Paul Graham is an extremely successful tech entrepreneur and one of the founders of Y Combinator, the largest startup accelerator in the world. He has invested in startups that have become some of the largest companies in the world today in their respective fields and has become a multi-billionaire in this journey.
While the brilliance of his exploits in the world of technology and startup investing is well beyond my understanding, I view him more as one of my idols for teaching me about the process of writing and original thinking through his essays.
His articulation of life experiences and complex topics in simple and easy-to-understand language shows his mastery of subjects.
I have also written about another person whom I look up to, Rick Rubin, a legendary music producer, and how his words have impacted my way of looking at things.
I love reading the works of these individuals and find it fascinating how much of what they articulate applies to the life of an average person like myself.
There is one commonality that makes all these amazing people who they are:
Independent thinking and an unwavering conviction in their ideas, regardless of what the consensus world may think of them.
Today’s essay is based on Paul Graham’s 34-page-long essay on How To Do Great Work.
I read the essay for a second time in great detail, took a printout, and made handwritten notes of paragraphs that stood out for me during my recent flight to Bangkok.
I have taken snippets from various paragraphs of the essay that deeply resonated with me and provided my views on some of the paragraphs mentioned in the piece.
This picture, taken by my friend during the flight, perfectly captures how deeply engrossed I was in the piece. It was a 5-hour flight to Bangkok, during which approximately 3 hours were spent simply reading and taking notes.
Key paragraphs from the essay that resonated with me and my personal views on select paragraphs:
“The first step is to decide what to work on. The work you choose needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that offers scope to do great work.”
That sounds straightforward, but it's often quite difficult. When you're young you don't know what you're good at or what different kinds of work are like. Some kinds of work you end up doing may not even exist yet.
The way to figure out what to work on is by working.
You'll probably guess wrong some of the time, but that's fine. It's good to know about multiple things; some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields.
It may be within some bigger project, but you'll be driving your part of it.”
My Takeaway:
This is like a chicken and egg situation. 'What to write about' and 'What you like to write about’ are ironically figured out only through writing first.
It helps to engage in activities in life that push you toward a certain form of writing. I was lucky to find snippets from my professional and personal life that enabled me to identify patterns in my writing.
“What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that would bore most other people? That's what you're looking for.”
“Many discoveries have come from asking questions about things that everyone else took for granted.”
“Boldly chase outlier ideas, even if other people aren't interested in them — in fact, especially if they aren't. If you're excited about some possibility that everyone else ignores, and you have enough expertise to say precisely what they're all overlooking, that's as good a bet as you'll find.”
My Takeaway:
As I reflect on the process of investing, I've noticed that the most extraordinary investors often pursue ideas that others would deem outright crazy at the time, yet these ideas often turn out to be the most brilliant bets.
“Let's talk a little more about the complicated business of figuring out what to work on. The main reason it's hard is that you can't tell what most kinds of work are like except by doing them. Which means the four steps overlap: you may have to work at something for years before you know how much you like it or how good you are at it. And in the meantime, you're not doing, and thus not learning about, most other kinds of work.”
My Takeaway:
Refer back to my first fleeting note on the chicken and egg situation of writing, this thought captures that same essence
“Ambition comes in two forms, one that precedes interest in the subject and one that grows out of it. Most people who do great work have a mix, and the more you have of the former, the harder it will be to decide what to do.”
“When it comes to figuring out what to work on, you're on your own. Some people get lucky and do guess correctly, but the rest will find themselves scrambling diagonally across tracks laid down on the assumption that everyone does.”
“What you should not do is drift along passively, assuming the problem will solve itself. You need to take action. But there is no systematic procedure you can follow. When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved.”
“Don't worry if you find you're interested in different things than other people. The stranger your tastes in interestingness, the better. Strange tastes are often strong ones, and a strong taste for work means you'll be productive. And you're more likely to find new things if you're looking where few have looked before.”
My Takeaway:
Writing a blog and sharing insights on various topics in public was previously a daunting and anxiety-inducing task for me. However, as I slowly observed how this process made me feel lighter and more at peace with myself, I began to focus only on the positive aspects and let go of my shyness.
In the initial days, it even felt pointless, but the more I wrote, the more I realized that this process, which I once thought was pointless, became the reason for my clarity of thinking.
This, in turn, has paid great dividends for me in both my personal and professional life, and I strongly believe it ultimately led to the writing of my book. It has also significantly shaped my way of thinking.
“If you're making something for people, make sure it's something they actually want. The best way to do this is to make something you yourself want. Write the story you want to read; build the tool you want to use.”
My Takeaway:
Wisdom is abundant in today’s world; people don’t want to be told how to embark on the journey, but rather they prefer to go on the journey with you. The only way to take them with you is by ruthlessly being yourself.
“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.”
My Takeaway:
Write about what you want to read about—a simple piece of advice that I follow
“Following your interests may sound like a rather passive strategy, but in practice, it usually means following them past all sorts of obstacles. You usually have to risk rejection and failure.”
“But while you need boldness, you don't usually need much planning. In most cases the recipe for doing great work is simply: work hard on excitingly ambitious projects, and something good will come of it.”
“The trouble with planning is that it only works for achievements you can describe in advance. You can win a gold medal or get rich by deciding to as a child and then tenaciously pursuing that goal, but you can't discover natural selection that way.”
“To the extent you can, try to arrange your life so you have big blocks of time to work in. You'll shy away from hard tasks if you know you might be interrupted.”
My Takeaway:
In my piece 'On Writing,' I wrote about how writing is more process-oriented than people often realize, emphasizing the importance of setting aside blocks of time throughout the day to maintain consistency in the writing process. Artists such as Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Paulo Coelho, Stephen King, and many others adhere to this process-oriented approach.
“It will probably be harder to start working than to keep working. You'll often have to trick yourself to get over that initial threshold. Don't worry about this; it's the nature of work, not a flaw in your character. Work has a sort of activation energy, both per day and per project.”
“This is one case where the young have an advantage. They're more optimistic, and even though one of the sources of their optimism is ignorance, in this case ignorance can sometimes beat knowledge.”
“Since there are two senses of starting work — per day and per project — there are also two forms of procrastination. Per-project procrastination is far the more dangerous. You're not just sitting around doing nothing; you're working industriously on something else. So per-project procrastination doesn't set off the alarms that per-day procrastination does. You're too busy to notice it.”
“Great work usually entails spending what would seem to most people an unreasonable amount of time on a problem. You can't think of this time as a cost, or it will seem too high. You have to find the work sufficiently engaging as it's happening.”
My Takeaway:
I echoed a very similar view in my blog post on opportunity costs.
“When you let your mind wander, it wanders to whatever you care about most at that moment.”
My Takeaway:
Some of my best creative ideas have come in a state of procrastination, I never try to force any ideas on the page and these ideas hit me out of nowhere at any given time of the day.
“Something that grows exponentially can become so valuable that it's worth making an extraordinary effort to get it started. But since we underrate exponential growth early on, this too is mostly done unconsciously: people push through the initial, unrewarding phase of learning something new because they know from experience that learning new things always takes an initial push, or they grow their audience one fan at a time because they have nothing better to do. If people consciously realized they could invest in exponential growth, many more would do it.”
My Takeaway:
Everyone knows about the power of compounding, but very few implement it because it requires years of dedication and perseverance, especially during the initial phase of pursuing something worthwhile.
Only after this phase do you begin to see the real fruits of your labor.
So, keep at it.
“Don’t try to work in a distinctive style. Just try to do the best job you can; you won’t be able to help doing it in a distinctive way.
Style is doing things in a distinctive way without trying to. Trying to is affecation.
Affecation is in effect to pretend that someone other than you is doing the work.”
My Takeaway:
Style is being who you are and not giving a damn about what others think. This is style, it’s not about what’s hot today or what’s not, style is the definition that you carry for the world to see.
“One way to avoid intellectual dishonesty is to maintain a slight positive pressure in the opposite direction. Be aggressively willing to admit that you’re mistaken. Once you’ve admitted you were mistaken about something, you’re free. Till then you have to carry it.”
“There may be some jobs where it is an advantage to be cynical and pessimistic, but if you want to do great work it’s advantage to be optimistic, even though that means you’ll risk looking like a fool sometimes. There is an old tradition of finding the opposite. The Old Testament says it’s better to keep quiet lest you like a fool. But that’s advice for seeming smart. ”
My Takeaway:
This pretty much sums up one of the core principles of investing and wealth creation.
“Talking or writing about the things you're interested in is a good way to generate new ideas. When you try to put ideas into words, a missing idea creates a sort of vacuum that draws it out of you. Indeed, there's a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing.”
My Key Takeaway
Writing is like telepathy, it opens doors, doors that you never existed
“Curiosity and originality are closely related. Curiosity feeds originality by giving it new things to work on. But the relationship is closer than that. Curiosity is itself a kind of originality; it's roughly to questions what originality is to answers. And since questions at their best are a big component of answers, curiosity at its best is a creative force.”
“The other thing you need is a willingness to break rules. Paradoxical as it sounds, if you want to fix your model of the world, it helps to be the sort of person who's comfortable breaking rules. From the point of view of the old model, which everyone including you initially shares, the new model usually breaks at least implicit rules.
Few understand the degree of rule-breaking required because new ideas seem much more conservative once they succeed.”
MymTakeaway:
I echoed a similar view in my piece on contrarian investing. Great investors and entrepreneurs are those who want to bend the rules in their favor over the long term, even if it means appearing foolish in the short term.
“People show much more originality in solving problems than in deciding which problems to solve. Even the smartest can be surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on. People who'd never dream of being fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable problems.”
“But the most common type of overlooked problem is not explicitly unfashionable in the sense of being out of fashion. It just doesn't seem to matter as much as it actually does. How do you find these? By being self-indulgent — by letting your curiosity have its way, and tuning out, at least temporarily, the little voice in your head that says you should only be working on "important" problems.”
“Sometimes you carry a question for a long time. Great work often comes from returning to a question you first noticed years before — in your childhood, even — and couldn't stop thinking about. People talk a lot about the importance of keeping your youthful dreams alive, but it's just as important to keep your youthful questions alive.”
“But actually the more puzzled you are, the better, so long as (a) the things you're puzzled about matter, and (b) no one else understands them either.”
“Being prolific is underrated. The more different things you try, the greater the chance of discovering something new. Understand, though, that trying lots of things will mean trying lots of things that don't work. You can't have a lot of good ideas without also having a lot of bad ones.”
“Even a project that fails can be valuable. In the process of working on it, you'll have crossed territory few others have seen, and encountered questions few others have asked. And there's probably no better source of questions than the ones you encounter in trying to do something slightly too hard.”
“Use the advantages of youth when you have them, and the advantages of age once you have those. The advantages of youth are energy, time, optimism, and freedom. The advantages of age are knowledge, efficiency, money, and power. With effort, you can acquire some of the latter when young and keep some of the former when old.
The old also have the advantage of knowing which advantages they have. The young often have them without realizing it. The biggest is probably time. The young have no idea how rich they are in time. The best way to turn this time to advantage is to use it in slightly frivolous ways: to learn about something you don't need to know about, just out of curiosity, or to try building something just because it would be cool, or to become freakishly good at something.”
“One of the most valuable kinds of knowledge you get from experience is to know what you don't have to worry about”
My Takeaway:
While investing, you slowly learn this with experience.
“The young know all the things that could matter, but not their relative importance. So they worry equally about everything when they should worry much more about a few things and hardly at all about the rest.”
“People new to a field will often copy existing work. There's nothing inherently bad about that. There's no better way to learn how something works than by trying to reproduce it. Nor does copying necessarily make your work unoriginal. Originality is the presence of new ideas, not the absence of old ones.
There's a good way to copy and a bad way. If you're going to copy something, do it openly instead of furtively, or worse still, unconsciously. This is what's meant by the famously misattributed phrase "Great artists steal." The really dangerous kind of copying, the kind that gives copying a bad name, is the kind that's done without realizing it, because you're nothing more than a train running on tracks laid down by someone else. But at the other extreme, copying can be a sign of superiority rather than subordination.”
My Takeaway:
I draw great inspiration from numerous individuals in my life, and much of my work is influenced by the lessons I've learned from them. Whether I interact with them personally or simply follow their journey on social media, their impact on me is profound and a large part of what I do is reflective of the work they have shared with the world for others to get inspired with.
”In many fields it's almost inevitable that your early work will be in some sense based on other people's. Projects rarely arise in a vacuum. They're usually a reaction to previous work. When you're first starting out, you don't have any previous work; if you're going to react to something, it has to be someone else's. Once you're established, you can react to your own. But while the former gets called derivative and the latter doesn't, structurally the two cases are more similar than they seem.”
“Most people who are very good at something are happy to talk about it with anyone who's genuinely interested. If they're really good at their work, then they probably have a hobbyist's interest in it, and hobbyists always want to talk about their hobbies.”
'“Morale starts with your view of life. You're more likely to do great work if you're an optimist, and more likely to if you think of yourself as lucky than if you think of yourself as a victim.”
“Never give up" is also not quite right. Obviously, there are times when it's the right choice to eject. A more precise version would be: Never let setbacks panic you into backtracking more than you need to. Corollary: Never abandon the root node.”
My Takeaway:
I wrote about this in my piece called Quitters Are Winners. Knowing when to quit projects that may be failing you is an art that you learn over time.
“Competition can be an effective motivator, but don't let it choose the problem for you; don't let yourself get drawn into chasing something just because others are. In fact, don't let competitors make you do anything much more specific than work harder.
Curiosity is the best guide. Your curiosity never lies, and it knows more than you do about what's worth paying attention to.”
“Many more people could try to do great work than do. What holds them back is a combination of modesty and fear. It seems presumptuous to try to be Newton or Shakespeare. It also seems hard; surely if you tried something like that, you'd fail. Presumably, the calculation is rarely explicit. Few people consciously decide not to try to do great work. But that's what's going on subconsciously; they shy away from the question.”
“The discoveries are out there, waiting to be made. Why not by you?”
Conclusion
For those who read through this long blog post, I hope you leave with some inspiration from Graham’s essay as I did.
There is also an excellent podcast episode by David Senra on the Founder’s Podcast synthesizing David’s learnings about the essay.