How to Do Great Work

If 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.

Ambitious people are often wrong about what they want to work on. Part of the reason we're drawn to the wrong things is that we misunderstand what working on something actually consists of.

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.

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.

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 have a habit of working on your own projects. Don't let "work" mean something that 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.

Four steps: choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier, notice gaps, and explore promising ones. This is how practically everyone who's done great work has done it.