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• 2025-11-06 *

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

• Another more subtle component of earnestness is informality. Informality is much more important than its grammatically negative name implies. It’s not merely the absence of something. It means focusing on what matters instead of what doesn’t.
• What formality and affectation have in common is that as well as doing the work, you’re trying to seem a certain way as you’re doing it. But any energy that goes into how you seem comes out of being good. That’s one reason nerds have an advantage in doing great work: they expend little effort on seeming anything. In fact that’s basically the definition of a nerd.
• So try asking yourself: if you were going to take a break from “serious” work to work on something just because it would be really interesting, what would you do?
• Most people who are very good at something are happy to talk about it with anyone who’s genuinely interested. If they’re really good at their work, then they probably have a hobbyist’s interest in it, and hobbyists always want to talk about their hobbies.
• Colleagues don’t just affect your work, though; they also affect you. So work with people you want to become like, because you will.
• Morale starts with your view of life. You’re more likely to do great work if you’re an optimist, and more likely to if you think of yourself as lucky than if you think of yourself as a victim.
• if you’re smart and ambitious, it’s dangerous not to be productive. People who are smart and ambitious but don’t achieve much tend to become bitter.
• Curiosity is the key to all four steps in doing great work: it will choose the field for you, get you to the frontier, cause you to notice the gaps in it, and drive you to explore them. The whole process is a kind of dance with curiosity.
• Can you find a kind of work where your ability and interest will combine to yield an explosion of new ideas?

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