How to Do Great Work

New discoveries often have to be conceived initially as variations of existing things,

even by their discoverers

, because there isn't yet the conceptual vocabulary to express them.

What should you do if you're young and ambitious but don't know what to work on? 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.... See more

What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that would bore most other people? That's what you're looking for.

Morale compounds via work: high morale helps you do good work, which increases your morale and helps you do even better work. But this cycle also operates in the other direction: if you're not doing good work, that can demoralize you and make it even harder to. Since it matters so much for this cycle to be running in the right direction, it can be ... See more

People who do great work are not necessarily happier than everyone else, but they're happier than they'd be if they didn't. In fact, if you're smart and ambitious, it's dangerous

not

to be productive. People who are smart and ambitious but don't achieve much tend to become bitter.

July 2023

If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it.

Partly my goal was to create a guide that could be used by someone working in any field. But I was also curious about the shape of the intersection. And one thing this exercise sh... See more

One way to discover broken models is to be stricter than other people. Broken models of the world leave a trail of clues where they bash against reality

The way to figure out what to work on is by working. If you're not sure what to work on, guess. But pick something and get going

When an idea seems simultaneously novel and obvious, it's probably a good one.