David Senra reads and unpacks Paul Graham’s essay “How to Do Great Work.”
Key Insights
On finding what you love:
Only a few hundred thousand people out of billions ever actually figure out what they love to work on. Most are doomed in childhood by accepting the axiom that work equals pain. Those who escape this are nearly all lured onto the rocks by prestige or money.
Four steps to great work:
- Choose a field
- Learn enough to get to the frontier
- Notice the gaps others take for granted
- Boldly chase outlier ideas — especially if others aren’t interested
On excitingness:
Always preserve excitingness. There’s a kind of excited curiosity that’s both the engine and the rudder of great work.
On direct connection:
Avoid letting intermediaries come between you and your audience. It is so liberating to escape it that you might be better off switching to an adjacent type of work if that work will let you go direct.
On ambition:
If you’re ambitious, you need to work. It’s almost like a medical condition. People who do great work are not necessarily happier than everyone else, but they’re happier than they’d be if they didn’t. If you’re smart and ambitious, it’s dangerous not to be productive.