How to Do Great Work - Paul Graham  ## Metadata - Author: **Paul Graham** - Full Title: How to Do Great Work - Category: #articles - URL: http://www.paulgraham.com/greatwork.html ## Highlights - The first step is to decide what to work on. The work you choose needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that offers scope to do great work. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8na7a7d6t3pwvm831ymgsv7)) - Knowledge expands fractally, and from a distance its edges look smooth, but once you learn enough to get close to one, they turn out to be full of gaps. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8nb37r0s8xpn55kryva6sgt)) - Many discoveries have come from asking questions about things that everyone else took for granted ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8nb3xn3mb61fmmy0fcr7agn)) - Boldly chase outlier ideas, even if other people aren't interested in them — in fact, especially if they aren't. If you're excited about some possibility that everyone else ignores, and you have enough expertise to say precisely what they're all overlooking, that's as good a bet as you'll find ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8nb71cg6r1rg5cpzxr6bg5n)) - Four steps: choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier, notice gaps, explore promising ones. This is how practically everyone who's done great work has done it, from painters to physicists. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8nb7pa2czqzjfe56cgp0y7w)) - Steps two and four will require hard work. It may not be possible to prove that you have to work hard to do great things, but the empirical evidence is on the scale of the evidence for mortality. That's why it's essential to work on something you're deeply interested in. Interest will drive you to work harder than mere diligence ever could ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8nba4pz191522kejjjbjmnr)) - The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive. Sometimes they converge, and that combination is the most powerful of all. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8nbanfzdz1mksamwkvhmfcn)) - The nature of ambition exacerbates this problem. Ambition comes in two forms, one that precedes interest in the subject and one that grows out of it. Most people who do great work have a mix, and the more you have of the former, the harder it will be to decide what to do. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8thd392f2wqkz2pa7a2kxqs)) - So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8thfnvt7t68hzkc2nggs2nw)) - a field should become *increasingly* interesting as you learn more about it. If it doesn't, it's probably not for you. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8thha71zcd04934jcs55gvj)) - If you're making something for people, make sure it's something they actually want. The best way to do this is to make something you yourself want. Write the story you want to read; build the tool you want to use. Since your friends probably have similar interests, this will also get you your initial audience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8thngc0x87z802m5jprzty1)) - There are a lot of forces that will lead you astray when you're trying to figure out what to work on. Pretentiousness, fashion, fear, money, politics, other people's wishes, eminent frauds. But if you stick to what you find genuinely interesting, you'll be proof against all of them. If you're interested, you're not astray. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8tht83mg16pqtg6t4076nwn)) - Try to finish what you start, though, even if it turns out to be more work than you expected. Finishing things is not just an exercise in tidiness or self-discipline. In many projects a lot of the best work happens in what was meant to be the final stage. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8tj5xegft1p18zgf1wcf01e)) - Great work happens by focusing consistently on something you're genuinely interested in. When you pause to take stock, you're surprised how far you've come. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8tjbsb90vwrche1ntzbdb3w)) - Writing a page a day doesn't sound like much, but if you do it every day you'll write a book a year. That's the key: consistency. People who do great things don't get a lot done every day. They get something done, rather than nothing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8tjd9gn2d8jzyys36vdws4s)) - That's one reason nerds have an advantage in doing great work: they expend little effort on seeming anything. In fact that's basically the definition of a nerd. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8tkyzykqbb764rkx25m6z3x)) - Nerds have a kind of innocent boldness that's exactly what you need in doing great work. It's not learned; it's preserved from childhood. So hold onto it. Be the one who puts things out there rather than the one who sits back and offers sophisticated-sounding criticisms of them ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8tkzx94jmzybhr8282cf636)) - if you're trying to build a powerful tool, make it gratuitously unrestrictive. A powerful tool almost by definition will be used in ways you didn't expect, so err on the side of eliminating restrictions, even if you don't know what the benefit will be. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8x53gnp7hfp6pb61dtx34r3)) - Original ideas don't come from trying to have original ideas. They come from trying to build or understand something slightly too difficult ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8x5d85gt1nvsrt3ds98d5n0)) - Talking or writing about the things you're interested in is a good way to generate new ideas. When you try to put ideas into words, a missing idea creates a sort of vacuum that draws it out of you. Indeed, there's a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8x5ffe3wa7kfawxj3vzpvyt)) - Don't divide your attention *evenly* between many topics though, or you'll spread yourself too thin. You want to distribute it according to something more like a power law. [[17](http://www.paulgraham.com/greatwork.html#f17n)] Be professionally curious about a few topics and idly curious about many more. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8x5jpwdh15xzkddh8cx83h7)) - The other thing you need is a willingness to break rules. Paradoxical as it sounds, if you want to fix your model of the world, it helps to be the sort of person who's comfortable breaking rules. From the point of view of the old model, which everyone including you initially shares, the new model usually breaks at least implicit rules. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8x5we4fmqxzwbkgg85rsabh)) - Indeed, if you think about it, a good new idea has to seem bad to most people, or someone would have already explored it. So what you're looking for is ideas that seem crazy, but the right kind of crazy. How do you recognize these? You can't with certainty. Often ideas that seem bad are bad. But ideas that are the right kind of crazy tend to be exciting; they're rich in implications; whereas ideas that are merely bad tend to be depressing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8x61r86nthxhwbfepbz3dva)) - The other way to break rules is not to care about them, or perhaps even to know they exist. This is why novices and outsiders often make new discoveries; their ignorance of a field's assumptions acts as a source of temporary passive independent-mindedness ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h9ccyzq84nxqkyma3eedvc5m)) - One of the most interesting kinds of unfashionable problem is the problem that people think has been fully explored, but hasn't. Great work often takes something that already exists and shows its latent potential ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h8x6ec2c21kf6v7yvkgyhpv1)) - Use the advantages of youth when you have them, and the advantages of age once you have those. The advantages of youth are energy, time, optimism, and freedom. The advantages of age are knowledge, efficiency, money, and power. With effort you can acquire some of the latter when young and keep some of the former when old. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2vy4wxs8r1mjbbh51m2ny1p)) - For example, schools induce passivity. Since you were a small child, there was an authority at the front of the class telling all of you what you had to learn and then measuring whether you did. But neither classes nor tests are intrinsic to learning; they're just artifacts of the way schools are usually designed. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2vyamfmfm0gr3h7cdvvz2as)) - the features that are easiest to imitate are the most likely to be the flaws. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2vyhvqjqezxj2yzdznsr9dk)) - . Good pain is a sign of effort; bad pain is a sign of damage. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2vyw0mwcrd86k1ftc982vzc))