How to Do Great Work • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Do Great Work

#281

Post by Aeolun » Sun, Jul 02, 2023, 1:09 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #263

moneywoes wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, do you just think the industry is over hyped

Not the industry, but the rush-to-"AI" is certainly over-hyped and displays a very shallow understanding of the role of art of any form for most human beings.

The older I get the more I think this is fine, and more or less the way of the world.

Let the young ones expend their energy and drive trying to do all kinds of weird, pointless and occassionally very useful shit while we keep the world running.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#282

Post by 2snakes » Sun, Jul 02, 2023, 1:10 AM UTC

dclowd9901 wrote: post #59

travisgriggs wrote: post #19

Hmmm… > 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. But always preserve excitingness. I’m 53 and some of my greatest joys still come from well executed Lego builds. Wonder if I’m stuck in a rut :/

I used to be thrilled with big sets because they were… well, big. Now, I find Lego building relaxing with the occasional delight at a technique the master builders came up with to create some sort of texture or shape using those bricks.

new legos are the devil because all the creative thinking is done behind a desk at lego. (not my thought, just repeating)

Re: How to Do Great Work

#283

Post by BigElephant » Sun, Jul 02, 2023, 1:13 AM UTC

Why is his site not in https??

Re: How to Do Great Work

#284

Post by a_bonobo » Sun, Jul 02, 2023, 1:16 AM UTC

jakeduth wrote: post #252

I clicked on this without seeing that it's on paulgraham.com, yet still picked up it was his writing within a minute of reading. His writing is distinct even for someone who hasn't read much of it. My question is: why?

It's a unique mix of true earnestness, over-generalisation, very short sentences of roughly similar length, some insights, and a preachy tone. and a 90s website design :)

Re: How to Do Great Work

#285

Post by koopuluri » Sun, Jul 02, 2023, 1:18 AM UTC

artisanspam wrote: post #255

As I've gotten older, I believe more and more that having a desire for great work has more negatives than it does positives. This post really demonstrates why I believe this – mainly because PG doesn't touch at all on why someone would want to do great work while romanticizing how great it is to have that desire. I don't think the question that ambitious people should be asking themselves is "what is work that I can…

I agree. To your point, I feel the most useful questions we ought to ask are the ones that push us to understand our deepest selves: the desires, insecurities, fears that dictate why we do what we do.

Without that deeper understanding, we're more easily trapped into following someone else's / the collective culture's programming of our minds - which likely doesn't prioritize our own individual well-being.

And ofc this is a lifelong journey. I can't imagine waking up anytime soon thinking I understand what happens in the deepest recesses of my mind, but without having a reasonable sense of the deeper motivations, it's easy to read this essay by PG and feel a craving to "do great work" without understanding why or the impact this craving can have on your wellbeing.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#286

Post by movedx » Sun, Jul 02, 2023, 1:20 AM UTC

artisanspam wrote: post #255

As I've gotten older, I believe more and more that having a desire for great work has more negatives than it does positives. This post really demonstrates why I believe this – mainly because PG doesn't touch at all on why someone would want to do great work while romanticizing how great it is to have that desire. I don't think the question that ambitious people should be asking themselves is "what is work that I can…

I've been studying a lot of Buddhism as of late. One thing it has taught me in the Middle Way. In short, it means do nothing in excess, which includes doing nothing at all.

This balanced view leads to me to believe you, Paul, and "hustle culture" that's all over YouTube are both right and wrong. I've come to live by a simple system...

Try to do fulfilling work that's meaningful to future generations, whilst also putting back into society as much positive value as you can versus what you consume.

So far, this has led me to the model of, "Learn a skill, give a skill". The term "give" can be exchanged for "sell" depending on the receiver. This has led me to learn complex skills and problem solving (consuming from society), and then giving back in the form of books, videos, mentoring, and more (putting back) so that others can learn from my experience.

At the end of the day though, who really knows? :-)

Re: How to Do Great Work

#287

Post by v64 » Sun, Jul 02, 2023, 1:20 AM UTC

jamiek88 wrote: post #267

cdelsolar wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want enough to be able to work on it as a full time thing.

Have you got a Patreon?

@cdelsolar, definitely consider Patreon. I mentioned in this comment [1] recently about how so many coders are doing exactly what you wanna be doing, working on awesome projects full time, funded by people who want to see you succeed and to get the opportunity to get a behind the scenes glimpse of how you work, get updates about new things you're working on before anyone else, and getting access to beta testing and new features first.

I've worked with Scrabble players in the past on a personal project [2] and can say this is absolutely the kind of thing they'd go for. I had never heard of woogles.io either and will be passing the link on to them as well.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=36525089

[2] https://github.com/v64/fiend

Re: How to Do Great Work

#288

Post by cmdli » Sun, Jul 02, 2023, 1:27 AM UTC

civilized wrote: post #277

artisanspam wrote: post #255

As I've gotten older, I believe more and more that having a desire for great work has more negatives than it does positives. This post really demonstrates why I believe this – mainly because PG doesn't touch at all on why someone would want to do great work while romanticizing how great it is to have that desire. I don't think the question that ambitious people should be asking themselves is "what is work that I can…

I wonder if you might have found it more fulfilling if you had received some psychological help with all the harshness on yourself.

As somebody who has struggled with similar issues, oftentimes the psychological help you need is to de-emphasize the ambition and success. You have to act against the expectation and dreams of greatness, and instead focus on your present state and appreciating that. It's not impossible to do great work and be happy, but it's very easy to let your dreams consume you.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#289

Post by quickthrower2 » Sun, Jul 02, 2023, 1:30 AM UTC

cdelsolar wrote: post #199

My problem is that I’ve already chosen what to work on long ago - Scrabble. I’ve built a popular (within the community) study tool, I’ve also been working on an open source AI that I believe is finally better than the state of the art one - I’m going to set up a match between them sometime soon (but need a bot interface, etc). This is without ML, too, which I fully intend to explore soon. And finally I’ve been workin…

Are you obsessed with scrabble… or could that obsession be broadened to “word games” including wordle, crosswords, other word games (boggle?). Maybe time to make your own original game? That may get you further away from hasbro.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#290

Post by quickthrower2 » Sun, Jul 02, 2023, 1:35 AM UTC

artisanspam wrote: post #255

As I've gotten older, I believe more and more that having a desire for great work has more negatives than it does positives. This post really demonstrates why I believe this – mainly because PG doesn't touch at all on why someone would want to do great work while romanticizing how great it is to have that desire. I don't think the question that ambitious people should be asking themselves is "what is work that I can…

It is lonely doing hard work without some attaboys. Being some famous techie that people refer to you in droves by only your first name, or publishing a highly referenced paper, or exiting a startup with millions are great attaboys. But you sort of need to risk working hard and getting no cash and no attaboys. I think passion (that dirty word!) is needed to drive you to do the moonshot thing.

I often think we are a bee colony. We need lots of people trying ambitious stuff but few will get that attaboy kick. We need failures (otherwise everyone is not ambitious enough).