Outliers with Daniel Scrivner: Explore the Greatest Innovators, Founders, and Investors

Short Read: “How To Do Great Work” by Paul Graham | Episode #168

Jan 13, 2024

01:43:19

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Entrepreneur Paul Graham discusses his essay on 'How To Do Great Work,' exploring curiosity, originality, breaking rules, and being self-indulgent. He emphasizes the importance of asking big questions, iterative progress, and surrounding oneself with talented individuals for growth.

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Quick takeaways

Achieving great work requires a unique blend of ambition, curiosity, and consistency.

Selecting projects aligned with deep interest and challenging potential fosters genuine, impactful work.

Originality flourishes through engaging with challenges just beyond immediate capabilities and exploring topics widely.

Authenticity is crucial in creativity, emphasizing earnestness, substance over appearance, and expressing ideas truthfully.

Deep dives

Honing Excellence in Work

Excellent work is defined not just by hard work but by a distinct shape of efforts. Ambition and curiosity drive great work, emphasizing the need for a balance between ability and interest. The effort required for exceptional work is a harmonious blend of focusing on high-interest projects, seeking frontier knowledge, identifying gaps, and exploiting promising opportunities. Consistency is a linchpin in producing remarkable work, providing a steady trajectory towards achieving singular, influential outcomes.

Excited Curiosity as a Guide to Great Work

01:21

Create Something Amazing and Co-evolve with the Problem

01:10

The Power of Questions in Unveiling Insights

02:01

Turning off Filters for Generating New Ideas

01:33

Introduction

1min

Nurturing Great Work

6min

The Power of Curiosity in Great Work

23min

The Power of Consistency in Achieving Greatness

14min

Cultivating Originality: The Quest for Great Ideas

23min

Iterative Progress towards Greatness

7min

Copying as a Tool for Learning and Innovation

5min

Surrounding Oneself with Talented Individuals for Growth

9min

Curiosity as the Key to Great Work

9min

Paul Graham's essay on "How To Do Great Work" begins with the following words:

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 shows is that it does have a definite shape; it's not just a point labelled "work hard." The following recipe assumes you're very ambitious.

As we're all both very ambitious and focused on doing great work, it felt appropriate to cover this essay as a sort of book in miniature. The essay itself comes in at a staggering 11,800 words or nearly 30 pages when printed.

"How To Do Great Work" explores curiosity, the source of originality, the relationship between breaking rules and new ideas, and how being naive is a form of independent mindedness. As well as why being self-indulgent helps you find overlooked problems, why big ideas are more often questions than answers, and why the best questions grow while you work to answer them.

Explore the episode notes.

Search and down a transcript and find links to related books, interviews, lectures, and more: outlieracademy.com/168.

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