makes his advice very practical.
Motivation & Overall mindset
- If you’re smart and ambitious, it’s dangerous to not be productive, because people like this tend to get bitter if they don’t achieve much.
- Doing great work is a depth-first search whose root node is the desire to. So you don’t succeed, either try again, or backtrack and then try again. Corollary, never abandon the root node.
- You should let curiosity guide you instead of competition or desire to impress. It is the secret to doing great work, and the key to all four steps.
- Great work means doing something important so well that you expand people’s ideas of what’s possible.
- Distribute your attention according to something more like a power law.
Mindset for perceiving school & education system
- School induces passivity, that problems are given instead of discovered. To overcome this passivity, try to think of your education as your project, that your teacher are working for your work and your goal.
Advantage of youth
- The biggest advantage the young have is time. Use it in frivolous ways, but don’t simply waste it.
- The most subtle advantage of youth, or more precisely of inexperience, is that you're seeing everything with fresh eyes.
- Aim to be the best. If you don't try to be the best, you won't even be good.
- Take as much risk as you can afford, because in an efficient market risk is proportionate to reward.
- Even a project that fails can be valuable because you’ll cross territory few others have seen.
Deciding what to work on
- Optimize for interestingness. Your field should become increasingly more interesting as you learn more about it.
- Develop a habit of working on your own projects because you’ll be the driving part of the great work you do one day.
- The way to figure out what to work on is by working, pick something and get going.
Choosing a problem
- Originality in choosing problems matters more than originality in solving them, this distinguishes the people who discover whole new field.
- Everyone is too conservative about what counts as important problems, ask yourself if you were going to take a break from "serious" work to work on something just because it would be really interesting, what would you do?
- New discoveries often have to be conceived initially as variations of existing things, even by their discoverers, because there isn't yet the conceptual vocabulary to express them.
Err on the side of starting, and finish what you started for exponential result
- Be the one who puts things out there rather than the one who sits back and offers sophisticated-sounding criticisms of them.
- Being prolific is underrated. The more different things you try, the greater the chance of discovering something new. Err on the side of starting.
- For per-day work, you can trick yourself to get through the initial energy threshold.
- For per-project work, just ask “How hard can it be?”
- Don’t plan too much when you’re doing excitingly ambitious projects, preserve certain invariants and let the project evolve, because planning only works for achievements you can describe in advance.
- Beat per-project procrastination by asking yourself are you working on something you most want to work on?
- Doing great work is a depth-first search whose root node is the desire to. So you don’t succeed, either try again, or backtrack and then try again. Corollary, never abandon the root node.
- Try to finish what you started, it’s often the best work.
- The trouble with exponential growth is that the curve feels flat in the beginning, but keep in mind something that grows exponentially can be so valuable that it’s worth making an extraordinary effort to get it started.
Seeking the best colleague
- Great colleagues can see and do things that you can’t and keep you on your toes. You’ll know if you do.
Husband your morale
- Grounds for optimism: There are so many different ways to do great work, and even more that are still undiscovered. It's just a question of finding the one best suited for you, and how far into it your ability and interest can take you. And you can only answer that by trying.
- An audience is a critical component of morale, if a handful of people genuinely love what you’re doing, that’s enough.
- Morale and good work makes a dual-way reinforcing system, so it can be a good idea to switch to easier work when you’re stuck, just so you start to get something done.
Reflective questions
To help find out if you are working on the right project
- Am I working on what I most want to work on?
- If you were going to take a break from “serious” work to work on something just because it would be really interesting, what would you do?
- Is the thing you’re working on becoming increasingly more interesting as you learn more about it?
- Do others find what you’re working on tedious or frightening?
To help finding overlooked ideas
- What are people in your field religious about? What becomes possible if you discard it?
- What are some good ideas for someone else to explore?
Other good shits
- For my hepta-ed version of this article, click here.
- Go read the original article!
- How To Get Startup Ideas, Paul Graham
- Productivity, Sam Altman