#314 Paul Graham (How To Do Great Work)

Paul Graham's "How to Do Great Work"

• Paul Graham's essay "How to Do Great Work" suggests that to do great work, one must find something they have a natural aptitude for and a deep interest in.
• Graham emphasizes that the importance of the work is not a fixed threshold, but rather a matter of degree, and it's often difficult to judge at the time.

Finding Your Passion

• Graham encourages individuals to focus on developing their interests rather than worrying about whether they are important.
• He advises that the best way to figure out what to work on is by working, even if it means guessing and making mistakes.
• Graham highlights the importance of developing a habit of working on one's own projects and not letting work be defined by what others tell you to do.
• Graham believes that only a few hundred thousand people ever figure out how to do what they love, as most are led astray by prestige or money.
• He emphasizes that great work often comes from projects that are exciting and ambitious, and that this excitement should be preserved as one's taste and projects evolve.
• Graham suggests that this excited curiosity is the engine and rudder of great work, driving individuals and showing them what to work on.
• Graham advises following one's natural drift and pursuing areas of intense interest. Once you've reached a frontier of knowledge in your chosen field, you'll start to notice gaps and inconsistencies that others take for granted.
• Great work often involves exploring these gaps and pursuing outlier ideas, even if they are unpopular.
• Graham outlines a four-step process for doing great work: choose a field, learn enough to reach the frontier, notice the gaps, and explore promising gaps.

The Importance of Hard Work

• Paul Graham argues that doing great work requires hard work, similar to the evidence for mortality.
• He emphasizes the importance of working on something you are deeply interested in, as interest will drive you to work harder than mere diligence.
• He uses examples like Michael Jordan, Edwin Land, and Steve Jobs to illustrate how individuals who find work they enjoy are more likely to excel.
• Graham highlights the difficulty in figuring out what to work on, as you can't truly understand a field until you experience it firsthand.
• He criticizes educational systems for expecting students to commit to a field before they have a chance to explore it, calling it "madness."
• He emphasizes the importance of taking action and not passively waiting for the problem to solve itself when it comes to finding your life's work.

The Role of Luck

• Paul Graham states that luck plays a significant role in the success of individuals who have done great work. He cites examples from biographies where chance encounters and serendipitous discoveries led to their breakthroughs.
• The speaker emphasizes the importance of luck by highlighting the stories of James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, and Mark Twain. All three individuals were inspired by the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" during their childhood, leading them to pursue careers in filmmaking.
• The speaker delves into Mark Twain's life, outlining the series of events that led him to become a successful writer. Twain's journey involved various twists and turns, including a stint as a steamboat pilot, a period of hardship and contemplation of suicide, and a chance encounter with a diplomat who helped him secure a journalistic scoop.
• Paul Graham suggests that curious individuals are more likely to achieve great work because they are open to exploring different fields and are more likely to stumble upon the right path.

The Power of Curiosity

• The speaker emphasizes the importance of pursuing work that is genuinely interesting to you, even if it seems unconventional or different from what others are doing. He argues that strong and unique tastes often lead to greater productivity and the discovery of new opportunities.
• Paul Graham suggests that a sign of a good fit for a particular type of work is when you enjoy even the tedious or challenging aspects of it. This indicates a genuine passion and commitment to the field.
• Paul Graham emphasizes the importance of working on projects that genuinely excite you. He argues that if you're not passionate about your work, you're more likely to be distracted by external factors and lose sight of your goals.
• He highlights the common mistake of trying to create products or solve problems that you think others might want, rather than focusing on your own interests and needs.

Overcoming Obstacles

• Graham suggests that following your interests often involves facing rejection and failure, but it's crucial to persevere and not let setbacks deter you.
• He advocates for a "staying upwind" approach, where you continuously choose projects that are most interesting and offer the best opportunities for the future.
• Graham emphasizes the importance of intense concentration and dedicated work blocks, citing Edwin L. as a proponent of this approach. He believes that sustained focus can unlock hidden potential and lead to significant achievements.
• Paul Graham suggests that it is okay to lie to yourself about how much work a project will entail, as many great things began with someone saying "how hard could it be?".
• He emphasizes the importance of finishing what you start, even if it turns out to be more work than expected, as the best work often happens in the final stages.
• Graham believes that doing great work requires building a business that is authentic to your true self, which takes time and self-discovery.
• He suggests that it is permissible to exaggerate the importance of your work in your own mind, as this can lead to new discoveries.
• Graham introduces the concept of "per project procrastination," which is more dangerous than daily procrastination because it camouflages itself as work.
• He advises that the way to beat per project procrastination is to stop working on other projects and focus on the ambitious project you've been putting off.

The Importance of Time and Consistency

• Paul Graham emphasizes the importance of working on what you genuinely want to do, especially as you get older.
• He states that great work often involves spending an unreasonable amount of time on a problem, echoing Steve Jobs' belief that time is a key ingredient in greatness.
• Graham highlights the power of consistency, emphasizing that doing something small every day, like writing a page, can lead to significant achievements over time.
• He uses the example of Taylor Swift, who responded to 25,000 fan messages early in her career, illustrating the concept of exponential growth and the importance of early effort.
• Graham encourages "undirected thinking" during activities like walking or showering, as it can lead to breakthroughs that are not possible through direct problem-solving.
• He cautions against distractions that can divert this valuable type of thinking, emphasizing the need to focus on your work.

Cultivating Taste and Earnestness

• Graham concludes by emphasizing the importance of cultivating taste in your field, as it can serve as a moat against competition and guide you towards excellence.
• Paul Graham argues that aiming to be the best is crucial for achieving even good work. He emphasizes that trying to be distinctive in style can lead to affectation, which is artificial behavior designed to impress.
• Graham suggests that following one's natural interests and pursuing them authentically is key to creating genuine work. He warns against adopting a fake persona, as the fakeness will ultimately show in the work.
• He defines "earnestness" as sincere and intense conviction, highlighting intellectual honesty as its core. Earnestness involves seeing more truth than others and focusing on what matters, rather than trying to appear a certain way.
• Graham points out that nerds often have an advantage in doing great work due to their innocent boldness and lack of concern for appearances. He encourages readers to be the ones who put things out there, rather than criticizing others' work.
• He emphasizes that the route to great work is never easy and that critics' opinions should be disregarded. He highlights the theme of great founders believing in their own vision above all else.

The Importance of Redoing Work

• Graham recommends reading his essay "Life is Short" as a companion piece, emphasizing the importance of focusing on one's mission and avoiding time-wasting activities.
• He suggests that redoing work is essential for achieving greatness, as it allows for stripping things down to their essence and achieving a more concentrated result.
• The text discusses Steve Jobs's reaction to a mistake made in the design of the Apple Store prototype. Despite the significant amount of time and effort invested, Jobs insisted on starting over from scratch, demonstrating his commitment to excellence and willingness to discard flawed work.

Originality and New Ideas

• The author emphasizes that great work often appears effortless because it is built upon a foundation of deep understanding and exploration. He suggests that the process of creating something new can be seen as a form of discovery, where the creator acts as a conduit for ideas to take shape.
• The author highlights the importance of choosing the right problem to work on, suggesting that the best problems are often created in the process of exploring them. He emphasizes that originality is not a process but a habit of mind, cultivated through focused effort and exploration.
• The author advises against spreading attention evenly across many topics, advocating for a power law approach where focus is concentrated on a few areas of deep interest. He connects curiosity and originality, arguing that new ideas often emerge from seeing things that were previously overlooked.
• The author concludes by discussing the challenge of seeing new ideas, which often requires a shift in perspective and a willingness to acknowledge the limitations of existing models of the world. He suggests that fear of change is a major obstacle to seeing new ideas, despite the constant change that characterizes the world we live in.
• To create new ideas and models of the world, one must be willing to break rules.
• This rule-breaking can be either aggressive or passive.
• Aggressively independent-minded individuals enjoy breaking rules and find energy in the audacity of their projects.
• Passively independent-minded individuals are often unaware of or indifferent to existing rules, which allows them to make new discoveries.

Working on Unfashionable Problems

• Paul Graham emphasizes the importance of working on unfashionable problems, as they are often undervalued and overlooked.
• He encourages individuals to follow their natural interests and ignore the pressure to work on "important" problems, as many groundbreaking ideas were initially considered unimportant.
• Paul Graham's wife, Jessica, rereads his essay "How to Do Great Work" every year, highlighting its importance.
• The essay emphasizes the importance of living an authentic life and pursuing one's own interests, regardless of external opinions.
• The ability to ignore the pressure to work on "important" problems is crucial for doing great work, as many groundbreaking ideas were initially considered unimportant.
• Paul Graham uses the example of Henry Ford to illustrate the importance of following one's natural interests, even when the outside world may deem them unimportant. Ford's persistence with the internal combustion engine, despite skepticism, ultimately led to the creation of the Ford Motor Company and the Model T, which positively impacted millions of lives.

Choosing What to Work On

• Graham emphasizes that choosing what to work on is crucial, often more important than the "big ideas" themselves. He suggests that great work often stems from returning to questions that have lingered in one's mind for a long time.
• He encourages being "promiscuously curious," exploring multiple ideas and projects, as this increases the chances of discovering something new. Graham acknowledges that this approach will lead to many failures, but he emphasizes that having a lot of bad ideas is a necessary part of generating good ones.
• Graham advocates for starting small and being prolific, as this makes it easier to begin and allows for gradual evolution and improvement. He highlights the importance of successive versions, where initial small projects are iteratively developed into something more ambitious and sophisticated.
• Graham advises against overplanning and encourages taking action, learning through the process, and evolving ideas over time. He emphasizes that the final version of a project can be far more impressive and ambitious than anything initially envisioned.
• He concludes by suggesting that starting with the simplest possible solution often proves effective and that gradual evolution is preferable to trying to cram too much into a single version.

The Advantages of Youth

• Paul Graham argues that youth has advantages like energy, time, optimism, and freedom, while age brings knowledge, efficiency, money, and power.
• He emphasizes that young people often don't realize how valuable their time is and suggests using it in a "slightly frivolous" way to explore interests and experiment.
• Graham believes that the best way to turn time into an advantage is to follow curiosity and pursue interests, which ultimately leads to great work.
• He advises against wasting time but encourages spending it lavishly on things that might seem frivolous, as it allows for exploration and discovery.
• Graham highlights that experience teaches valuable lessons, including knowing what not to worry about. He criticizes schools for filling students' heads with "nonsense" and inducing passivity.
• He emphasizes that real-life work differs from schoolwork, requiring problem identification and solutions that may not be readily available.

Avoiding Shortcuts and Gatekeepers

• Graham warns against relying on shortcuts or gatekeepers for success and encourages focusing on doing good work instead of chasing influential people.
• He acknowledges that copying existing work is a valuable learning tool but emphasizes that originality lies in the presence of new ideas, not the absence of old ones.
• Graham encourages studying great work from various fields, as it can lead to powerful insights and cross-pollination of ideas.
• He suggests that visiting places where talented individuals in a field are concentrated can boost ambition and provide valuable exposure.

The Importance of Colleagues and Morale

• Paul Graham emphasizes the importance of seeking out the best colleagues, drawing inspiration from Mark Twain's advice to "refine yourself and your work" by associating with superior individuals.
• He argues that great work happens in clusters, suggesting that colleagues play a crucial role in achieving success.
• Graham highlights the significance of maintaining a positive inner monologue and morale, emphasizing that self-doubt can be detrimental to ambitious projects.
• He suggests that high morale fuels good work, which in turn boosts morale, creating a positive cycle.
• Graham advises against allowing setbacks to completely derail morale, suggesting that they are an inherent part of the problem-solving process.
• He emphasizes the importance of an audience in sustaining morale, stating that a small but dedicated group of people who genuinely appreciate your work can be enough to keep you motivated.

Direct Communication and Positive Influences

• Paul Graham emphasizes the importance of direct communication between creators and their audience, citing Taylor Swift's direct engagement with her fans on Tumblr as an example.
• He uses the example of Edwin Land, who initially struggled selling his automobile headlight innovations to car companies but found success when he directly connected with consumers through his cameras.
• Graham advises avoiding intermediaries and seeking out work that allows for direct connection with the audience.
• He stresses the importance of surrounding oneself with positive influences and avoiding those who drain energy.
• Graham emphasizes the importance of finding a partner who understands and supports one's ambition and work ethic.
• He acknowledges that ambitious individuals may not necessarily be happier than others, but they are happier than they would be if they weren't pursuing their goals.

Avoiding Prestige and Following Curiosity

• Graham warns against being guided by prestige and instead suggests focusing on doing work that is meaningful and fulfilling.
• He highlights curiosity as the best guide for pursuing great work, emphasizing that it knows more than we do about what is worth paying attention to.
• Graham concludes by encouraging viewers to read his entire essay, suggesting that those who have made it this far are already on the path to doing great work.