Can we get Paul an SSL cert?
How to Do Great Work
41–50 of 464 posts
Re: How to Do Great Work
#42It's 2023. Why do many websites featured here still not use HTTPS?
I mean it's a blog, with no ability to sign in / risk leaking any PI. Adding HTTPS would only waste CPU cycles serving the page.
What about an inbetween actor changing the content? Or someone just hijacking the website?
Re: How to Do Great Work
#43It feels like this takes a very narrow definition of greatness which is more aligned to innovation and "What will make you famous" or "What will be commercially successful". From plant life and human health all the way up to nation states, there are lots of people doing great work just making sure that things keep running smoothly.
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Re: How to Do Great Work
#44also: - Don't have any chronic diseases or pain that will distract or dull your attention - Have a stable source of income or enough wealth to let you try and fail at a lot of things - Have stable family and friends - Don't have optimism beaten out of you at a young age etc
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Re: How to Do Great Work
#45> Knowledge expands fractally, and from a distance its edges look smooth, but once you learn enough to get close to one, they turn out to be full of gaps. It is incredibly easy to get onto untrodden ground just by stepping off the main path a bit. You’re fighting with a lot of smart people to have a new insight about pi and e. But if you focus on application of theory, it’s very easy to do something new. Application…
Yes! I've found this approach very useful with my own projects. I might not be out here inventing C++ or Linux, but it's actually not too hard to find projects where you can apply well known computing techniques or technologies to a new domain to do something truly new.
I think this is really motivational because doing something new and showing the world is really fun!
Re: How to Do Great Work
#46> Develop a habit of working on your own projects. Don't let "work" mean something other people tell you to do. I spend eight hours+ a day supporting my addiction to food and shelter. Why would I spend my free time working toward “greatness” instead of doing hobbies I enjoy and spending time with friends and family? Any other time I have I’m spending working out and training for runs - neither of which I will ever be…
> Why would I spend my free time working toward “greatness” you don't have to. But then don't wonder why you never achieve greatness. Of course, life isn't about greatness.
If you can be a great parent, you’ve already achieved greatness from my point of view. And perhaps easier to achieve.
Re: How to Do Great Work
#47I 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.
Perhaps I am a bit too cynical here, but I think that it is harder to criticize a long-winded article than a short bold statement -- thereby making it slightly more comfortable to publish. For a critical reader, it takes a lot of effort to read the entire article, then check that its flaws are not nullified by some additional arguments, etc.
Re: How to Do Great Work
#48I 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.
> "Believe it or not, I tried to make this essay as short as I could. But its length at least means it acts as a filter. If you made it this far, you must be interested in doing great work. And if so you're already further along than you might realize, because the set of people willing to want to is small."
I scrolled up and down quickly through the essay, and the above was the very first thing I randomly read.
Re: How to Do Great Work
#49[flagged]
> offers scope for groundbreaking work
Hah, and make sure to be a genius with a workaholic attitude, otherwise the 100 people that are like that will make the groundbreaking discoveries a few years before you.
The more people alive and able to work on research, the higher the bar gets. For most people, implementing existing bleeding edge knowledge is already an achievement.
Re: How to Do Great Work
#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 eventually develop a passion for it (setting up a shop, or running a business or producing/distributing boring everyday products, etc).
The other alternative is to spend precious younger years of my time in search of "passion". This happens too, but mostly from folks who already have financial freedom to explore and experiment, who are relatively scarce in some societies.