How to Do Great Work (2023)

ttosh about 5 hours ago 32 commentsRead Article on paulgraham.com

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Discussion (32 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

bryanph_•about 1 hour ago

When Paul Graham uses a phrase like "great work" I can't help but only consider it as being synonymous to "work that generates a big return for the investor" in his context of Y Combinator

resonious•about 1 hour ago

That probably is what it means and I think there's still value in the analysis.

bryanph_•22 minutes ago

I agree. Though the article mentions work from people like Einstein, Copernicus, Darwin, etc. A far cry from the kind of work Y Combinator funds. It gives the post a comedic air to it. Perhaps if had given some more grounded examples that feel more relevant to the work he's done himself then the article would land more for me.

Eddy_Viscosity2•17 minutes ago

In work, once you remove all that is unnecessary, wrong, and bad. Then what you are left with must be greatness.

vodou•9 minutes ago

What an empty and depressing world it would be if that was true.

dtj1123•about 2 hours ago

Genuine question, what work has Paul Graham done that can be classified as 'great'?

gus_massa•about 1 hour ago

https://paulgraham.com/spam.html

I think all the parts were invented by other people, but he got the right mix to make it work.

It's also like the wheel. Before it was a huge problem and no one know how to solve it. Now it's invisible.

Note that all modern versions use enhanced variants with a lot or trick to make it better.

rvba•6 minutes ago

For me keeping Hacker News in the way it is. One of the last "inspiring" places, now that reddit is dead.

api•4 minutes ago

It’s declined in quality too but not as sharply as Reddit or the cess pools of the rest of social media.

durdn•about 2 hours ago

He wrote a lot about this. For example he built an e-commerce meta platform in Lisp that would allow anyone to build and customise their own shops that was far ahead of anything that existed at the time.

baconbkr•about 2 hours ago

Creating YCombinator

ignoramous•about 2 hours ago

Per Graham's own definition, the founding to Y Combinator. Setting aside critiques, some of his influential essays ("Ramen profitable", "Do things that don't scale", "Founder mode", "Beating the averages", "Schelp blindness", etc) also fit the bill.

resonious•about 1 hour ago

> 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.

Is this supposed to be relatable?

sph•about 1 hour ago

Why not?

- William James Sidis

Archer6621•about 1 hour ago

It's a nice post, with a lot of valuable insights. There is one that I disagree with though: "Never abandon the root node".

There are plenty of instances that show that in reality this is not what happens, and in fact this is often a necessary step of reinventing yourself if things really aren't working for you. The mid-life crisis is a famous example of this, or even the quarter-life crisis. In some specific psychological circles this is referred to as "disintegration". Sometimes carefully backtracking is simply not enough, and growth needs this kind large shock to the system.

ecto•44 minutes ago

He wouldn't know.

rvba•6 minutes ago

PG could really work on style to shorten those walls of text.

That's actually my own problem too - I often use AI to summarize / shorten my own texts. (Opposite of what most who seem to use it for generation?)

tosh•about 2 hours ago

good related read: You and Your Research (Hamming)

https://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html

gaigalas•about 2 hours ago

The people qualified to do great work probably don't need the advice. They most likely lack resources (like money or free time), not guidance.

The people who would benefit from the advice (resourceful people full of free time that are doing nothing meaningful) will likely ignore it anyway.

subygan•about 2 hours ago

this is one of the common conundrums of life. but for someone living in the grey, this stuff might push them over the edge to be great. that is the point of this article

screamingninja•about 2 hours ago

You assume that people are rigid in their habits. Inspiration goes a long way. Habits can be shaped greatly with the right motivation and mentorship.

user3939382•about 2 hours ago

There’s something cringey about having a zillion dollars and then using your cash soapbox to bloviate to everyone about how to be great-like-me.

condenser•about 2 hours ago

There's nothing "cringey" about sharing your own ideas in your own blog. What's cringey is this kind of pointless ankle-biting.

wseqyrku•about 3 hours ago

You can listen to this on youtube with pg's own voice which I find a pretty neat use of AI.

staplar•about 2 hours ago

I mostly use Safari Listen feature, on my phone, to listen to it while walking. Pretty neat and doesn’t clutter my YouTube history.

wseqyrku•about 1 hour ago

It's not like I wanted to play it in the background. In this particular case, I rather watch the talk than reading the essay if it's available. It's just interesting to have this option now which wasn't possible before.

conartist6•about 2 hours ago

Why? What's neat? To hear his thoughts the way he would voice them? But you're only pretending to...

wseqyrku•about 1 hour ago

Because I enjoy his talks but he obviously didn't do a talk for every single essay.

jagged-chisel•24 minutes ago

Might be a voice that’s sampled of PG’s speech, but it won’t deliver it like PG himself.

iammjm•about 2 hours ago

Why not just read it out loud himself and record it?

utopiah•31 minutes ago

Then share the result on https://librivox.org and other platforms.

stonecharioteer•about 2 hours ago

Because uhm, he doesn't have time?