July 2023

If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in various fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by creating it. My goal was to create a guide usable by anyone in any field and to understand the shape of this intersection. It turns out it’s not just about working hard. The first step is to decide what to work on. The work needs to have three qualities: natural aptitude, deep interest, and scope for great work. Ambitious people often worry too much about the third. Find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in.

The way to figure out what to work on is by working. If unsure, guess and start. You might guess wrong, but that’s fine. Develop a habit of working on your own projects. Your projects should be excitingly ambitious. As you grow, exciting and important will converge. Preserve excitingness.

Once you find something you're excessively interested in, learn enough to get to the frontier of knowledge. Notice the gaps. Great work often has a tincture of strangeness. Boldly chase outlier ideas. Four steps: choose a field, learn to the frontier, notice gaps, explore promising ones.

Interest drives hard work more than diligence. The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to impress. Consistency is key. Great work happens by focusing on something genuinely interesting.

Curiosity is the best guide. It will choose the field, get you to the frontier, cause you to notice gaps, and drive you to explore them. The factors in doing great work are ability, interest, effort, and luck. Can you find a kind of work where your ability and interest yield an explosion of new ideas? Many more people could try to do great work than do. Don’t worry about being presumptuous. The discoveries are out there, waiting to be made. Why not by you?

The original article: http://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html