[HN Gopher] How to Do Great Work ___________________________________________________________________ How to Do Great Work Author : razin Score : 533 points Date : 2023-07-01 14:41 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (paulgraham.com) (TXT) w3m dump (paulgraham.com) | grumpy_coder wrote: | You really shouldn't write a long post on doing great work | without mentioning teamwork. He seems to say great work is done | in the garage or garden shed, which has been false for centuries | at this point. | rosecross wrote: | He mentions that for certain projects you'll need to be good at | managing others, or you shouldn't attempt them at all. | brailsafe wrote: | Unless you live in any of the houses right outside the Apple | campus. The single most shocking thing to me when I visited for | the first time was that the entire area including right outside | the visitor center is still dominated by these upsetting 60s | bungalows. Ironically up in Redmond they're putting them to | shame in terms of development. | cdelsolar wrote: | My problem is that I've already chosen what to work on long ago - | Scrabble. I've built a popular (within the community) study tool, | I've also been working on an open source AI that I believe is | finally better than the state of the art one - I'm going to set | up a match between them sometime soon (but need a bot interface, | etc). This is without ML, too, which I fully intend to explore | soon. And finally I've been working on a modern lichess-like app | (woogles.io) for it, with tournaments, puzzles, etc that recently | hosted its 3 millionth game, with a small team of contributors. | It will likely be the test bed for the AI matches. And if that | isn't enough, I've attempted to achieve mastery at the game, | being rated as high as 7th nationally in the last few years. | Although I think I'd be better if I didn't spend so much time | building stuff for everyone to play with. | | The problem is there's no money in it. Hasbro is litigious, all | of this stuff is open source because I find it curious and deeply | interesting, and as a sort of misguided attempt to try to | democratize access to it. I'm not going to charge without getting | sued, and even if one of the companies like Scopely wanted to | hire me, I'm only interested in keeping this open source and | free. So I'm not really sure what to do. | galacticaactual wrote: | Frankly not sure what you want. You want money but also want to | keep things open source and free. I think you need to take a | hard look at your wants and how they map to the real world. | cdelsolar wrote: | I just want enough to be able to work on it as a full time | thing. | dr_dshiv wrote: | Maybe hasbro wants to hire you? | tough wrote: | Just keep doing whatever you want and maybe this work will be | the springboard to a new discovery where copyright isn't | limiting. | | I say following your passion can never go wrong, (well | ,sometimes, heh) | detourdog wrote: | No doubt I have followed this advice to a Tee (given to me at | weighing graduate school or a commercial world) 32 years | later I have whittled the perputal timeline from 2-5 years to | 6 weeks. Some days I even think I'm doing it. | isc_lover wrote: | Good effort, but ISC is still better. Sorry not sorry. | j2bax wrote: | Is there a problem if you don't use the trademarked name | Scrabble or any of their art? It's my understanding that you | can't protect a game mechanic. Is that inaccurate? | lairv wrote: | You seem passionate about it, so you should definitely keep | going | | > Hasbro is litigious | | > I'm not going to charge without getting sue | | I don't think this is a thing ? There's this website which is a | web Catan game ( https://colonist.io/ ) which is at least as | niche as Scrabble, and they seem to be doing well | ftxbro wrote: | I remember looking this up before, and game rule sets are not | protected in USA. You can't make some game rules and say that | other people can't make that game. The things that are | protected are the things that go along with the game, like if | you use any trademark name in the game or if you use any | protected media like if it's a card game then you can't use the | same card art. My understanding is that you can make a game | with the same rules as scrabble and not call it scrabble or use | their art and you are allowed to do it. | | Edit: this is getting upvoted so maybe at this point I should | say I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice lol | jacobolus wrote: | In theory. In practice, depends what judge you pull, and | you'd better have deep pockets for legal fights. | | My friends made a Tetris-like game (under a different name, | with unrelated art, just broadly similar rules) and were sued | out of existence by The Tetris Company. Even though they were | legally in the clear according to theoretical analysis, the | judge took a brief look and decided "this seems like it | should be a violation" and summarily decided in the Tetris | Company's favor, without even engaging with any of the issues | involved. Their pro-bono lawyers decided they didn't have the | resources to mount an appeal, so that was the end of that. | andrewstuart wrote: | I feel like I'm doing my greatest project at the moment. | | I enjoy PGs work but I'm not a fanboy. | | However in this case it's uncanny that the path of this work I am | doing is precisely as he has described here. | | I kinda knew already I was making something special but it's | almost like PG has been leaning over my shoulder watching my | thinking and watching my work process over years. | | In fact this article is "great work" because actually distilling | the essence of, and describing, great work would have been | incredibly hard. | | The article describes the process it must have taken to write the | article. Kinda recursive. | photochemsyn wrote: | This is a good article, but I don't think it acknowledges the | challenges and dangers that come with working in disruptive | technology fields. There are certain fields where great work is | welcomed by all, and although their may be a competition between | interested parties over who gets to control (i.e. profit from) | the fruits of your work, nobody is interested in actively | suppressing technological progress in that field. For example, | nobody I know of wants to suppress the development of faster | computer chips - although the US government doesn't want China to | have access to the latest ASML process technology. | | There are many fields where this is not true - e.g. neither Apple | nor Microsoft were thrilled about the development of the open- | source Linux operating system for decades. Similarly, renewable | energy technology funding has been actively suppressed at the | federal funding level in the USA by politicians in the pay of the | fossil fuel sector since the 1970s, as even a cursory examination | of DOE budgets will reveal. Decentralized robust energy grids not | under the control of large investor conglomerates are another | touchy subject. | | Nevertheless, it's possible to do great work in these fields but | only if you understand the forces arrayed against you in great | detail. In some cases, making progress might require fairly | radical solutions. For renewable energy development, moving to a | country whose economy is not based on fossil fuel exports and | which already is interested in replacing fossil fuel imports with | renewables might be the optimal solution, particularly if the | kind of work you have in mind requires expensive technological | support. Otherwise, you'll have to accept shoestring budgets and | active opposition to your work. | | There are a rather large number of fields where these issues | arise. Academic institutions have largely been corporatized in | the USA, and one side-effect is the gutting of environmental | contaminant research programs that measured things like heavy | metals, organochlorine contaminants, etc. in water, plants and | soil. Similarly, research progams that focused on the potential | uses of out-of-patent medicinal compounds were eliminated because | the private pharmaceutical partners of universities were only | interested in new patentable compounds. Of course, there are | fields where you'll get lots of support - development of military | drone technology, say. | | This kind of situation isn't a new phenomena. Historically, | technological stagnation is associated with the rise of | autocratic monopoly power in all civilizations. The printing | press was a threat to the established order in medieval Europe, | the electric lightbulb was a threat to the kerosene lamp and oil | business (note it took FDR's New Deal to electrify Rural | America), and so on. Therefore, if you plan on doing great work | in a disruptive technology field, don't be surprised when you run | into headwinds of various sorts. Such forces can often be | overcome (Linux eventually succeeded on a large scale), but | pretending they don't exist is the worst mistake you can make. | Understanding those opposing forces in detail is going to be a | necessary first step. | bryanmgreen wrote: | I think it's important to note there are two types of "great | work" | | 1) Where you have work expertise that is objectively higher than | your peers or in the top percentile of your industry due to | natural skills or experience or both. | | 2) Where you have do not have top-percentile expertise, but are | hitting the limits of your capabilities. Maxing out your | performance is the only way to know your limits and get better. | Sometimes you just can't improve, but if you're doing your best, | that's great work too. | | I have my own business and while I think there are people out | there who could do it better, everyday I'm putting in my best and | learning a lot. What more could I realistically ask for? | zeroonetwothree wrote: | The third type is where you just got lucky. For example a one | hit wonder musician or writer. Your baseline abilities aren't | that good but you hit the high side of variance. | ftxbro wrote: | fourth type is when someone else does the great work and you | get the credit | n6242 wrote: | Fifth type is when do something crappy but then someone | else looks at it and for whatever reason they think it's | great. | notpachet wrote: | The older I get, the bigger I think category 5 actually | is. | anonyme-honteux wrote: | That's so true, why bother doing great work, which is a lot | of work, when you can get the credit of many people doing | it? | | That's what Elon Musk has done since the start of his | career and it has worked pretty well for him. For that you | need to be a really good hype man because it's objectively | true that great work that nobody knows about is pure waste. | You need to be rich because in the US it's assumed that | this means something awesome about you personally. You need | to be the one who always announce the news on Twitter, you | don't even have to lie, your strongest fan will assume you | did all the work. Like they believe he is the founder of | Tesla. Like they believe he is the real life Tony Stark. | Like they believe that he, not the actual rocket scientists | working at Tesla, design all those rockets. Like they | believe that he invented the hyperloop when he renamed the | vactrain concept from hundred years ago and then couldn't | build it because it's bullshit. Like they believe he will | save humanity by helping us anytime soon to escape Earth | that people like him are destroying. | | I don't really care about Elon Musk. The guy is a mix | between a Tech Robber Baron and an emotionally immature 14 | years old who has read too much science fiction. And | remember more the fiction than the science. | | OTOH his fan club is a fascinating experiment on how a cult | of personality develops in public and in real time. | quacked wrote: | I work in the aerospace industry and know several current | and former senior engineers at SpaceX. None of them would | agree with your assessment that Musk has done no | meaningful work for SpaceX, or is a poor engineer | incapable of valuable work. | | I don't disagree with your read on his lack of maturity, | or that he takes credit for work he hasn't done, or that | his fans believe he is singularly responsible for the | accomplishments of his teams. However, it's odd that Musk | is so obsessively hated. I believe his passionate | detractors are under a similar polarizing spell as his | passionate fans, only in the opposite direction of "hero | worship". | ftxbro wrote: | > "I work in the aerospace industry and know several | current and former senior engineers at SpaceX. None of | them would agree with your assessment that Musk has done | no meaningful work for SpaceX, or is a poor engineer | incapable of valuable work." | | Could you expand that more? Like what meaningful work did | your acquaintances say Musk did for SpaceX and what | valuable engineering work did they think he was capable | of doing? | | Maybe Musk socially engineered a kind of nerd | reputational ant mill | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_mill where everyone who | works in the aerospace industry knows several current and | former senior engineers at SpaceX, none of whom agree | with the assessment that Musk has done no meaningful work | for SpaceX, or is a poor engineer incapable of valuable | work. | | I know he had pocket emeralds when he was a teenager and | he bought twitter and made a lot of stupid tweets, but | those things don't take much time, maybe in his other | time he did amazing things. | hgomersall wrote: | To flip that on its head, most people who do great work | do it explicitly for someone else. Or put another way: | you can build equity for yourself, or you can build | equity for someone else. | ftxbro wrote: | sometimes that depends on circumstance how easy or hard | that decision is, for example if you got pocket emeralds | as allowance from your parents when you were a teenager | it might be easier to have means and agency to build | equity for yourself, whereas if you were literally a | medieval serf born into a fief then it might be harder to | make this decision to build equity for yourself maybe you | will have to revolt | ftxbro wrote: | I think some of the fan phenomenon is just how much money | he has, although of course that's not the only thing. | Like if he plans to spend all his money over the next | decade (probably he doesn't) and he doesn't make any more | money or interest, then if you can get one single second | of his financial attention, then that is worth like a | thousand dollars, so of course anyone like that will be | swarmed by so many people. | closeparen wrote: | I don't think you have to be better than your peers to do great | work, unless they're direct competitors. You could be working | on something they're not, approaching it in a way that they | haven't, making a creative expression of something particular | to your own nature and experiences. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | Surely there's another type where your work is _good_ but not, | in isolation, truly extraordinary, but either by chance or by | understanding the problem space is applied in a place that has | a massive impact. | raminf wrote: | I agree with almost everything said here, especially the value of | curiosity and experimentation. | | A few thoughts: | | - Every project is at its most exciting right in the beginning | when it's new, and toward the end where the end is in sight. The | trick is staying engaged and interested in the long, flat middle | where progress comes in small dribs and there are frequent | setbacks. | | - Another point I wish the essay made is that many projects reach | a point at which it is best to reveal it to others. That is one | of the most scary parts, of exposing oneself to criticism and | doubt. It's what petrifies so many people from even starting. But | if you embrace it not as the end, but as part of the process and | a natural part of the evolution of the idea, it can itself be | turned into a motivator. It's your first milestone. You WANT to | get to that point, as a checkpoint. Seek out the feedback, | adjust, and press on. | | - In fact, more should be said about the emotional part of doing | projects. The love (or lust), the fear, the frustration, the | doubt, and yes, the joy. All those human emotions are part of | doing any work. We can run away from it and try to avoid it, or | realize it comes with the territory. | | - Another thing that comes with experience and age is knowing | what to say NO to, and avoid getting pulled away into the | tributaries. It's easy to get distracted by side quests and to | engage in bike-shedding. In fact, sometimes it's necessary for | one's mental health. But it is best to keep an eye on the main | goal that got us excited about the idea in the first place. | Knowing when the break is over and it is time to get back to main | path is a trick that seems to only come with age. | | - Lastly, there is great value in brevity (this is not a critique | of PG's excellent essay :-) Imagine meeting a friend and they ask | what you are working on. You tell them a long, complicated story, | and their eyes glaze over. Next person, you learn to shorten it. | Same result. You iterate. Soon, you've boiled it down to a short | sentence you can rattle off without thinking. That's the nugget | of the idea. The through-line. It's the blurb on the back of the | book, the opening line of the website, and the executive summary | of the grant application or pitch deck. At some point, all works | need to be explained to someone else, before they become Great | Works. | johnnyAghands wrote: | Kind of strange I'm getting a certificate error for this site... | wondering if its just me. Strange. | nathias wrote: | a great work has many conditions, and takes a lifetime dedication | from early on | RadixDLT wrote: | Unlocking your full potential comes down to one thing: passion. | Find what lights a fire within you and let it fuel your journey | towards doing great work. | jb1991 wrote: | I can't help but feel this essay is literally 100x longer than it | needs to be for the point it's trying to make. This sort of long- | winded, redundant writing seems to have gone out of style a long | time ago. | carlossouza wrote: | Although I enjoy reading his essays, yes, they tend to be | longer than usual. | | I wonder whether he uses an editor to provide constructive | feedback before publishing it or just writes and clicks | "publish." | | Interestingly, I found that point missing: people who do great | work usually have editors/mentors/advisors to help them along | the way. | andromaton wrote: | Scroll to the bottom. He always credits multiple people. I | assume all of them read his drafts. | smokel wrote: | Perhaps I am a bit too cynical here, but I think that it is | harder to criticize a long-winded article than a short bold | statement -- thereby making it slightly more comfortable to | publish. For a critical reader, it takes a lot of effort to | read the entire article, then check that its flaws are not | nullified by some additional arguments, etc. | williamstein wrote: | > "Believe it or not, I tried to make this essay as short as I | could. But its length at least means it acts as a filter. If | you made it this far, you must be interested in doing great | work. And if so you're already further along than you might | realize, because the set of people willing to want to is | small." | | I scrolled up and down quickly through the essay, and the above | was the very first thing I randomly read. | jb1991 wrote: | I find that quote rather condescending. It's also an excuse | in disguise. | 331c8c71 wrote: | "You are special (if you made it so far)" part is a cheap | manipulation imo. | DaveSchmindel wrote: | [flagged] | grrdotcloud wrote: | Maybe hard work has gone out of style? | | Yesterday I poured over two companies documentation. About 200 | pages of their API docs only to find: | | Dozen of typos. Errors in versions. Conflicts in examples. | Broken examples. | | I barely invest in this much reading but this time I did | because I was trying to deliver and sure enough I'm able to | benefit our entire product because of this effort. | vsareto wrote: | It's hard to not be lazy in today's corporate environments. | You simply don't get much for putting in the extra effort. | | Hard work needs incentives. Companies want you to light that | fire yourself so they don't have to pay extra. It's why I'm | not curious about anything work-related (plus it's hard to be | interested in CRUD apps after a decade). Even if I was, I'd | give the benefits to myself and not my company. | KnobbleMcKnees wrote: | Do you have examples of 200+ page API documentation that | doesn't have any errors or broken examples? | | Sounds like the law of small errors to me: | | https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_4_00.html | imran-iq wrote: | Django docs come to mind | GavinMcG wrote: | By the way, and only because your comment suggests you care | about detail and will find this valuable: it's "pored over" | unless there was a liquid you were dumping on them. | echelon wrote: | > pored over | | Let's change this. That's disgusting. Literally. | projektfu wrote: | It's lousy documentation but it makes great coffee. | [deleted] | worldta8 wrote: | From Zero to Millions: How Our Business Plan Transformed a | Startup into a Mega Success Story - | https://www.schoolterritory.com/2023/06/how-to-write-winning... | norir wrote: | One might be forgiven for wondering if PG gets paid by the word. | shri_krishna wrote: | Not related to the post. I am genuinely curious. Does PG make his | own titles? And why is it a gif instead of a regular text? I know | the site has remained stuck in the 90s kind of web design and I | quite like it. However, I fail to understand why the title has to | be a gif instead of text. Is it autogenerating it in the backend | or did someone actually write it out in some graphical software, | exported the title to a gif and then hardcoded it into the HTML? | So many questions LMFAO | andreasmueller wrote: | This blog post is GREAT and INSPIRING!! Thank you so much! --- | What came in mind is: To attentively make use of the concepts of | static and dynamic quality (introduced in | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila:_An_Inquiry_into_Morals). | scarface_74 wrote: | > Develop a habit of working on your own projects. Don't let | "work" mean something other people tell you to do. | | I spend eight hours+ a day supporting my addiction to food and | shelter. Why would I spend my free time working toward | "greatness" instead of doing hobbies I enjoy and spending time | with friends and family? | | Any other time I have I'm spending working out and training for | runs - neither of which I will ever be great at. | stephendause wrote: | I certainly don't think you have to, and I don't think that's | what Graham is saying, either. For those who are ambitious/do | seek "greatness" in some form, though, I think this is a good | article. | helicalmix wrote: | There's literally a note that says the text assumes you're very | ambitious. If you have no desire to work towards some | definition of "greatness", I assume that you're not ambitious, | and the text doesn't apply to you. | | Which is ok! You don't need to be ambitious, but it also means | you shouldn't take this essay so personally. | padolsey wrote: | Ambition is a pretty ambiguous term for what I think--here-- | means "A strong yearning for a type of success characterised | by western capitalist-individualistic schema of wealth and | status." Cool if you want that I guess. But it's narrow af. | scaramanga wrote: | If you work hard, in the fields, every day, perhaps one day | you, too, could be a successful pharaoh like me. Said the | great wise pharaoh. | thisgoesnowhere wrote: | This is a oddly very narrow view of ambition. | q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: | Genuinely not sure what you mean -- it seems like the | standard definition of ambition. | | How would you define it? | vsareto wrote: | Ambition has a large dynamic range. Shooting for | greatness is closer to the extremes. | hcks wrote: | "Ambition is wanting to live any life you want" is not a | very useful concept | esafak wrote: | It literally means a strong desire to do or achieve | something. | chii wrote: | > Why would I spend my free time working toward "greatness" | | you don't have to. But then don't wonder why you never achieve | greatness. Of course, life isn't about greatness. | emodendroket wrote: | Is Franz Kafka best remembered for how good he was at his day | job? | scarface_74 wrote: | And he died at 40 and this was his personal life: | | > Kafka never married. According to Brod, Kafka was | "tortured" by sexual desire ... his life was full of | "incessant womanising" and that he was filled with a fear | of "sexual failure".[64] Kafka visited brothels for most of | his adult life[65][66][67] and was interested in | pornography.[63] In addition, he had close relationships | with several women during his lifetime. On 13 August 1912, | Kafka met Felice Bauer, a relative of Brod's, who worked in | Berlin as a representative of a dictaphone company. A week | after the meeting at Brod's home, Kafka wrote in his diary: | emodendroket wrote: | OK... neither here nor there for my point that nobody | remembers him as a clerk. | wsc981 wrote: | If you can be a great parent, you've already achieved | greatness from my point of view. And perhaps easier to | achieve. | amoshebb wrote: | > The following recipe assumes you're very ambitious. | | No reason why. PG isn't writing to you. If you've got hobbies | that make you happy, relationships you love, and runs that keep | you healthy, I'm sure PG would tell you not to change anything. | ren_engineer wrote: | I think the idea here would be to manage your manager so you | can tie what work interests you into your job whenever | possible, implied by this section: | | "Don't let "work" mean something other people tell you to do. | If you do manage to do great work one day, it will probably be | on a project of your own. It may be within some bigger project, | but you'll be driving your part of it." | | as for time with family and friends, I'd say you can't have it | all. It's a personal decision on whether you want to achieve | "greatness" and what you are willing to sacrifice for it | scaramanga wrote: | Develop a habit of having a lot of dollars. Don't let life be | something you do without at least a billion of them. | | You're totally welcome for the sage advice. Have a nice day. | | haha. | ianbutler wrote: | I enjoy working on my side projects more so than other hobbies, | I have fun with them, it's not "work" in the sense as I think | you mean. I'm not working towards "greatness" as much as I have | ideas for projects that I think should exist and then want to | bring them into existence. | | I truly and deeply find my chosen projects interesting and | stimulating in a way other things aren't. | | I don't view work as a bad thing, with the caveat that it has | to be productive and interesting work that goes towards | something I think is impactful where the definition of | impactful is personal. | | I'm not saying your way is incorrect or bad or anything, just | providing the perspective of someone who spends a lot of time | working and how I feel about it. | CoastalCoder wrote: | Sometimes that side work prepares you for a day job that's more | enjoyable and/or pays better. | saiya-jin wrote: | Sure, but also sometimes you waste your life working thinking | you kick ass left and right, till you arrive at certain | point, ie retirement and realize you actually wasted your | life, and no amount of money can change that. Sure, you have | a some freedom ahead of you, but only as much as your health, | finances and other circumstances allow you to, and this is | usually less than people project earlier. | | Plus family happens _now_ for many of us, and not later. Kids | need their parents, not their money. Its a grave mistake that | hurts badly your closest ones for life to prioritize | excellence in 1 direction over everything else, especially | them. | | I'll always have endless amount of respect of people raising | their kids properly themselves into mature, happy adults who | know what they want in life and go for it, even if it means | they just worked to live. I don't have even a cubic picometer | of respect for folks who end up doing the opposite, | regardless of what they achieved professionally. This world | needs new generation of balanced adults much much more than | some search optimized by 0.1% or some marginally improved | social graph monetization. | | Of course not everybody wants, needs or can create a family, | that's fine but another topic, then I agree with you more. | scarface_74 wrote: | After staying at a job for too long by 2008 and barely | surviving the recession at a startup until 2012 and also | getting married the same year and (gladly) becoming the | father to my then 9 and 14 year old stepsons, I changed | jobs six times and pushed myself to get ahead until 2020 | and falling into a mid level position at BigTech (cloud | consulting department). | | I then tried to stay on the treadmill and I spent about a | year working toward a promotion by increasing my "scope" | and "impact". | | I then realized by 2022 at 48 years old, why? I make more | than "enough" especially seeing I work remotely. | | I then told my manager I was just interested in "improving | in my current role" and my wife and I decided to do | something completely different: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966 | | I've never been happier not trying to be "great" and being | "content" | scarface_74 wrote: | I found it much better to work "overtime" at my day job to | learn new to me technologies and do POCs if the company is | not using the technology or to volunteer for assignments | based on something I don't know well and put in extra time to | meet the deadline. | | One reason is that I can seek feedback from coworkers and | polish the POC. I also can take advantage of infrastructure | that may be cost prohibitive to test something at scale based | on real world usage. | | The other reason is that for my next job, it's much more | impressive to say I spearheaded work for a company than a | hobbyist side project. | | Yes I know one advantage of your own side project is that you | can show your code. But most of the time the hiring manager | isn't going to take time to look at your work anyway. | | I have personally been fortunate enough to have unfettered | Admin access to an AWS account on someone else's dime between | two jobs for the past five years where I could experiment and | learn on the job. | brigadier132 wrote: | What's your complaint? That this article is not targeted at | you? The article is titled "how to do great work". If you | aren't interested in doing great work then you are not the | target audience. | skribanto wrote: | Does HN really think this? 99% of people will have neutral to | negative impact on the world 10 yrs post mortem. None of us | are the target audience is this article | brigadier132 wrote: | The words you wrote make sense but are filled with so many | assumptions and beliefs that I actually don't understand | what you are trying to say. | | For example | | > 99% of people will have neutral to negative impact on the | world 10 yrs post mortem | | What does it even mean to have a negative impact on the | "world"? Do you mean a negative impact on humanity? Also, | where does the 99% number come from. | | > None of us are the target audience is this article | | Do you think humanity would be worse off with more people | working hard to create and discover things to improve their | own lives and the lives of others? | | Anyway, your comment is filled with cliche cynicism. | Cynicism is a cheap way to appear smart. I think people | learned it from TV when they watched tv shows like House or | Sherlock. | mmargerum wrote: | If your personal projects are "work" then yes do not bother. | These are my creative outlet and where I get to enjoy coding | again. My day job is massive .net/angular/sql projects that are | just meh. | luqtas wrote: | Paul the creator of Ycombinator? | | hmm... depends what you consider great. last time i checked | companies you helped, one of them was Rappi. they came to Brazil | and basically destroyed the bicycle courier scene with anti- | competitive practices on other companies just because they were | rolling on money. after them, it is pretty rare to see someone | working with deliveries and bicycles... and they are more silent | and ecological than any motor-cycle or car. and actually smart | considering the amount of damage noise and pollution from motor | does. | | anyway, considering something great is a sensible topic. | specially if you taking the amount of money made as a important | factor. maybe that is why the world is full of people digging | CEOs status on top of zombie-like consumers that can not think | for themselves | lewisjoe wrote: | "Follow your interest/passion" - is such an easy advice. | | However in some societies / economies, it's simply not possible. | Where I'm from (India), where a majority of my generation has to | lift their families from money problems, there's no option of | following passion. There's only "learn/do what makes money". It's | not entirely a bad thing though. | | For example people here just jump into doing something and then | eventually develop a passion for it (setting up a shop, or | running a business or producing/distributing boring everyday | products, etc). | | The other alternative is to spend precious younger years of my | time in search of "passion". This happens too, but mostly from | folks who already have financial freedom to explore and | experiment, who are relatively scarce in some societies. | badpun wrote: | India is essentially at the development stage matching that of | XIX century Europe and the US. Back then, nobody was following | passions, and everyone was just starting practical businesses | and investments which will (hopefully) bring in some money. Now | it's India's turn to go through that phase. | [deleted] | kubb wrote: | I'm surprised Paul gets upvoted so much, no matter what | platitude he serves up. His writing is good for a software | engineer, but doesn't hold a candle to a capable journalist or | writer. Basically it feels like you're reading a documentation | page about the last idea he's had in the shower. | codethief wrote: | > "Follow your interest/passion" - is such an easy advice. | | > For example people here just jump into doing something and | then eventually develop a passion for it (setting up a shop, or | running a business or producing/distributing boring everyday | products, etc). | | No one said you first had to sit down, ponder hundreds of life | options and then choose your passion. Passion might also come | to you as you progress in whatever field you're in. Put | differently, you might as well follow your natural inclinations | (whatever you find somewhat interesting in the moment) or | submit to life/financial constraints (choose a promising career | path), and as you become better and better at what you do, | develop a passion for it. | mercurialsolo wrote: | I have always wondered is greatness is something we see in | retrospect and in the middle of all the work - do we really see | it as great. What keeps us ticking to do the work? | | The passion, the finish line, the eye on the goal, the fleeting | moment of accomplishment? | | And do you really see work as a product of your life's output. Or | the way you live your life as one dedicated to the work. Are your | relationships, your friendships, your contribution to your | immediate environment around you motivators? | rmorey wrote: | [flagged] | moffkalast wrote: | > offers scope for groundbreaking work | | Hah, and make sure to be a genius with a workaholic attitude, | otherwise the 100 people that are like that will make the | groundbreaking discoveries a few years before you. | | The more people alive and able to work on research, the higher | the bar gets. For most people, implementing existing bleeding | edge knowledge is already an achievement. | MichaelRo wrote: | Well put. What the article (and others like it) lacks is the | fallback, the plan B, the exception handling. | | There's a Gauss curve. Simple stuff can be done by any idiot | so there's going to be a lot of competition on that. Like | picking strawberries, for any position there's 100 Mexicans | (in the US) or Eastern European guys (in the EU) willing to | do that for cheap. So getting good (skilled, educated) does | decrease competition and increase one's chances of doing | "great work". But from a point on you reach into the | territory where there's just too much genius, semi-autistic | high IQ workaholics that crowd some niche field and end up | with the same 100 hulks for one job. Doesn't matter if it's | picking strawberries or playing forward in Champions League, | if you're not getting either you're still a loser. | | So exception handling: if you invest a lot of effort into | something make sure you get to reap some rewards even if | you're one of the 99th guys that doesn't get to pick the | strawberries. | | Otherwise like a great Romanian scholar and philosopher once | said: "Decat sa lucri de-a pulea mai bine stai de-a pulea | (Gigi Becali)". Loosely translated: "Rather than work your | ass off for nothing, better sit on your ass for nothing". | carabiner wrote: | Who is Claude? | la_fayette wrote: | I read the text of PG and now found this summary, which fully | sums it up. Thank you. | Octokiddie wrote: | > What are you excessively curious about -- curious to a degree | that would bore most other people? That's what you're looking | for. | | This is a great article, but there are many, many people for whom | this advice is going to lead nowhere or worse. They have often | been to fancy universities and have often earned fancy degrees. | But what they don't realize is that they've also been trained to | respond to the praise of authority figures. The article touches | on this point later, but emphasizes a different outcome. | | If there's one thing that authority figures absolutely hate is a | project that makes you excessively curious. | | I'll speculate that those most affected by this perverse reward | system will deny its influence over them most strongly. They | won't realize that their motivation for projects stems from the | enthusiasm that authority figure show or withhold. They will | therefore conclude that the warning above does not apply to them. | And they will have a very hard time. | | I saw this first-hand in graduate school. At least half the | students had never learned to disregard the level of the | greybeard's enthusiasm when choosing projects. Unsurprisingly, | they also did not understood the process of formulating a project | idea. This was the half that had, by far, the hardest time. At | the slightest hint of graybeard apathy for a project idea, they | were onto something else. | chinchilla2020 wrote: | At the end of the day, your curiosity and talent is used to | make money for someone. | | Fetishizing work productivity and ability ignores the fact that | most company owners are managerial types that will harness your | output for monetary value. You could easily end up wasting your | life by becoming some niche field leader in the systems you | work on, but never enjoying the rewards of your talent. | | Hackernews in particular likes the idea of a life spent | entirely behind a laptop, but there is a larger world out | there, and the winners are enjoying it while we chase little | lifehacks to eke out 20 extra minutes of productivity in a 10 | hour day. | | I'm as guilty of this productivity fetishization as anyone | here, but am just reaching a point in life where I'm starting | to notice the walls of the maze. | einpoklum wrote: | > Don't let "work" mean something other people tell you to do. | | So, either be someone who's privileged, or very lucky, or - first | get rid of the wage-labor-based economy, and probably Capitalism | altogether, then get started :-) | fnord77 wrote: | also: | | - Don't have any chronic diseases or pain that will distract or | dull your attention | | - Have a stable source of income or enough wealth to let you try | and fail at a lot of things | | - Have stable family and friends | | - Don't have optimism beaten out of you at a young age | | etc | badtension wrote: | I am amazed how many people take their fortunes for granted and | then preach about how they "worked harder than anyone else | hence deserve much more than the others". You have to be | incredibly lucky to get to that point. In case of chronic | illness (like brain fog) you are pretty much destined to fail. | helicalmix wrote: | I'm also amazed how people will take a self-improvement | article like this, and take it so personally. Like yes, pg | was lucky to have a lot of things work out for them, but that | doesn't mean his advice here (which encompasses more than | just "work hard") is invalid for everyone just because it's | invalid for some people. | 331c8c71 wrote: | It's a post-factum rationalization of personal experience | possibly mixed with some anecdata. | | Fine as a motivational material but that's all this is. | CartyBoston wrote: | It would be nice to see Paul write more about the | privileges he has enjoyed. | [deleted] | amts wrote: | Yep, get yourself a bs job first while implicitly getting | yourself stroke, cancer and diabetes from it to pay for | utilities and a few gallons of water per month and only then do | great work. | [deleted] | guptarohit wrote: | This is one of the great writeup! | | In case you want to listen it instead of reading it like me, you | can do so by following command, it creates a audio file (named | greatwork) which you can play: | | wget -qO- http://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html | sed -e | '/<script/,/<\/script>/d' -e 's/<[^>]*>//g; s/\ \;/ /g; | s/\&\;/\&/g; s/\<\;/</g; s/\>\;/>/g' | say --progress -o | greatwork | | please note, this is tested on macOS only. | dhdaadhd wrote: | If you're looking for something that scales this feature, you | might love Matter (https://hq.getmatter.com/). It has instant | article text-to-speech via a simple chrome extension & a web + | iOS app - along with %-read tracking, ability to start playing | audio from any word, etc. | | (Not affiliated, just a happy user.) | guptarohit wrote: | thanks for sharing, Matter looks promising I'll give it a | try. | wackget wrote: | It's 2023. Why do many websites featured here _still_ not use | HTTPS? | slig wrote: | It's not _even_ tableless. | ghqst wrote: | see http://n-gate.com/software/ | nullandvoid wrote: | I mean it's a blog, with no ability to sign in / risk leaking | any PI. Adding HTTPS would only waste CPU cycles serving the | page. | mgamache wrote: | Sure, but there's a wider context of encrypting all internet | traffic to provide less context for the stuff that _is_ | sensitive. | seanhunter wrote: | This is a common attitude that I think overlooks a big part | of the benefits of secure transport. | | If all your traffic is TLS then you have a number of | benefits, including principally | | 1) Noone can MITM the traffic. They can't insert anything in | stream or do anything else funky that they absolutely can | with clear traffic if they own your route somehow. | | 2) The amount of information leakage is less due to chaffing. | Consider a situation where all your sensitive traffic is | HTTPS and all your other traffic is HTTP. In that world a bad | person monitoring your traffic may not know the details of | your sensitive traffic, but they know that the metadata of | any HTTPS indicates sensitive traffic. If everything is HTTPS | on the other hand literally any of the metadata could be | sensitive or non-sensitive and they have no way of telling. | The more non-sensitive traffic is encrypted the greater the | benefit of this protection. | | So given those are pretty significant benefits for visitors | to your site it's nice to provide the option of HTTPS. On a | seperate note, the amount of CPU cycles consumed by serving | HTTPS these days is really trivial especially if you use a EC | cert or similar. | lkschubert8 wrote: | I suppose someone could mitm impersonating pg? Seems like a | low risk though. | nyc_pizzadev wrote: | What about an inbetween actor changing the content? Or | someone just hijacking the website? | [deleted] | ava2 wrote: | [flagged] | vonnik wrote: | Mary Helen Immordino Yang has some interesting thoughts about how | to change education to make it nudge kids towards doing more | interesting work: | | https://youtu.be/S8jWFcDGz4Y | nazgulnarsil wrote: | One thing mostly not addressed is just how hard it can be to | receive social opprobrium for pushing against things that are | obviously broken but act as important foundation for current | social reality. Even small amounts of contrarianism can get | surprising amounts of not just overt push back, but social | undermining over seemingly trivial things. | | This creates a different kind of blindness to 'What you Can't | Say' and 'Schlep Blindness' but rather a filtering of most smart | contrarians into fields where lots of smart people bicker over | table scraps of prestige and the few interesting problems that | are legible and funded to work on. Work on seemingly low status | problems and you won't have to waste your time competing. | MichaelRo wrote: | Well put. But what the article (and others like it) lacks is the | fallback, the plan B, the exception handling, what to do if | things don't work out as planned. | | There's a Gauss curve. Simple stuff can be done by any idiot so | there's going to be a lot of competition on that. Like picking | strawberries, for any position there's 100 Mexicans (in the US) | or Eastern European guys (in the EU) willing to do that for | cheap. So getting good (skilled, educated) does decrease | competition and increase one's chances of doing "great work". But | from a point on you reach into the territory where there's just | too much genius, semi-autistic high IQ workaholics that crowd | some niche field and eventually you end up competing with the | same 100 hulks for one job. Doesn't matter if it's picking | strawberries or playing forward in Champions League, if you're | not getting either you're still a loser. It's a dog eat dog | world, winners take all and there's no reward for the effort. If | you don't win the big prize, you've wasted your life for nothing. | | So exception handling: if you invest a lot of effort into | something make sure you get to reap some rewards even if you're | one of the 99 guys that doesn't get to pick the strawberries. | | Otherwise like a great Romanian scholar and philosopher once | said: "Decat sa lucri de-a pulea mai bine stai de-a pulea (Gigi | Becali)". Loosely translated: "Rather than work your ass off for | nothing, better sit on your ass for nothing". | zamfi wrote: | I'm not sure we got the same thing from this essay. | | Picking problems is one of the first things mentioned in this | essay, and neither soccer-playing nor strawberry-picking seem | like fields where there are lots of questions folks haven't | answered yet. (This is not to say that there aren't interesting | questions in agriculture or sports in general!) | | Picking a field that's zero-sum, where there are already 100 | workaholic geniuses pursuing the only possible positive | outcomes (eg, champions league forward) seems like maybe not | the right way to go, and the essay is pretty explicit about | this. | Blahah wrote: | Honestly I didn't think it was well put at all. A vast number | of words for very little content, and what content can be | distilled is useful to approximately nobody. I've never known a | person who needed this advice. | | If you're exceptional in some niche you don't need the advice | (if it can be called that). If you aren't, you can be your best | and thrive if you are motivated, in which case this is | similarly unhelpful. In the final case, if you aren't | intrinsically motivated to do 'great work' then you won't. | jsunderland323 wrote: | I think part of the point of it is to assure people working | on niche problems that embody some of the qualities of what | pg is describing as great work. It's easy to look at the | shiny zeitgeist and feel a lot of self doubt if you're off | working on something few outside the niche seem to | understand. I'm not sure if this an advice piece as much as | an encouragement piece to those readers going through those | trenches. | [deleted] | ren_engineer wrote: | in tech at least even if you fail, you are developing valuable | skills that can be used elsewhere. Plenty of failed startup | founders end up at other places in engineering or management | roles | | not creating a billion dollar startup isn't a failure, tons of | people in the tech industry retire as multimillionaires | essentially working a 9-5. A lot of people on HN seem to think | if you don't make the Forbes list you are a failure | aleph_minus_one wrote: | > in tech at least even if you fail, you are developing | valuable skills that can be used elsewhere. | | Rather: _Currently_ in tech _in the USA_ ... | sentientslug wrote: | I'm not really sure that their statement is temporal or | regional. With failure in general comes lessons that can be | applied to other situations, regardless of anything else. | moneywoes wrote: | > So exception handling: if you invest a lot of effort into | something make sure you get to reap some rewards even if you're | one of the 99 guys that doesn't get to pick the strawberries. | | How does this work in the world of business where 99% fail | | Should I not even try? | badpun wrote: | Example - try to launch a startup as a technical founder. If | it fails, you can still get a coding job and do ok. | | Example of what not to do - try becoming a pro poker player. | If you fail, you have no marketable skills to fall back on. | chksum wrote: | Many professional poker players transition into quant based | roles. They're great at assessing risk and objective | decision making. | [deleted] | chinchilla2020 wrote: | Exactly. | | My cousin tried to become a twitch streamer. He is an | incredible gamer and did some competitive gaming in shooter | tournaments back in the day. He's also very funny and | charismatic. | | He became interested in hacking minecraft pushed some of the | boundaries of what you could do in the modding/hacking scene. | | Despite his efforts, things never really took off and ended up | heading off to college like the rest of us. | sctb wrote: | > It's a dog eat dog world, winners take all and there's no | reward for the effort. If you don't win the big prize, you've | wasted your life for nothing. | | Prizes and rewards are never guaranteed. The only way to be | sure you aren't wasting your time is to spend it on something | gratifying--in the context of this essay this might be the | "excited curiosity that's both the engine and the rudder of | great work." You don't need a fallback if your approach isn't | outcome oriented. | kepano wrote: | "The way to figure out what to work on is by working. If you're | not sure what to work on, guess. But pick something and get | going." | | I very much agree with this sentiment. That's how you find good | problems to solve. In general, we don't teach enough about | "problem finding" which is arguably harder and more important | than problem solving. | [deleted] | dkqmduems wrote: | There's another word for this...play? | xyzelement wrote: | It's not exactly play, it's more like focused exploration. Eg | Columbus setting sail without knowing what he would find. You | wouldn't say he was playing but you would say he was | discovering. | moneywoes wrote: | Ideation and customer discovery? Market research? | tough wrote: | I mean the guy was going for a shorter trip to the indias | and found out the americas | | I'd call that mostly luck lmao | | Took courage to go to the end of the world, for sure, but | still god damn luck too | cushychicken wrote: | Another thing you need: patience. | | I'm 34, and just in the last year reached the point where I have: | | - enough experience and context to do great work, and | | - the right people to leverage that context and experience on | meaningful applications | | It took a lot of waiting for that ideal blend of circumstances to | come around. I wish I'd have been able to tell my 26 year old | self that as he slogged through an entry level EE job. The | choices he made affected where I am now, but he definitely made | some sacrifices on my behalf. | skmurphy wrote: | I think people can do great work at any age. Sometimes | newcomers look at a long-standing problem and discover or | design a new approach that is substantially better. Other times | established experts can leverage the breadth of their | experience to develop a better solution or offering. For me, | the key elements are the desire to create something of value or | make a contribution, a willingness to collaborate to extend | what you can accomplish, and the self-discipline to work hard | for extended periods of time. | zengid wrote: | Hofstadter's Law: | | _It always takes longer than you think, even if you take into | account Hofstadter's Law._ | grrdotcloud wrote: | Similar but more confidence. | | And ignoring all self doubt and imposter feelings has made my | career way less stressful. | moneywoes wrote: | > the right people to leverage that context and experience on | meaningful applications | | Whss as t does this entail, business context? | andrewstuart wrote: | This is an important point..... | | Great work and your | craftsmanship/experience/wisdom/capabilities are interrelated. | | Being able to do great work is partly a function of your | ability to work. | aman_jha wrote: | An essay worth waiting months to read | Ericson2314 wrote: | The fact that this is so much longer than previous ones makes me | wonder if LLMs were involved. | urs wrote: | Just stumbled upon this thread and wanted to share Richard | Hamming's classic talk from '86, "You and Your Research." | | Then I realized that the funny part is that PG has already linked | to Hamming's talk on his site | (http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html), and mentioned it on | Twitter (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/849300780997890048). | | There's a part in that talk that has always stuck with me: he | advises to ask yourself at every Friday evening, "What are the | important problems in my field?" Not entirely dissimilar from | PG's take on how the educational system in forcing you to commit | prematurely often has you overlook this entirely. | | In the vein of "great minds think alike," both of them hammer | home the importance of working on what genuinely grabs your | interest. PG's advice is to "optimize for interestingness" ; | Hamming when he says, "If you do not work on an important | problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work." | | I got a kick out of how both of them advocate for being flexible | in our approach to work -- especially given how launching and | pivoting after learning from your users has also been the PG | advice for the better part of two decades in startup-focused | essays. PG's all for switching horses mid-race if a more exciting | problem shows up , and Hamming shares the same sentiment, | stressing the importance of being ready to seize new | opportunities. Today pivoting is just default vernacular in | startup world, but also cutting losses and getting that fractal | and pushing that to its end is worth it. | | Curious how has "optimizing for interestingness" played out in | your own work or life? Additionally, curious if there are any | good HN stories about pursuing research and "pivoting" in fields | that are not searching for product-market/fit for a startup... | | (Hamming's talk has been shared countless times here and this | feels like PG's contribution to a similar idea | (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35778036)). | interroboink wrote: | There's an unspoken aspect of the word "important" here -- | important _to you_ , or important _to the world_ (society, | etc)? | | From Hamming: | | "I thought hard about where was my field going, where were the | opportunities, and what were the important things to do. Let me | go there so there is a chance I can do important things." | | It seems he is talking about the _important to the world_ | aspect. He wants to have a big impact on the world, and be | where the action is. The goal is to make a name for yourself, | or to at least have a hand in the next big transformations. | | But there is also the "important _to you_ " aspect. In | Hamming's case, those two notions of importance align. But not | so for everyone. | | Quoting again: | | "I went home one Friday after finishing a problem, and | curiously enough I wasn't happy; I was depressed. I could see | life being a long sequence of one problem after another after | another." | | So, he is happiest when working on problems that have big | "important" implications for the world. Good for him; I'm glad | he discovered that about himself, and followed what made him | happy. | | So now for my actual point: I'd encourage a person to actually | first and foremost focus on what is important to them | personally -- what makes them happy -- rather than what seems | "important" from some external perspective. | | I think a lot of people will decide, like Hamming did, that | they want to be where the action is, that they want to | participate in transforming the world, that that is what makes | them happy. But to put that choice on a pedestal as though it | is the True Goal -- to put "important to society" above | "important to oneself" is putting the cart before the horse. | It's how you get a bunch of unhappy people chasing after other | people's dreams. | | It's actually somewhat touched upon in TFA, with: | | "The following recipe assumes you're very ambitious." | | Indeed -- like Hamming was. But not everyone is, and not | everyone needs to be to be happy. I am just slightly irked by | our somehow reserving the word "great" for ambitious people's | accomplishments. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Right now, the audio tech/software niche is abuzz with ideas | and attempts related to using transformer technology within | the field. Music generation, new synthesis techniques, | generative DSP and more. | | According to the field, viewed from some altitude, these the | "important (to the world)" things. | | But for myself, with 25+ years in the field, I couldn't give | a rat's arse about any of it. Absolutely not "important (to | me)". | | Am I ambitious (still) ? I think so. But I'm also picky about | where I'm willing to put my energy. | moneywoes wrote: | Curious, do you just think the industry is over hyped | zug_zug wrote: | I haven't finished this yet, will take more than one sitting to | digest, but I'm already 90% sure I'm going to disagree with this | one a lot. | | I like to validate people's advice by playing it out in | hypotheticals, so let's take some random fields people may think | they want to be great at, and apply this advice: chess, piano, | philosophy, quantum physics, soccer. I think it's self-evident | that his algorithm isn't suited for the wide set of cases. | | Here's my alternative proposal: | | - If you're interested in a field, first ask, what % of people | who dedicate their life to that field get any kind of | fame/wealth/recognition (or whatever greatness means to you). So | if we're talking chess, and you're already 14 and can't play, you | have a 0% chance of getting to the top 100. Or if it's being a | famous writer good to know what your base odds are. | | - Look up people who RECENTLY (within 30 years) succeeded in this | field and look for patterns. I know 0 famous philosophers of the | last 30 years, but the closest ones would probably be youtube | philosophers. So maybe that's the current meta. | | - Look at the power-structures that determine success in the | field (soccer is a fair game, art is judged by a few powerful | tastemakers, news may be judged by clicks, some academia is | judged by splash), decide if you are okay with the system and | think you can excel in this system. Don't become a professional | writer because "You have something to say," become a writer | because "You have something other people want to hear." | | That's all I got for now, it's his blog post not mine. | [deleted] | mistermann wrote: | Watch out for this during your analysis: | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics | ianbutler wrote: | > Don't become a professional writer because "You have | something to say," become a writer because "You have something | other people want to hear." | | I think this is terrible advice for doing great work, probably | good advice for doing shallow work that gets you paid. Great | does not (always) mean wealthy, popular or well liked. Plenty | of writers went through life with people telling them they | sucked and then eventually people got it. Look at Charles | Bukowski for example. | zug_zug wrote: | I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure you see what I'm | saying. | | If you want to maximize your chances of being a great writer, | obviously write. But if you want to maximize your chances of | being great period, then you need to decide if writing the | next great american novel is the course you want to work | toward. IMO you are an order of magnitude more likely to | become famous/great from youtube than from writing, even if | your best skill is novel-writing. | | Sure there are people who persevered at writing at made it | work, but also probably more people persevered and wasted | their lives on writing than most other pursuits. | dmvdoug wrote: | As usual, this is both interesting but also so generalizing as to | get frustrating in places. But it's clearly well-meaning and | earnest, which makes it easier to tolerate some of its annoyingly | breezy certainty. | | Then there's this: | | > Religions are collections of cherished but mistaken principles. | So anything that can be described either literally or | metaphorically as a religion will have valuable unexplored ideas | in its shadow. Copernicus and Darwin both made discoveries of | this type. | | > [18] The principles defining a religion have to be mistaken. | Otherwise anyone might adopt them, and there would be nothing to | distinguish the adherents of the religion from everyone else. | | First, anything can be either literally or metaphorically | described as a religion, so that makes this an empty principle, | since it either covers nothing or everything or both. | ("Cheesecake is my religion." Etc.) | | Second, the footnote is literally impenetrable to me. Honestly. I | can discern no coherent meaning. That everyone could adopt a | principle or belief does not mean it must be false just because | everyone uniformly and indistinguishably believes it and | therefore nobody disbelieves it. Whether people can be | distinguished from one another with respect to some belief (say, | that in base 10 arithmetic that 1+1=2) has nothing to do with the | truth vel non of that belief. | | And honestly, I am genuinely struggling to fathom a mind that | _could_ not only believe that statement but believe it so deeply | that they breezily announce it as obviously true. So it's funny | that this is the next paragraph: | | > What are people in your field religious about, in the sense of | being too attached to some principle that might not be as self- | evident as they think? | | The only, and I mean, literally only, interpretation that I can | come up with is that PG is using "religion" and "religious" in | enough different ways that when he mixes them, as it seems to do | here, he doesn't notice. Or he means them ONLY in the sense of | "too attached to some principle that might not be as self-evident | as they think." But I have a very strong suspicion that he is | definitely not using them only in that way. | hospitalJail wrote: | >But it's clearly well-meaning and earnest | | When you are famous, people give you the benefit of the doubt. | | When you are small fries, you are blogspam. | dmvdoug wrote: | It's more a tone issue. He's a skilled enough writer to come | across as sincere and well-meaning. Whether he is or not I | have no clue, I don't know the man. | carabiner wrote: | Traditionally, footnotes are straightforward explanations of | terms or passages. Tech writers, in their grandiosity, have | perverted them to contain randomass tangents that no one really | cares about. | dmvdoug wrote: | Whereas legal opinions use them either as a citation dump | (known as "collecting cases"), as a place to bracket issues | that are not being decided, or as a place to put a | substantive response to a separate opinion in the case (if | you're an appellate court). | mamediz wrote: | I like footnotes, or in this case maybe we should call | "endnotes". David Foster Wallace was known to use them a lot, | sometimes he would put footnotes in footnotes. | dmvdoug wrote: | Good old postmodernist literature. So meta. | leoc wrote: | Footnotes are _mainly_ straightforward-enough glosses and | references, but there have always been digressions (and quite | often sniping) in there too. The C19 has some real specimens. | interroboink wrote: | > annoyingly breezy certainty. | | I may have to steal that phrase (: | kens wrote: | > [18] The principles defining a religion have to be mistaken. | Otherwise anyone might adopt them, and there would be nothing | to distinguish the adherents of the religion from everyone | else. | | I think what's going on here is the theory that the purpose of | religion is to create a trusted in-group separated from the | out-group, with rules that make it difficult to casually join. | [1] If you start from that premise, PG's footnote makes sense. | But this ignores the fact that the largest religions really | want as many members as possible and would be delighted if | everyone followed their principles. | | [1] See for instance: | https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/24/there-are-rules-here/ | dmvdoug wrote: | This is actually helpful. So, he's saying, religions _really_ | exist for this social function of group formation /identity. | Thus, we know that the principles they proclaim, which tend | to be universal claims of truth, are wrong, since if those | principles were true, they would defeat the real purpose of | religion. Therefore, one good way to find ideas to explore is | to question the principles or bracket them and see what you | can do without them. | | That does make what he's saying there cohere better. Of | course, what he's saying turns entirely on the ambiguity he's | playing on (which I suspected): religion in the sense of | concrete historical/social human practices and religion in | the sense of identifying strongly with and thus not | questioning your principles. Never a good idea to hang your | hat on the coatrack of suggestive language games. Or, you | know, outrageous bullshit. | | I almost think it makes it worse, finding a coherent meaning | ---which is so silly. | enraged_camel wrote: | I used to interpret PG's self-assured tone as wisdom. Over the | years though, I've come to realize what it actually is: hubris. | KnobbleMcKnees wrote: | Not to get too memey but: why not both? | rblion wrote: | Design checks all the boxes for me. I am naturally gifted in this | field, deeply interested in how everything works, how I can | increase quality of life for all beings. | | > There's a kind of excited curiosity that's both the engine and | the rudder of great work. It will not only drive you, but if you | let it have its way, will also show you what to work on. | | We are going to meet one day PG and I will thank you for | encouraging me since I was 17. I am 33 now and determined as | ever. | hyperthesis wrote: | PSA: This is much longer than pg's other essays. There are | multiline gaps between sections that can seem like the end. | culopatin wrote: | Ive been conflicted for 12 years now on what field to pursue. I'm | between mechanical engineering because of my interest in | materials and aerodynamics (I'd love to do research in this | field), and software engineering (I don't know what I'd do | research in, but I like the idea of making tools people use). | | I work in IT/light software dev, and I think I'm inclined towards | software because that's where I've been building my expertise in, | but I'm always thinking of mechanics in my head. | | This post made me think that maybe what I should truly follow is | mechanics. | oldelpaso66 wrote: | Go for it! | zevv wrote: | No need to choose, you can have both - there is this very nice | place where software meets hardware; call it embedded, call it | robotics, call it industrial automation; this is the place | where software actually gets to interface to physics: read | sensors, drive solenoids and motors, make things move and act | and do things in the real world. | | I got into this business 25 years ago and never left. Still | loving every single day. | keithalewis wrote: | It's funny what people tell you if you just listen. Scrabble and | Great Work. Tiddly Winks probably won't lead to great work | either. | Graffur wrote: | [flagged] | smokel wrote: | I quite like to read an article like this from time to time, | because it can be motivating when your ambitions are low. | | However, I also believe that it can be detrimental and even lead | to burn-out or depression if you actually believe that putting in | the work, and putting it in in a good way, will lead you to | success. This seems like a recipe for disaster. | | Is it not more likely that most historically successful people | just stumbled on the promising gaps almost by accident? The | concepts of "thrownness" and "survivorship bias" might be | relevant to look up in this context. Is it possible to train | curiosity, ambition, intelligence, passion, perseverance, if you | did not grow up with it? | AnimalMuppet wrote: | I think that it shouldn't lead to burnout if you keep the | "play" or "interest" aspect. It's not "I have to find something | at the frontier, so I have to pursue this until I get there." | It's "I'm interested in this, and so I'm pursuing it because I | want to." | | > Is it not more likely that most historically successful | people just stumbled on the promising gaps almost by accident? | | Yes and no. Yes, they stumbled on a promising gap by accident. | No, it's not pure chance. Their odds go way up by being out | there stumbling around, looking at things they find | interesting. | the6thwonder wrote: | > if you actually believe that putting in the work, and putting | it in in a good way, will lead you to success. | | What's the point of motivation of you don't believe what you do | matters? The antitode to these kind of arguments is always to | bring it to a closer level. Can you control how clean your | house is with work? Would hard work help you tend to a farm | better? Where does it stop helping you? | ajkjk wrote: | Anecdotally: I think of myself as one of those people who is by | nature driven to do great work. Tbd if it happens. But in my | life I see most other people as having written off almost | everything I find interesting, all the places where it seems | like there is great work to be done if one digs hard enough. | | It seems obvious that someone like me, who believes this and is | looking and working everywhere, will be the type of person who | does the great work, rather than someone who thinks that, ah | well, it's probably an accident that others found things and | they didn't. Because, seriously.. The gaps are everywhere! in | everything! Some of us can scarcely go a day without having an | idea that seems to have huge potential and it's a question of | deciding what to focus on and how far to go. The problem is | never thinking of something that could be great work to do... | it's picking which one. | | So basically, strong disagree, it's no accident at all. | | That said the main reason everyone is writing off all the | potential is, yes, lack of ambition, lack of curiosity, lack of | perseverance, etc. Can those habits be unlearned? Dunno. | Probably. I think most people are 'followers' at heart, and to | imagine doing something truly novel is to imagine, ultimately, | not trying to do what they're told, not trying to be safe. And | the thought gives them intense anxiety so they explain a | hundred reasons why they're right, why nothing can be done. | Well, from my perspective that's just a matter of perspective. | badpun wrote: | As usual, Ancient Greeks had it figured out already. | Aristoteles wrote: "make war to have pace. Do business to | enjoy leisure". That's the natural proclivity of 99% human | beings. The other 1%, for whatever internal reason, does work | for work's sake, and is often pushing civilization forward. | smokel wrote: | Perhaps I have worded my argument somewhat too poetically. | You say that you are driven to do great work _by nature_. | That is what I would call "by accident", as you had very | little say in that nature. | | Pushing the argument a bit further: When you are so lucky to | have what it takes to do great things, would you be able to | _not_ do great things? | ren_engineer wrote: | >Is it not more likely that most historically successful people | just stumbled on the promising gaps almost by accident? | | to some degree, but it's not like you can luck your way into | writing an app by slapping the keyboard. The degree of success | might differ, but generally there's some kind of barrier of | entry in terms of the work to learn the base skill needed. | Right place at the right time is a thing, but plenty of people | miss out because they don't even try at all | pcthrowaway wrote: | > to some degree, but it's not like you can luck your way | into writing an app by slapping the keyboard | | I wish some of the people I've worked with knew this | scaramanga wrote: | Fascinated as I might be to read an approximately 11 trillion | word article which says "if you want to be great then work on | things you are passionate about stay fresh and curious" | | I have to first stop and wonder if this is advice that I've | already seen being given in embroideries, on countless coffee | mugs, or along the side of a ballpoint pen. | htss2013 wrote: | "What are you excessively curious about -- curious to a degree | that would bore most other people? That's what you're looking | for." | | I'm trying to make sense of this question. Usually people think | about boredom as a matter of kind, not degree. X subject is | either boring or not to most people, to any degree, small or | large. | | Conceiving of boredom as a matter of degree is counter intuitive. | Is this meant to be an insightful nuanced point or am I just | high? | rosecross wrote: | Everyone likes movies, but that doesn't mean they want to | discuss cinematography all night. | htss2013 wrote: | That's a difference in kind, not degree. People find watching | movies interesting, not making them. They're two completely | different experiences. | rosecross wrote: | Interests don't stay in boxes. They grow tentacles that | reach up and down the chain of production. They bump up | against adjacent fields and they make the whole world look | a little different. A single curiosity will evolve and | change form over time. The beginning of it might not be | boring to others, but if you take it far enough the end | probably will be. | maxibenner wrote: | I'd imagine that a lot of people who are interested in taking | photographs might zone out once I start talking about content- | based interpretation and the renewal of artistic language. | stanleydrew wrote: | Thinking about boredom as a "matter of kind" is just a special | case of "matter of degree." The degree is just zero or not | zero. | | There are lots of subjects that I have a cursory interest in, | but then I'm done exploring once I've read the Wikipedia page. | cookie_monsta wrote: | It feels like this takes a very narrow definition of greatness | which is more aligned to innovation and "What will make you | famous" or "What will be commercially successful". | | From plant life and human health all the way up to nation states, | there are lots of people doing great work just making sure that | things keep running smoothly. | mensetmanusman wrote: | Curiosity is key. | | I know people who are perfectly content following obscurity | with curiosity and the world would not consider them successful | by monetary measures. | slothtrop wrote: | This is contrived. You can do a good job bagging groceries, but | no society will ever elevate that to "greatness". Colloquially | it's either in reference to mastery, or prolific/high-impact | work as society is concerned. | tinktank wrote: | Absolutely. I'm constantly amazed at the clever, resourceful | folks beavering away on things that don't have a lot of | visibility. | peteradio wrote: | Seems well aligned with the dictionary definition of great. If | you are maintaining the status quo that is pretty much by | definition not great. | badpun wrote: | great: immense; notable; momentous; exalted; grand | | If you can dig ditches faster than anyone else, then you're a | great ditch digger, and you're doing great work. Similarly, | if you're a surgeon who saves much more lives than the | average, you're doing great work. Etc. | andrewstuart wrote: | IMO he's talking about innovation and creation as "great work". | | Sure there's vast numbers of people doing great work that isn't | innovation and creation. | | You're dismissing the insights here too quickly if you're just | wanting to find fault with the intersection of the term "great | work" with all the people in the world doing all sorts of | different types of great work. | | This is about creation and innovation as great work. | dclowd9901 wrote: | There are also lots of innovations in keeping things running | smoothly. And the wonks in those fields recognize those | innovations and those innovative folks do tend to enjoy _some_ | level of fame or notoriety (if not at a general public level). | masto wrote: | It's Paul Graham. He's a poster child for essays about how | there's one way to do things. | | If you want to have a successful internet business, code in | lisp. | dzogchen wrote: | It is a very narcisistic perspective. Which makes sense if you | consider the author. | andai wrote: | Both are necessary. I think the difference is that Group A | (keep things running) without Group B (explore new territory) | would have kept us in the stone ages. However, that is not to | understate their importance: a humanity consisting entirely of | Group B would be much more unstable, and possibly have gone | extinct. | | It's similar to the Rogue Bees: https://www.mrdbourke.com/what- | if-you-did-the-exact-opposite... | | Although rogue bees (as a small portion of the population) are | actually essential to a hive's survival. | neon_electro wrote: | Could it be possible that there is also overlap between | groups A and B, and the interdependence is what fuels | societal progress more than "it's all group B"? | hooverd wrote: | A tortured analogy could be line cooks and dishwashers, the | line cooks made all the tasty food, but the kitchen would | crash and burn without the dishwashers and busboys and prep | cooks. | varelse wrote: | [dead] | mattlondon wrote: | TL;Dr - be rich enough that you don't need to do Real Work and | can focus on your personal passion projects. | astee wrote: | Prioritize output early. | | You can't do great without slogging through mediocre. Don't be | afraid to suck. Don't stop at the first failure. | | And don't worry about originality. Creativity comes from doing. | Experience begets ideas. | ignoramous wrote: | https mirror: https://archive.is/4ZlRl | thisismyswamp wrote: | The thing I try to keep in mind most when dealing with these | kinds of blog posts is that something that must be helpful to a | majority of its audience will inevitably lose a lot of the value | it can provide to each individual. | chubot wrote: | It is a bit weirdly generalized | | I kept trying to read between the lines for the domain PG is | known for and writes most frequently about -- startups | | But a lot of the writing seems to apply to achievements in | math, science, art, and literature | | I think the latter four domains have a lot more in common with | each other than they have in common with startups | | And PG seems to write and claim expertise largely in startups, | although certainly he has experience in many areas and is well | read | | So it would be nice to address that, otherwise it does seem | less useful | | I'd agree the first part of the essay generalizes, but have my | doubts about many points deeper in the essay | chubot wrote: | Just to elaborate on what bugged me about this essay -- | probably the most important part for many domains is a single | sentence, the last one in this paragraph: | | _Most of us can benefit from collaborating with colleagues, | but some projects require people on a larger scale, and | starting one of those is not for everyone. If you want to run | a project like that, you 'll have to become a manager, and | managing well takes aptitude and interest like any other kind | of work. If you don't have them, there is no middle path: you | must either force yourself to learn management as a second | language, or avoid such projects_ | | "You must force yourself to learn management" is not very | useful | | It's basically like saying "go run a marathon in a world | record time" | | --- | | And I'd say that's the KEY difference between companies and | math/art/literature | | The former are necessarily collaborative -- YC even says that | PREFER co-founders; they reject solo founders | | Whereas math/art/literature has more of a solo feel, and so | does this essay, despite the fact that PG is accomplished | more in the collaborative domains | | Science these days is probably more like a company, more | collaborative. A hundred years ago it was probably closer to | math | | So I would have preferred to read about one kind of endeavor | or the other; as is, it's something of a mish-mash that's not | too actionable | | It's more of a "cheering section" for people working mostly | alone, not really practical advice | | --- | | That said, I do appreciate his turns of phrase (going | diagonally across the tracks), and the metaphor of reaching | the edge of knowledge, it fractally expanding, etc. | | (It's probably more that I've already gotten these ideas from | his previous essays, which are mostly great) | moneywoes wrote: | Where do you go for specific advice, upwork? | iamwil wrote: | PG tends to revisit the same topics from different angles in | multiple essays as he's figuring something out. You can hear | resonances of this essay in a previous essay he had a long time | ago about cultivating taste for makers. | | http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html | mikewarot wrote: | Ansel Adams tended to visit the same sites and take slightly | different photographs over time, refining his vision of a | place. I think it's a modality of most work, refinement and | improvement over time as new perspectives are incorporated. | mmargerum wrote: | Why doesn't paul take some of that cash horde and put it into the | LISP community? Maybe he does? | emmender wrote: | As Mark Twain said: "I wrote a long essay because I didn't want | to put the effort writing a shorter one" - applies to this piece. | rosecross wrote: | Guess you didn't read to the end | emmender wrote: | No, I did not. | | The question is ill-posed imo. I would invert the question | and ask: "How not to suck at your work" as that would lead to | similar conclusions, and is more actionable. | | This essay has too many weasel sentences like: | | "Boldly chase outlier ideas," | | "Husband your morale" | | "Doing great work is a depth-first search whose root node is | the desire to. " | | "Curiosity is the best guide." | | This is woolly-feel-good writing that chatgpt and folks like | steve pinker, deepak chopra etc specialize in, ie: a bag-of- | words about fuzzy feel-good ideas we all want to hear. | jb1991 wrote: | Many of us feel this way about his essays. He bloviates often | as if on a pedestal without realizing how transparently | arrogant he sounds. Many of his ideas inherently contradict his | other ideas, or are simply vague and shallow. But he's rich, so | of course he must be an astute philosopher. | oldstrangers wrote: | Can we get Paul an SSL cert? | throw_pm23 wrote: | How did it hold you back that it was plain http? | oldstrangers wrote: | That's irrelevant obviously but Chrome pushing a bunch of | 'not secure' warnings at me isn't ideal. | [deleted] | gozzoo wrote: | Am I the only one who is noticing that pg's posts are getting | longer lately? | travisjungroth wrote: | > Knowledge expands fractally, and from a distance its edges look | smooth, but once you learn enough to get close to one, they turn | out to be full of gaps. | | It is incredibly easy to get onto untrodden ground just by | stepping off the main path a bit. You're fighting with a lot of | smart people to have a new insight about pi and e. But if you | focus on application of theory, it's very easy to do something | new. Application is about intersections, and the combinatorics | brings novelty right to your nose. | | Pick a random combination of tech, domain, and theory and it's | unlikely to have been explored. It's unlikely to be _useful_ , | but that's what makes it exploration and not farming. | wcedmisten wrote: | Yes! I've found this approach very useful with my own projects. | I might not be out here inventing C++ or Linux, but it's | actually not too hard to find projects where you can apply well | known computing techniques or technologies to a new domain to | do something truly new. | | I think this is really motivational because doing something new | and showing the world is really fun! | bigdict wrote: | > I might not be out here inventing C++ | | thank you! | PartiallyTyped wrote: | It's so incredible how deep the rabbit-hole goes when you try | to solve a real world problem and you have the capacity to | understand and pull information from a vast number of seemingly | unrelated works. | | I really believe that this is the best time to be a polymath, | or at least have a broad spectrum of knowledge and references | to look into and pull information from; and that being a true | generalist that can dive as deep as needed enables you to build | great stuff. But maybe that's just my experience. | creer wrote: | Re. "this is the best time to be a polymath". I was noticing | something like that. For a while it became impossible to know | or do "science" ("philosophy", was it?) as a whole. Too | broad, too deep. That was not the end of the polymath but it | was the end of truly broad expertise in one individual. Then | the net in general made so much info available painlessly. | (Much faster to dig deep on a narrow issue and switch issues | - than say, even with a large academic library.) So that now, | it's still not possible to master the forefront of tech or | science on a very broad front, but it is possible to dig deep | as needed to address this or that problem in the pursuit of | what is now just about always a multidisciplinary project. | | With the very present danger that many feel that a couple | youtube videos is as deep as they ever need to go. | | Being able to gauge how deep and broad you have to go for | each difficulty you encounter has become an important skill. | But polymath seems very possible. | travisjungroth wrote: | > It's so incredible how deep the rabbit-hole goes when you | try to solve a real world problem and you have the capacity | to understand and pull information from a vast number of | seemingly unrelated works. | | It's funny, I considered quoting this other part as well: | | > The big prize is to discover a new fractal bud. You notice | a crack in the surface of knowledge, pry it open, and there's | a whole world inside. | | The nature of fractals is that everything is a new fractal | bud. There's really endless complexity everywhere. So I don't | think that alone is the "big prize". There's some other | dimension, like utility or interest. Because I get that | discovering a new subfield of topology is different from | discovering the new sounds you can make banging on your | stove. But it's not just that one has more to it than the | other. | | Real world problems with disparate fields involved are a rich | of source of "medium sized" fractal buds by this unnamed | measure. No one is dedicating their life to your application | of measure theory to data dashboards, but it's meatier than | searching in the absurd and easier to find than breaking | ground in pure theory. | mistermann wrote: | > The nature of fractals is that everything is a new | fractal bud. There's really endless complexity everywhere. | So I don't think that alone is the "big prize". There's | some other dimension, like utility or interest. | | Here's another dimension: try convincing others of this | _while they 're discussing a specific object level problem_ | and see how that goes. | travisjungroth wrote: | I don't really follow. You've quoted a few statements and | I also don't know what you mean by a specific object | level problem. | | Is it that it would be hard to convince people there's | endless complexity in this domain while they're deciding | what to get for lunch? Yeah, probably. They're too | hungry. | wsintra2022 wrote: | I second that, I feel like right now, with the rise of ML | tools in audio production, demucs, audio to midi, voice | clones etc, the rise of image generation and text. Coupled | with some coding skills and interests in many different | fields I could not get bored in a million years because there | can be so much to jump into and learn/create/explore | Biologist123 wrote: | I don't know man, farming in most of the world is a totally | risky activity. | tuukkah wrote: | You might say the climate crisis has made it interesting. | ycomb-acct wrote: | [flagged] | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Just a self-delusion due to lack of research. It's all | due to technology advances, all of it. Against increasing | drought and heat. | | Sure corn grows in more places now. Because they warmed | up - a concern of its own. They'll not stop warming up. | Witness https://globalnews.ca/news/9761043/dry-spring- | southern-alber... | ycomb-acct wrote: | [flagged] | sacnoradhq wrote: | Some categories are explored or unexplored because either they | didn't have a compelling, defining entrant like smart watches | or they're Chindogu like flying cars and VR. | | Build something that's currently painful you know there's a | definite need for and people would gladly pay money for. | Solving a burning pain is far more compelling than | incrementally better with the gotcha of introducing the risk of | change. | | The biggest mistake people make is not letting things soak in a | lean, passive income marketable way. They'll build something, | shake the trees for customers for a little while, and then turn | it off 3 months later when they're not instant internet | billionaires. Not working would be 15 years later <$10k/year | net profit. Let it simmer with as little engineering investment | as possible. Never waste time on churn for churn's sake, or | effort that doesn't add end-user UX value. | igormartynov wrote: | Two words: Ambitious Curiosity | | Twenty words: Strive for great work by choosing an exciting | field, exploring its frontiers, noticing gaps, and boldly | exploring promising ideas. | vervas wrote: | https://youtu.be/HL1UzIK-flA | snihalani wrote: | can I sell pg a https cert plz | travisgriggs wrote: | Hmmm... | | > At 7 it may seem excitingly ambitious to build huge things out | of Lego, then at 14 to teach yourself calculus, till at 21 you're | starting to explore unanswered questions in physics. But always | preserve excitingness. | | I'm 53 and some of my greatest joys still come from well executed | Lego builds. Wonder if I'm stuck in a rut :/ | js2 wrote: | Some of my greatest joys are cooking a meal and doing the lawn. | They are so much different than writing software. There's a | start, an end, and a clear set of steps in between where you | can easily see your progress. When you're done, you can step | back and admire your work, and show it to others. | | Do you ever refactor your LEGO builds into new builds? Do you | prefer kits or building something of your own design from | generic sets? | jahewson wrote: | I like to start with a deck of my LEGO design for the pre- | seed round. | borski wrote: | Nah. I literally have a LEGO brick tattoo. Never let that die. | Swizec wrote: | I "rediscovered" LEGO in my early 30's. Turns out when you're | an adult, LEGO isn't _that_ expensive and you can _just buy a | set_. Walk into a store and walk out with a brand new set! | | It's an amazing and dangerous freedom. 3 short years later and | I have more sets than space. | | Now all I need is the time and space I had as a kid to treat | LEGO as a tool for invention. Build stuff out of imagination, | not a blueprint. Then again, as an adult, I could also get a | bunch of power tools and "play with LEGOs" without using actual | LEGOs ... hmmmm | rizky05 wrote: | [dead] | dclowd9901 wrote: | I used to be thrilled with big sets because they were... well, | big. | | Now, I find Lego building relaxing with the occasional delight | at a technique the master builders came up with to create some | sort of texture or shape using those bricks. | svilen_dobrev wrote: | > Obviously the most exciting story to write will be the one you | want to read. The reason I mention this case explicitly is that | so many people get it wrong. Instead of making what they want, | they try to make what some imaginary, more sophisticated audience | wants. | | somehow, i have almost always made software as for my self if i | were the user. And out of 35+ years and 20?30?50?70? projects, | only 5 times this aligned. While in most ~~failed cases it was | that _i wanted_ much more sophisticated stuff than the eventual | audience (if any). Or i was not connected to right audience. All | the same. | | so.. YMMV | | ------ | | another one... | | > It's a great thing to be rich in unanswered questions. And this | is one of those situations where the rich get richer, because the | best way to acquire new questions is to try answering existing | ones. Questions don't just lead to answers, but also to more | questions. | | reminds me of something i told once to my mentees: | | "searching answers.. does not make life interesting. Search for | questions... then you beCOME interesting. And inconvenient. To | the asnwer-producers (whole industries and institutions are only | doing this). | | which.. is already interesting :) | | ...Most People are either Answers - and boring ones - or not even | Answers, only lay faceless. banal. incredibly predictable and.. | like a transparent bag, you see through but can get through.. | | search for People-that-are-Questions. search. " | | have fun ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-01 23:00 UTC)