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How to Do Great Work

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Do Great Work

#411

Post by sanderjd »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #396
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 lov…

I don't think this essay ever actually made the value judgment that doing "great work" is "the most important thing in life" or even a good thing in life. Did I miss that part? I read it as, "for better or worse, some people are driven to do great work, here are some techniques to accomplish that". I think it's true, right?, that such people do exist, whether that is good or bad for them.

I suppose I know enough of his history to know that he would make that value judgment, but I read this particular essay as being fairly agnostic about it, leaving it up to the reader.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#412

Post by sanderjd »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #290
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 b…

I think "passion" just isn't the best word for it. I much prefer (and relate to) the use of "curiosity" instead in this essay.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#414

Post by ralphc »

ftxbro wrote: post #225
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…

I remember looking this up before, and game rule sets are not protected in USA. You can't make some game rules and say that other people can't make that game. The things that are protected are the things that go along with the game, like if you use any trademark name in the game or if you use any protected media like if it's a card game then you can't use the same card art. My understanding is that you can make a gam…

Sounds like words with friends.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#415

Post by yowlingcat »

sanderjd wrote: post #409
yowlingcat wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no, I agree with you there. Most wealthy people are not self-made, which supports your point. Maybe that's where the sleight of hand occurs -- many if not all wealthy people will pass it off as being self-made, when only a small fraction of those instances are the case. But I do think you will see hard work playing a large role in that fraction of cases.

No, I really think you're mistaking this. Some of the easiest ways to become wealthy - or let's say "financially independent", because it's a more clear-cut term - are doing useful and well-compensated work, that is definitely not "great work" in the essay's sense. Think dentists and most doctors and lawyers, and also lots of different kinds of "businesspeople", including software engineers at big successful companie…

If anything, I view that as a slight deficiency and bias of the essay's sense. Here's how I'd phrase it based on what's worked for me, which is "Learn to fall in love with expensive, poorly-solved problems." Not all expensive poorly-solved problems are poorly-solved, but for the ones that are, focusing your curiosity on them -- why they are expensive, why they are poorly-solved, what state of the art looks like, how it could be improved -- that is a surefire way, in my view, towards doing great work.

Now, that may not be considered great work by the essay. But I might read the essay with my assumption around its editorialization -- which is that it's to some degree an attempt to describe "here's what I'd like to invest in." I'll bet you today (and especially in the future) that if I tested the author's revealed preference about investing in "my" thesis of great work, while our stated preferences might differ, our revealed preferences would align.

Caveat that this is this is all conjecture given that I've never directly interacted with YC's investment thesis.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#416

Post by sanderjd »

yowlingcat wrote: post #415
sanderjd wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I really think you're mistaking this. Some of the easiest ways to become wealthy - or let's say "financially independent", because it's a more clear-cut term - are doing useful and well-compensated work, that is definitely not "great work" in the essay's sense. Think dentists and most doctors and lawyers, and also lots of different kinds of "businesspeople", including software engineers at big successful companie…

If anything, I view that as a slight deficiency and bias of the essay's sense. Here's how I'd phrase it based on what's worked for me, which is "Learn to fall in love with expensive, poorly-solved problems." Not all expensive poorly-solved problems are poorly-solved, but for the ones that are, focusing your curiosity on them -- why they are expensive, why they are poorly-solved, what state of the art looks like, how…

Yeah we're sort of just debating the implied definition of something left purposefully vague, but I don't read this particular essay as an investment thesis thing at all. His motivating examples are pretty much all musicians and theoreticians there's no investing in those things. To some extent those examples are metaphorical of course, and I'm certain he is thinking of at least some entrepreneurs as having done "great work". But I still take the essay more at face value that it isn't primarily focused on the kind of wildly lucrative "great work" that makes a good investment.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#417

Post by sanderjd »

emmender wrote: post #195
rosecross wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess you didn’t read to the end

No, I did not. The question is ill-posed imo. I would invert the question and ask: "How not to suck at your work" as that would lead to similar conclusions, and is more actionable. This essay has too many weasel sentences like: "Boldly chase outlier ideas," "Husband your morale" "Doing great work is a depth-first search whose root node is the desire to. " "Curiosity is the best guide." This is woolly-feel-good writin…

The essay is about something different than "how not to suck at your work".

Re: How to Do Great Work

#418

Post by sanderjd »

nadam wrote: post #357

As I got older I have a very different take on pg's essays than when I was younger. When I was younger these essays motivated me, as I felt that these essays are written for me. PG seemingly addresses many of his essays to 'very ambitious', 'extremely smart', 'independent thinking' people, and writes about topics to achieve extreme success. When I was younger I believed I am such a person. Now I know that I am smarte…

I think your advice is good. And definitely better advice than "you should be very ambitious and dedicate yourself to doing great work". But I think it isn't what the essay is about. The essay assumes that it is talking to a person who has failed to take your good advice. I think that describes a lot of people.

A lot of commenters here seem to have read into this essay that it is saying "you should be this kind of person". But I'm not sure which parts of the text support that perspective. The quote you pulled out certainly doesn't:

> The following recipe assumes you're very ambitious.

It doesn't add ", which you should be" or ", which is the only good way to be" or anything like that.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#419

Post by sanderjd »

dmvdoug wrote: post #76

As usual, this is both interesting but also so generalizing as to get frustrating in places. But it’s clearly well-meaning and earnest, which makes it easier to tolerate some of its annoyingly breezy certainty. Then there’s this: > Religions are collections of cherished but mistaken principles. So anything that can be described either literally or metaphorically as a religion will have valuable unexplored ideas in it…

Yeah I generally enjoyed this essay overall but also bumped on that and couldn't parse the footnote. It's not just you :)
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