#314 Paul Graham (How To Do Great Work)

What I learned from reading How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham.---Join Founders AMAMembers of Founders AMA can:-Email me your questions directly (you get a private email address in the confirmation email) -Promote your company to other members by including a link to your website with you question -Unlock 31 Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes immediately-Listen to new Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes every week ---One of the best podcasts I've heard this year: Listen to Invest Like The Best #336 Jeremy Giffon Special Situations in Private Markets ---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(2:00) All you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in.(2:10) Doing great work means doing something important so well that you expand people's ideas of what's possible.(4:15) How many even discover something they love to work on? A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions.  —How to Do What You Love by Paul Graham(5:10) Always preserve excitingness. (Let what you are excited about guide you)(8:15) 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.(9:15) How To Work Hard by Paul Graham(10:05) When you follow what you are intensely interested in this strange convergence happens where you're working all the time and it feels like you're never working.(10:20) You can't tell what most kinds of work are like except by doing them. You may have to work at something for years before you know how much you like it or how good you are at it.(13:00) When it comes to figuring out what to work on, you're on your own.(14:00) Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain by Roy Morris Jr. (Founders #312)(17:15) One sign that you're suited for some kind of work is when you like even the parts that other people find tedious or frightening.(17:50) Make what you are most excited about.(19:00) If you're interested, you're not astray.(19:30) Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #300)(20:15) At each stage do whatever seems most interesting and gives you the best options for the future. I call this approach "staying upwind." This is how most people who've done great work seem to have done it.(22:50) In many projects a lot of the best work happens in what was meant to be the final stage.(25:00) A Mathematician’s Apology by G.H. Hardy(26:00) Great work usually entails spending what would seem to most people an unreasonable amount of time on a problem.(26:30) The reason we're surprised is that we underestimate the cumulative effect of work. Writing a page a day doesn't sound like much, but if you do it every day you'll write a book a year. That's the key: consistency. People who do great things don't get a lot done every day. They get something done, rather than nothing.(27:10) Something that grows exponentially can become so valuable that it's worth making an extraordinary effort to get it started.(27:30) Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version)