How to Do Great Work

Paul Graham:

Four steps: choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier, notice gaps, explore promising ones. This is how practically everyone who's done great work has done it, from painters to physicists.

Graham again:

Consciously cultivate your taste in the work done in your field. Until you know which is the best and what makes it so, you don't know what you're aiming for.

And that is what you're aiming for, because if you don't try to be the best, you won't even be good.

There's a category of smart person that I particularly admire: guys who beat the system. Guys who see what no one else sees and that gives them an edge. Read The Big Short (or any of Michael Lewis's books, really), and you'll know who I'm talking about.

I don't know that you can intentionally become like these people; so much depends on circumstance. But you can probably train yourself to look for the things that nobody else sees. The most obvious way to do that seems to be: notice where everyone else is looking, then look in the opposite direction.

When you grow up, you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

Steve Jobs

It’s easier to persist, I think, when you see your work as a practice—an ongoing process of improvement—instead of focusing too much on any particular project. No project will be perfect. But each project can be better than the previous one, and each project can sharpen your skills and deepen your commitment to a craft. Celine Nguyen, The Divine Discontent