Saved by Ajinkya Wadhwa and
Early Work
Another way to get through the lame phase of ambitious projects is to surround yourself with the right people — to create an eddy in the social headwind. But it's not enough to collect people who are always encouraging. You'd learn to discount that. You need colleagues who can actually tell an ugly duckling from a baby swan.
Paul Graham • Early Work
One motivation that works particularly well for me is curiosity. I like to try new things just to see how they'll turn out.
Paul Graham • Early Work
Another common trick is to start by considering new work to be of a different, less exacting type. To start a painting saying that it's just a sketch, or a new piece of software saying that it's just a quick hack. Then you judge your initial results by a lower standard. Once the project is rolling you can sneakily convert it to something more.
Paul Graham • Early Work
I've noticed in many fields that the most successful people are slightly overconfident. On the face of it this seems implausible. Surely it would be optimal to have exactly the right estimate of one's abilities. How could it be an advantage to be mistaken? Because this error compensates for other sources of error in the opposite direction: being
... See morePaul Graham • Early Work
If you overestimate the importance of what you're working on, that will compensate for your mistakenly harsh judgment of your initial results.
Paul Graham • Early Work
It will be easier to try out a risky project if you think of it as a way to learn and not just as a way to make something. Then even if the project truly is a failure, you'll still have gained by it.
Paul Graham • Early Work
One of the biggest things holding people back from doing great work is the fear of making something lame. And this fear is not an irrational one.
Paul Graham • Early Work
Of course, inexperience is not the only reason people are too harsh on early versions of ambitious projects. They also do it to seem clever. And in a field where the new ideas are risky, like startups, those who dismiss them are in fact more likely to be right. Just not when their predictions are weighted by outcome.
Paul Graham • Early Work
To start a painting saying that it's just a sketch, or a new piece of software saying that it's just a quick hack. Then you judge your initial results by a lower standard. Once the project is rolling you can sneakily convert it to something more.