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This text provides insights and techniques for achieving excellence in various areas, including startup success, effective presentations, intellectual property protection, securing funding, hiring well, and engaging in great work through curiosity, ambition, openness, balance, consistency, and a focus on original ideas.
Slides
Slide Presentation (12 slides)
Key Points
- The article "How to Do Great Work" by Paul Graham offers insights and advice on achieving excellence in one's work.
- The article covers a range of topics, including the importance of reading, the value of new ideas, the role of heresy and novelty, and the benefits of hard work.
- It also touches on subjects such as wealth inequality, writing effectively, and the characteristics of successful founders.
- The intersection of techniques for doing great work in different fields is explored, emphasizing the importance of choosing work that aligns with natural aptitude and deep interest.
- Curiosity, originality, and the willingness to take risks are highlighted as important factors in doing great work.
Summaries
95 word summary
Achieve excellence through reading, hard work, and entrepreneurship. Website covers startup advice, learning from founders, mistakes that kill startups, presenting to investors, software patents, funding, open source, and hiring. Choose what you're good at, stay curious. Finding balance and avoiding burnout are crucial. Consistency, engagement, and taste drive great work. Great work requires optimism, risk-taking, and earnestness. Be original, creative, curious to generate ideas. Turn off filters, explore overlooked problems for originality. Seek inspiration, find great colleagues, stay positive. Be ambitious, impress, choose curious problems. Building connection with audience. Routine for deep thinking. Acknowledge contributions.
422 word summary
Achieve excellence through reading, hard work, and entrepreneurship.
Website covers startup advice, learning from founders, mistakes that kill startups, presenting to investors, software patents, funding, open source, and hiring.
Choose what you're good at, stay curious.
Choose field, learn, notice gaps, explore. Hard work, curiosity, motivation. Educational system doesn't help. Take action, don't drift passively.
Be curious, explore, ignore outside influences, take risks.
Finding balance and avoiding burnout are crucial in order to do great work. It is important to have uninterrupted work time and to find ways to trick oneself into starting difficult tasks. Finishing projects and assessing whether or not one is working on desired tasks are also key aspects of doing great work.
Consistency, engagement, and taste drive great work.
Aim to be the best, create valued work. Be sincere, admit mistakes, prioritize substance. Informality helps focus. Nerds have an advantage. Emphasize creation over criticism.
Great work requires optimism, risk-taking, and earnestness. It should avoid intellectual dishonesty, orthodoxy, fashion, and coolness. Confidence is needed to simplify work. Mathematical elegance is a good standard. Great work feels like a discovery and serves as a foundation for others.
Be original, creative, curious to generate ideas.
Changing perception, recognizing broken models, breaking rules. (7 words)
Turn off filters, explore overlooked problems for originality.
Overlooked first step in deciding what to work on. Acquiring new questions through experimentation is key.
Start small, evolve, embrace failure, use time.
Use youth as an advantage to notice details. Take control of education, clear bad habits.
Focus on overlooked problems, not cheating. Don't rely on others. Rejection doesn't matter. Copying is a good way to learn, but be cautious. Copying old ideas or flaws is dangerous. Copying across fields can lead to discoveries.
Seek inspiration, find great colleagues, stay positive.
Maintain morale, switch tasks when stuck, distinguish pain, audience is crucial, surround with energizing people, prioritize taking care, physical well-being crucial, be productive.
Be ambitious, impress, choose curious problems.
Work hard, pursue interests, notice anomalies. Curiosity finds the right thing. Avoid making things for less sophisticated audience. Procrastination has negative consequences. Get paid for similar work, do side projects. Set up life for focus-relax cycle.
Be the best, avoid affectation, have safe beliefs. Ideas come while working. Allocate attention wisely. Address childhood questions. Conventional people often win disputes. Attack projects to deflect criticism. Producing is better than consuming. Published opinions bias judgment. Van Dyck painted to show superiority. Physical proximity advantages are hard to define. (7 words)
Building connection with audience. Routine for deep thinking. Acknowledge contributions.
965 word summary
In his essay "How to Do Great Work," Paul Graham offers advice on achieving excellence, covering topics like reading, new ideas, putting ideas into words, hard work, individual projects, heresy and novelty, thinking for oneself, entrepreneurship, and startup funding.
The website covers startup advice, learning from founders, mistakes that kill startups, presenting to investors, software patents, funding, open source, and hiring.
To do great work, choose something you're naturally good at and deeply interested in. Work on personal projects, stay curious, and pursue outlier ideas.
To do great work, choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier, notice gaps, and explore promising ones. Hard work is necessary, and being deeply interested in the work will drive you to work harder. Curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive are powerful motivators. Figuring out what to work on is complicated because you can't truly know what a type of work is like until you do it. The educational system doesn't help much in determining what to work on. If you're young and ambitious but don't know what to work on, take action rather than drifting passively.
To do great work, be curious and explore different things. Stick to what genuinely interests you and ignore outside influences. Take risks and focus on what is most interesting to achieve success.
Finding balance, avoiding burnout, uninterrupted work time, tricking oneself to start difficult tasks, finishing projects, assessing if working on desired tasks.
Great work requires time and engagement. Consistency and deliberate work are necessary for solving problems. Avoid distractions and cultivate taste in your field. Ambition is important for achieving greatness.
To do great work, aim to be the best and create something that will be valued in the long term. Be sincere, admit mistakes, and prioritize substance over appearance. Informality helps focus on the work, and nerds have an advantage. Emphasize creation over criticism.
Great work requires optimism, risk-taking, earnestness, and avoiding intellectual dishonesty, orthodoxy, fashion, and coolness. It should be consistent and may require redoing things. Confidence is needed to cut work down to its essence. Mathematical elegance is a good standard. The best work feels like a discovery. Powerful tools require eliminating restrictions. Great work serves as a foundation for others.
Generating new ideas involves being original, creative, and curious, and exploring different topics and changing one's context.
Discovering new ideas and doing great work requires changing our perception of the world and being strict in recognizing broken models. It also involves breaking rules, as new ideas often defy norms. Good new ideas may seem crazy, but they are exciting and have significant implications. Strictness and rule-breaking are not opposed, and only rule-breakers can be truly strict in important matters. (36 words)
To generate new ideas, turn off filters that shoot down unconventional concepts. Explore overlooked problems. Originality in choosing problems is more important than in solving them.
The first step in deciding what to work on is important and often overlooked. The real insight in new ideas lies in the question, not the answer. Being comfortable with unanswered questions and trying many different things leads to acquiring new questions. Learning through experimentation is more effective than studying what has been done before.
Starting small and evolving is key to great work. Get an initial version in front of people quickly and evolve based on their response. Avoid cramming too much into one version. Embrace failure as valuable learning experiences. Utilize the advantages of youth and age. Use time to learn and explore.
When young, use inexperience as an advantage to notice overlooked details. Clear away bad habits and take control of education.
To do great work, focus on overlooked problems and solutions, not cheating or shortcuts. Don't rely on others for big breaks. Rejection by committees doesn't matter. Copying existing work is a good way to learn, but be cautious of limiting creativity. Copying old ideas or flaws is dangerous. Copying ideas from one field to another can lead to discoveries.
Great work can be inspired by different fields, including negative examples. Visiting places where experts gather can increase ambition. Seek out colleagues doing great work. Quality is more important than quantity in colleagues. Managing well requires aptitude and interest. Maintain high morale on ambitious projects. Being optimistic and thinking of yourself as lucky can increase chances of doing great work. Work can serve as a refuge from life's difficulties.
Maintaining morale is crucial for great work. Switch tasks when stuck, setbacks are part of the process. Distinguish between good and bad pain. An audience is essential for morale. Surround yourself with energizing people, but prioritize taking care of others. Physical well-being is crucial. Smart and ambitious people should not be unproductive.
To do great work, be ambitious, impress the right people, and choose problems driven by curiosity. Ability and interest are crucial. Modesty and fear shouldn't hold you back.
To do great work, work hard and pursue your interests. Notice anomalies in everyday life for new ideas. Curiosity helps in finding the right thing to work on. Avoid making things for a less sophisticated audience. Procrastination can have negative consequences. Consider getting paid for similar work or working on side projects. Set up your life to achieve the focus-relax cycle needed for great work.
Don't be anything but the best. Avoid affectation in acting. Unquestionable beliefs are safe if unfalsifiable. Ideas come while working. Allocate attention reasonably. Religion's principles are mistaken. Address childhood questions. Conventional people often win disputes. Many ideas generate good ones. Attack projects to deflect criticism. Producing is less wasteful than consuming. Published opinions bias judgment. Van Dyck painted to show superiority. Advantages of physical proximity are hard to define.
Building a direct connection with the audience is valuable. Stick to a routine for deep thinking. Acknowledge contributions.
2542 word summary
"How to Do Great Work" is an essay by Paul Graham that provides insights and advice on achieving excellence in one's work. The essay covers various topics such as the importance of reading, the need for new ideas, the value of putting ideas into words, and the role of hard work in achieving success. Graham also discusses the significance of individual projects, the impact of heresy and novelty, and the benefits of thinking for oneself. The essay concludes with a discussion on the risks and rewards of being an entrepreneur and the future of startup funding.
This excerpt contains a list of various articles and topics covered on the website, including startup advice, learning from founders, the mistakes that kill startups, presenting to investors, the power of the marginal, software patents, funding a startup, open source, hiring, and more.
The intersection of techniques for doing great work in different fields has a definite shape, rather than just being labeled "work hard." To do great work, choose something you have a natural aptitude for, a deep interest in, and that offers scope for greatness. It may be difficult to figure out what to work on, but the way to discover it is by working. Develop a habit of working on your own projects, as great work is often done on personal projects. Preserve excitement and curiosity in your projects, and always pursue what you are excessively curious about. Learn enough about your chosen field to reach the frontiers of knowledge and notice the gaps in that knowledge. Ask questions and embrace strange answers. Boldly chase outlier ideas, even if others aren't interested in them.
To do great work, choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier, notice gaps, and explore promising ones. Hard work is necessary, and being deeply interested in the work will drive you to work harder. Curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive are powerful motivators. Figuring out what to work on is complicated because you can't truly know what a type of work is like until you do it. Ambition can make this process even harder. The educational system doesn't help much in determining what to work on. If you're young and ambitious but don't know what to work on, take action rather than drifting passively.
To do great work, luck plays a significant role. To increase your chances of luck, be curious and explore different things. Different types of work should be given a chance to see if they become more interesting as you learn more about them. It's okay to have different interests than others, as unique tastes often lead to productivity. If you find something more exciting while working on one thing, don't be afraid to switch. Make something that you yourself want and your friends will likely be interested too. Stick to what genuinely interests you and ignore outside influences. Following your interests may require boldness and risk-taking. Planning is not necessary for doing great work; instead, focus on what is most interesting and gives you the best options for the future. This approach, called "staying upwind," is how most people who have done great work have achieved success.
Working on exciting projects is not always straightforward. There will be times of inspiration and times when things are challenging. It's important to find a balance between working hard and avoiding burnout. It's also helpful to have uninterrupted blocks of time to work in and to trick yourself into getting started on difficult tasks. Finishing what you start is important, as the best work often happens in the final stages. Procrastination can be dangerous, especially when it disguises itself as work. It's important to regularly assess if you are working on what you truly want to be working on.
Great work requires spending a significant amount of time on a problem and finding it engaging. Consistency is key, as small actions done consistently can lead to exponential growth. Undirected thinking can be powerful in solving problems, but it must be interleaved with deliberate work. Avoid distractions that push your work out of priority. Cultivate your taste in your field to know what you're aiming for. Ambition is important in achieving greatness.
Ambition to be the best is different from ambition to be good, and being good is too vague of a standard. However, aiming to be the best can simplify things and be easier than trying to be good. To aim high, create something that people will care about in a hundred years. Avoid affectation and instead be earnest and intellectually honest. Admit when you're mistaken and focus on what matters instead of how you seem. Informality is important, as it allows you to focus on the work. Nerds have an advantage in doing great work because they don't expend effort on seeming a certain way. Put things out there rather than criticizing.
Doing great work requires optimism and the willingness to take risks. It is important to be earnest and avoid being affected, intellectually dishonest, orthodox, fashionable, or cool. Great work is consistent with itself and may require throwing away and redoing things. It is important to have the confidence to cut and strip work down to its essence. Mathematical elegance is a useful standard for evaluating work. The best work feels like a discovery rather than a creation. Building powerful tools should involve eliminating restrictions. Great work often serves as a foundation for others to build upon.
Great ideas are those that have implications in multiple areas and are both true and new. Originality, creativity, and imagination are skills that contribute to the ability to generate new ideas. Original thinkers have the habit of throwing off new ideas about whatever they focus on. Building or understanding something slightly too difficult can lead to original ideas. Talking or writing about topics of interest can also generate new ideas. Changing one's context, such as visiting a new place or going for a walk, can help in generating new ideas. Exploring different topics and being professionally curious about a few can also lead to more original ideas. Curiosity is closely related to originality and is a creative force. Having new ideas often involves seeing things that were previously overlooked.
Discovering new ideas and doing great work can be difficult because it requires changing the way we perceive the world. Our models of the world both help and limit us, and fixing a broken model is challenging. To find new ideas, we must be stricter than others and pay attention to signs of breakage. Breaking rules is also necessary, as new ideas often go against established norms. Good new ideas may seem crazy, but they are exciting and rich in implications. There are two ways to be comfortable breaking rules: enjoying it or being indifferent to them. Strictness and rule-breaking are not opposed; in fact, only rule-breakers can truly be strict in matters that truly count.
To generate more new ideas, turn off filters that shoot down unconventional or risky concepts. Explore ideas that others may overlook or contradict cherished principles. People are often more conservative in choosing problems to solve than in finding solutions. Unfashionable problems are undervalued and can yield great work. Don't be deterred by skepticism about a field being tapped out. Be self-indulgent and follow your curiosity to find overlooked problems. Originality in choosing problems is more important than originality in solving them.
The initial step in deciding what to work on is crucial and often overlooked. Contrary to popular belief, the real insight in new ideas often lies in the question rather than the answer. Questions can lead to exciting discoveries and can be carried for a long time before finding a solution. Actual expertise involves being puzzled and comfortable with unanswered questions. Acquiring new questions is best done by trying to answer existing ones. It is better to be curious and try many different things, even if they don't work. Studying everything that has been done before is not as effective as learning through experimentation.
Starting small and making successive versions is key to doing great work. By beginning with something simple and evolving it, you can create something clever and ambitious. It's important to get an initial version in front of people quickly and then evolve it based on their response. Trying the simplest thing that could possibly work often yields surprising results. Avoid cramming too much new stuff into one version. It's a good sign if an early version is dismissed as a toy because it means it has potential for growth. Planning in advance may seem more organized, but it doesn't work as well as starting small and evolving. Planning is a necessary evil, and if you keep projects small and use flexible media, you can minimize the need for extensive planning. Take risks and embrace failure as valuable learning experiences. Inexperience makes young people fear risk, but they can afford to take more risks. Even failed projects can provide unique experiences and valuable questions. Utilize the advantages of youth, such as energy, time, optimism, and freedom, as well as the advantages of age, such as knowledge, efficiency, money, and power. Time is a valuable resource that young people often overlook. Use time in slightly frivolous ways to learn and explore.
When you're young, it's important to spend time wisely and not waste it. Inexperience can be an advantage because you see things with fresh eyes and notice things that others may overlook. Pay attention to things that seem wrong or missing when learning something new, as they may represent undiscovered ideas. Inexperience also means having a head full of nonsense and bad habits that need to be cleared away. Schools can induce passivity and give a misleading impression of what work is like. Overcoming passivity and taking control of your education is important.
To do great work, you must focus on problems and solutions that others have overlooked, rather than trying to cheat or take shortcuts. Don't rely on someone else to give you a big break; instead, focus on doing good work. Rejection by committees should not discourage you, as their criteria are different from what is required for great work. Copying existing work can be a good way to learn and is not necessarily unoriginal. However, be cautious of copying without realizing it, as it limits your creativity and originality. When starting out, your work will naturally be based on others', but as you progress, you can react to your own work. Copying can be dangerous if you only copy old ideas or try to imitate every feature of something. Some features of admired things are actually flaws, and the easiest features to imitate are often the flaws. Additionally, copying ideas from one field into another can lead to powerful discoveries.
Great work can be inspired by ideas from different fields, even if they are used as metaphors. Learning from negative examples can be just as valuable as learning from positive ones. Visiting places where the best people in your field are gathered can increase your ambition and self-confidence. Most experts are happy to talk about their work with genuine interest. Seek out colleagues who are doing great work and who you want to become like. Quality is more important than quantity in colleagues. Sufficiently good colleagues offer surprising insights and can see and do things that you can't. Managing well requires aptitude and interest, so it may not be for everyone. Maintain high morale when working on ambitious projects. Being an optimist and thinking of yourself as lucky can increase your chances of doing great work. Work can serve as a refuge from everyday life's difficulties.
Morale is crucial for doing great work. It can either compound through good work or decrease through setbacks. When stuck, it can be helpful to switch to easier tasks to maintain momentum. Setbacks should be seen as part of the process, and backtracking is sometimes necessary. Distinguishing between good pain (effort) and bad pain (damage) is important. An audience, even a small one, is essential for morale. Avoid intermediaries if possible. Surrounding yourself with people who increase your energy is important, but prioritize taking care of those in need. Taking care of your physical well-being is crucial for maintaining morale. Doing great work doesn't guarantee happiness, but it's dangerous for smart and ambitious people to be unproductive.
To do great work, it is important to be ambitious and impress the right people, rather than seeking fame or prestige. Competition can be motivating, but it shouldn't dictate the problems you choose to solve. Curiosity is the key to doing great work, as it guides you in choosing the field, exploring its gaps, and driving you forward. Ability and interest are crucial factors in doing great work, and there are many different ways to achieve it. Modesty and fear often hold people back from trying to do great work, but it is worth pursuing regardless of the outcome.
To do great work, you need to work hard and find something that interests you. Great work involves doing something important so well that it expands people's ideas of what's possible. It's more important to focus on developing your interests rather than worrying about whether they're important or not. New ideas often come from noticing anomalies in everyday life. Finding something to work on can be difficult because the search space is vast, but curious people are more likely to find the right thing. It's not advisable to make things for an audience you feel is less sophisticated than you. Procrastinating for several years can have a greater negative impact than procrastinating for a day. Getting paid for work close to what you want or doing something else entirely and working on your own projects on the side are two options, both with drawbacks. Setting up your life in the right way can automatically deliver the focus-relax cycle needed for great work.
Don't try to be anything except the best. Avoid unintentional affectation in fields like acting. It's safe to have unquestionable beliefs if they're unfalsifiable. Affectation is easier to cure than intellectual dishonesty. Ideas often come to you while you're working. Psychoactive drugs may have a similar effect. Allocate your attention to different topics in a reasonable distribution. The principles defining a religion have to be mistaken. Make a list of questions you wondered about in your youth and see if you can do something about them now. Conventional-minded individuals tend to have the upper hand in disputes, despite being less intelligent. Having many ideas is important for generating good ideas. Attacking a project as a "toy" is a way to deflect criticism. Producing is less likely to be a waste of time than consuming. Having previously published opinions can bias your judgment. Van Dyck painted his own version of a painting by Daniel Mytens to show his superiority. The advantages of being in the same physical place are hard to define.
Building something that allows people to bypass intermediaries and interact directly with their audience is a valuable idea. It may be beneficial to stick to a familiar routine when working, as it frees up mental space for deep thinking. The author acknowledges contributions from various individuals.