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How to Do Great Work

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Do Great Work

#391

Post by jiggywiggy »

movedx wrote: post #286
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 putt…

You speak mostly of not getting attached. Which is mostly a method not to build negative karma in Buddhism and build positive karma. But positive karma is not a goal in itself in Buddhism, realization is.

The Madhyamaka way, translated to the great middle way, mostly refers to combining freedom & meaning from emptiness. Meaning things are neither real, nor or they an illusion. Therefore the middle.

This is because understanding emptiness often leads to nihilism: "nothing really matters". The opposite seeing things as real, instead of acknowledging everything is changing, often leads to suffering: if laptop breaks, relationships end etc. Both are true and both are false.

The goal of madhymaka is to explain middle way between those and also practical how that leads to freedom, joy and meaning in every moment of life.

In the end the goal of Buddhism is not to change outer conditions but to get to a state were hapiness is experienced regardless of outer experiences.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhyamaka

Re: How to Do Great Work

#392

Post by i_am_a_peasant »

kirso wrote: post #334
skmurphy wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people can do great work at any age. Sometimes newcomers look at a long-standing problem and discover or design a new approach that is substantially better. Other times established experts can leverage the breadth of their experience to develop a better solution or offering. For me, the key elements are the desire to create something of value or make a contribution, a willingness to collaborate to extend what…

Exactly, I'd reckon you have a better position to do great work when you are older, given you know yourself better and what makes you tick. This is IMO impossible without experimentation and doing stupid stuff during the 20s. I just turned 35 and only starting out on the best work of my life in the shape of offering something of value except for just my time at work prior.

have you got any kids? I'm 30 and one of my biggest worries is that starting a family will mean I will never get the time to do great things. I also got a fair share of skills under my belt and a lot of motivation. My relationship always ends to taking time away from my projects however and that's only going to get worse once there's a kid 5 years down the road.

Then again Bach had a lot of kids, and look at the body of his work.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#393

Post by lying4fun »

nullcipher wrote: post #374
rikroots wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The work that you do will be great work if you have a reason for doing it other than "I want to do something great." I've always had an issue with the word "great". Who defines greatness? How will I know that I've achieved greatness in whatever work I'm doing at any particular time. For work, I know when my work is great because co-workers and managers praise it: "nice fix", "some really good insights here", etc. B…

> For work, I know when my work is great because co-workers and managers praise it: "nice fix", "some really good insights here", etc. They only said nice and good though not great. I would say if your CEO came down and said that's awesome, then it's great work. (for you) As for me, I don't think too much about word semantics. No advice can be given or taken if you take each word apart. We will just keep arguing abou…

It depends how much you value/respect your co-workers. In a high level team “good insight” can mean “great work”. I am not saying you disagree with this, but you may have made assumptions about the parent’s team and his relation to it. Conversely, a “great work” from a CEO can mean nothing to a person

Re: How to Do Great Work

#394

Post by Lk7Of3vfJS2n »

JohnCurran wrote: post #355

I respect Paul and everything that he writes, even if I don’t agree with it. It takes some serious stones to publish your thoughts on the internet - whether people agree or not. In any case. This seems like a continuation of the never ending quest for people to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of a corporate profit they will never see. I’m not interested in eliminating the ceiling - I want to raise the floor.…

> This seems like a continuation of the never ending quest for people to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of a corporate profit they will never see.

Reading the essay I didn't see a reference to "the betterment of a corporate profit". Doing good work doesn't mean starting a startup, if this is what you meant.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#395

Post by MaxBarraclough »

badpun wrote: post #187
ajkjk wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally: I think of myself as one of those people who is by nature driven to do great work. Tbd if it happens. But in my life I see most other people as having written off almost everything I find interesting, all the places where it seems like there is great work to be done if one digs hard enough. It seems obvious that someone like me, who believes this and is looking and working everywhere, will be the type of…

As usual, Ancient Greeks had it figured out already. Aristoteles wrote: "make war to have pace. Do business to enjoy leisure". That's the natural proclivity of 99% human beings. The other 1%, for whatever internal reason, does work for work's sake, and is often pushing civilization forward.

People with high-paying careers rarely choose to radically reduce their work hours after achieving financial security. I don't think the idea of doing great work often enters the equation.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#396

Post by Wowfunhappy »

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, and I think this conflict is actually visible within the essay. One particular parenthetical jumped out at me:

> So avoid the kind of distraction that pushes your work out of the top spot, or you'll waste this valuable type of thinking on the distraction instead. (Exception: Don't avoid love.)

PG never explains why love is an exception. Perhaps he thought it was obvious. I disagree.

I agree that familial love is important to the overall human experience. But this isn't an essay on how to live a fulfilling life, it's an essay on "how to do great work," for a so-called "very ambitious" person who wants to achieve "great work" at any cost. In this context, familial love is no less of a distraction than anything else. History is littered with eccentric artists who prioritized their work above any human interaction, and achieved fame for it.

So why does PG say not to avoid love? I believe it's because deep down, he realizes that "great work" isn't the most important thing in life—but he isn't quite aware enough to acknowledge it.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#397

Post by krosaen »

For every person doing great work of the sort he describes - original and impactful - there often needs to be several talented people helping to execute towards the newly discovered goal. He hints at this when he mentions the need to manage on certain types of projects. So what of all those talented craftsmen helping get the idea done? Working a job, hard enough to squeeze away time towards significant side projects (if one still desires to maintain good health and relations with family)? Are they suckers? Should they phone it in at work to leave time for their side hustle? What if trying hard at their main job is more impactful? This is the paradox of startup advice. It’s good advice for those aiming to do original work. But it turns its nose up at the kind of work that is a vital ingredient towards achieving great things. And I think Cal Newports advice is more practical in this sense - cultivating craft and autonomy within any role can be equally satisfying and is way more practical for a lot of people.

That said, I still really like PG’s advice for how to think about being original, and I suppose I shouldn’t expect someone trying to convince more people to become founders to be completely even handed about assessing or recommending other kinds of meaningful impactful work.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#398

Post by simonh »

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…

In the old days we used to call those hobbies.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#399

Post by emodendroket »

scarface_74 wrote: post #347
emodendroket wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK… neither here nor there for my point that nobody remembers him as a clerk.

Isn’t that the point though? Do you think on his death bed when he looked back at his relatively short life he took solace in the fact that years in the future some random people admired his “greatness” even though his personal life was a mess?

I don't pretend to have any idea of his interior life but I do think that if he invested his time in being great at his job rather than a passion project with no real practical purpose he would be forgotten. I like being a dad but I don't think everyone has to do that or aspire to it.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#400

Post by _x5ft »

nicbou wrote: post #352
_x5ft wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us feel this way about his essays. He bloviates often as if on a pedestal without realizing how transparently arrogant he sounds. Many of his ideas inherently contradict his other ideas, or are simply vague and shallow. But he’s rich, so of course he must be an astute philosopher.

The comment above was fair criticism. This one is needlessly mean. Pay attention to the community guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thank you for your note, and for all you do to help moderate HN. Moderators like you help keep the site honest.

I have reviewed the link you provided. I agree with the guidelines noted therein. I asked some of my peers to give an objective read of my comment and they found it an accurate reflection of how they too responded to the posted essay. I cannot identify anything about it that was contrary to what is observed by many members of this community.

I do apologize to you though if you read it differently.

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