How to Do Great Work: A Guide to Finding Your Path
I discovered that great work requires finding a field where your natural aptitude and deep interest intersect. You must learn enough to reach the frontier of knowledge, then notice the gaps others ignore. Curiosity drives you to explore these outliers, even when they seem strange. The best projects are those you would build for yourself, fueled by an excited curiosity that makes the hard work worthwhile.
There's a kind of excited curiosity that's both the engine and the rudder of great work.
- bryanph_
When Paul Graham uses a phrase like "great work" I can't help but only consider it as being synonymous to "work that generates a big return for the investor" in his context of Y Combinator
- dtj1123
Genuine question, what work has Paul Graham done that can be classified as 'great'?
- resonious
> At 7 it may seem excitingly ambitious to build huge things out of Lego, then at 14 to teach yourself calculus, till at 21 you're starting to explore unanswered questions in physics.
Is this supposed to be relatable?
- Archer6621
It's a nice post, with a lot of valuable insights. There is one that I disagree with though: "Never abandon the root node".
There are plenty of instances that show that in reality this is not what happens, and in fact this is often a necessary step of reinventing yourself if things really aren't working for you. The mid-life crisis is a famous example of this, or even the quarter-life crisis. In some specific psychological circles this is referred to as "disintegration". Sometimes carefully backtracking is simply not enough, and growth needs this kind large shock to the system.
- tosh
good related read: You and Your Research (Hamming)