How To Do Great Work
I recently read the Paul Graham essay “How to Do Great Work” that has been making its way across the internet. Not only is it worth reading, it’s also worth discussing.
In this piece, Graham outlines a list of techniques across fields to highlight their intersection. The value, however, lies in the nuances. Just like great leadership which has a framework of obvious tenants, but what truly makes a leader stand out is in the subtleties of their intangibles.
The first step to doing great work is to decide what to work on. The work you choose needs to have three qualities:
It must be something you have a natural aptitude for
You must have a deep interest in
Offers scope to do great work
That’s straightforward, yet 85% of Americans dislike their jobs, so it isn’t as straightforward as one might think. The remedy to this that Graham suggests is to develop a habit of working on your own projects; something that most corporate professionals don’t do. Not doing this hinders your exposure to exploring work that will harness your aptitude and allow you to discover what you’re deeply interested in.
If you find yourself dissatisfied with your career, following Graham’s advice may be the avenue that drives you towards change. In my Reinvent Yourself Program, I use a similar method to Graham’s to help professionals identify their interests through a series of exercises. I instruct participants to brainstorm topics that they can speak about without any preparation. Graham describes this as something that you’re curious about to a degree that would bore most people.
He then goes on to state that once you’ve identified something you’re excessively interested in you should learn enough about it to identify the gaps. That is where you can dig in. For various reasons, the brain will want to gloss over these gaps, but that is precisely where you should focus. Boldly chase the outlier ideas that others have overlooked and most have ignored. I personally believe this is what sparks innovation.
The three most powerful motives Graham writes about are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive. The big prize is to discover a new fractal bud. When you notice a crack in the surface of knowledge, pry it open and there you’ll find a whole world inside.
Why does an article like Graham’s, which is over 11,000 words in length, spark such interest? I believe there is a craving for meaningful work and purpose. Our educational system has failed us by its teaching methods that reward based on memorization of information rather than critical thinking followed by deep exploration.
Trying and failing is still failing. The consequences of failure create an aversion to risk that is reinforced through a negative incentive structure. This same cultural theme is perpetuated through the corporate world, which has little tolerance for failure. It’s much safer to both conform and play small.
In reading biographies of people who’ve done great work, Graham states how much luck plays a part. His advice for that is to put yourself in a position where you can become a target of luck. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books and most importantly ask lots of questions. But remember questions don’t lead to answers but to more questions.
Pretentiousness, fashion, fear, money, politics, other people’s wishes, and eminent frauds are the forces that will lead you astray as you’re trying to figure out what to work on. Stay the course and allow what genuinely interests you to be your north star. Work hard on excitingly ambitious projects and something good will come of it.
Consistency is key. People who do great things don’t necessarily do a lot every day, but they do get something done rather than nothing. If you do that, your work will compound. Writing one page a day doesn’t seem like much, but at the end of the year you’ve written an entire book.
Letting your mind wander is also important. There’s a kind of indirect thinking that sparks ideas when you’re walking or taking a shower or even lying in bed. By letting your mind wander, you’ll often solve problems you weren’t able to solve by a frontal attack. This is why I believe meditation is so powerful.
To see new ideas, you need an exceptionally sharp eye for the truth. Remember you’re trying to see what others overlooked so far. You can achieve this by putting pressure in the opposite direction. This will keep you intellectually honest. You can’t have a sharp eye for truth if you’re intellectually dishonest. This will also require an aggressive commitment to admit when you’re mistaken.
Seeing a new idea requires you to change the way you look at the world. When we see the world through old models, we tend to constrain ourselves. Broken models of the world leave a trail of clues. They also bash against reality and challenge a set of rules.
Most people don’t want to see these clues, nor do they want to break any rules. To find new ideas, seize on the signs of breakage instead of looking away. Know that creating a new model will usually break at least implicit rules.
Take as much risk as you can afford. Don’t look for certainty but bet on a high expected value. Keep in mind that even a project that fails can have value. The world needs what you have to offer, so let’s get started.
Here’s how:
To get started, try asking yourself the following question: If I were going to take a break from “serious” work to work on something because it interests me, what would I do? The answer is probably more important than it seems.