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How to Do Great Work

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Do Great Work

#161

Post by badpun »

lewisjoe wrote: post #50

"Follow your interest/passion" - is such an easy advice. However in some societies / economies, it's simply not possible. Where I'm from (India), where a majority of my generation has to lift their families from money problems, there's no option of following passion. There's only "learn/do what makes money". It's not entirely a bad thing though. For example people here just jump into doing something and then eventual…

India is essentially at the development stage matching that of XIX century Europe and the US. Back then, nobody was following passions, and everyone was just starting practical businesses and investments which will (hopefully) bring in some money. Now it's India's turn to go through that phase.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#162

Post by zamfi »

MichaelRo wrote: post #137

Well put. But what the article (and others like it) lacks is the fallback, the plan B, the exception handling, what to do if things don't work out as planned. There's a Gauss curve. Simple stuff can be done by any idiot so there's going to be a lot of competition on that. Like picking strawberries, for any position there's 100 Mexicans (in the US) or Eastern European guys (in the EU) willing to do that for cheap. So…

I’m not sure we got the same thing from this essay.

Picking problems is one of the first things mentioned in this essay, and neither soccer-playing nor strawberry-picking seem like fields where there are lots of questions folks haven’t answered yet. (This is not to say that there aren’t interesting questions in agriculture or sports in general!)

Picking a field that’s zero-sum, where there are already 100 workaholic geniuses pursuing the only possible positive outcomes (eg, champions league forward) seems like maybe not the right way to go, and the essay is pretty explicit about this.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#163

Post by [deleted] »

lewisjoe wrote: post #50

"Follow your interest/passion" - is such an easy advice. However in some societies / economies, it's simply not possible. Where I'm from (India), where a majority of my generation has to lift their families from money problems, there's no option of following passion. There's only "learn/do what makes money". It's not entirely a bad thing though. For example people here just jump into doing something and then eventual…

[deleted]

Re: How to Do Great Work

#164

Post by andromaton »

carlossouza wrote: post #109
_x5ft wrote: post #26

I can't help but feel this essay is literally 100x longer than it needs to be for the point it's trying to make. This sort of long-winded, redundant writing seems to have gone out of style a long time ago.

Although I enjoy reading his essays, yes, they tend to be longer than usual. I wonder whether he uses an editor to provide constructive feedback before publishing it or just writes and clicks "publish." Interestingly, I found that point missing: people who do great work usually have editors/mentors/advisors to help them along the way.

Scroll to the bottom. He always credits multiple people. I assume all of them read his drafts.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#165

Post by guptarohit »

This is one of the great writeup!

In case you want to listen it instead of reading it like me, you can do so by following command, it creates a audio file (named greatwork) which you can play:

wget -qO- http://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html | sed -e '//d' -e 's/]*>//g; s/\&nbsp\;/ /g; s/\&amp\;/\&/g; s/\&lt\;//g' | say --progress -o greatwork

please note, this is tested on macOS only.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#167

Post by sctb »

MichaelRo wrote: post #137

Well put. But what the article (and others like it) lacks is the fallback, the plan B, the exception handling, what to do if things don't work out as planned. There's a Gauss curve. Simple stuff can be done by any idiot so there's going to be a lot of competition on that. Like picking strawberries, for any position there's 100 Mexicans (in the US) or Eastern European guys (in the EU) willing to do that for cheap. So…

> It's a dog eat dog world, winners take all and there's no reward for the effort. If you don't win the big prize, you've wasted your life for nothing.

Prizes and rewards are never guaranteed. The only way to be sure you aren't wasting your time is to spend it on something gratifying—in the context of this essay this might be the "excited curiosity that's both the engine and the rudder of great work." You don't need a fallback if your approach isn't outcome oriented.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#168

Post by dhdaadhd »

guptarohit wrote: post #165

This is one of the great writeup! In case you want to listen it instead of reading it like me, you can do so by following command, it creates a audio file (named greatwork) which you can play: wget -qO- http://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html | sed -e '/ /d' -e 's/ ]*>//g; s/\&nbsp\;/ /g; s/\&amp\;/\&/g; s/\&lt\;/ /g' | say --progress -o greatwork please note, this is tested on macOS only.

If you’re looking for something that scales this feature, you might love Matter (https://hq.getmatter.com/). It has instant article text-to-speech via a simple chrome extension & a web + iOS app - along with %-read tracking, ability to start playing audio from any word, etc.

(Not affiliated, just a happy user.)

Re: How to Do Great Work

#169

Post by aleph_minus_one »

ren_engineer wrote: post #153
MichaelRo wrote: post #137

Well put. But what the article (and others like it) lacks is the fallback, the plan B, the exception handling, what to do if things don't work out as planned. There's a Gauss curve. Simple stuff can be done by any idiot so there's going to be a lot of competition on that. Like picking strawberries, for any position there's 100 Mexicans (in the US) or Eastern European guys (in the EU) willing to do that for cheap. So…

in tech at least even if you fail, you are developing valuable skills that can be used elsewhere. Plenty of failed startup founders end up at other places in engineering or management roles not creating a billion dollar startup isn't a failure, tons of people in the tech industry retire as multimillionaires essentially working a 9-5. A lot of people on HN seem to think if you don't make the Forbes list you are a fail…

> in tech at least even if you fail, you are developing valuable skills that can be used elsewhere.

Rather: Currently in tech in the USA ...

Re: How to Do Great Work

#170

Post by guptarohit »

dhdaadhd wrote: post #168
guptarohit wrote: post #165

This is one of the great writeup! In case you want to listen it instead of reading it like me, you can do so by following command, it creates a audio file (named greatwork) which you can play: wget -qO- http://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html | sed -e '/ /d' -e 's/ ]*>//g; s/\&nbsp\;/ /g; s/\&amp\;/\&/g; s/\&lt\;/ /g' | say --progress -o greatwork please note, this is tested on macOS only.

If you’re looking for something that scales this feature, you might love Matter ( https://hq.getmatter.com/ ). It has instant article text-to-speech via a simple chrome extension & a web + iOS app - along with %-read tracking, ability to start playing audio from any word, etc. (Not affiliated, just a happy user.)

thanks for sharing, Matter looks promising I'll give it a try.
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