#314 Paul Graham (How To Do Great Work)
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How to do great work? If you got the list of techniques for doing great work and a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out the following recipe assumes your very ambitious.

The first step is to decide what to work on. The work you choose needs to have three quality. Number one, IT has to be something you have a natural aptitude for.

Number two, you have to have a deep interest in IT. And number three, IT offers the scope to do great work in practice, you don't have to worry much about the third criteria. All you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and a great, interesting.

And right away we get to want to polls first, fit notes. He says, doing great work means doing something important so well that you expand people's ideas of what's possible. But there's no thresh hold for importance that something he's going to repeat many times in different, different ways to have that s just keep that in no threshold for importance is a matter of degree, and it's often hard to judge at the time anyway.

So i'd rather people focus on developing their interests rather than worrying about whether they're important or not. Just try to do something amazing and leave IT to the future generations to say, if you succeeded back to the top of essay he left off, he says, all you need to do is find something you have an attitude for in a great interest in. That sounds straight forward, but IT is often quite difficult.

When you're Young, you don't know what you're good at, and some kinds of work that you end up doing may not even exist yet. It's funny. That's the same advice.

I went, I went and talked a career day of my daughter school when he was in fourth grade. And I don't think the teachers like that very much because I started the conversation with, don't don't worry about what your parents are. Your teachers think just find out what you're really interested in and become a learning machine.

So in my own way, I told a bunch of nine year old zc. Cause was like, and when I was your age was no such thing as podcasts. I didn't exist back to what person.

The way to figure out what to work on is by working. If you're not sure what to work on, guess, but pick something and get going. You probably get wrong some of the time, but that is fine.

And that this is an idea that, you know, if i've talked about multiple times, you see in these biographies over over again, the act of finding your life's work for entrepreneur usually requires that you going have to start more than one business. I'd have to go back to the episode, see if I can even find somebody that got IT right the first time. Maybe I think the closest example, this might be mark sucker.

Uh, back to this. It's good to know about multiple things. Some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields, develop a habit of working on your own projects.

Do not let work means something that other people tell you to do. And that is such an important that sentence, don't let work mean something other people tell you to do. That is the lived experience of most people alive and dead.

In fact, paul has another essay called how to do what you love, where he says only a few hundred thousand and his guess, a few hundred thousand people ever actually figured out, let me read. I'm going to just read the next year from that a other S A quick, he says, with such powerful forces leading A A stray, it's not surprising that we find IT so hard to discover what we like to work on. Most people are doomed in child good by accepting the axim that work equals pain.

Those who escaped this are nearly all load onto the rocks by prestige or money. How many even discovers something they love to work on? A few hundred thousand, perhaps out of billions.

And so I think that sentence hits even harder after you read the extra from his past, as I don't let work mean something other people tell you to do. If you do manage to do great work one day, it'll probably be on the project of your own. What should your project be? Whatever seems to you excitingly ambitious as you grow older and your taste and projects?

Eos, exciting and important, will convert, but always preserve exciting this. I love that maxim, always preserve exciting this. There's a kind of exciting curiosity that boat, the engine and the rudder of great work.

IT will not only drive you, but if you let IT have its way, will also show you what to work on in a small degree is why I wasn't expecting to do this. S A, uh, as an episode. In fact, i'm reading two other books right now that I thought I was going to do before this.

But so many first or so many people that listen, founder sent me this. Is that saying that I start reading IT and this is exactly what happened. I feel like I have good something now I get excited and i'm like, nope, like a completely cleared everything else like there's nothing else.

Like when I people ask how I could pick books or do have like a schedule, know that for when when to work on. I just go to a bookshelf, a where I have tons of a on red books is like one of my most excited to learn about right now. And I start reading pause essay and my gop, there's answer i'm most excited about this S A right now.

And so therefore I use that. He just said, it's to both the engine and the rudder of great work. IT will not only drive you, but if you let IT have its way, you'll also show you what to work on.

Back to polls, I say, what are you excessively curious about? Curious to a degree that would born most other people? This is what you're looking for. So again, have another example this. So people, soon, because I read a lot of books, that I must have great recommendations on what to read.

But time and time again, I actually recommend a book, and then i'll hear back from that person like, oh, that was how how to read that. Like, that book was too boring. And this happened so many times.

I like, oh, my god, I didn't even understand that my thresh holds for critical boring books is so much higher than most other schools because those books we're boring to me. I was reading them because I had to satisfy whatever curiosity I had, right? So you just said, what do you excessively curious about curious to degree that would borrow most other people?

That is what you're looking for once you found something you're excessively interested in, how i'm not i'm a few paragraphs into the esa like his he's telling you like follow your interest what charly mongers is. Follow your natural drift. What do you interesting? Go do that once you found something you're excessively interested in, the next steps to learn enough about IT to get you to one of the frontiers of knowledge.

And then once you're at a frontier of knowledge and whatever, feel that you're excessive interested in you're, that's where you're going to start to learn and you're actually going to start to see you're learned enough so you can actually see gaps. And so this is this point. Many discoveries have come from asking questions about things that everyone else took for granted. If the answer seems strange to you, right, you're working in something that you're accessible and you're doing the work necessary. Ic is again, you're not, he said, this essay is not four years for you ambitious if just trying to like skate through life.

No point reading IT, but he's assuming, okay, you you're following your accessible interested you're willing to you want to do great work, which they mean you'll do enough work to get to the frontier knowledge and then once you get there, you'll notice the gaps and you're like await other people are taking this for granted if the answer seems strange to you so much, the Better. Great work often has a twitter of strangest, and then he has advice on what to do next bolly chase outlier ideas, even if other people are not interested in them, in fact, especially if they aren't. If you're excited about some possibility, everyone also ignores and you have enough expertise to say precisely what they're all overlooking.

That's as good of a bed as you will find. And this next paragraphs, last sense in this next get to one second, exactly why you know, programmes, essays, all of them are, are worth reading and rereading. And you've seen this to my own actions.

Go back to two thousand five, two thousand six, two, seven, seven. So like three weeks reading and rereading all of his essays, and like, I read them a bunch for years. And you do this because he's able to compare uh, ideas and in this case, he focused on great work in different fields, entrepreneurship, r its mathematics, whatever is.

So he says four steps. One, number one and choose a field. Number two, learn enough to get to the frontier.

Number three, ah notice the gaps. Number four, explore promising gaps. And this is the punchline of the paragraph, which I absolutely love.

This is how practically everyone who's done great work has done IT from paintings to physicists. Step two and four will require hard work. I paul, there is a good thing that paul has another great S A called how to work hard.

So I I will leave that link down below if you haven't read IT. Obviously read this as I first, and then follow all the link for his other essay. But how to how to work hard could is like, should be in the note of this essay, so says steps two and four 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. So it's essentially it's like a sure bet with us that is why it's essential to work on something you're deeply interested in.

Interest will drive you to work harder. The mere diligence ever could. And we seen this over over again.

Go back to all robocall. Go back to Michael Jordan, Edwin land, Steve jobs. We'll the same thing that we find work that feels like play. They're so intensely and deeply interested in IT that they have no choice and just wanted on the spot whether strange convergence happens where you're working all the time and I feels like you you're never working.

And then he brings up the fact that you can learn this without doing IT that suck a little more about the complicated business of figuring out what to work on. The main reason is hard is that you can tell what most kinds of work are like except by doing them, you may have to work at something for years before you know how much you like IT or how good you are at IT. And in the meantime, you're not doing and that's not learning about most other kinds of work.

And I love just sitting there reading and rereading that paragraph because it's all point. You know, it's like, listen, we're going to try to do great work. We're going to try to find our life's work.

This you can expect this to be easy because if he was easy, billions of billions of people in in the past and currently wouldn't feel to do IT. And he hits at one of the most important part because you don't know what it's like until you start doing that. And that means you might be working at something for several years before you know how much you like IT or how good you are at IT.

And in the meantime, you're not learning, are doing other kinds of work so you could go down a path and multiple path even that are just a dead end all the way to you're in the brief. And I think this is why I think the S A so important that I would detect entire essay to IT to, like, really stop and think and read and reread, because this is not easy, and we only get one shot at life so that goes into some of the things like like why is this so complicated? Like the search structures and institutions and the society created that doesn't make this easier and if you read um I think i've knows some this later but pause that says a lot well just kind like he's constant poking at the way we we like our educational systems are set up.

You can tell he's just not a found and he's not hiding the fact he's not a found. So he says educational systems in most countries expect you to commit to a field long before you could know what it's really like, which is madness. This doesn't make sense. IT would be Better if they at least admitted, if they admitted that the system not only can do much help you figure out what to work on, but is designed on, though this is so crazy, this is what the great thing about, is writing, because it's so like refined, like he talked about the editing process all time, at least went like half a year, writing this to, say, from a mistaken. So these ideas just get right to your brain, but listen to, this is madness.

But IT is designed on the assumption that you'll somehow magically guess, as a teenager, if I go back and think what I was like as a teenager, if you do the same, like, how many ideas did you believe are true and I use that were valuable, uh, when you were teenagers, as you still believe I was, think about the world, like maybe one that reading books is prior good use of my time, right? And reading the right box is probably good use of my time. The idea is like, hey, we're going to pick what we're going to do and we're going to figure that out and not figure out guess the magically guess is a great way to put IT as a teenager.

And then this is what I was alleging to, like White spent what time thinking about? I don't believe over the S A radio. Think about IT.

They don't tell you, but I will when he comes to figure out what to work on, you're on your own. And so then he gets the importance of the only going to figure out you have to take, actions do not be passive. What should you do if you're Young and ambitious but don't know what to work on? What you should not do is drift along passively.

Assuming the problem will solve itself, you need to take action. When you read by graphs of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved. They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting, or by reading a book that they happen to pick up.

I need to pause here. This has been on my mind a ton. First of all, obviously, what people are there is completely right.

They need a lot of biofeedback people who done great work, which is the entire part cast. It's remarkable how much look is involved, right? Just look at the last few weeks. We don't have to go into the last seven years, right?

How is that possible to about James Cameron and Chris fro en both watch the movie two thousand one a space auto sy when they were kids, and both arrived at the same conclusion that I can do that, that I can make movies. Maybe even the the best example recently you got to go back, listen to the mark train. Episode seeks like episode, reach over something.

This is whole thing, because about his Young life is really about this essay. Like he's a Young, ambitious person, doesn't know what to work on. He literally turns from same mucus to our train, IT told the end of the episode fact. I'll tell you, I think it's like fifty minute mark because I have the transcript in front of me. I'm going to read from this like the series of events that had to happen for mark train to finally find his path.

Listen till the the episode but this is because you having heard IT, i'm just going to give you this like two paragraphs this me reading from transition ript from the mark twin episode and so I say, let's look back at what is taking place first. This is going to be a code o deal. He travels down the river, stumbles upon the best job that he thought he would have forever, which is the mississip river boat steamboat pilot.

Which is kind of crazy that Martine wasn't planning on being A A, A writer in a lecture. It's like, know, the best shop ever is the the steamboat captains or steam boat pilots. Then something completely out of his control, the civil war comes and causes him to flee, to go out west and have all these series of adventures.

He turns from sam Clements into my train. Along the way, he meets a bunch of people along the way to give him fantastic c advice and change her projective of his life. He experienced on blue able highs and then at the very bottom unbeliever lows, where he literally has a gun to his head.

He is contempt suicide. Then right after that, he does something smart, puts the its on the pistol, picks up the pan, right? He finds the opportunity of life, writes what he thinks is just a silly story.

That story goes vial. That story then creates all, all, all these other fans and people that love, train and want to help him. He turns that into a trip to who I, he meets another one of his fans who happens to be a very influential diplomats who leads him to the greatest journalistic scoop he has of all time.

That scope leads him to his elector career, which further enhances his public profile, which then leads him to this twenty three we trip in europe, which in turn is going to lead to the source material for his first great book, the first public, the success that he ever has, which then in turn changes his life forever. That example of my march in is a microsoft actly. What program is talking about here? What what should do if you're Young and ambitious but don't know what to work on?

March in which Young, ambitious, he had no idea what to work on, he put pen to paper, he took action, is another way to think about that, right? When you read biography of people have been great. Work is remarkable.

How much life is involved. Discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting. Or we're reading a book that they happen to pick up at the end of that paragraph. Paul has a fantastic footnote.

There are many reasons curious people are more likely to do great work, but one of the most sutter is that by casting a wide net, they're more likely to find the writing to work on in the first place. Okay, so back up top, when in doubt, optimized for interesting ist fields change as you learn more about them. I feel you become increasingly interesting as you learn more about IT.

If IT doesn't, it's probably not for you. Do not worry if you're interested in different things in other people, the stranger your taste in interestingness, the Better strange taste often or strong ones. And a strong case for work means you'll be productive and you'll be more likely to find new things if you're looking where few others have looked before.

One sign that you're suit for some kind of work is when you like, even the parts that other people find T, D, S, are frightening. So that's another he's introit is reintroducing that idea, right? Find work that feels like play.

If you're interesting, the work will pull you in. Fields are not people. You do not owe them any loyalty. If in the course of working on one thing, you discover another as more exciting, do not be afraid to switch. 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 that you want to use. This should follow from the exciting this rule.

So what is he saying there? Make what you are most excited about that the main message of what he trying to teach he also has this um there I think I talked about this before but in other essay he he couldn't figure out like he would notice a pattern when he doing like office hours with founders that why commentor that the ones they were kind of loss her like kind of not doing well. They were weren't even using our product.

They were building a product that they thought other people might want or trying to solve a problem that they really understand. And that's a big problem. You're not if if you don't love your own product, if you're not using your own product, there's nothing like to enjoy ourself around.

It's like why don't you just write the story that you want to read, build the tool that you want to use? I mentioned this case exactly because so many people get a wrong, instead of making what they want, they try to make what some imaginary, more sophisticated audience wants. And when you go down that while you're loss.

So I kind of just ran over the point that he was making there. There are a lot of forces that I will lead you a strake when you're trying to figure out what to work on, pretentiousness, fashion, fear, money, politics, other people's interests, in other words, like distractions. I can you offer your true, authentic path, but if you stick to what you find genuinely interesting, they'll be proof against all of them.

If you're interested, you're not a stray. And so when I read at the first time, I said that may be my favorite paragraph so far and really cause that line. If you stick to what you find genuinely interesting, you'll be proof against all of them.

If you're interested, you're not a stray. This idea will be very familiar to you. And I it's why my number one recommendation is still James dicon first automotive phy against the odds.

Following your interest usually means following them, past rejection and failure. IT does take a good deal of voting. While you'll need boldness, you usually don't need much planning.

In most cases, the recipe for doing great work is simply work hard on excitingly ambitious projects, and something good will come of IT. The trouble with planning is that that only works for achievements you can describe in advance. You can win a gold metal or get rich by deciding as a child and internatio sly pursuing that goal.

But you can't discover natural selection that way. I think for most people who want to do great work, the right strategy is not to plan too much at each stage, do whatever seems most interesting and gives you the best options for the future. I call this approach.

Let me cause I need to repeat that at each stage, do whatever seems most interesting. He's repeated that to us. What fifteen times, maybe so far, in different ways at each stage, do whatever seems most interesting and gives you the best options for the future.

I call this approach staying up wind. This is how most people who've done great work seem to have done IT, even when you found something exciting to work on. Working on IT is not always going to be straight forward.

There will be times when some new idea makes you leap out of bed in the morning and great, straight to work. But there also be plenty of times when things are not like that. You don't just put out your sale and get blown forward by inspiration.

There are headwinds and currents and hidden shows. So there's a technique to working, just as there is to selling, for example, while you must work hard, it's possible to work too hard. And if you do that, you'll fine.

You get diminishing returns. Fatigue will make you stupid and eventually even damage your health. The point at which work yields diminishing returns depends on the type, some of the hardest st types.

You might only be able to do four or five hours a day. Ideally, those hours will be continuous to the center. You can try to range your life so you have big blocks of time to work in. And when land said, at best, I never surette this quote because it's one of my favorites. My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can out in people resources they didn't know they had.

Program says, ideally, those hours will be continuous to the extent you can try to range your life so you have big blocks of time to work in IT is usually mistake to lie yourself if you want to do great work, but this is one of the rare cases where IT isn't. When i'm reluctant to start work in the morning, I often trick myself by saying, i'll just read over what i've got so far five minutes later and I found something that seems mistake or incomplete and i'm off and running. So i'm about tricking himself into working even when you don't feel like a and he talks about the similar techniques work for starting new projects, and he says it's OK to lie yourself about how much a project will not tell.

For example, lots of great things began with someone saying, how hard could IT be? He's absolutely rate on that. How many times i've lost counting? How many times I read in these after this is done, they'd be like, I would have never done this to begin with. I won't never try IT if I actually knew going into IT how hard or difficult or painful IT would wind up being.

So there is some kind of like benefit to I don't want to go like blissful, I guess, blissful ignorance maybe is the way thing about that 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 self discipline. In many projects, a lot of the best work happens. And what was meant to be the final stage.

So I got to post there and I A weird um idea that that's the king mine that was prompted by reading that. So I guess you just try to finish that even if IT more working, you expected finishing things is not just an exercise in self discipline. In many projects, a lot of the best work happens.

And what was meant to be the final stage, I would say, in that's true for people's lives, too. I was just trying to figure out like you when you're reading these stories, like why do so many like you're not going to find many people in treneman to find many people make their best. So their best product when they're like twenty are like twenty five.

And this happened so much as like, why do so many people want of doing their best work many decades into their career? I think the highway center would be like, I think about this is like, okay, well, yeah, like they've had three decades of an entrepreneur practice. Like they started to venture businesses.

Now they know their industry Better. They just understand the shape of the work and what they want to do. And I think that is true. But I one thing that I just can let go of is I think a key to doing truly great work is building a business as authentic to you, to your true self.

And what I realized, like, oh, but they know themselves Better, that the process of self discovery of, like, really fig, who who am I truly not? Am I imitating what's around me? Like, who I truly? What are my true interests? And like, what do I actually want to do with my life? That process is just take many, many decades.

So I get I had a lot more experience and practice. And entrepreneurs, they also know themselves way Better, multiple decades into the curing when they started. And I think there's a they they like a relationship between those two things.

To this S A another permissible lies exaggerate the importance of what you're working on, at least in your own mind, if that how you discover something new IT may turn out not to have been a lie at all. That is a fascinating idea that there might be a good idea to lie yourself. Exaggerate, right, the importance of what you're working on, at least in your own mind, if that helps you discover something new, IT may turn out to not have been a lie at all.

And so the footnote on that idea is he says, this is an idea I learned from this book called mathematicians apology. And he says, I recommend to anyone ambitious to do great work in any field. And he vows that ensure ising idea up with another one.

This is paul theory on poor project procrastination per project, per crassness ation. Since there are two senses of starting work per day and per project, there are also two forms of procrastination per project. Procrastination is far more dangerous.

You put off starting that ambitious project from year to year because the time is in quite right. One reason poor project, progressive ation is so dangerous is that they usually came of logic itself as work. You're not just sitting around doing nothing.

You're working indus dusters ously on something else. You're too busy to notice IT. And then I love a simple guide on how to catch you for actually doing this. The way to be this is stop. actually.

Ask yourself, am I working on what I most want to work on when you're Young? It's okay if the answer sometimes no, but this gets increasingly dangerous as you get older. Just ask yourself and I working on what I most want to work on.

Great work usually entails spending what would seem to most people an unreasonable amount of time on a problem. I have to pause there. When I read that sentence immediately comes to mind when sea jobs said that everything great has a shared ingredient time.

Paul says great work usually entail spending what would seem to most people an unreasonable amount of time on a problem. Great work happens by focusing consistently on something you're genuinely interested in. When you pause to take stock, you'll be surprised on how far you've come.

The reason were surprised is that we underestimate accumulated fect of work. Oh, another great paragraph this is going to be in, I say, when to read multiple times throughout life. Uh, hope you read the entire thing.

When you're one, listen to writing a page per day doesn't sound like much, but if you do day, you'll write a book a year. That is the key consistency. People who do great things don't get a lot done every day.

They get something done rather than nothing. And if you do work at compounds, you'll get exponential growth. The trouble with exponential growth is that the curve feels flat in the beginning.

IT isn't IT is still a wonderful extension al curve. But we can't grass that intuitively. So we underrate exponential growth in early stages, something that grows exponentially.

Ally can become so valuable that is worth making an extraordinary effort to get started is so good. Okay, something that grows excelling. Check this out that let me tell you something that I was seeking about.

One, reading something that grows accidentally become so valuable, it's making an extraordinary effort to get started. So I wasn't protest with my daughter. She's eleven. And right now he loves tailless wift. So we were listening to the acquired protests episode on Taylor swift acquires, made by my friends banner David and I can member banner David at IT.

But one of them said that Taylor swift, ed, early in her gray rate SHE, personally responded to, like twenty five thousand messages from fans on the blogging platform tumblr that was a popular back in the day when he was just starting out. So it's like this idea. It's like twenty five thousand personal responses to the small fan base that he had.

I had to feel at that time to her like the curve is going to feel flat to her because it's still the beginning. Now you have fast forward about fifteen years later, maybe twenty years later. He might be like fifteen when SHE was doing IT, so you might be twenty years ago and now she's selling out stadiums back to back to back like multiple days like I was just looking her show in lay.

I think she's doing the stadium there like five minutes in a row or something like that. But this idea, something that grows exponentially, become so valuable, that is worth making an extraordinary effort to get started. This is something that the Young tailor swift t understood.

intuitive. Ly, that's it's amazing. Work doesn't just happen when you're trying. There's a kind of undirected thinking you do when walking or taking a shower or lying in bed that can be very powerful.

By letting your mind wander a bit, you'll often solve problems you are unable to solve by frontal attack. And again, this is just been top of mind. I've heard this bunch, but like Christopher i've been thinking about, I like Christopher Allen and David ovv just because they build on top of monks of me.

Episode about them both recently sounds like them if you read about them like. This is, they think like this. They use this.

You have to working hard, uh, in a Normal way to benefit from this phenomenon, though you can just walk around daydreaming. That daydreaming has to be interleaved with deliberate work that feeds its questions. They will tell you that you need to give your mind time to think, time to wonder.

I think is the the term that paul about to use here, which is fantastic when you let your mind wander IT wonders to whatever you are about most at that moment, to avoid the kind of distraction that pushes your work out of the top spot. Are you waste this valuable type of thinking on the distraction? Instead, there is one exception to this, do not avoid law.

Consciously cultivate your taste in the work done in your field until you know which is best and what makes us so you don't know what you're aiming for. And then on the very extreme end, taste is actually a mote ah and that is what you're aiming for because if you don't try to be the best, you won't even be good. So I need to back that up.

I'm going to read that together. So interrupted this. He's going to tell that you must aim to be the best, consciously activate your taste and the work done in your field until you know which is the best and what makes you so you don't know what your aiming for, and that is what you're aiming for.

Because if you don't try to be the best, you want me to be good. This observation has been made by so many people and so many different fields that I might be worth thinking about why IT is true. Don't try to work in a distinctive style.

Just try to do the best job you can. you. And if you do, you won't be able to help doing IT in a distinctive way. Style is doing things in a distinctive way without trying to.

Trying to is affectation so that's defined affectation because he's going to use this where a couple times IT is uh behavior, speech, writing as artificial and design to impress with IT, which is the opposite of what really he thinks like follow your nature drift that in which your most interested in be your guide. And now in some people do this, and they're like putting on a show for all the people. None of this is going to work.

If it's inauthentic to you, you adopt an impressive but fake persona. And while you're pleas with the impressiveness, the fitness is what shows in the work. And I think all these ideas feed on each other following us.

Interest is authenticity. You and therefore the work put you into IT and that you do for a long time. So you get Better at as as a byproduct.

All these things work very well together. So again, you're not an impressive the fake persona. And while you're pleased with the impressionist, the fake ness is what shows in the work.

If you succeed at an ambitious project, you're not a nobody. You're the person who did that. So just do the work and your identity will take care of itself and so is like a negative role you get to, hey, avoid being fake, whatever the case is.

But he's like, well, how do you actually express this idea positively? How would you say what to be instead of what not to be? And he says, the best answers is earnest.

And so we're going to find earnest resulting from, or showing sincere in its hance conviction. I love that definition, intense conviction. The core being earnest is being intellectually honest.

You're trying to see more truth than others have seen so far, key of doing great work. And how can you have a sharp by for truth if you're intellectually dishonest? Another sub component of earnestness is informality.

IT means focusing on what matters instead of what does in what formality and affectation have in common. Is that as well as doing the work you're trying to seem a certain way as you're doing IT? That's one reason nerds have an advantage in doing great work.

They expand little effort on seeming anything. Nerds have a kind of innocent boldness. This is alex.

Nerds have a kind of innocent boldness. That's exactly what you need in doing great work. IT is not learned. Be the one who puts things out there, rather than the one who sits back and offer sophisticated sounding criticisms of them, is easy to criticize, is true in the most literal sense. And the road to great work is never easy.

And I know thing like, who cares what the critics say? The loud's booze always come from the cheapest seats. There's a theme that runs through a lot of the great founders, and it's the fact that they believe that their opinion on what they're working on, their opinion is greater than every other person's opinion around them regarding of what they're working on.

And they're too busy building their empires and making great products and creating a fortune for themselves and their family to stick their head up and start talking shit about what other people are doing. Paul's other essay, life is short, which I think you are really like via a perfectly pair with this S A. Because you're realize outside of taking care, your health, working on your mission or being with your tribe, nothing else matters.

Stop wasting your time. Focus on what you want to do is so hard. The road to great work is never easy.

I doubt be possible to do great work without being earnest. Another sign of people that can do great work. They're willing to redo things. You may have the third things away and redo them.

You you have to be willing to when there's something you need to reduce statistic bias and laziness will combine to keep you denial about IT have the confidence to cut do not keep something that doesn't fit just because you're proud of IT or because IT costs you a lot of effort in some kinds of work is good to strip whatever you're doing to its essence. The result will be more concentrate you'll understand a Better. I don't mean a why, but when I got to this section, I was thinking about this story.

Read in one of the biography of Steve jobs, they had spend so much time on this concept for the apple stores, just be before, like open to the public. And I forgot who the person was, the guy helping a Steve on this. They're king on this for maybe, I don't know, like a year more than that and they're going the hidden like this prototype of an apple store and like this warehouse summer and the Steve like picks them up to go like take a look at IT.

And the guy had realized the day before all my god, we have this set up, the incorrect way, like we should have IT set up by, like, what the devices do, or whatever the case was. The important part was Steve s. reaction.

So the guy was like, shit. We put us this time in africa to IT. We need to like, destroy everything we did and start over because this other way is a Better idea. And Steve flip his lid, started getting upset, like yelling.

Then he get Simon right because he's just he has cancer, is like very sick when this happening and he's just like, you know, I don't know if I have the energy to do this, like from scratch again. And so then it's a complete quiet. They're riding in the car in complete silence.

They get to the prototypes for all the rest of people. The other employees at apple are waiting for them. And then Steve quietly says, he's right.

Do what he says, start from scratch. We're doing IT all over again. You have to throw things away and redo them.

You have to be willing to. Another sign of somebody that's doing great work. IT looks easy. They make IT look easy. Some of the best work will seem like IT took comparatively little effort because IT was in a sense or be there IT didn't have to be built just seen.

It's a very good sign when it's hard to say whether you're creating something or discovering IT when you're doing work that could be seen as either creation or discovery air on the side of discovery, try thinking yourself as a mere conduit to which the ideas take their natural shape. StrAngely enough, one exception is the problem of choosing a problem to work on. This is usually seen as a search, but in the best case is more like creating something.

In the best case, you create the field in the process of explorer IT. And I love what he says here next, because I feel the same way I never like to term creative process IT seems misleading. Originality isn't a process, but a habit of mind.

Original thinkers throw off new ideas about whatever they focus on. And he is that idea to the ideas that earlier, like, don't sit their passively. Man, you got at work like you're gonna arn.

What field is you you work on and how do you great work by doing IT? You're much more likely to have original ideas when you're working on something. Original ideas don't come from trying to have original ideas.

They come from trying to build or understand something slightly too difficult. You'll have more new ideas. If you explored a lots of different topics, do not divide your attention evenly between many topics. So IT sounds almost like a contradiction, but it's not you explain that you have more new ideas, right?

If you explore a lot of different topics, but do not divide attention evenly between many topics, so are you spread yourself to, then you want to distribute according to something more like a power law? Be peh. I gness all this like, I know how ties everything together.

Be professionally curious about a few topics and idly curious about many more. Curiosity and originality are closely related. Having new ideas is a strange game because they usually consists of seeing things that were right under your nose when you've seen a new idea attends to seem obvious.

When an idea seems simultaneously novel and obvious, it's probably a good one. And then he gets til like, why is is such a strange game and another way says, like, why is is like such president is such a small percentage of humanity seeing the new idea you you to change the way you look at the world. It's admitting to yourself that have a broken model of the world, right? Broken model of the world.

Leave a trail of clues where they bash against reality. Most people do not want to see these clues. IT would be an understatement to say that they are attached the current model.

And I think underneath all this, like the main causes, because people are terrified of change, which is strange, because we're living in a world where the only constant thing is changed. In fact, I was reading this sa and then going through a bunch of other quotes that paul collects on his website that I think you're excEllent. And there's a line that the king in mine went, I would got to the section.

I said, change breaks the brittle. Back to the S. A. The other thing you need is a willingness to break rules. If you want to fix your model of the world, IT helps to be the sort of person whose comfortable breaking rules you understand the degree of rule breaking required, because no idea is seem much more conservative once they succeed. That is.

So what he said at the beginning, the section, the fact that is facing that once we discover a new idea, IT tends to seem obvious. f. The fact they seem perfectly reasonable when you using the new model of the world, they brought with them the ideas, bring the models, not the other way, around this faster.

But they didn't at the time. IT took the greater part of a century for the heliocentric model to be generally accepted, even among astronomers. Because I felt so wrong.

If you think about IT, a good new idea has to seem bad to most people. Or someone would have already explored IT back to breaking rules. There are two ways to be comfortable breaking rules.

To enjoy breaking them are to be indifferent to them. I call these two cases being aggressively and passively independent minded, the aggressively independent minded, or the naughty ones. Rules don't merely fail to stop them.

Breaking rules gives these people additional energy for this sort of person. Delight at the sheer audacity. Y of a project sometimes supplies them enough activation energy to get IT started.

The other way to break rules is to not care about them, or perhaps not even know they exist. This is why novices and outsiders often make new discoveries. Their ignorance of a field assumptions are field rules, right?

Act as a source of temporary, passive, independent, mindless ss. And so he goes back to original point that deciding what to work on is so important that a lot of people are getting distracted because they like working on fashionable problem. So program puts this an even Better way, like the actual value is going to recruit things that not top of mind.

He says unfashionable problems are undervalued. Working on an unfashionable problem can be very pleasing. There's no hype or hurry opportunities. Sts and critics are both occupied elsewhere. And that's not the same as like doing the opposite of whatever radios want to do.

IT rate is the most common type of overlook problem, is not explicitly unfashionable in the sense of being out of fashion. IT just doesn't seem to matter as much as IT actually does. And the only way to find this as you've pulling your natural interest, again, tight, everything, is together.

How do you find this? By being self indulgent, by letting your curiosity have its way, and turning out, at least temporarily, the little voice in your head that said, that says you should only be working on important problems. And so it's important to note that the word important in that sentence has quotation Marks.

It's just like, really, it's the opinion of other people, right, by being self indulged, by letting your curiosity have its way in tuning out that little voice in your head that says you should only be working on important problems. And so I want to positive because I think this is so important. So in addition to reading this, I say, I thought I saw that paul's wife and his partner on y commentor Jessica said that she's going na reread every year.

I think he said every year he wants to reread this. I say how to do a great work. And SHE also really reads like polls.

I say life is short every year. And so when you read them back to back, you realize, oh, well, that's like, really good. They go well together.

And what was fascinating is there is this line in the life is short episode. esa. Ray says the things that matter aren't necessary. The ones people would call important, he uses important in quotation Marks again.

So this ability to literally like not care, to deliver an automated life, ask yourself my following my own interest, is this what I want to work on? And if the answer is yes, everybody else's opinion is irrelevant. And I think as you get older, you actually know yourself, that becomes like a easier to do.

But it's obviously something that is not common, right? The ability do is not common because IT comes up in these essays over over again, so much so that paul has explicit tell the reader, give advice, hey, that even if you hear them like the backyard mind, that's fine. Like shut IT up because it's it's taking off the path that you're meant to be off.

That little voice in your head that you that says you should only be working on. Quite important problems ignored. why? Because most people that work on important problems and do great work, those problems were not seen as important to the external world at the time they started working on them.

And you only know that if you go back and you study the creation, all these new industries and read all these other bike phy IT pops up over and over again. The example is, again, is the fact that Henry forward is sitting and detroit in thousand nine hundred, working on an internal combustion engine in his fucking kitchen, and everybody around him saying, what are you doing? You're wasting time.

Cars are obviously going to be an electric, or there is going to be a steam powered his boss tells him, because he's working. The electric company is an engineer. If you keep up your experimentations with your internal condition engine, you need to have to choose between the engine are your job and hand you for that cool.

I'm choosing the engine. He followed his natural interest with the entire outside world, was telling them this is an important of this little stupid thing that you're doing. Focus on the big thing.

Obviously, electricity is the biggest invention. Obviously, all the cars are going to be electric. Last for one thousand years, when that conversation, Henry ford owns a hundred percent of the ford motor company has created a manufacturer car.

They made over fifteen million people's lives Better after the fifteen th million model t rolled off the assembly lines. That guidance opinion about what Henry ford should be doing matter. No IT didn't matter at number fifteen, and he didn't matter when he said IT.

And paul describes perfectly, says, try asking yourself if you were to going to take a break from coronal serious work to work on something just because IT would be really interesting. What would you do? The answer is probably more important than IT seems.

What might seem to be merely the initial step. Deciding what to work on is, in a sense, the key to the whole game. I know you know how far we are into this essay, but I think it's obvious why so many people that listen to the park.

Guess sentience. To me, this is perfect. Few grasses. The fact that picking what to work on is the key to the whole game, right? Few grasp this. People think big ideas are the answers, but often the real insight was in the question. Sometimes you Carry a question for a long time.

Great work often comes from returning to a question you first notice years before, and you could not stop thinking about IT is a great thing to be rich and unanswered questions and a way to know that if you have a good on answer question, he says the best questions grow in the answering. You'll notice a thread and then try pulling on IT and IT just gets longer and longer so don't require a question to be obviously big before you try answering IT goes back to the Henry ford just messing around fallowing this own interest in his itchen right? You can really predict that it's hard enough to even notice the thread, let alone to predict how much I will unravel if you pull on IT.

IT is just Better to be promiscuity. Curious to put a little bit on a lot of threats and see what happens. Big things starts small.

The initial versions of big things were often just experiments. Our side projects, our talks, which then growing to something bigger. So start lots of small things.

Being prolific is undated. The more different things you try, the greater the chance of discovering something new. Understand, though, that trying lots of things will mean trying lots of things that do not work.

You cannot have a lot of good ideas without also having a lot of bad ones. And so I love the fact that paul says being prolific is underrated. A few days before I read this, my friend, a nil, who is the founder of meter, he actually sent me his post.

He, on his personal website, a neo, collects examples, like historical examples, of people that he calls outlandishly prolific. I'll leave the link down below in case you want to look at the list. It's it's fantastic, uh, air on the side of starting, which is easier when starting means starting small.

Those two ideas fit together like two puzzle pieces. So air on the side of starting and then it's easier to start when IT means starting small. How do you get from starting small to doing something great by making successive versions great? Things are almost always made in successive versions.

You start with something small and involve IT. And the final version is both clever and more ambitious than anything you could have planned. See what I just did there.

Where are deep into this S. A. now? And now he he finds ways to take ideas that he referenced.

You know, maybe I know, five thousand words ago. This ideas I don't went to matter. I'm planning, get in.

You'll start to learn more. And then he, he, he tie everything together. You're following a natural interest, are having a bias to action. You're starting small. You're evolving and over time.

And as a result, the final version is able to clever and more ambitious than anything you could have planned, begin by trying the simplest thing that could possible work surprisingly often. IT does do not try to cream too much new stuff into any one version. Evolve instead.

And so there's a few times in the essay way he'll talk about with the difference chain, like, what would you do if you're Younger, are a little bit older, like he describes this, use the advantages of youth when you have them, and the advantages of age once you have those. The advantages of youth, their energy, time, optimism and freedom, the advantages of age or knowledge, efficiency, money and power, the old also have the advantage of knowing which advantages they have. I like that line.

The Young often have them without realizing IT. The biggest is probably time. The Young have no idea how rich they are in time. The best way to turn this time to advantage is to use IT in a slightly frivolous way to learn about something you don't need to know about, just out of curiosity, or to try building something just because that would be cool, or we to become frequently good at something. So I need to repeat that because he's like, listen, i'm not going to tell you to waste your time, but list, if you are Young, you have no idea how rich you are. Time, the best way to turn this time into an advantage.

Is to use IT in a slightly frivolous way so he seems like to experiment to like, what are my true interests? What are things I want to work on? How am I going to find up a path that I can actually do, uh, like we turned into me being able to do great work and at the root cause it's like, well, just follow your curiosity, follow your interest which again is the main theme here, right? And so he's going to abit on myself because I wanted to read, repeat that because then he goes into what he means.

Spend time lavishly when you're Young, but don't simply wasted. There is a big difference between doing something you worry might be a wae of time and doing something you know for sure will be. And so the ability to spend time labor shy is something that only the the Young hat right now you talk to about a feel little older.

You have another vantage ed when the most valuable kinds of knowledge you get from experience is to know what you don't have to worry about. The Young know all the things that could matter, but not the relative importance. So they worry equally about everything when they should worry much more about a few things and hardly at all about the rest.

And the source of this confusion about, okay, well, like they're worried about everything equally. When I just focus on the really important things and ignore anything else. So the source of the confusion he goes back to this is the problem with with school is that IT just fills your head with a bunch of nonsense.

So everybody, almost by defauts, will arrive at adulthood with a head full of nonsense. And he says, much of that nonsense left in your head is left there by schools. Schools induce passivity. The sooner you overcome this, the Better. Schools also give you a misleading impression of what work is like in school.

They tell you what the problems are, and they're almost always solvable using no more than what you've been taught so far in real life, you have to figure out what the problems are, and you often don't know if they available at all. But perhaps the worst thing the schools do is they train you to win by hacking the test. You cannot do great work by doing that.

So stop looking for that kind of shortcut. Do not skip on the work itself. Don't think of yourself as dependent on some gatekeeper or giving you a big break.

Even if this were true. The best way to get IT will be to focus on doing good work rather than chasing influential people. Is that idea that you should try to be so good that people can ignore you? People neutra field often copy existing work.

There's nothing inherently bad about that. There's no Better way to learn how something works in trying to reproduce IT, nor is copying necessarily make your work on original originality is the presence of new ideas, not the absence of old ones. And then he goes into why you wanna study all the great work that came before you, not just to work.

And like your failure industry, one of the most powerful kinds of copying is to copy something from one field into another. History is so full of chance. Discoveries of this type that is probably worth giving chance a hand by deliberately learning about other kinds of work.

You can take ideas from quite distant fields if you let them be metaphors, that is. So i'm going to either repeat that. I love that one of the most powerful kinds of copying is to copy something from one field into another.

History is so full of chance discoveries of this type that is probably worth giving chance a hand. By deliberately learning about other kinds of work. You can take ideas from quite distant fields if you let them be metaphors.

And then he goes into something that's repeater through history a lot. They're sociate the begin of industries. They all seem all the supermarket to people seem to be within close physical proximity to one another.

If a lot of the best people your field are collected in one place is usually a good idea to visit for a while. IT will increase your ambition. And also, by showing you that these people are human, increase your self confidence.

If you are earnest, you'll probably get a warmer welcome than you might expect. Most people, this is. So I love the idea.

Most people who are very good at something are happy to talk about IT with anyone who's genuinely interested. If they're really good at their work, then they probably have a hobbist interest in IT. And hobbist always want to talk about their hobby.

Seek out the best colleagues, that is like the online maximum of this section, right? Seek out the best colleagues if you listen to the mark train episodes ference. Earlier, the best advice mark train ever got that he followed for the the remain forty four years of his life was this american diplomat.

And hawaii told him, you have great ability. I believe you have genius. What you need now is refinement of association. Seek companies ship among men of superior intellect and character. We're fun.

This is like the punched e for me, we're fine yourself and your work never affiliate with inferiors always climb programs. Way of saying that to seek out the best colleagues. Colleagues don't just affect your work, though, they also affect you.

So work with people you want to become like because you will and he's going to go into. While a great work happens in clusters, which just see this will never getting back is not merely Better but necessary. Judging from history, the degree to which great work happens in clusters suggest that one colleagues often make the difference between doing great work and not.

Wow, we gotto read that again. The degree to which great work happens in clusters suggest that one's colleagues often make the difference, train doing great work and not. That's why to see so many of history go founders, they put, they repeat over over again in the importance of recruiting and finding a way to attract the very best people, whether as partners, employees, that doesn't matter, like they're all repeat this over over gun.

And then paul has a great way to tell if you done this or not. How do you know when you have sufficiently good colleagues? In my experience?

When you do, you know, which means if you're unsure, you're probably don't. And then the essay takes a fascinating turn because he talks about, like maintaining your own, like intermonth gue in your own morale. Husband, your morale. IT is the basis of everything.

When you're working on ambitious projects, you have to nurture and protect IT of the multiple episodes and read multiple books or short ga, and he says is over over again like it's very dangerous when you started doubting he would very deliberate, uh, get away physically from people that would try to like, uh, either tell him h aren't don't do that impossible like you can't part like how can you be an active like no one can even understand you or you can get famous for lifting weights and becoming. Like, you can become the governor of california. Like, what are you talking about? And so this ideas like very dangerous.

You gonna get enough negative input from, like, the external world. You can't have any coming from yourself. It's a very dangerous when you start double yourself.

Paul, sing here. It's like, listen, the basis of everything. When you're working on ambitious projects, he goes back to why managing your inner monogue, your own morale is so important. Morale compounds via work. hi. Morale helped you do good work, which increases your morale and helps you do even Better work if you're not doing work that can demoralize you and make IT even harder to do good work.

Since that matters so much for this cycle to be running in the right direction, IT can be a good idea to switch to easier work when you're stuck, just so you start getting something done. One of the biggest mistakes ambitious people make is to allow sep acts to destroy them around all at once, like a balloon popping. You can inactivate yourself against this by explicitly ly considering setbacks, a part of your process.

Solving hard problems will always involve some backtracking. Never let setbacks pen you into backtracking more than you need to IT is not necessarily a bad sign. If work is a struggle, any more than is a bad sign to be out of breath while running.

And so then he turns the S A entities all back into morale. An audience is a critical component of morale. And so this become obvious, I think, as you go through this.

But he's talking about like the people using whatever IT is that you're making, right? What is who is? You're making great work. It's not like the only person that can be great if you're only person sees IT.

So somebody is using the tour or listening to what you're doing or whatever reading IT whatever is if you're just starting out, a small but dedicated audience can be enough to sustain you. If a handful of people genuinely love what you're doing, that is enough. Avoid letting intermediaries come between you and your audience.

That point is actually very important. Avoid letting intermediaries come to you and your audience. When I first thought about that, I thought about Taylor or swift.

I got on tumblr, right, talking directly to her fans, to the people listening to her music. There's nobody in between her and her audience. Also can be applied.

And like the more like traditional like business product sense, where do you study the career of Edwin? He are trying to make he's always making innovations because he you know creating new technology, new patterns, new science. And he was he was trying to sell into like he wasn't connected to the end user.

So he's trying to make headlights, automobile headlights, a safer, but he's got to sell and convince people like a handful people may be detroit. And when he did for many years and fail days, like i'm never letting anybody else get between me and the so then he starts making consumer kids right that he can talk directly to the customer, which is his cameras. Anything that's a really important observation.

Like, okay, but I failed when I couldn't communicate directly with the customer because I was selling the car company is opposed to people drive in the car. But I succeeded wildly when I had a direct connection with the customers, the one actually buying my cameras. And so paul says, avoid letting intermediaries come between you and your audience.

That is so liberating to the scape IT that you might be Better off switching to an adjacent type of work if that work will let you go direct. And then back to this idea, get away from the naysayers, flee the doubt or so. You don't need that.

The people you spend time with also have a big effect, big effect on your morale. Seek out the people who increase your energy and avoid those who decrease IT. Do not marry someone who doesn't understand that you need to work or sees your work as competition for your attention.

If you're ambitious, you need to work. It's almost like a medical condition. So someone who won't let you work either doesn't understand you or does and doesn't care. And I think porting answers a question. I've been asked question the past.

Like do I think the people cover instead in the posts are like happier than the average person and so I don't know how to really answer that and like, I kind of waffle, but this idea was like, oh, if you're ambitious, you need to work is almost like a medical condition uh, he says people who do great work are not necessarily happier than everyone else, but they're happier than they would be if they didn't. That is a Better way to think about IT than i've ever come up with. In fact, if you're smart and ambitious to, it's dangerous not to be productive.

People who are smart and ambitious but don't achieve much tend to become bitter. And he goes back into the recurrent thing, do not be guided by prestige. IT is okay to want to impress other people, but choose the right people.

The opinion of people you respect is signal fame, which is the opinion of a much larger group you might or might not respect, just adds noise. The prestige of a type of work is, at best, a trAiling indicator. If you do anything well enough, you will make IT prestige.

The question to ask about the type of work is not how much prestige IT has, but how well IT could be done. And this might be the best line of the entire essay. Curiosity is the best guide.

Your curiosity never lies. And IT knows more than you do about what's worth paying attention to. If you ask an oracle the secret to doing great work, and the oracle replied with a single word, my bet would be on curiosity.

This whole process is a dance with curiosity. Believe IT or not, I try to make this S A as short as I could, but it's a length at least means IT access a filter. If you make IT as far, you must be interested in doing great work.

And if so, you're already further along than you might realize, because the set of people willing to want to is small. The discoveries are out there waiting to be made. Why not by you? And that is where i'll leave IT.

I highly, highly, highly recommend reading the entire essay. It'll be a linked down below. And I also link to pause. S A life is short, which I think should be read directly after reading this one. Thanks for listing is far, and i'll talk you again soon.