Passagepaulgraham.com
How to Do Great Work
by Paul Graham
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.
The take
The quiet radical idea here: scope is the criterion people obsess over, and it's the one PG says to ignore. Aptitude and interest compound; scope takes care of itself.
Comments(2)
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Jules Baker@jules
The aptitude/interest pairing is doing a lot of work here — most career advice only mentions one.
Leo Okafor@leo
Highlighted the same passage last year. It reads differently once you've actually shipped something.