How to Do Great Work (2023)

I didn’t get much from it, but I’ve gotten that sort of advice my whole life, so it was a little boring. As a result of being bored, I skimmed it. As I skimmed it, it started to feel repetitive. It is possible that a deeper reading would reveal some non-repetitive aspect to the parts I found repetitive. It seems like a good blog post to give to a smart teenager.

Edit: I think we’ll get some dismissive responses here because most of the posters here are at least somewhat mid-career, so they’ve already gotten and acted on this kind of advice. Imagine reading it before college, though. I’d have enjoyed it.

One thing is art. I was in new orleans once and heard a kid play jazz saxaphone out on a street corner in the middle of the night. It was legitimately the most beautiful music ive ever heard in my life. I think that man put all his life into that solo and hit the frontier of how music can affect a listener's soul. I think he was doing great by paul grahams definition

>The first step is to decide what to work on. The work you choose needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that offers scope to do great work.

>In practice you don't have to worry much about the third criterion. Ambitious people are if anything already too conservative about it. So all you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in.

Bull-shit. The set of all things you enjoy and have aptitude for is much larger than the set of things you can make money on. There's a reason why Paul Graham chased coding and making an e-store in the 90s and not becoming a great philosopher, which he seems to have natural interest in (and he probably thinks he has quite a bit of aptitude for it).

That reason is $$$. I've found in my time that the number one rule of making $$$ is that you must chase $$$. It doesn't knock at your door, it doesn't come when you least expect it. $$$ is degrading in that you must submit yourself to it. If the $$$ is in code then you code and there's no room for individuality beyond that. It's genuflect or be poor. That's why all these rich people narrowly chase code or similar cash cows. The number two and three rules is chase it a lot and chase it efficiently. If you chase something else a lot and efficiently you will still be poor.

Charitably maybe the concept of chasing $$$ is so ingrained in these people that it's not a conscious decision to them. That seems to be what he says anyway. You could call that greed and I think a lot of brilliant people don't have it to the same degree that most billionaires do so failing to acknowledge it even by accident leads to gatekeeping money.

I think all the parts were invented by other people, but he got the right mix to make it work.

It's also like the wheel. Before it was a huge problem and no one know how to solve it. Now it's invisible.

Note that all modern versions use enhanced variants with a lot or trick to make it better.

Whatever you feel about it, it would be inaccurate to say that he has not found success. Clearly he has. So it is up to each person to decide whether or not any products of that success, including his writings, matches their own definition for 'great'.

You are somewhat smart in one specific domain; you are a "Genius".

You are successful in something; you are the "Greatest".

You fail in something; you are a "Loser".

You make one single mistake; you are "Dumb".

It is almost as if we have forgotten how we got here viz. lots of trial-and-error, sheer persistence, extreme specialization, building theories, sharing knowledge, building teams, focusing on goals, good dose of luck, etc.

When Ivy League educated VC billionaires tell people that they can do great things and change the world if they want, one assumption is that you already have to be pretty close to the in-group.

- William James Sidis

In any case; I think you will get the most out of the article if you do not pay the relatility too much thought: Even if C) would be true and you (or me or others) are indeed not part of the intended audience, I am sure there are still interesting thoughts in the essay on can think about and potentially apply to ones own life.

Follow up with Hamming's classic book; The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn available here (pdf) - https://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming_1997_-_The_Art_of_Doing_... It is a very unique one-of-a-kind book which is a must read cover-to-cover.

The last chapter of the above book is You and Your Research ;-)

Maybe you wanted to make a point about some aspects of the authors biography invalidated some claims they make? That would be interesting, then it would be good to be more specific regarding what you are refering to more concretely, though.