#1: How to Do Great Work? - Myth
Debate, extension, and application practice on Paul Graham's How to Do Great Work
Paul Graham’s new post, How to Do Great Work, is currently very famous among our friend group, so we decided to host a blog reading session to (1) Understand how to do great work and also the nuances/ complexity that might not be covered in the blog post. (2) Devise potential strategies & take concrete actions toward doing great work.
Before the meeting, my friend, Ha, put together study guide questions for us (This is Minerva style.) Here are the questions.
Paul Graham said there are four steps to working on something great: choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier, notice gaps, and explore promising ones. Where are you right now?
Are you working on what you most want to work on?
What “bad habits” have you acquired that might have prevented you from doing great work? What about “bad morale”? What stops us from doing great work?
This article is long but might not be comprehensive. What would it be if you disagreed with the article on something?
Esther & I did an exciting challenge - we followed this advice: “If you don't try to be the best, you won't even be good.” And ask ourselves what we would want to be the best at. Esther’s answer: I want to be the best LLM/ AI engineer. Ha’s answer: I want to create the best climate tech company. What would you want to be the best at?
We debated and discussed the blog, and here are the myths we debunked ourselves in the group.
Myth 1: We need to do great work, and great work means a large-scale impact, like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs.
The statement "We need to do great work" is debatable as people have different priorities in life, such as exercise, relationships, and exploration. Self-awareness and personal choice are essential for striving toward their definition of significant work (So we are all making our own work manifesto). Capitalistic societies have led us to value measurable and external factors, which is why individuals like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk’s work are considered great. However, minor impacts, such as caring for family and friends, are equally important. We need individuals with various skills and backgrounds in society. Send you peace and love.
Myth 2: Great work shouldn't be a selfish goal.
We can identify three reasons people strive to do great work: passion for the problem, reputation, and ego. My friend told me she hates some arrogant people in San Francisco because they only work to become famous. However, she feels okay about being deeply interested in her problem because of the intellectual stimulation it provides. Humans have many self-motivations, so we should accept that many of our goals are often selfish. Even if our primary driver is self-interest, it can still be okay if we are on the way to creating a positive impact.
Myth 3: Ambitions and direction are a must for great work.
Ambition and direction help, but they're not the only ways. I really love Yueh Han's simple thoughts on thinking of work as creation: doing your hobbies and interests that make you feel internally fulfilled. It will make it feel so much easier to try and achieve. Lots of great work spins up from small personal projects and interests. As Paul Graham says, curiosity is a better guide to sustain someone in the long term and provides better intuition to find "the gap" in society too. Why not start something easy and fun? (I’m lost too. 😉)
Myth 4: We need to be good enough to do great work.
The biggest hurdle most people face in our blog reading group is self-confidence. We realize many toxic negative thoughts in ourselves about who we are and what we can or cannot do. We are always unsure if we are good enough or if the things we want to do might be too difficult for us. To unblock this, we break down the problem into two parts.
(1) How can we change our self-image of not being good enough? I’ve tried to break this question down through self-manifestation, deepening and expanding my competitive advantages. I wrote a blog post: "How to Gain Career Confidence: Strategies and Mindsets for Being the Best."
(2) How can we still motivate ourselves to do things even when we don't think we are good enough? For me, it's about making everything funny. I wrote a blog post: "Try to Do Hard Things? Make It Funny."
Another friend, Svitlana, also suggested Tim Ferriss’s fear exercise to tackle our fear.
Myth 5: We need to work crazily to do great work.
A lot of fear I’m afraid of doing great work in my mind because I don’t agree with a life with only work. I still deeply value other dimensions of my life. For instance, my relationship. (Yes, I date hard, and will throw my career away when I’m in love.)
However, this discussion reminds me to find the right scope and a niche scope of problems I want to tackle that I feel comfortable with, rather than working crazily 24-7.
At the end of the discussion, we create an action plan. Let me share it with you.
My current work manifesto: Enable all of us to learn with curiosity through technology.
Right now, what would it be if you were to work on only one thing that offers the scope to do great work? Write it down: Specifically, I want to learn with my community in a fun or funny way through LLM technology.
What is your biggest blocker in doing great work in this field? Write it down:
I don’t have enough time to do it consistently.
What small (<1 week) experiments can you try to remove that blocker? Brainstorm 3 different ways and write them down:
I want to try creating a customized learning map through LLM.
I can start by breaking my projects down, learning React, and tuning LLM in different weeks.
I can find people interested in AI x Learning to collaborate for 3 hours.
If nothing works out, I will continue writing about what I learned in my week.
I think I will review this blog in the future, and let me know if you are on this path too. We can share and have fun together!