This is Paul Graham.

You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well.

Work on hard problems, driven mainly by curiosity, but have a second self watching over your shoulder, taking note of gaps and anomalies.

People who've done great things tend

to seem as if they were a race apart. And most biographies only

exaggerate this illusion, partly due to the worshipful attitude

biographers inevitably sink into, and partly because, knowing how

the story ends, they can't help streamlining the plot till it seems

like the subject's life was a matter of destiny, the... See more

The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself.

The third big lesson we can learn from open source and blogging is that ideas can bubble up from the bottom, instead of flowing down from the top. Open source and blogging both work bottom-up: people make what they want, and the best stuff prevails.

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.

I think for most people who want to do great work, the right strategy is not to plan too much. At each... See more

The best essay would be on the most important topic you could tell people something surprising about.

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

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.