How to Achieve Great Work? Paul Graham, the Father of Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship, Computer Scientist, and Founder of Y Combinator

Paul Graham, computer scientist, Founder of Y Combinator, known as the Father of Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship.

Original article link: Helping You Read “How to Achieve Great Work” - by Gaan - Book Notation

In July 2023, he published a lengthy article of 12,000 words titled How To Do Great Work, exploring the underlying logic of “great achievements” that applies across all fields.

No fluff, just 12,000 words of solid content.

To make the content easier to digest, I have organized these 12,000 words into 86 bullet-point highlights.

This article is recommended for you to keep and reread when you feel lost in your career.

“The following suggestions all assume that you want to become a great person.”

86 Highlights on How to Achieve Great Work

Publicly share your efforts. You must constantly tell others your thoughts to truly discover new knowledge. It is easy to criticize others with fancy comments, but it is difficult to present results and accept criticism.
Honesty is not weakness; it is a source of strength. If you are not honest in knowledge, how can you see the subtle truth if you deceive others and yourself?
Build extremely universal tools in very specific niches. The best works often become the shoulders of giants, allowing others to stand on them.
You must be brave to change, even if it means starting over. Ask yourself this question: “If I could start over, would I still want to be where I am now?”, this can help you change.
Great inventions or discoveries often have mathematical elegance. This elegance has two sources: consistency and simplicity. When you have to make significant choices in your work, ask yourself which decision is more consistent.
The more obscure and strange your interests, the better. Quirky interests are strong, so you will have strong motivation and productivity.
When everyone is afraid of something, but you love it, that is a good sign, indicating you may have found a job that suits you very well.
“Life will find its way” is wrong. Do not go with the flow.
When you read enough biographies, you will find that great achievements involve a lot of luck. Therefore, your best strategy is to actively take action to improve your luck: try many different things, meet many people, read many books, and ask many questions.
Curious people are more likely to achieve great work, because in the face of the vast sea of infinite possibilities, they actively cast nets to catch the right opportunities.
Fields are not like girlfriends; you do not need to remain loyal. If during your exploration, you find that a certain field no longer holds meaning for you, switch immediately.
Remember: what mathematicians are really doing is very different from high school math. You must maintain interest and continuously try various fields.
If you find it hard to say whether something is your "creation" or "discovery," that is usually a good sign. Top works often seem effortless, while laborious work only earns short-term admiration.
The four steps to achieving greatness: “Choose a field, reach the knowledge frontier, find knowledge gaps, and delve into those gaps.”
The "knowledge frontier" looks like a smooth line from afar, but up close it is pockmarked with many "knowledge gaps." Pay attention to these “knowledge gaps,” when most people ignore them for simpler world models, a few will make great discoveries by delving into these gaps.
If the knowledge you find is a bit unusual, that is even better. The hallmark of great achievements is that they are a bit strange.
Bravely pursue neglected knowledge, especially when people do not care about it or the ideas. If a piece of knowledge that people overlook excites you, and you can precisely articulate what they missed, that is your best opportunity in life.
Carefully cultivate your taste for "what constitutes the highest standard." The ambition to pursue “the top” is completely different from the ambition to pursue “acceptable.” Do not pursue anything other than “the top."
Some jobs require you to "grind" for years before you can start doing enjoyable things. Great achievements are not like that. Great achievements focus on "fun" from the start. When you stop and look back, you will realize how far you have come.
Great work means "an unreasonable amount of time invested in solving a trivial problem." You cannot view this time as a cost; you must see it as “meaning” itself.
People who achieve great work do not pursue productivity. They do a small amount of work each day but do it consistently every day. Investing in compounding work will yield exponential growth.
Procrastination on projects is the most dangerous, because you keep telling yourself “the timing is not right,” and it can drag on for years.
We often overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do in a year; we also overestimate the damage of procrastinating for a day and underestimate the damage of procrastinating for a year.
On the path to greatness, a lie you can tell yourself is: the work you are doing is the most important work in the world, at least in your own heart. This will help you make new discoveries, and then it will no longer be a lie.
The key element of honesty is: informality. Focus only on what is truly important, omitting unimportant etiquette and formality. Nerds have this innate recklessness; they focus only on the truly important essence. Be a nerd, love your work.
On the path of exploring passion, you will encounter these internal resistances: “arrogance and hubris, trends, fear, money, others' expectations, and the temptation of fame.” But if you persist on the right path of “interest,” these resistances will not harm you.
Following “interest” sounds passive, but in reality, you must persist in your interest when facing internal resistance. This means actively taking risks and having courage.
The formula for great achievements is simple: Invest in projects that excite you, and then let good things happen. Instead of making a bunch of plans and strategies, it is better to nurture that original intention (invariant).
You should only write the stories you want to see. Most people imagine a fictional audience, trying to figure out what they want. Going down this path is wrong.
Producing content for "fools" is dangerous. You can make a lot of money, but that is not the path to great achievements.
Original ideas often emerge from the oldest clichés. When you find them, you will only think: “How come no one thought of this?”
Original ideas cannot be deliberately produced. You can only try to create something “a bit too difficult,” allowing ideas to emerge naturally during the process.
There is a kind of thinking that must be conducted through writing. When you write, the struggle of lacking ideas creates a vacuum that draws out the ideas within you.
A field suitable for you should make you "more and more interested." If your interest does not increase with exploration, then this field is probably not suitable for you.
In sailing, there are tailwinds, as well as undercurrents and shallows. You should work hard, but also know when not to work hard. Working too hard leads to burnout, making you stupid, and then harming your health.
Daydreaming, taking a shower, walking, and lying down can be powerful. Let your brain daydream freely, and you can often solve problems that you cannot solve while working hard. But you must work hard regularly for daydreaming to be effective.
You can design your life trajectory to allow this "focus - relax" cycle to happen naturally. How to design? Try to find a workspace close to home and walk to work.
An empty brain is more easily disturbed by distractions. Be very careful to protect your empty time, do not let social media, phones, or images take it away. (Except for leaving time for your loved ones)
Even the hardest working people can only do 4-5 hours of "focused work" a day. Ideally, make those four hours as continuous as possible; if you are often disturbed, it is hard to complete difficult challenges.
Affectation is "pretending to be someone else." You can use a very cool persona, and you might gain some reputation, but the feeling of “fakeness” will still appear in the writing.
Deliberately crafted styles are tricks. In the process of trying to solve problems, a style will naturally emerge.
How to upgrade your thinking framework? Be very logical with yourself. Ineffective frameworks leave unrealistic contradictions, and most people deliberately ignore them because they are too lazy to think. Bravely use logic to break the rules. If a rule contradicts reality and is unreasonable, it should be broken.
Do not plan too much. The problem with planning is that it can only lead to “achievements you can imagine." You cannot discover epoch-making discoveries like “natural selection” or “heliocentrism” through planning. At each stage, do what you find most interesting and what gives you the most options for the future. I call this: “staying ahead."
There are three powerful internal drives in people: curiosity, pleasure, and the desire to do something impressive.
Working hard is actually the easiest path. Because you are willing to “work hard,” you can easily overtake those who are unwilling to do so. This liberates you; you no longer have to think of a bunch of strategies and tactics.
One way to "pursue excellence": create works that people will still care about a hundred years later. Not because people’s opinions are important, but because if it still has value a hundred years later, then it is truly good stuff.
Use lies to help yourself kickstart work: “I will just do it for five minutes."
Do not worry about being too reckless. If you try to pursue greatness and fail, so what? Many people’s lives have more serious problems than this. If your life’s troubles are just this kind of failure, you are very lucky.
The four elements of great achievements: ability, interest, effort, and luck. Luck is uncontrollable, and effort is something everyone has; you should ask yourself: “In what field do I have both interest and ability?".
Curiosity is the most accurate guide. On the path to greatness, curiosity will never deceive you, it knows far better than you what is worth your energy.
The pursuit of greatness is a dance of curiosity. If you ask a medium, “What achieves greatness?” and the medium can only reply with one word, I bet that word would be “curiosity.”
Do not pursue something just because others are pursuing it. The only function of competition should be to motivate you to work harder; nothing else.
If you do something well enough, you will give it value. So the question you should ask is not “What work is respected?” but “What work can I truly do well?"
It is good to want to show off, but choose the right people to show off to. The few people you respect giving you affirmation is a “good sign." A large group of people you do not care about giving you affirmation is fame, that is “noise."
Pursuing great achievements does not necessarily make you happier than others, but it definitely makes you happier than your unambitious self. If you are very smart and ambitious, not pursuing greatness is dangerous. Such people often become bitter.
Ambition comes from the body. You think with your body, so you must take good care of it. Exercise well, eat well, sleep well, and do not use recreational drugs. Jogging and walking are great exercises because they help with thinking.
Do not marry someone who does not understand "you must put in the work." If you have ambition, you must work; it is a physiological need. So if your partner does not let you work well, they either do not understand you or understand but do not care about you.
The value of fans does not grow linearly with quantity. As long as you have a small group of passionate supporters, that is enough to sustain yourself.
“Never give up” is not always right. Sometimes you should go back a step and test again. A more precise statement should be: Never let setbacks panic you, but do not take too many steps back. There is one exception: never give up your original intention.
People with high aspirations often make the mistake of letting setbacks destroy their ambition, like popping a balloon. View setbacks as part of the process; there will always be ups and downs in solving difficult problems.
If the craft you choose to hone is pure, the hard work itself will become a refuge from life's troubles. You can call this escapism, but it is very productive and is a favored escape method of great people throughout the ages.
When you are making ambitious plans, ambition is everything to you. You must carefully nurture and protect it, like a living organism.
In choosing colleagues, quality far outweighs quantity. Working with one “extremely strong” person is better than a group of “pretty good” people.
How do I know I have a truly strong colleague? When you have one, you will know for sure. That is to say, when you are not quite sure, you probably do not have one. A strong colleague will provide you with “surprising” insights, seeing things you cannot see.
If the top people in your field are concentrated in a certain place, it is good to visit them occasionally. This will give you ambition and let you know that these peaks are just people, which gives you confidence. Stay sincere; these people usually give you a warm welcome. Those who are truly dedicated to their craft are often willing to chat with interested people.
Failure cases may be more enlightening than success cases. You must lack something to know what is necessary.
When original ideas first appear, there is often no language to describe them, so they often look like derivatives of old ideas, even to the discoverer themselves.
Learning through imitation will not make you unoriginal. Originality is the existence of new ideas, not the absence of old ideas.
If you want to imitate someone, do it deliberately and publicly; do not do it secretly or unconsciously. The worst imitation is being unaware that you are imitating, because you are just unconsciously becoming that person.
When young, you should spend time with moderation. Doing things that “might be a waste of time” is very different from doing things that are “definitely a waste of time.” The former is at least a gamble, and the odds are better than you think.
The capital of youth is energy, time, optimism, and freedom. The capital of old age is knowledge, efficiency, money, and power. As long as you work hard enough, you can gain a bit of old capital in your youth; and in old age, you can also gain a bit of young capital.
Lack of experience makes young people afraid to take risks, but it is precisely when you are young that you can take the most risks.
Planning is not a good thing, although sometimes it is a necessary evil. If you keep projects small and maintain flexibility, you do not need to plan too much; your designs can iterate continuously.
Starting immediately will help you learn faster and have more fun. With practical experience, you can understand the experiences of predecessors. By continuously iterating your work, you will gradually move towards greatness.
The "Mythical Man-Month" mentions two bad habits in software development: the second-system effect and spending too much time completing the first version; both are extensions of this concept: Do not cram too much into one iteration version.
To have a good idea, you must first come up with a lot of bad ideas.
Those who cling to tradition speak loudly, even if they are foolish. Innovators, on the other hand, cannot have any “certainty” because their minds are always thinking about “problems."
People often think new ideas are "answers," but the real insight is “questions."
Asking good questions completes half of the discovery. But this also means you must bear unanswered questions for a while.
Great achievements often come from "answering questions posed in childhood." Practice writing down the questions you had when you were young; you may find that you can answer them now.
The public believes that experts have "answers," but real experts are filled with “questions” that no one can answer.
Choosing problems is far more important than solving problems. Even the smartest people are very conservative when choosing topics. Those who do not follow trends will also become trend-chasers when choosing topics.
The value of "unfashionable questions" is severely underestimated. Great achievements often dig out new ideas in those “outdated” fields.
Good ideas often lurk behind "dogmas." Every “traditional view” has a circle of “dark areas” nearby, where many precious original insights are hidden. They are hidden because they contradict “traditional views." For example, Copernicus and Darwin found a lot of good ideas in the “dark areas” of “religion.” Think about what principles in your field are regarded as “sacred dogmas”? What possibilities arise when you discard this dogma?
A way to find good ideas: "If someone else were to do this, how would they do it?" Good ideas are often shot down by the subconscious, saying they are too strange, too risky, too difficult, too tiring, or too controversial. But asking yourself, “What if someone else were to do it?” makes it easier to turn off the subconscious filter.
The characteristic of a good idea is that "most people think it is a bad idea," otherwise it would have been discovered long ago.

86 Highlights on How to Achieve Great Work

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