How to Do Great Work
Paul Graham's long-form argument that great work is not a method but a disposition — and that curiosity is the one variable you can actually trust.
1 / 5In the article
There's a kind of excited curiosity that's both the engine and the rudder of great work.”
There's a kind of excited curiosity that's both the engine and the rudder of great work.
Curiosity drives great work forward and steers its direction simultaneously, making it the single indispensable trait.
Receipt
When an idea seems simultaneously novel and obvious, it's probably a good one.
That double feeling of surprise and inevitability serves as a practical test for recognizing genuinely promising ideas.
Receipt
Originality isn't a process, but a habit of mind. Original thinkers throw off new ideas about whatever they focus on, like an angle grinder throwing off sparks. They can't help it.
Originality is reframed as an involuntary byproduct of how certain minds naturally operate, not a deliberate technique.
Receipt
Per-project procrastination camouflages itself as work — you're not sitting around doing nothing, you're industriously working on something else, so the alarm never sounds.
The most dangerous procrastination hides inside apparent productivity, bypassing the self-awareness that would otherwise prompt correction.
Receipt
A good new idea has to seem bad to most people, or someone would have already explored it.
Apparent badness in a new idea is evidence of its novelty, not its weakness, reversing the usual instinct to retreat.
Receipt
Keep going with this source
Ask a question
Ask about anything in this article. We’ll try to provide an answer.