How to Do Great Work

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| July 2023If 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.
The first step is to decide what to work on. The work you choose
needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a
natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that
offers scope to do great work.In practice you don't have to worry much about the third criterion.
Ambitious people are if anything already too conservative about it.
So all you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for
and great interest in.
[1]That sounds straightforward, but it's often quite difficult. When
you're young you don't know what you're good at or what different
kinds of work are like. Some kinds of work you end up doing may not
even exist yet. So while some people know what they want to do at
14, most have to figure it out.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.
You'll probably guess wrong some of the time, but that's fine. It's
good to know about multiple things; some of the biggest discoveries
come from noticing connections between different fields.Develop a habit of working on your own projects. Don't let "work"
mean something other people tell you to do. If you do manage to do
great work one day, it will probably be on a project of your own.
It may be within some bigger project, but you'll be driving your
part of it.What should your projects be? Whatever seems to you excitingly
ambitious. As you grow older and your taste in projects evolves,
exciting and important will converge. At 7 it may seem excitingly
ambitious to build huge things out of Lego, then at 14 to teach
yourself calculus, till at 21 you're starting to explore unanswered
questions in physics. But always preserve excitingness.There's a kind of excited curiosity that's both the engine and the
rudder of great work. It will not only drive you, but if you let
it have its way, will also show you what to work on.What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that
would bore most other people? That's what you're looking for.Once you've found something you're excessively interested in, the
next step is to learn enough about it to get you to one of the
frontiers of knowledge. Knowledge expands fractally, and from a
distance its edges look smooth, but once you learn enough to get
close to one, they turn out to be full of gaps.The next step is to notice them. This takes some skill, because
your brain wants to ignore such gaps in order to make a simpler
model of the world. Many discoveries have come from asking questions
about things that everyone else took for granted.
[2]If the answers seem strange, so much the better. Great work often
has a tincture of strangeness. You see this from painting to math.
It would be affected to try to manufacture it, but if it appears,
embrace it.Boldly chase outlier ideas, even if other people aren't interested
in them — in fact, especially if they aren't. If you're excited
about some possibility that everyone else ignores, and you have
enough expertise to say precisely what they're all overlooking,
that's as good a bet as you'll find.
[3]Four steps: choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier,
notice gaps, explore promising ones. This is how practically everyone
who's done great work has done it, from painters to physicists.Steps two and four will require hard work. It may not be possible
to prove that you have to work hard to do great things, but the
empirical evidence is on the scale of the evidence for mortality.
That's why it's essential to work on something you're deeply
interested in. Interest will drive you to work harder than mere
diligence ever could.The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the
desire to do something impressive. Sometimes they converge, and
that combination is the most powerful of all.The big prize is to discover a new fractal bud. You notice a crack
in the surface of knowledge, pry it open, and there's a whole world
inside.Let's talk a little more about the complicated business of figuring
out what to work on. The main reason it's hard is that you can't
tell what most kinds of work are like except by doing them. Which
means the four steps overlap: you may have to work at something for
years before you know how much you like it or how good you are at
it. And in the meantime you're not doing, and thus not learning
about, most other kinds of work. So in the worst case you choose
late based on very incomplete information.
[4]The nature of ambition exacerbates this problem. Ambition comes in
two forms, one that precedes interest in the subject and one that
grows out of it. Most people who do great work have a mix, and the
more you have of the former, the harder it will be to decide what
to do.The educational systems in most countries pretend it's easy. They
expect you to commit to a field long before you could know what
it's really like. And as a result an ambitious person on an optimal
trajectory will often read to the system as an instance of breakage.It would be better if they at least admitted it — if they admitted
that the system not only can't do much to help you figure out what
to work on, but is designed on the assumption that you'll somehow
magically guess as a teenager. They don't tell you, but I will:
when it comes to figuring out what to work on, you're on your own.
Some people get lucky and do guess correctly, but the rest will
find themselves scrambling diagonally across tracks laid down on
the assumption that everyone does.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. They discover what to work on as a result
of a chance meeting, or by reading a book they happen to pick up.
So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to
do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people,
read lots of books, ask lots of questions.
[5]When in doubt, optimize for interestingness. Fields change as you
different from what you do in high school math classes. So you need
to give different types of work a chance to show you what they're
like. But a field should become increasingly interesting as you
learn more about it. If it doesn't, it's probably not for you.Don't worry if you find you're interested in different things than
other people. The stranger your tastes in interestingness, the
better. Strange tastes are often strong ones, and a strong taste
for work means you'll be productive. And you're more likely to find
new things if you're looking where few have looked before.One sign that you're suited for some kind of work is when you like
even the parts that other people find tedious or frightening.But fields aren't people; you don't owe them any loyalty. If in the
course of working on one thing you discover another that's more
exciting, don't be afraid to switch.If you're making something for people, make sure it's something
they actually want. The best way to do this is to make something
you yourself want. Write the story you want to read; build the tool
you want to use. Since your friends probably have similar interests,
this will also get you your initial audience.This should follow from the excitingness rule. Obviously the most

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