硅谷创业教父两万字长文：普通人如何成就一番大事？

Paul Graham，YC 创始人、硅谷创业教父、《黑客与画家》作者。经常在博客上分享自己对于创业的思考。今天这篇文章《如何取得杰出成就》，是 PG 准备了半年之久的「重磅文章」，试图讲明白一个适用于每个人的主题——如何做成「大事」（great work）。

公众号「赛博禅心」作者认为这是「他读过的最实用的工作指南之一」，并全文翻译了这篇文章。转载自「赛博禅心」。需要说明的是，文中的注脚也值得一读，29个注脚金句频出，与正文一样精彩。本文于 2023 年 7 月发布于 Paul Graham 的个人博客，原文标题为《How to Do Great Work》，原文链接：

[https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html](https%3A%2F%2Fpaulgraham.com%2Fgreatwork.html)

英语原文曹哲也给大家放置文章最后。原文：如果我们收集在不同领域成就伟大事业的技巧列表，它们的交集会是什么呢？我决定通过实践来找出答案。我的目标有两个，其一是创建一个可以为所有领域的从业者所用的指南，其二是我也对交集的形态感到好奇——实践表明，这个交集确实有一个「明确的形状」，它不仅仅是一个标有「努力工作」字样的点。

以下指南的前提假设是你拥有雄心壮志。<text bgcolor="green">01</text> 第一步是决定要做什么。我们所选择的工作需要具有三个特质：在实践中，我们不必过于担心第三点——对于具有雄心壮志的人来说，可见的空间已然过于保守—— 所以我们需要做的就是找到有天赋和极大兴趣的事情。

[1] [1] 我不认为我们可以给杰出成就一个精确的定义。取得杰出成就意味着做了某件很重要事情，做得很好，以至于扩大了人们对可能性的认识，但是，对于重要性并没有一个阈值，这是一个程度的问题，而且往往很难在当时进行判断。

所以，我宁愿让人们专注于发展他们的兴趣，而不是担心它们是否重要——只要试图做一些令人惊奇的事情，子孙后代会判断你是否成功。这听起来很简单，但往往很困难。当我们年轻时，并不知道自己擅长什么，或者不同类型的工作是什么样的，甚至我们最终做的一些工作可能当前还不存在。

所以，虽然有些人在十四岁的时候就知道他们想做什么，但大多数人还需要时间去弄清楚。找出要做什么的方法是通过工作。如果我们不确定要做什么，那就猜，但是要选择一件事情并开始做。我们可能会猜错，但没关系，了解多种事物是好的—— 一些最伟大的发现来自于注意到不同领域之间的联系。

养成自己起并推动项目的习惯。不要让「工作」这个词等同于别人告诉我们要做什么事情。如果我们有一天真的取得了杰出成就，那可能会始于我们自己发起的一个项目——它可能包含在某个更大的项目中，但你会推动其中的一部分。我们的项目应该是什么？任何令自己感到兴奋的且可以让自己踌躇满志的事。

随着年龄的增长，我们对项目的品味会进化，兴奋程度和重要性会趋于正相关——七岁时，用乐高搭建巨大的模型可能看起来令人兴奋且斗志满满；十四岁时，可能是自学微积分；二十一岁时，则可能是开始探索物理学中的未解问题——但，无论是什么，它们始终是令人兴奋的。

伴随着兴奋的好奇心是杰出成就的引擎和舵，它不仅会驱动我们前进，如果我们能让它发挥更大的作用，它还会告诉我们要做什么。我们对什么有着「过分的」好奇心，「过分」到其他大多数人会觉得无聊的程度？那就是我们所要寻找的事。一旦找到了「过分」感兴趣的事，下一步就是学习足够多的知识，让我们能够到达此领域的知识前沿。

知识以分形的方式扩展，从远处看，它的边缘看起来很平滑，但一旦我们学习得足够多，接近其中的部分边缘，会发现它们充满了缺口。下一步是注意到这些缺口。这需要一些技巧，因为我们的大脑想要忽略这些缺口，以便构建一个更简单的世界模型。许多伟大的发现来自于对大家都视为理所当然的事提出问题。

[2] [2] 很多的单口喜剧都是基于在日常生活中发现的不寻常现象。「你有没有注意到...？」新的想法来自于关于非琐碎事情的这类观察，这可能有助于解释为什么人们对一个新想法的反应往往是笑：哈！如果答案看起来很奇怪，那就更好了——杰出成就往往带有奇特色彩——从绘画到数学，我们都可以看到这一点。

试图制造这种奇特的行为是做作的，但如果它出现了，就接受它。大胆地追求不合群的想法，即使其他人对它们不感兴趣 ——事实上，尤其是他们不感兴趣的时候。如果我们对大家都忽视的某种可能性感到兴奋，并且有足够的专业知识来精确地说出他们都忽视了什么，那就是我们能找到的最好的赌注。

[3] [3]「有足够的专业知识来精确地说出他们都忽视了什么」这个限定是关键。如果我们对大部分权威都不认可的事情感到兴奋，但不能给出比「他们不懂」更精确的解释，那么我们自己就开始向怪人那一端发展了。四个步骤：——这就是几乎所有取得杰出成就的人都是如何做到的，从画家到物理学家。

第二步和第四步需要努力。我可能无法用语言证明一个人必须努力才能取得伟大成就，但实证证据就像死亡的证据一样确凿。

这就是为什么我们必须从事自己深感兴趣的事情——兴趣会驱使我们比单纯的勤奋工作更加努力。三个最强大的内在动机是好奇心、快乐和做出令人印象深刻的事情的欲望，当它们会汇聚在一起时，会成为最强大的组合。最大的奖励是发现一个新的分形芽。我们注意到了知识表面的一个裂缝，撬开它，里面有一个完整的世界。

<text bgcolor="green">02</text> 我们多讨论一些关于弄清楚要做什么这个复杂的问题。其中，主要困难在于，除了做过的工作，我们无法知道大多数类型的工作是什么样的，这意味着前面所说的四个步骤是重叠的：我们可能需要花几年的时间做某件事，才能知道自己有多喜欢它或者我们在这方面有多好；

同时，我们没有在做大多数其他类型的工作，也就没有在学习。

所以在最坏的情况下，我们会在不正确的时机且信息非常不完整的情况下做出选择。[4] [4] 找到一些事情来做并不仅仅是在当前版本和已知问题之间找到匹配的问题，我们往往必须要与问题共同发展，这就是为什么有时找出该做什么事会很困难。我们所能搜索的空间是巨大的，它是所有可能的工作类型（已知的和尚未发现的）和所有可能的未来版本的笛卡尔乘积。

我们没有办法搜索整个空间，所以必须依赖启发式方法在空间中生成有希望的路径，并希望最佳匹配会聚集在一起——但是，它们并不总是会聚集在一起——不同类型的工作被聚集在一起，多半是由于历史的偶然性，而非它们的内在相似性。雄心壮志加剧了这个问题。

雄心壮志有两种形式：一种是在对工作感兴趣之前就有的，另一种是在工作过程中生长出来的。取得伟大成就的大多数人的雄心都是混合的，但前者越少，就会越难决定要做什么。大多数国家的教育系统都假装决定要做什么很容易，他们期望我们在知道某个领域真正是什么样子之前就做出决定。

因此，沿着最佳轨迹来看，一个有雄心壮志的人往往会被系统视为异类。如果这些系统至少承认这一点就好了——系统不仅不能帮助我们弄清楚要做什么，而且还是在假设我们可以在十几岁的时候神奇地猜出来的基础上设计的。它们不会说，但在这里我要强调：当涉及到弄清楚要做什么时，我们只能靠自己 。

有些人运气好，一下就猜对了，但其他人会发现自己在假设每个人都会在的轨道上歪斜着奔跑。如果我们年轻并且有雄心但不知道要做什么，我们应该做什么？我们知道自己不应该被动漂流，假设问题会自己解决，同时我们需要采取行动，但没有可以遵循的系统性程序。

当我们阅读取得杰出成就的人的传记时，会发现运气的参与程度是那么高：他们通过偶然的会面，或者读到他们碰巧拿起的一本书，就发现了要做什么。

所以我们需要让自己成为运气的显眼目标，做到这一点的方法是保持好奇——尝试很多事，见很多人，读很多书，问很多问题 。[5] [5] 好奇的人更有可能取得杰出成就有很多原因，但其中的一个微妙原因是，通过撒了一个宽广的网，他们更有可能在一开始就找到正确的事情来做。

当我们感到疑惑时，优先考虑有趣的事情。随着对它们了解得越多，我们对领域的认知就会发生变化，例如，数学家做的事情与我们在高中数学课上做的事情非常不同——所以我们需要给不同类型的工作一个展示它们是什么样的机会——但是，当我们对一个领域了解得越多，它应该变得越来越有趣，如果没有，那可能就不适合自己。

如果我们发现自己对其他人不感兴趣的事情感兴趣，不要担心，我们的兴趣越奇特，越好——奇特的往往是强烈的，对工作有强烈的感受意味着我们会有超高的生产力。而且，如果我们在很少有人到达过的地方探索，那就更有可能找到新的东西。当我们喜欢其他人感到乏味或恐惧的工作时，这是一个我们适合这份工作的标志。

但，领域不是人，我们完全不需要对它们保持忠诚。如果在做一件事的过程中，我们发现了另一件更令人兴奋的事，不要害怕切换。如果我们正在为人们做点东西，要确保它是人们真正想要的。做到这一点的最好方法是做自己想要的东西：写自己想读的故事，制作自己想使用的工具。

由于我们的朋友可能有类似的兴趣，这也会为我们带来初始「观众」。这也可以从令人兴奋的规则中得出的——显然，最令人兴奋的故事就是我们自己想读的故事。我特别提到这个例子的原因是， 有很多人在这方面做错了，他们不是制作他们想要的东西，而是试图制作一些想象中的、更成熟的观众想要的东西。

一旦我们走上这条路，就迷失了 。[6] [6] 如果我们感觉受众不如自己精明，我们可能会对他们居高临下，那么为他们制作出的东西可能也是糟糕的。如果我们抱着藐视一切的态度做产品，可以赚很多钱，但这不是通往杰出成就的路——不过使用这种手段的人可能不会在意。

当我们试图弄清楚要做什么时，有很多力量会使我们误入歧途：矫饰、趋势、恐惧、金钱、政治、他人的愿望、狡猾的骗子。但如果我们坚持自己真正感兴趣的事情，就能抵御所有这些，如果我们感兴趣，就没有误入歧途。<text bgcolor="green">03</text> 追随自己的兴趣可能听起来像是一种相当被动的策略，但在实践中，它通常意味着要跨越各种障碍，我们通常需要冒着被拒绝和失败的风险，所以这确实需要相当大的勇气。

但是，我们虽然需要勇气，但通常不需要太多计划。大多数情况下，成就伟大事业的方式很简单：在令人兴奋的、能够激发我们雄心壮志的项目上努力工作，好的事情就会自然发生—— 我们不需要制定一个计划然后执行它，只需要维持某些不变量。计划的问题在于，它只适用于可以提前描述的成就。

我们可以决定赢得金牌或者变得富有，然后坚持追求这个目标，但不能以这种方式实现自然选择。我认为，对于大多数想要取得伟大成就的人来说，正确的策略是不要计划太多。在每个阶段，做任何看起来最有趣并为未来提供最好选择的事，我称这种方法为「保持上风」——这似乎就是大多数伟大成就如何达成的。

<text bgcolor="green">04</text> 即使我们找到了令人兴奋的工作，进行这项工作也并不总是简单的。有时候，一些新的想法会让我们早上从床上跳起来，直接开始工作，但也有很多时候，事情恰恰相反。我们不能只是张开帆，让灵感把自己推向前方，会有逆风、潮汐和隐藏的暗礁。

所以， 工作就像航行一样，是有技巧的 。

例如，我们虽然必须努力工作，但是也有可能工作过度，在这种状态下，我们会发现收益递减：疲劳会让我们变得愚蠢，最终甚至可能损害我们的健康。工作产生递减收益的点取决于工作的类型，一些最艰难的类型，我们可能一天只能做四五个小时。理想情况下，这些工时应该是连续的。

尽可能地，试着安排自己的生活，让自己有大块的时间来工作，如果知道可能会被打断，那就回避艰难的任务。开始工作可能比继续工作更难，你经常需要欺骗自己，才能越过初始门槛。不要担心，这是工作的性质，不是你性格中的缺陷。工作需要一种「激活能量」，每天，以及每个项目都有，但因为它比继续前进所需的能量高，这个门槛可以被视作是假的，所以可以对自己适度撒个谎来越过它。

如果我们想取得伟大成就，对自己撒谎通常是错的，但有少数几个例外。每当早上不愿意开始工作时，我经常欺骗自己说：「我只是看看自己到目前为止做了什么。」五分钟后，我发现了一些看起来错误或不完整的东西，就开始工作了。类似的技巧适用于开始新的项目。

在预估项目所需的工作量时，向自己撒谎是可以的， 许多伟大事业都是从某人说「这有多难？」开始的。这是年轻人有优势的例子之一——他们更乐观——尽管他们乐观的部分来源是无知，但在这种情况下，无知有时可以打败渊博。尽管如此，我们要尽量完成已经开始的事情，即使它比预期的工作量要多很多。

完成一件事不仅是整洁或自律的练习，在许多项目中，最佳成就点处于本应是最后阶段的地方。另一个可以撒谎的点是在自己心中夸大我们正在做的事情的重要性。如果这有助于我们发现新的东西，那么它可能最终并不是一个谎言。[7] [7] 这个想法我从哈代的《一个数学家的辩白》中学到的，我推荐任何有抱负，要取得伟大成就的人去阅读读，无论是在什么领域。

<text bgcolor="green">05</text> 由于「开始工作」的有两种定义——每天和每个项目——所以也有两种形式的拖延，以项目为单位的拖延远比以天为单位的拖延更危险 ——我们把开始那个雄心勃勃的项目推迟了一年又一年，因为时间还不够——当以年为单位计算时，我们可以做很多事情。

[8] [8] 就像我们高估了我们在一天内可以做什么，低估了我们在几年内可以做什么，我们高估了拖延一天造成的损害，低估了拖延几年造成的损害。项目的拖延之所以如此危险，其中一个原因是它通常会伪装成「工作」。我们不是坐在那里什么都不做，而是在其他事情上勤奋地工作。

所以，项目的拖延不会像日期的拖延一样，触发拖延的警报——我们太忙了，注意不到它。打败项目拖延的方法是偶尔停下来问自己：「我正在做我最想做的事吗？」 年轻的时候，如果答案有时是「不」，那是可以的，但随着年龄的增长，这会变得越来越危险。[9] [9] 我们通常不能完全按照自己的意愿去做事，特别是在早期。

有两个选择：做接近我们想做的工作并希望二者越来越接近，或者做完全不同的事情并在业余时间做自己的项目。两者都可行，但两者都有缺点：在第一种方法中，我们的工作默认被妥协了，在第二种我们必须努力找到时间去做。<text bgcolor="green">06</text> 杰出的成就通常需要我们在一个问题上花费大多数人认为超出了合理范围的大量时间。

我们不能把这个时间看作是成本，否则它会显得太高，我们必须在工作过程中找到足够的吸引力。有一些工作，我们可能必须在自己讨厌的事情上努力工作数年，才能接近喜欢的部分，但这不是杰出成就产生的方式，杰出的成就是通过持续关注自己真正感兴趣的事情来实现的——当我们停下来盘点时，会惊讶于自己已经走了多远。

我们往往会低估工作的累积效应。每天写一页字不算什么，但如果我们每天都这样做，一年就能写一本书—— 这就是关键：一致性 ——取得杰出成就的人并不是每天都做很多事情，他们只做一些事情，而不是什么都不做。如果我们做的工作有复合效应，那么我们就会收获指数增长 ，大多数在做此类工作的人都是无意识的，但这值得我们停下来认真思考。

例如，学习就是这种现象的一个例子：我们对某件事了解得越多，学习更多的事情就越容易。「观众」的增长也是如此：我们的粉丝越多，他们就会为我们带来更多的新粉丝。指数增长的问题在于，曲线在开始时给人的感觉很平。但它不是，它仍然是一个美妙的指数曲线，只是我们无法直观地理解这一点，所以我们低估了指数增长的早期阶段。

一件可以指数增长的事可以变得非常有价值，值得我们付出特别的努力去启动。但由于我们在早期低估了指数增长，这也主要是无意识地完成的：人们在学习新事物的初始且无回报的阶段中坚持下去，因为他们从经验中知道学习新事物总是需要一个初始的推动力，或者他们一个一个地增加他们的「观众」，

因为他们没有更好的事可做——如果人们意识到他们可以投资于指数增长，会有更多的人去做。<text bgcolor="green">07</text> 工作不仅仅在我们努力时发生的。当我们散步、洗澡或躺在床上时，会进行一种无明确目标的思考，这种思考可能非常有力量。

通过让思绪稍微漫游一下，我们经常能够解决那些无法通过正面攻击解决的问题。

然而，我们必须是在以正常的方式努力工作前提下，才能从这种现象中获益。我们不能只是四处游荡做白日梦。这种漫无目的的思考必须与有意识的工作交替进行，工作会引导我们思考问题。[10] [10] 如果我们的生活安排得当，它会自动提供「专注 - 放松」的周期。

完美的设置是我们在这个循环中工作，并且拥有可以步行往返的办公室。每个人都知道在工作时要避免分心，但在周期的另一半避免分心也很重要。每当我们的思绪发散时，它会漫游向我们那一刻最关心的事情上。

所以，要避免让会将工作挤出首位的事分散自己的注意力，否则我们会把这种宝贵的思考方式用在分心上（例外情况：不要回避爱情！）。<text bgcolor="green">08</text> 有意识地培养对自己领域工作的品味。除非我们知道什么是最好的，以及是什么使它成为最好的，否则我们并不知道自己在追求什么。

这就是我们所应追求的，因为如果我们不努力成为最好的，我们甚至都做不好。这一观察已经被许多不同领域的人指出了，所以这可能值得我们思考一下为什么会这样：1 可能是因为实现雄心壮志的途中有这样一种现象，几乎所有的错误都偏向一方——几乎所有未击中目标的炮弹都是落得不够远；

2 可能是因为追求做到最好的雄心壮志与追求做好的抱负有着质的不同；3 可能与「最好」不同，「好」只是一个过于模糊的标准。——这三个可能都是真的。[11] 也许有一些非常超凡的人，他们可以取得杰出成就，而不需要有意识地去尝试。如果我们想拓展这个规则以取得同样的成功，它会变成：

除了做最好的，别尝试做其他任何事情。幸运的是，这里也存在规模经济。虽然努力做到最好可能看起来会为我们增加很大的负担，但实际上我们经常会得到净收益。这是令人兴奋的，也是一种奇妙的解放，事情被简化了——在某些方面，努力做到最好比仅仅努力做好更容易。

追求高目标的方法之一是试图创造一些人们在一百年后还会关心的东西。并不是因为他们的观点比我们同时代的人更重要，而是 因为一百年后仍然看起来不错的东西更有可能是真正好的东西。<text bgcolor="green">09</text> 不要试图以一种独特的风格工作，只需要尽力做好自己的工作 ，我们无法不以一种独特的方式做事。

风格是在不刻意为之的情况下以独特的方式做事，刻意为之则是矫饰。矫饰实际上是假装工作的人不是自己，我们采用了一个令人印象深刻但虚假的人格。虽然我们可能会为给他人留下深刻印象感到满足，但工作中表现出来的是一种假人格。[12] [12] 在诸如表演之类的工作中，目标是展现一个假的人格，这就更复杂了。

但是即使在这种情况下，也有可能被矫饰影响——也许在这样的领域中的规则应该是避免无意的矫饰。年轻人最容易受到「成为他人」的诱惑，他们经常自认为是无名小卒。但永远不需要担心这个问题，因为如果我们持续做足够有前景的项目，这个问题就会逐渐自我消解。

如果成功地完成了一个伟大的项目，我们就不是无名小卒，而是完成它的人。

所以，只要工作，我们的身份就会自己变好。「避免矫饰」是个有用的规则，这需要长期坚持，但我们如何用积极的方式表达自己的想法呢？我们如何说出要成为什么，而不是不要成为什么呢？最好的答案是真诚。如果我们是真诚的，那就不仅可以避免矫饰，还可以避免一整套类似的恶习。

真诚的核心是诚实。我们从小就被教导要诚实，作为一种无私的美德——作为一种牺牲。但事实上，它是一种力量的来源，要看到新的想法，我们需要对真相异常敏锐。假设我们正在试图看到比其他人到目前为止看到的更多的真相，如果我们在智力上不诚实，又怎么能对真相有敏锐的眼光呢？

保持智力诚实（Intellectual Honesty）的一种方法是保持轻微的正压。愿意积极承认自己的错误——一旦我们承认自己在某件事上犯了错误，就自由了——在这之前，我们必须承担它。[13] [13] 如果我们有一个原则，如何判断它是否可以被视为是无可质疑的？

只有在它是无法证伪的情况下才是安全的。

例如，每个人都应该在法律面前平等，这是安全的原则，因为一个带有「应该」的句子实际上并不是关于世界观的陈述，因此很难被证明是错误的。如果我们不需要掩盖任何事实以维护它，那就没有证据可以证伪我们的某个原则。真诚的另一个更微妙的组成部分是不拘小节。

「不拘小节」比它的语法层面所暗示的要重要得多， 它不仅仅意味着少做某些事，还意味着关注重要的事情，而不是无关的事情。拘泥于形式和矫饰的共同点是，你在做工作的同时，也试图以某种方式伪装。但任何投入到「表面功夫」中能量都会被从做重要的事情中分走。

这就是为什么书呆子在做伟大的工作上有优势的一个原因：他们在表面功夫上花费的努力很小。事实上，这基本上就是书呆子的定义。书呆子有一种天真的大胆，这正是你在做伟大的工作时所需要的。它不是学来的；它是从童年保留下来的，所以要保持它。成为那个把事情做出来的人，而不是坐在背后提供复杂的批评的人。

「批评很容易」在最字面的意义上是真的，而取得伟大成就的路永远不容易。可能有一些工作，悲观是一个优势，但如果我们想去的杰出成就，乐观是一个优势，即便这意味着我们有时会冒看起来像一个傻瓜的风险。旧传统指导我们做相反的事，《旧约圣经》说：最好保持安静，以免看起来像一个傻瓜——但这是为了看起来聪明的建议，如果我们真的想发现新的东西，最好冒险告诉人们自己的想法。

有些人天生就是真诚的，有些人需要有意识的努力，任何一种真诚都足够。但我怀疑， 如果没有真诚，就不可能做出伟大的工作，而且即使我们是真诚的，也很难做到。我们没有足够的误差边际来容纳被影响、智力上的不诚实、拘泥于形式、流行或酷带来的现实扭曲。

[14] [14] 矫饰比智力不诚实更容易治愈。矫饰往往是年轻人的缺点，随着时间的推移会消失，而智力不诚实更像是一个性格上的缺点。优秀的作品不仅与创作者保持一致，也与作品本身保持一致。通常而言，优秀的作品都是成体系的——所以，如果我们在工作中面临抉择，问问自己哪个选择更有一致性。

我们可能不得不放弃一些事情并重新开始，我们不一定必须这样做，但我们必须愿意这样做，这可能需要一些努力。当我们需要重做一些事情时，对维持现状的倾向性和懒惰会联合起来让我们否认这个想法。为了克服这个问题，问问自己：如果我已经做了改变，我是否想要恢复现在的状态？

要有放弃的信心与决心 。不要仅仅因为自己为其感到骄傲，或者花费了很多努力，就保留不合适的东西。实际上，在某些类型的工作中，层层剥离并探究自己正在做的事情的本质是好的。结果会更加直接明了，我们会更好地理解它，也将无法对自己撒谎，需要直面其中是否有真正重要的东西。

数学优雅（Mathematical Elegance）可能听起来像是一个纯粹的隐喻，来自艺术——当我第一次听到用「优雅」这个词用来形容一个证明时，我就是这么想的。但现在我倾向于它在概念上是先行的——艺术优雅的主要成分是数学优雅——无论如何，这都是一个超越数学的有用标准。

然而， 优雅是一个长期的投注 。费力的解决方案在短期内通常会有更高的声望，它们需要大量的努力，而且很难理解，这两点都会让人印象深刻，但也许是暂时的。

相反，完成一些最好的作品看起来好像只花费了相对较少的努力，因为它在某种意义上已经存在了，它不需要被创造，只需要被看到。当我们很难说自己是在创造某物还是在发现它时，这是一个非常好的迹象。当我们正在做的工作可以被看作是创造或发现时，请偏向于发现。

试着把自己想象成一个管道，通过它，想法可以自然地形成。（奇怪的是，选择要解决的问题这件事是一个例外。这通常被视为搜索，但在最好的情况下，它更像是创造一些东西，我们在探索过程中创造了某个领域。）同样，如果我们试图构建一个强大的工具，那要让它尽可能地无限制。

一个强大的工具会以我们没有预料到的方式被使用——这几乎可以算作强大工具的定义，所以要倾向于消除限制，即使你不知道这样做会有什么好处。伟大的作品通常会像工具一样，其他人可以基于其再构建作品。

所以，如果我们正在创造其他人可以使用的想法，或者揭示出其他人可以回答的问题，那么这是一个好的迹象——最好的想法在许多不同的领域都有影响。如果我们以最通用的形式表达自己的想法，它们会比我们预期中的更真实。<text bgcolor="green">10</text> 当然，仅仅真实是不够的， 伟大的想法必须是真实且新颖的。

并且，即使我们已经学到足够的知识来到达知识的前沿，看到新的想法也需要一定的能力。在英语中，我们给这种能力取了如原创性、创造性和想象力等名字。给它一个单独的名字似乎是合理的，因为在某种程度上它似乎是一个单独的技能。我们可能在其他方面有很高的能力——很高的「技术性能力」——但可能没有这么多看到新想法的能力。

我从未喜欢过「创新过程」这个词，它似乎有些误导性。原创不是一个过程，而是一种思维习惯。原创的思想家，无论他们关注的是什么，都会产生新的想法，就像角磨机抛出火花一样，没有人可以控制这种现象的发生。如果一个人关注的事情是自己不太理解的事情，这些新的想法可能并不好。

我认识的最具原创性的思考者之一在离婚后决定专注于约会，他对约会的了解不甚深入，大约与一般 15 岁的孩子一样，结果好得令人惊讶——看到原创性与专业知识是分离的，它的本质就变得更加清晰。我不知道原创性是否可以被培养出来，但肯定有方法可以最大限度地利用自己所拥有的。

例如，当我们在工作时，更有可能产生原创想法。原创想法并不来自于刻意的尝试，而是来自于尝试构建或理解稍微困难的东西。[15] [15] 显然，我们不必在有想法的那一刻就投入这项工作，但我们需要工作。讨论或写作我们感兴趣的事情是产生新想法的好途径。

当我们试图把想法用词语表达出来时，缺失的想法会产生一种「吸引力」，把新想法从自己身上「吸引」出来。实际上，有一种思考只能通过写作来完成。改变我们所处的环境可能有所帮助。如果我们到访一个新地方（这里地方的定义是模糊的，不特指物理坐标），会发现自己在那里会产生新想法，旅行本身通常会使灵感涌现。

但是，我们可能不必走得很远就能体会到这种妙处——有时候，只需要去散步就足够了。[16] [16] 有些人说精神活性药物有类似的效果。我持怀疑态度，但也对它们的影响几乎一无所知。了解不同的专业领域也会有所帮助。如果我们探索了许多不同的领域，会有更多新想法，这就像是给了角磨机更大的工作表面，另一部分原因则是，类比是新想法的丰富的来源。

不过， 不要把注意力平均分配到许多领域上， 否则会分散得太薄。我们应该根据幂律分布的规则来分配它 [17]—— 对少数几个主题「专业地好奇」，对更多的主题「随便地好奇」。[17] 例如，我们可能会给第 n 个最重要的主题 (m-1)/m^n 的注意力，m > 1。

当然，我们不能那么精确地分配自己的注意力，但这至少给出了一个合理分配的想法。好奇心和原创性密切相关。表面上看，好奇心通过给原创性提供新事物来喂养它，但两者之间的关系比这更紧密——好奇心本身就是一种原创性，它大致可以被视为问题的原创性，和答案的原创性一样。

而且，既然在最理想的情况下，问题在答案中的权重很高，那么同样在最理想的情况下，好奇心就是创造力的一种。<text bgcolor="green">11</text> 拥有新想法是一种奇怪的游戏，因为通常它还包括看到那些就在我们眼前的东西。

一旦我们看到一个新的想法，它往往显得很明显——为什么之前没有人想到这个？当一个想法看起来既新颖又显而易见时，它可能是个好主意。看到显而易见的东西听起来很容易，然而，从经验上看，产生新想法是困难的，这个明显矛盾的源头是什么呢？那就是看到新的想法通常需要我们改变看世界的方式。

我们通过模型看世界，这些模型既帮助着我们，也限制着我们，在修复有问题的世界模型的过程中，新的想法会变得显而易见，但注意到并修复一个有问题的模型是困难的，这就是新的想法既明显又难以发现的原因。在你做了一些困难的事情之后，它们就容易被看到。

发现有问题的世界模型的方法之一是比其他人更严谨。有问题的模型在与现实发生冲突时会留下一些迹象，但大多数人不想看到这些迹象。保守的说法是，人们倾向于依赖于他们当前的模型，这就是他们的思维方式，所以他们倾向于忽略模型出现问题时留下的线索，无论这在反思中看起来多么明显。

要找到新的想法，我们必须抓住这些迹象，而不是避而不见。这就是爱因斯坦做的，他能看到麦克斯韦方程的伟大意义，不是因为他在寻找新的想法，而是因为他更严谨。我们所要做的另一件事是愿意打破规则。虽然这听起来矛盾，但如果我们想修正自己的世界模型，那么成为一个习惯于打破规则的人会有所帮助。

从旧模型的观点来看，这个模型通常至少会违反隐含的规则，包括我们自己最初也是这么认为的。很少有人了解打破规则所需的程度，因为新的想法在成功后看起来更保守。一旦我们使用了新的世界模型，它们会看起来完全合理，但开始的时候并不是这样的，地心模型在天文学家中被普遍接受甚至都花了近一个世纪，在这期间，所有人都觉得它错得离谱。

实际上，如果我们思考一下会发现，一个好的新想法必须对大多数人来说看起来是坏的，否则就已经有人探索过了。

所以 我们在寻找的是那些看起来疯狂，但是正确类别的疯狂想法 。我们如何识别他们呢？不能确定。通常看起来不好的想法就是不好的，但是，正确类别的疯狂想法往往是令人兴奋的，它们富有意蕴，而单纯的坏想法往往会让人感到沮丧。有两种方式可以让我们自然而然地打破规则：

享受打破规则本身，或干脆无视规则——我将它们分别称为积极和被动独立思考。积极独立思考的是那些叛逆的人。规则不仅无法阻止他们，打破规则还会给他们额外的能量。对这类人来说，一个项目的纯粹胆大有时就可以提供足够的「激活能量」让它启动。打破规则的另一种方式是不关心甚至不知道它们的存在——这就是为什么新手和外行人经常做出新发现，他们对所在领域既有假设的无知可以作为一种暂时的被动独立思考的来源。

自闭症患者似乎也对常规信条有着免疫力，我认识的几个人说这帮助他们有新的想法。「严谨 + 打破规则」听起来像是一个奇怪的组合。在主流文化中，他们是对立的，但在这方面，主流文化的模型是有问题的，它默认假设问题都是琐碎的，而在琐碎的事情中，严谨和打破规则确实是对立的， 但在真正重要的问题中，只有打破规则的人才是真正严谨的。

<text bgcolor="green">12</text> 一个被主流文化忽视的想法通常直到半决赛才败下阵来。我们在潜意识中看到了它，然而潜意识的另一部分会击败它，因为它太奇怪、太冒险、太麻烦、太有争议。但这隐含了一个令人兴奋的可能性：

我们如果能关闭这些过滤器，就能看到更多的新想法。做到这一点的方式之一是问自己：什么是别人认为的好想法？这样我们的潜意识就不会为了自我保护而否决他们。我们也可以从掩盖它们的事物着手，来发现被忽视的想法。每个被珍视的错误原则周围，都存在一片有价值但因为它们与原则相矛盾而未被探索的想法的栖息地。

宗教是被珍视但错误原则的集合。

所以无论是字面意义上或隐喻地，任何被描述为宗教的东西的阴影之下都存在有价值的但未被探索的想法，哥白尼和达尔文都做出了此类发现。[18] [18] 定义一个宗教的原则必须是错误的。否则，任何人都可能采用它们，那么就没有什么可以区分宗教信徒和其他人的了。

在我们所在的领域，人们对什么规则过分依赖，以至于它们可能不像公认的那般可以自证其是？如果我们抛弃这个原则，会有什么可能性？<text bgcolor="green">13</text> 人们在解决问题上所表现出的原创性远超在决定要解决哪些问题上。

即使是最聪明的人，在决定要做什么时也可能惊人地保守，那些在其他任何方面都不会想要赶时髦的人也会被吸入到处理「时兴问题」的漩涡中。问题需要我们下大赌注，这也是人们选择问题比解决问题更保守的原因之一。一个问题可能伴随我们好几年的时间，而探索一个解决方案可能只需要几天。

但即便如此，我认为大多数人都过于保守，他们不仅仅是在回避风险，也在迎合潮流，不流行的问题被低估了。最有趣的一类不流行问题是那些人们认为已经完全探索过，但实际上并没有的。杰出的成就往往源于已经存在的东西，但问题发现者深入探索并展现了其更多潜力 ，杜勒尔和瓦特都做到了这一点。

所以，如果我们对别人认为已经被充分探索的领域感兴趣，不要让他们的怀疑阻挡我们，人们往往会在这方面犯错。解决不流行的问题可能会非常愉快，工作过程中没有炒作或忙慌。机会主义者和批评者都在别处忙碌，这时我们的工作往往有一种气定神闲的稳定，在努力「培育」这些「否则会被浪费」的想法时，有一种令人满足的经济感。

但最常见的被忽视的问题并不是明确地不流行，而是它们并未过时，只是似乎没有它实际上那么重要。我们怎么找到这些呢？通过自我放纵——通过让自己的好奇心有其自由发挥的空间，至少暂时地屏蔽自己脑中那个说我们只应该在「重要」问题上工作的小声音。我们确实需要将精力放在重要的问题上，但几乎每个人在评价什么算重要问题时都过于保守。

而且，如果我们周围有一个重要但被忽视的问题，它可能已经在我们的潜意识雷达中了。

所以，试着问自己：如果我要从「严肃」的工作中抽出时间，只是因为这会非常有趣，我会做什么？答案可能比看起来更重要。选择问题的原创性似乎比解决问题的原创性更重要，这是区分那些发现全新领域的人的关键点。

所以，可能看起来只是初步步骤的东西——决定要做什么——在某种意义上是整个游戏的关键。<text bgcolor="green">14</text> 很少有人能理解这一点。关于新想法的最大的误解之一是关于他们的组成中问题与答案的比例，人们认为重要的部分是答案，但往往真正的洞察在于问题。

我们低估问题的一部分原因是学校的教育方式。在学校里，问题往往只在被解决之前存在一段很短的时间，就像不稳定粒子一样。但一个真正好的问题可以是更多的东西，一个真正好的问题是发现的一部分：新物种是如何产生的？让物体向地球坠落的力量和让行星保持在它们轨道上的力量是同一个吗？

通过甚至提出这样的问题，我们已经进入了令人兴奋的新领域。未解决的问题与我们如影随形，会让我们感到负担。但我们带着的问题越多，发现解决方案的机会就越大——或者可能更令人兴奋的是，发现两个未回答的问题是同一个。有时候一个问题会伴随我们很长时间。

杰出的成就往往出自我们多年前——甚至我们的童年同期——首次注意到的，而且无法停止思考的问题。人们经常谈论保持自己年轻时梦想活跃的重要性，但保持年轻时问题的活跃同样重要。[19] [19] 试着写下我们过去好奇的问题的列表可能是一个好的练习。

我们可能会发现自己现在有能力去解决其中的一些问题。专业知识的实际形态与大众印象最大的区别之一是， 在大众印象中，专家们是胸有成竹的，但实际上，我们越是困惑，越好， 只要（a）我们困惑的事情是重要的，并且（b）没有其他人也理解它们。想想新想法被发现的那一刻之前所发生的事，通常情况下，是一个具有足够专业知识的人对某事感到困惑，这意味着困惑是原创性的一部分——混乱！我们必须愿意看到世界充满谜团，对此感到舒适，但也不能那么舒适，以至于不想解决它们。

[20] [20] 原创性和不确定性之间的联系导致了一种奇特的现象：因为有传统思维的人比独立思维的人更确定，这往往给他们在争论中占上风，即使他们通常更愚蠢。最好的人都缺乏信念，而最差的人充满了顽固气息。拥有很多未解答的问题是一件很棒的事。

这也是那些富有的人会变得更富的原因之一， 获得新问题的最好方法是尝试回答现有的问题，问题不仅导向答案，而且也导向更多的问题。<text bgcolor="green">15</text> 最好的问题会在被回答的过程中成长 。我们注意到当前范式中一条显眼的线索，并试图拉扯它，它就会变得越来越长。

所以，我们在试图回答问题之前，不要苛求问题的「大」是明确的，我们很少能预测到这一点，仅仅注意到线索就已经很难了，更不用说预测如果我们拉扯它，会有多少东西随之而来。最好的方法是保持广泛的好奇心——在许多线索上都稍微拉一拉，看看会发生什么。

大事物开始时都很小，它们的初始版本通常只是实验、副项目或者演讲，然后逐渐发展成更大的事物——所以，我们应该开始着手做很多小事情。高产的作用是被低估的 。我们尝试的事情越多，发现新事物的机会就越大。

然而，要知道，尝试很多事也将意味着尝试很多无用的事，我们不能只有很多好主意而没有同样多的坏主意。[21] [21] 来自 Linus Pauling 的「如果你想有好主意，你必须有很多主意。」当我们进入一个领域时，虽然从学习前人的工作成果开始听起来更负责任，但通过尝试，我们会学得更快，也会收获更多的乐趣，而当我们去看前人的工作时，也会更好地理解它们。

所以，在初始阶段不要害怕犯错，与此同时，这也意味着我们从小事着手更加容易，这两个想法就像两片相邻的拼图片一般契合。我们如何从小事开始做出伟大的事情？通过做有连续性的事。伟大的事业几乎总是在一系列连续的工作中被成就的。我们从一些小事开始，逐渐发展它，最后的版本既比我们可能计划的任何东西更好，也更有想象空间。

当我们为人们做东西时，制作连续的版本特别有用——快速地将初始版本呈现给他们，然后根据他们的反应进行演变。试试可能行得通的最简单的东西。出乎意料地，它经常会是有用的，如果没有，至少这会让我们启程。不要试图在任何一个版本中塞进太多的新东西。

对此有一些对应的名称，对第一个版本来说是呈现（delivery）花费太长时间，对第二个版本来说是第二系统效应，但这些都只是更具一般性原则的例子。新项目的早期版本有时会被贬低为玩具。当人们这么做时，这是个好兆头，这意味着它具备新思想所需要的一切，只是缺乏规模，而那往往会随之而来。

[22] [22] 称一个项目为「玩具」类似于称一个声明为「不适当」，这意味着没有更实质的批评可以给出。从小发展的另一种选择是事先计划我们要做的事情。计划通常看起来是更负责任的选择，说「我们要做 x，然后做 y，然后做 z」听起来比「我们要试试 x，看看会发生什么」似乎更有组织，它确实更有组织，只是效果不那么好。

计划本身并不好，但有时候它是必要的，只是是一种必要的恶——对无情条件的反应。我们必须这么做，因为我们正在使用不灵活的媒介，或者因为我们需要协调很多人的努力，如果我们保持项目小而使用灵活的媒介，就不必计划那么多，我们的设计可以逐步演变。<text bgcolor="green">16</text> 尽可能承担我们负担得起的风险。

在有效市场中，风险与回报成比例，所以不要寻求确定性，而要寻找高期望价值的赌注。如果我们不失败，偶尔可能是因为过于保守。虽然保守主义通常是老年人的代名词，但年轻人更容易犯这个错误。无经验让他们害怕风险，但实际上，我们年轻的时候承受得起的风险最大。

即使一个项目失败了，也可以是有价值的。因为在处理它的过程中，我们会穿过很少有人见过的领域，遇到很少有人提出的问题。试图做一些稍微难一点的事情，在这个过程中遇到的问题可能是全新问题的最好来源。<text bgcolor="green">17</text> 在我们有年轻人的优势时，使用它们，一旦我们有了有经验的优势，就使用那些。

年轻人的优势是精力、时间、乐观和自由，有经验的优势是知识、效率、金钱和权力——努力工作，我们可以在年轻时获取一些后者，并在经验渐长时保持一些前者。有经验的人的另一个优势是知道自己有哪些优势。年轻人经常意识不到自己所拥有的优势——最大的可能性来自时间，而年轻人对他们在时间上的富足没有任何概念。

利用这个时间的最佳方式是以「略微任性」的方式来使用它：只是出于好奇心而去学习我们不需要知道的东西，或者只是因为一件事很酷而试图去建造一些东西，或者让自己变得非常擅长某事。「略微」是一个重要的修饰词。当我们年轻的时候，可以挥霍时间，但不要简单地浪费它。

做一些我们「担心可能是」浪费时间的事情和「确定会」浪费时间的事情之间有很大的区别——前者至少是一次赌注，结果可能比我们认为的更好。[23] [23] 判断我们是否在浪费时间的一个方法是问自己是否在生产还是在消费。写电脑游戏可能比玩它们浪费时间的可能性要小，而玩我们可以创造东西的游戏可能比玩不能创造东西的游戏浪费时间的可能性要小。

年轻，或者说无经验的最微妙的优势，就是我们用全新的眼光看待一切。当我们的大脑第一次接受一个想法时，有时两者并不完全匹配，但通常问题出在我们的大脑上，偶尔在想法上。想法中的一部分突兀地冒出来，在我们思考时刺痛自己，习惯了这个感觉的人已经学会忽视它，但我们有机会不这样做。

[24] [24] 另一个相关的优点是，如果我们还没有公开地说过什么，就不会偏向于相信支持我们之前的结论的证据。以足够的中立态度，我们可以在这方面实现永恒青春，但很少有人能做到。对大多数人来说，以前公开过的意见有一种类似于意识形态的效果，只是在数量上为 1。

所以，当我们第一次学习某件事时，要注意那些似乎错误或缺失的东西。我们会被诱惑忽视它们，认为有 99% 的可能性问题在自己身上，并且我们可能必须暂时放下自己的疑虑以继续前进，但不要忘记它们——当我们深入到领域中，再回来检查它们是否依然存在，

如果在我们现在的知识水平下，它们仍然是可行的，那么它们可能代表着一个未被发现的想法。<text bgcolor="green">18</text> 经验给我们带来的最有价值的知识之一是知道我们不必担心什么。年轻人知道所有可能的事，但不知道它们的相对重要性，所以他们对所有事情都一样担忧，而我们应该只对几件事情担忧，对其他的事情几乎不需要担忧。

但我们的无知只是缺乏经验问题的其中一半，另一半是我们所熟知的那些错误的东西。我们带着满脑子毫无意义的东西进入成年期——已经养成的坏习惯和被教导的错误观念——在清除了至少是在自己想做的工作的路上的噪声前，我们无法取得杰出成就。我们头脑中许多无意义的噪声都是学校留下的。

我们习惯于学校，以至于我们无意识地将「去学校」当作「学习」，但实际上学校有各种奇怪的价值观，扭曲了我们对学习和思考的观念。

例如，学校会引导我们进行被动学习。当我们还是小孩子的时候，课堂便利用其权威告诉我们所有人必须学习什么，然后测试我们是否做到了，但是课堂和考试并不是学习的本质，他们只是学校通常设计的产物。尽快克服这种被动性越好。如果还在学校，那就试着把教育当作自己的项目，老师是在为自己工作，而不是反过来。

这可能看起来有些牵强，但这不仅仅是一种特别的思维实验，从经济上说，这是真的，在最好的情况下，从知识上说也是真的，最好的老师不想做我们的老板。他们宁愿我们推进，用他们作为一个建议的来源，而不是被他们通过材料拉动。学校也给我们工作是什么样的误导性印象。

在学校里，他们告诉我们问题是什么，而且几乎总是可以使用我们到目前为止学到的东西来解决。在现实生活中，我们必须找出问题是什么，而且往往不知道它们是否可以解决。但是学校教导我们最糟糕的事情可能就是训练我们通过「破解测试（hacking the test）」来赢。

我们不能通过这样做取得杰出成就，所以要停止寻找此类捷径，击败系统的方法是专注于其他人忽视的问题和解决方案，而不是偷工减料。<text bgcolor="green">19</text> 不要依赖某个「看门人」给自己一个「大机会」，即使这是真的，得到它的最好方式是专注于做好工作，而不是追逐有影响力的人。

也不要把「委员会」的拒绝放在心上。让招生官员和管理委员会印象深刻的品质与做出伟大工作所需的品质完全不同。选择管理层的决定只有在它们是反馈循环的一部分时才有意义，而很少有决定是这样的。<text bgcolor="green">20</text> 在一个领域里，新手经常会复制已有的工作。

这本身并没有什么错，试图复制一件事是学习它是如何运作的最好方式，复制并不一定会使我们的工作失去原创性， 原创性在于新想法的产生，而不是旧想法的缺失 。有好的复制方式，也有坏的。如果我们要复制一些东西，那么公开地去做，而不是偷偷摸摸，或者更糟糕，无意识地去做，这就是那句被误传的名言「伟大的艺术家都是窃贼」的含义。

真正危险的复制类型，即给复制带来坏名声的那种，就是我们在不知不觉中做的复制，在这种情况下，我们只不过是在别人铺设的轨道上行驶的列车，但在另一个极端， 复制可以是一种超越的标志，而不是从属关系。[25] [25] 1630 年代初，Daniel Mytens 画了一幅画，描绘了 Henrietta Maria 把月桂冠递给 Charles I 的场景，

然后 Van Dyck 画了他自己的版本，以显示他有多么优秀。在很多领域里，我们早期的工作几乎不可避免地在某种程度上是基于他人的。项目很少是凭空产生的，它们通常是对已有工作的反应：刚开始的时候，我们自己没有任何已有工作，如果我们要对某事有反应，那必然是别人的工作，一旦我们有了稳定的地位，就可以对自己的工作有所反应。

尽管前者被认为派生的，后者不被认为派生的，但从结构上看，两种情况比看起来更相似。有时候，足够新颖的、最新奇的想法一开始看起来更加像派生出来的。在最初构想阶段，新的发现通常需要被视为现有事物的变形，甚至他们的发现者也是这样做的，因为还没有对应的概念以及词汇来描述它们。

复制确实有些危险，其中之一是倾向于复制旧东西——那些在过去是知识前沿，但现在已经不再是的东西。当我们复制某件事时，不要复制它的所有特性。如果我们复制某些部分的话，会看起来很荒谬。

例如，我们 18 岁时不能复制一位 50 岁杰出教授的举止，或者几百年前文艺复兴时期诗歌的习语。我们所崇拜事物的一些特性是「尽管他们存在缺陷但依然取得成功的」。但事实上，最容易模仿的特性最有可能是缺陷。对于行为尤其如此。一些有才华的人是混蛋，这有时使得无经验的人认为做混蛋是才华的一部分，并不是，才华只是他们得以逃脱的方式。

最有力的复制类型之一是从一个领域复制到另一个领域。历史上充满了这种类型的偶然发现，所以我们值得有意地去学习其他类型的工作，从而为这类偶然性提供帮助。我们可以从毫不相干的领域中获取想法，如果我们能够让它们成为灵感来源的话。负面的例子可能和积极的例子一样启发人。

事实上 ，我们有时可以从做得糟糕的事情中学到比从做得好的事情中更多的东西， 有时只有当它缺失时，才能清楚地看出完满需要什么。<text bgcolor="green">21</text> 如果我们所在领域的许多最好的人都集中在一个地方，那去那里待一段时间通常是个好主意。

这会增加我们的斗志，同时，通过向我们展示这些优秀的人都是人，增加我们的自信心。[26] [26] 我在这里故意模糊了什么是地方的定义。截至写这篇文章，身处同一物理地点具有难以复制的优势，但这可能会改变。如果我们是真诚的，可能会受到比自己期望的更热烈的欢迎。

大多数在某件事上非常出色的人都很乐意和任何真正有兴趣的人谈论它——如果他们真的很擅长自己的工作，那么他们可能对它存在一种类似业余爱好者般的心理，业余爱好者总是想谈论他们的爱好。

然而，找到那些真正优秀的人可能需要一些努力。取得杰出成就会带来巨大的威望，以至于在一些地方，特别是大学，大家都有一个礼貌的假设，那就是每个人都在从事它。而这并非事实，人们不能公开说明这点，但在大学内部，不同部门所做的工作的质量差距巨大——一些部门有人做出了伟大的工作，其他的在过去有过，其他的从来没有过。

<text bgcolor="green">22</text> 寻找最好的同事。很多项目是无法独自完成的，即使我们正在从事可以独自完成的项目，也好有其他人来鼓励自己，和我们交流想法。

然而，同事不仅会影响我们的工作，他们也会影响我们本身。

所以， 与我们想成为的人一起工作，因为我们将会变得像他们。在同事方面，质量比数量更重要——拥有一两个优秀的同事比拥有一个楼的还算不错的同事更好。实际上，不仅是更好，而且是必需的，从历史来看，在集群中取得杰出成就的案例表明，同事通常决定了我们是否能取得伟大成就。

我们如何知道自己有足够好的同事呢？根据我的经验，当我们有的时候，你就知道了——这意味着，如果我们不确定，那可能没有。可能有更具体的答案，但这里是一个尝试：足够好的同事会提供令人惊讶的见解，他们能看到并做我们不能做的事。

所以，如果我们有一小撮足够好的同事，让我们在这个意义上保持警觉，他们可能就已经越过了「不错」的阈值。我们大多数人都可以从与同事的合作中获益，但一些项目需要更大规模的人，并不是每个人都适合发起这样的项目。如果我们想参与这样的项目，将必须成为一个管理者，好的管理需要才能和兴趣，这和其他任何类型的工作一样，如果我们没有它们，就没有妥协的方案：

我们必须强迫自己学习管理并将其作为第二技能，或者避免参与这样的项目。[27] [27] 当其他人必须做的工作非常受限时，这是错误的，例如 SETI@home 或比特币。通过定义类似的受限协议，让节点有更大的行动自由，可能会使错误扩大。<text bgcolor="green">23</text> 珍惜自己的士气——当我们从事雄心勃勃的项目时，这是一切的基础。

我们必须像呵护生命一样来培养和保护它。士气从我们的人生观开始。如果我们是一个乐观主义者，则更有可能取得伟大成就，我们需要把自己看作是幸运的，而不是受害者。事实上，工作可以在某种程度上保护我们免受自己的问题的影响。如果我们选择的工作是纯洁的，那么其本身就会成为我们从日常生活的困难中寻求庇护的地方，这种逃避是非常有生产力的，一些历史上最伟大的思想家都利用过这种行为。士气通过工作复合增长：

高昂的士气帮助我们做好工作，这又增加了我们的士气，帮助我们做得更好。但这个周期也在反方向奏效：如果我们没有做好工作，那可能会让自己士气低落，使得做事更难。由于这个周期在正确的方向运行如此重要，当我们陷入困境时，切换到更简单的工作可能是个好主意，只要我们一直做事就好。

雄心勃勃的人最大的错误之一就是让挫折一次性毁掉他们的士气，就像气球爆炸一样。我们可以通过明确挫折是我们过程的一部分来预防这一点，解决难题总是涉及到走回头路。取得杰出成就是一种深度优先搜索，其根节点是我们想成功的欲望。

所以，「如果一开始没有成功，再试一次」这句话并不完全正确，它应该是「如果一开始没有成功，要么再试一次，要么退回去，然后再试一次」。「永不放弃」也不完全正确，显然，有时候选择退出是正确的选择。更准确的说法应该是：永远不要让挫折让我们慌乱地走比自己需要的更多的回头路——推论：

永远不要放弃根节点。工作如果令人痛苦挣扎，不一定是坏的迹象，就像在跑步时呼吸困难不一定是坏的迹象一样，这取决于我们跑得多快。

所以学会区分好的痛苦和坏的痛苦——好的痛苦是努力的标志，坏的痛苦是损害的标志。<text bgcolor="green">24</text> 「观众」是士气的关键组成部分。学者的观众可能是他们的同行，在艺术领域，可能是传统意义上的观众——无论哪种方式，观众的数量不需要很大，观众的价值并不像其大小那样成线性增长。

这对于那些著名的人来说是个坏消息，但对于刚刚起步的人来说是个好消息，因为这意味着一小组专注的观众足以支持我们，如果有少数人真正喜欢我们在做的事，那就够了。尽可能避免让中间人介入我们和自己的观众之间。在某些类型的工作中，这种情况不可避免，但我们有极大的自由度摆脱这种情况，因此，如果能让我们直接面对自己的观众，那我们最好转而从事类似的工作。

[28] [28] 推论：构建能让人们绕过中介并直接与受众接触的东西可能是个好主意。我们花时间在一起的人也会对我们的士气产生很大影响。我们会发现有些人增加了自己的能量，而有些人减少了我们的能量，而一个人对你产生的影响并不总是你期望的。寻找那些能增加我们能量的人，避开那些减少我们能量的人——当然，如果有人需要我们照顾，那就优先考虑。

不要与一个不明白我们需要工作，或者与我们的工作竞争注意力的人结婚。如果我们有雄心壮志，我们需要工作，这无须多言，所以，如果一个人不让我们工作，要么就是不理解我们，要么就是理解但不在乎。

最后， 士气其实也是物理的，我们用身体思考，所以照顾好它很重要。这意味着定期运动、饮食以及保持良好睡眠，避免使用危险类型的药物。跑步和步行是特别好的锻炼方式，因为它们有利于思考。[29] [29] 一直走或跑同样的路线可能有所帮助，因为这给思考留出更多注意力。

我有这种感觉，也有一些历史证据支持。取得杰出成就的人并不一定比其他人更快乐，但他们比不成功时更快乐。实际上，如果我们聪明而有雄心，不工作是危险的，那些聪明而有雄心，但没有成就很多的人往往会变得很痛苦。<text bgcolor="green">25</text> 想要给别人留下印象是可以的，但要选择正确的人，我们所尊重的人的观点是信号；

名声，也就是我们可能尊重或可能不尊重的更广泛群体的观点，只是噪音。一种工作的声望最好的情况下是一个落后的指标，有时则是完全错误的标志。如果我们把任何事情做得足够好，我们就会使它有声望。

所以，面对一种工作，我们的问题不应该是它有多大的声望，而是它可以被做到多好。竞争可以是一个有效的动力，但不要让它指导我们选择问题，不要仅仅因为别人在追求某件事就让自己被扯进去。事实上，不要让竞争者指导我们做任何比较具体的事，比如更加努力工作。

好奇心是最好的指导者，好奇心永远不会撒谎，它比我们自己更了解什么值得关注。<text bgcolor="green">26</text> 注意这个词出现的频率。如果我们问一个预言家取得杰出成就的秘密，预言家用一个词回答，我赌就是「好奇心」。

这并不能直接被解释为建议。仅仅是好奇是不够的，我们也不能左右好奇，但是我们可以培养它，让它驱动我们。好奇心是做伟大工作的所有四个步骤的关键：它会为我们选择领域，带我们到达领域边界，让我们注意到其中的空白，并驱使我们去探索它们——整个过程都在与好奇心共舞。

<text bgcolor="green">27</text> 信不信由你，我试图让这篇论文尽可能地短。但是它的长度至少意味着它起到了一个过滤器的作用——如果你看到了这里，你一定对做伟大的工作感兴趣。如果是这样，你已经比你可能意识到的要进一步了，因为愿意去想的人的集合是很小的。

取得伟大成就的因素在字面上，数学上是因素，它们是：能力、兴趣、努力和运气。运气是我们无法左右的，所以可以忽略它；并且，如果确实想要取得伟大成就，我们可以假设每个人都很努力；

所以问题归结为能力和兴趣——我们能否找到一种工作，将自己的能力和兴趣结合起来，让新想法迸发？我们有乐观的理由。有很多不同的方式来取得伟大成就，与此同时，还有更多的方式还未被发现。在所有这些不同类型的工作中，我们最适合的那一种可能是非常接近的匹配，可能是一个滑稽的接近的匹配——这其中只有一个问题，我们要找到它，以及我们的能力和兴趣能带自己走多远——我们只能通过尝试来回答这个问题。

可以尝试取得伟大成就的人比实际做到的人多得多，但阻止他们的是一种由谦逊和恐惧组成的混合物，例如，「试图成为牛顿或莎士比亚似乎有点狂妄，这看起来也很难」，「如果试了这样的事情，一定会失败」，「经过推算，这样的概率很小，不做是明智的」等等。

很少有人有意识地决定不去尝试取得伟大成就，但这就是潜意识里正在发生的事——他们回避这个问题。现在我要与你玩个游戏了。你想取得伟大的成就，还是不想呢？现在你必须有意识地下决定——对不起，对此我感到抱歉，我一般不会对读者这么做，但看到这里，我已经知道你感兴趣了。

不要担心过于自大，你不需要将这个决定告诉任何人。如果太难，失败了，那又怎样呢？很多人需要解决这更糟糕的问题——实际上，如果这是你最糟糕的问题，那么你真的非常幸运。是的，我们必须努力工作。但再次，很多人必须努力工作。并且，如果我们在做自己觉得非常有趣的事情，我们必然会在正确的道路上，工作可能会感觉比我们很多同伴的轻松。

还有很多发现正在等待被发现，为什么不是由我们自己（去发现）呢？英语原文：

July 2023 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. Partly my goal was to create a guide that could be used by someone working in any field. But I was also curious about the shape of the intersection. And one thing this exercise shows is that it does have a definite shape;

it's not just a point labelled "work hard." The following recipe assumes you're very ambitious. 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. [1] 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. So while some people know what they want to do at 14,

most have to figure it out. 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 know about multiple things;some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields. Develop a habit of working on your own projects. Don't let "work" mean something 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. It may be within some bigger project,but you'll be driving your part of it. What should your projects be?

Whatever seems to you excitingly ambitious. As you grow older and your taste in projects evolves,exciting and important will converge. 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. But always preserve excitingness. There's a kind of excited curiosity that's both the engine and the rudder of great work. It will not only drive you,

but if you let it have its way,will also show you what to work on. What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that would bore most other people?

That's what you're looking for. Once you've found something you're excessively interested in,the next step is to learn enough about it to get you to one of the frontiers of knowledge. Knowledge expands fractally,

and from a distance its edges look smooth,but once you learn enough to get close to one,they turn out to be full of gaps. The next step is to notice them. This takes some skill,

because your brain wants to ignore such gaps in order to make a simpler model of the world. Many discoveries have come from asking questions about things that everyone else took for granted. [2] If the answers seem strange,

so much the better. Great work often has a tincture of strangeness. You see this from painting to math. It would be affected to try to manufacture it,

but if it appears,embrace it. Boldly chase outlier ideas,even if other people aren't interested in them — in fact,especially if they aren't. If you're excited about some possibility that everyone else ignores,

and you have enough expertise to say precisely what they're all overlooking,that's as good a bet as you'll find. [3] Four steps:

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

from painters to physicists. Steps two and four will require hard work. It may not be possible to prove that you have to work hard to do great things,

but the empirical evidence is on the scale of the evidence for mortality. That's why it's essential to work on something you're deeply interested in. Interest will drive you to work harder than mere diligence ever could. The three most powerful motives are curiosity,

delight,and the desire to do something impressive. Sometimes they converge,and that combination is the most powerful of all. The big prize is to discover a new fractal bud. You notice a crack in the surface of knowledge,

pry it open,and there's a whole world inside. Let's talk a little more about the complicated business of figuring out what to work on. The main reason it's hard is that you can't tell what most kinds of work are like except by doing them. Which means the four steps overlap:

you may have to work at something for years before you know how much you like it or how good you are at it. And in the meantime you're not doing,

and thus not learning about,most other kinds of work. So in the worst case you choose late based on very incomplete information. [4] The nature of ambition exacerbates this problem. Ambition comes in two forms,

one that precedes interest in the subject and one that grows out of it. Most people who do great work have a mix,and the more you have of the former,the harder it will be to decide what to do. The educational systems in most countries pretend it's easy. They expect you to commit to a field long before you could know what it's really like. And as a result an ambitious person on an optimal trajectory will often read to the system as an instance of breakage. It would be better if they at least admitted it — if they admitted that the system not only can't do much to help you figure out what to work on,

but is designed on the assumption that you'll somehow magically guess as a teenager. They don't tell you,but I will:when it comes to figuring out what to work on,

you're on your own. Some people get lucky and do guess correctly,but the rest will find themselves scrambling diagonally across tracks laid down on the assumption that everyone does. What should you do if you're young and ambitious but don't know what to work on?

What you should not do is drift along passively,assuming the problem will solve itself. You need to take action. But there is no systematic procedure you can follow. When you read biographies of people who've done great work,

it's remarkable how much luck is involved. They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting,or by reading a book they happen to pick up. So you need to make yourself a big target for luck,

and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things,meet lots of people,read lots of books,ask lots of questions. [5] When in doubt,

optimize for interestingness. Fields change as you learn more about them. What mathematicians do,for example,is very different from what you do in high school math classes. So you need to give different types of work a chance to show you what they're like. But a field should become increasingly interesting as you learn more about it. If it doesn't,

it's probably not for you. Don't worry if you find you're interested in different things than other people. The stranger your tastes in interestingness,

the better. Strange tastes are often strong ones,and a strong taste for work means you'll be productive. And you're more likely to find new things if you're looking where few have looked before. One sign that you're suited for some kind of work is when you like even the parts that other people find tedious or frightening. But fields aren't people;

you don't owe them any loyalty. If in the course of working on one thing you discover another that's more exciting,don't be afraid to switch. If you're making something for people,

make sure it's something they actually want. The best way to do this is to make something you yourself want. Write the story you want to read;

build the tool you want to use. Since your friends probably have similar interests,this will also get you your initial audience. This should follow from the excitingness rule. Obviously the most exciting story to write will be the one you want to read. The reason I mention this case explicitly is that so many people get it wrong. Instead of making what they want,

they try to make what some imaginary,more sophisticated audience wants. And once you go down that route,you're lost. [6] There are a lot of forces that will lead you astray when you're trying to figure out what to work on. Pretentiousness,

fashion,fear,money,politics,other people's wishes,eminent frauds. But if you stick to what you find genuinely interesting,

you'll be proof against all of them. If you're interested,you're not astray. Following your interests may sound like a rather passive strategy,

but in practice it usually means following them past all sorts of obstacles. You usually have to risk rejection and failure. So it does take a good deal of boldness. But while you need boldness,

you don't usually need much planning. In most cases the recipe for doing great work is simply:work hard on excitingly ambitious projects,

and something good will come of it. Instead of making a plan and then executing it,you just try to preserve certain invariants. The trouble with planning is that it only works for achievements you can describe in advance. You can win a gold medal or get rich by deciding to as a child and then tenaciously pursuing that goal,

but you can't discover natural selection that way. I think for most people who want to do great work,the right strategy is not to plan too much. At each stage do whatever seems most interesting and gives you the best options for the future. I call this approach "staying upwind." This is how most people who've done great work seem to have done it. Even when you've found something exciting to work on,

working on it is not always straightforward. There will be times when some new idea makes you leap out of bed in the morning and get straight to work. But there will also be plenty of times when things aren't like that. You don't just put out your sail and get blown forward by inspiration. There are headwinds and currents and hidden shoals. So there's a technique to working,

just as there is to sailing. For example,while you must work hard,it's possible to work too hard,and if you do that you'll find you get diminishing returns:

fatigue will make you stupid,and eventually even damage your health. The point at which work yields diminishing returns depends on the type. Some of the hardest types you might only be able to do for four or five hours a day. Ideally those hours will be contiguous. To the extent you can,

try to arrange your life so you have big blocks of time to work in. You'll shy away from hard tasks if you know you might be interrupted. It will probably be harder to start working than to keep working. You'll often have to trick yourself to get over that initial threshold. Don't worry about this;

it's the nature of work,not a flaw in your character. Work has a sort of activation energy,both per day and per project. And since this threshold is fake in the sense that it's higher than the energy required to keep going,

it's ok to tell yourself a lie of corresponding magnitude to get over it. It's usually a mistake to lie to yourself if you want to do great work,

but this is one of the rare cases where it isn't. When I'm reluctant to start work in the morning,I often trick myself by saying "I'll just read over what I've got so far." Five minutes later I've found something that seems mistaken or incomplete,

and I'm off. Similar techniques work for starting new projects. It's ok to lie to yourself about how much work a project will entail,

for example. Lots of great things began with someone saying "How hard could it be?" This is one case where the young have an advantage. They're more optimistic,

and even though one of the sources of their optimism is ignorance,in this case ignorance can sometimes beat knowledge. Try to finish what you start,though,

even if it turns out to be more work than you expected. Finishing things is not just an exercise in tidiness or self-discipline. In many projects a lot of the best work happens in what was meant to be the final stage. Another permissible lie is to exaggerate the importance of what you're working on,

at least in your own mind. If that helps you discover something new,it may turn out not to have been a lie after all. [7] Since there are two senses of starting work — per day and per project — there are also two forms of procrastination. Per-project procrastination is far the more dangerous. You put off starting that ambitious project from year to year because the time isn't quite right. When you're procrastinating in units of years,

you can get a lot not done. [8] One reason per-project procrastination is so dangerous is that it usually camouflages itself as work. You're not just sitting around doing nothing;

you're working industriously on something else. So per-project procrastination doesn't set off the alarms that per-day procrastination does. You're too busy to notice it. The way to beat it is to stop occasionally and ask yourself:

Am I working on what I most want to work on?When you're young it's ok if the answer is sometimes no,but this gets increasingly dangerous as you get older. [9] Great work usually entails spending what would seem to most people an unreasonable amount of time on a problem. You can't think of this time as a cost,

or it will seem too high. You have to find the work sufficiently engaging as it's happening. There may be some jobs where you have to work diligently for years at things you hate before you get to the good part,

but this is not how great work happens. Great work happens by focusing consistently on something you're genuinely interested in. When you pause to take stock,

you're surprised how far you've come. The reason we're surprised is that we underestimate the cumulative effect of work. Writing a page a day doesn't sound like much,

but if you do it every day you'll write a book a year. That's the key:consistency. People who do great things don't get a lot done every day. They get something done,

rather than nothing. If you do work that compounds,you'll get exponential growth. Most people who do this do it unconsciously,

but it's worth stopping to think about. Learning,for example,is an instance of this phenomenon:the more you learn about something, the easier it is to learn more. Growing an audience is another:

the more fans you have,the more new fans they'll bring you. The trouble with exponential growth is that the curve feels flat in the beginning. It isn't;

it's still a wonderful exponential curve. But we can't grasp that intuitively,so we underrate exponential growth in its early stages. Something that grows exponentially can become so valuable that it's worth making an extraordinary effort to get it started. But since we underrate exponential growth early on,

this too is mostly done unconsciously:people push through the initial,unrewarding phase of learning something new because they know from experience that learning new things always takes an initial push,

or they grow their audience one fan at a time because they have nothing better to do. If people consciously realized they could invest in exponential growth,

many more would do it. Work doesn't just happen when you're trying to. There's a kind of undirected thinking you do when walking or taking a shower or lying in bed that can be very powerful. By letting your mind wander a little,

you'll often solve problems you were unable to solve by frontal attack. You have to be working hard in the normal way to benefit from this phenomenon,

though. You can't just walk around daydreaming. The daydreaming has to be interleaved with deliberate work that feeds it questions. [10] Everyone knows to avoid distractions at work,but it's also important to avoid them in the other half of the cycle. When you let your mind wander,

it wanders to whatever you care about most at that moment. So avoid the kind of distraction that pushes your work out of the top spot,

or you'll waste this valuable type of thinking on the distraction instead. (Exception:Don't avoid love.) Consciously cultivate your taste in the work done in your field. Until you know which is the best and what makes it so,

you don't know what you're aiming for. And that is what you're aiming for,because if you don't try to be the best,you won't even be good. This observation has been made by so many people in so many different fields that it might be worth thinking about why it's true. It could be because ambition is a phenomenon where almost all the error is in one direction — where almost all the shells that miss the target miss by falling short. Or it could be because ambition to be the best is a qualitatively different thing from ambition to be good. Or maybe being good is simply too vague a standard. Probably all three are true. [11] Fortunately there's a kind of economy of scale here. Though it might seem like you'd be taking on a heavy burden by trying to be the best,

in practice you often end up net ahead. It's exciting,and also strangely liberating. It simplifies things. In some ways it's easier to try to be the best than to try merely to be good. One way to aim high is to try to make something that people will care about in a hundred years. Not because their opinions matter more than your contemporaries',

but because something that still seems good in a hundred years is more likely to be genuinely good. Don't try to work in a distinctive style. Just try to do the best job you can;

you won't be able to help doing it in a distinctive way. Style is doing things in a distinctive way without trying to. Trying to is affectation. Affectation is in effect to pretend that someone other than you is doing the work. You adopt an impressive but fake persona,

and while you're pleased with the impressiveness,the fakeness is what shows in the work. [12] The temptation to be someone else is greatest for the young. They often feel like nobodies. But you never need to worry about that problem,

because it's self-solving if you work on sufficiently ambitious projects. If you succeed at an ambitious project,you're not a nobody;

you're the person who did it. So just do the work and your identity will take care of itself. "Avoid affectation" is a useful rule so far as it goes,

but how would you express this idea positively?How would you say what to be, instead of what not to be?The best answer is earnest. If you're earnest you avoid not just affectation but a whole set of similar vices. The core of being earnest is being intellectually honest. We're taught as children to be honest as an unselfish virtue — as a kind of sacrifice. But in fact it's a source of power too. To see new ideas,

you need an exceptionally sharp eye for the truth. You're trying to see more truth than others have seen so far. And how can you have a sharp eye for the truth if you're intellectually dishonest?

One way to avoid intellectual dishonesty is to maintain a slight positive pressure in the opposite direction. Be aggressively willing to admit that you're mistaken. Once you've admitted you were mistaken about something,

you're free. Till then you have to carry it. [13] 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. Nerds have a kind of innocent boldness that's exactly what you need in doing great work. It's not learned;

it's preserved from childhood. So hold onto it. Be the one who puts things out there rather than the one who sits back and offers sophisticated-sounding criticisms of them. "It's easy to criticize" is true in the most literal sense,

and the route to great work is never easy. There may be some jobs where it's an advantage to be cynical and pessimistic,

but if you want to do great work it's an advantage to be optimistic,even though that means you'll risk looking like a fool sometimes. There's an old tradition of doing the opposite. The Old Testament says it's better to keep quiet lest you look like a fool. But that's advice for seeming smart. If you actually want to discover new things,

it's better to take the risk of telling people your ideas. Some people are naturally earnest,and with others it takes a conscious effort. Either kind of earnestness will suffice. But I doubt it would be possible to do great work without being earnest. It's so hard to do even if you are. You don't have enough margin for error to accommodate the distortions introduced by being affected,

intellectually dishonest,orthodox,fashionable,or cool. [14] Great work is consistent not only with who did it,but with itself. It's usually all of a piece. So if you face a decision in the middle of working on something,

ask which choice is more consistent. You may have to throw things away and redo them. You won't necessarily have to,but you have to be willing to. And that can take some effort;

when there's something you need to redo,status quo bias and laziness will combine to keep you in denial about it. To beat this ask:

If I'd already made the change, would I want to revert to what I have now?Have the confidence to cut. Don't keep something that doesn't fit just because you're proud of it,

or because it cost you a lot of effort. Indeed,in some kinds of work it's good to strip whatever you're doing to its essence. The result will be more concentrated;

you'll understand it better;and you won't be able to lie to yourself about whether there's anything real there. Mathematical elegance may sound like a mere metaphor,

drawn from the arts. That's what I thought when I first heard the term "elegant" applied to a proof. But now I suspect it's conceptually prior — that the main ingredient in artistic elegance is mathematical elegance. At any rate it's a useful standard well beyond math. Elegance can be a long-term bet,

though. Laborious solutions will often have more prestige in the short term. They cost a lot of effort and they're hard to understand,

both of which impress people,at least temporarily. Whereas some of the very best work will seem like it took comparatively little effort,

because it was in a sense already there. It didn't have to be built,just seen. It's a very good sign when it's hard to say whether you're creating something or discovering it. When you're doing work that could be seen as either creation or discovery,

err on the side of discovery. Try thinking of yourself as a mere conduit through which the ideas take their natural shape. (Strangely enough,

one exception is the problem of choosing a problem to work on. This is usually seen as search,but in the best case it's more like creating something. In the best case you create the field in the process of exploring it.) Similarly,

if you're trying to build a powerful tool,make it gratuitously unrestrictive. A powerful tool almost by definition will be used in ways you didn't expect,

so err on the side of eliminating restrictions,even if you don't know what the benefit will be. Great work will often be tool-like in the sense of being something others build on. So it's a good sign if you're creating ideas that others could use,

or exposing questions that others could answer. The best ideas have implications in many different areas. If you express your ideas in the most general form,

they'll be truer than you intended. True by itself is not enough,of course. Great ideas have to be true and new. And it takes a certain amount of ability to see new ideas even once you've learned enough to get to one of the frontiers of knowledge. In English we give this ability names like originality,

creativity,and imagination. And it seems reasonable to give it a separate name,because it does seem to some extent a separate skill. It's possible to have a great deal of ability in other respects — to have a great deal of what's often called technical ability — and yet not have much of this. I've never liked the term "creative process." It seems misleading. Originality isn't a process,

but a habit of mind. Original thinkers throw off new ideas about whatever they focus on,like an angle grinder throwing off sparks. They can't help it. If the thing they're focused on is something they don't understand very well,

these new ideas might not be good. One of the most original thinkers I know decided to focus on dating after he got divorced. He knew roughly as much about dating as the average 15 year old,

and the results were spectacularly colorful. But to see originality separated from expertise like that made its nature all the more clear. I don't know if it's possible to cultivate originality,

but there are definitely ways to make the most of however much you have. For example,you're much more likely to have original ideas when you're working on something. Original ideas don't come from trying to have original ideas. They come from trying to build or understand something slightly too difficult. [15] Talking or writing about the things you're interested in is a good way to generate new ideas. When you try to put ideas into words,

a missing idea creates a sort of vacuum that draws it out of you. Indeed,there's a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. Changing your context can help. If you visit a new place,

you'll often find you have new ideas there. The journey itself often dislodges them. But you may not have to go far to get this benefit. Sometimes it's enough just to go for a walk. [16] It also helps to travel in topic space. You'll have more new ideas if you explore lots of different topics,

partly because it gives the angle grinder more surface area to work on,and partly because analogies are an especially fruitful source of new ideas. Don't divide your attention evenly between many topics though,

or you'll spread yourself too thin. You want to distribute it according to something more like a power law. [17] Be professionally curious about a few topics and idly curious about many more. Curiosity and originality are closely related. Curiosity feeds originality by giving it new things to work on. But the relationship is closer than that. Curiosity is itself a kind of originality;

it's roughly to questions what originality is to answers. And since questions at their best are a big component of answers,

curiosity at its best is a creative force. Having new ideas is a strange game,because it usually consists of seeing things that were right under your nose. Once you've seen a new idea,it tends to seem obvious. Why did no one think of this before?

When an idea seems simultaneously novel and obvious,it's probably a good one. Seeing something obvious sounds easy. And yet empirically having new ideas is hard. What's the source of this apparent contradiction?

It's that seeing the new idea usually requires you to change the way you look at the world. We see the world through models that both help and constrain us. When you fix a broken model,

new ideas become obvious. But noticing and fixing a broken model is hard. That's how new ideas can be both obvious and yet hard to discover:

they're easy to see after you do something hard. One way to discover broken models is to be stricter than other people. Broken models of the world leave a trail of clues where they bash against reality. Most people don't want to see these clues. It would be an understatement to say that they're attached to their current model;

it's what they think in;so they'll tend to ignore the trail of clues left by its breakage,however conspicuous it may seem in retrospect. To find new ideas you have to seize on signs of breakage instead of looking away. That's what Einstein did. He was able to see the wild implications of Maxwell's equations not so much because he was looking for new ideas as because he was stricter. The other thing you need is a willingness to break rules. Paradoxical as it sounds,

if you want to fix your model of the world,it helps to be the sort of person who's comfortable breaking rules. From the point of view of the old model,

which everyone including you initially shares,the new model usually breaks at least implicit rules. Few understand the degree of rule-breaking required,

because new ideas seem much more conservative once they succeed. They seem perfectly reasonable once you're using the new model of the world they brought with them. But they didn't at the time;

it took the greater part of a century for the heliocentric model to be generally accepted,even among astronomers,because it felt so wrong. Indeed,if you think about it,

a good new idea has to seem bad to most people,or someone would have already explored it. So what you're looking for is ideas that seem crazy,

but the right kind of crazy. How do you recognize these?You can't with certainty. Often ideas that seem bad are bad. But ideas that are the right kind of crazy tend to be exciting;

they're rich in implications;whereas ideas that are merely bad tend to be depressing. There are two ways to be comfortable breaking rules:

to enjoy breaking them,and to be indifferent to them. I call these two cases being aggressively and passively independent-minded. The aggressively independent-minded are the naughty ones. Rules don't merely fail to stop them;

breaking rules gives them additional energy. For this sort of person,delight at the sheer audacity of a project sometimes supplies enough activation energy to get it started. The other way to break rules is not to care about them,

or perhaps even to know they exist. This is why novices and outsiders often make new discoveries;their ignorance of a field's assumptions acts as a source of temporary passive independent-mindedness. Aspies also seem to have a kind of immunity to conventional beliefs. Several I know say that this helps them to have new ideas. Strictness plus rule-breaking sounds like a strange combination. In popular culture they're opposed. But popular culture has a broken model in this respect. It implicitly assumes that issues are trivial ones,

and in trivial matters strictness and rule-breaking are opposed. But in questions that really matter,only rule-breakers can be truly strict. An overlooked idea often doesn't lose till the semifinals. You do see it,

subconsciously,but then another part of your subconscious shoots it down because it would be too weird,too risky,too much work,too controversial. This suggests an exciting possibility:if you could turn off such filters,you could see more new ideas. One way to do that is to ask what would be good ideas for someone else to explore. Then your subconscious won't shoot them down to protect you. You could also discover overlooked ideas by working in the other direction:

by starting from what's obscuring them. Every cherished but mistaken principle is surrounded by a dead zone of valuable ideas that are unexplored because they contradict it. Religions are collections of cherished but mistaken principles. So anything that can be described either literally or metaphorically as a religion will have valuable unexplored ideas in its shadow. Copernicus and Darwin both made discoveries of this type. [18] What are people in your field religious about,

in the sense of being too attached to some principle that might not be as self-evident as they think?What becomes possible if you discard it?

People show much more originality in solving problems than in deciding which problems to solve. Even the smartest can be surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on. People who'd never dream of being fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable problems. One reason people are more conservative when choosing problems than solutions is that problems are bigger bets. A problem could occupy you for years,

while exploring a solution might only take days. But even so I think most people are too conservative. They're not merely responding to risk,

but to fashion as well. Unfashionable problems are undervalued. One of the most interesting kinds of unfashionable problem is the problem that people think has been fully explored,

but hasn't. Great work often takes something that already exists and shows its latent potential. Durer and Watt both did this. So if you're interested in a field that others think is tapped out,

don't let their skepticism deter you. People are often wrong about this. Working on an unfashionable problem can be very pleasing. There's no hype or hurry. Opportunists and critics are both occupied elsewhere. The existing work often has an old-school solidity. And there's a satisfying sense of economy in cultivating ideas that would otherwise be wasted. But the most common type of overlooked problem is not explicitly unfashionable in the sense of being out of fashion. It just doesn't seem to matter as much as it actually does. How do you find these?

By being self-indulgent — by letting your curiosity have its way,and tuning out,at least temporarily,the little voice in your head that says you should only be working on "important" problems. You do need to work on important problems,

but almost everyone is too conservative about what counts as one. And if there's an important but overlooked problem in your neighborhood,

it's probably already on your subconscious radar screen. 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?The answer is probably more important than it seems. Originality in choosing problems seems to matter even more than originality in solving them. That's what distinguishes the people who discover whole new fields. So what might seem to be merely the initial step — deciding what to work on — is in a sense the key to the whole game. Few grasp this. One of the biggest misconceptions about new ideas is about the ratio of question to answer in their composition. People think big ideas are answers,

but often the real insight was in the question. Part of the reason we underrate questions is the way they're used in schools. In schools they tend to exist only briefly before being answered,

like unstable particles. But a really good question can be much more than that. A really good question is a partial discovery. How do new species arise?

Is the force that makes objects fall to earth the same as the one that keeps planets in their orbits?By even asking such questions you were already in excitingly novel territory. Unanswered questions can be uncomfortable things to carry around with you. But the more you're carrying,

the greater the chance of noticing a solution — or perhaps even more excitingly,noticing that two unanswered questions are the same. Sometimes you carry a question for a long time. Great work often comes from returning to a question you first noticed years before — in your childhood,

even — and couldn't stop thinking about. People talk a lot about the importance of keeping your youthful dreams alive,

but it's just as important to keep your youthful questions alive. [19] This is one of the places where actual expertise differs most from the popular picture of it. In the popular picture,

experts are certain. But actually the more puzzled you are,the better,so long as (a) the things you're puzzled about matter,

and (b) no one else understands them either. Think about what's happening at the moment just before a new idea is discovered. Often someone with sufficient expertise is puzzled about something. Which means that originality consists partly of puzzlement — of confusion!

You have to be comfortable enough with the world being full of puzzles that you're willing to see them,but not so comfortable that you don't want to solve them. [20] It's a great thing to be rich in unanswered questions. And this is one of those situations where the rich get richer,

because the best way to acquire new questions is to try answering existing ones. Questions don't just lead to answers,

but also to more questions. The best questions grow in the answering. You notice a thread protruding from the current paradigm and try pulling on it,

and it just gets longer and longer. So don't require a question to be obviously big before you try answering it. You can rarely predict that. It's hard enough even to notice the thread,

let alone to predict how much will unravel if you pull on it. It's better to be promiscuously curious — to pull a little bit on a lot of threads,

and see what happens. Big things start small. The initial versions of big things were often just experiments,or side projects,or talks,which then grew into something bigger. So start lots of small things. Being prolific is underrated. The more different things you try,

the greater the chance of discovering something new. Understand,though,that trying lots of things will mean trying lots of things that don't work. You can't have a lot of good ideas without also having a lot of bad ones. [21] Though it sounds more responsible to begin by studying everything that's been done before,

you'll learn faster and have more fun by trying stuff. And you'll understand previous work better when you do look at it. So err on the side of starting. Which is easier when starting means starting small;

those two ideas fit together like two puzzle pieces. How do you get from starting small to doing something great?By making successive versions. Great things are almost always made in successive versions. You start with something small and evolve it,

and the final version is both cleverer and more ambitious than anything you could have planned. It's particularly useful to make successive versions when you're making something for people — to get an initial version in front of them quickly,

and then evolve it based on their response. Begin by trying the simplest thing that could possibly work. Surprisingly often,

it does. If it doesn't,this will at least get you started. Don't try to cram too much new stuff into any one version. There are names for doing this with the first version (taking too long to ship) and the second (the second system effect),

but these are both merely instances of a more general principle. An early version of a new project will sometimes be dismissed as a toy. It's a good sign when people do this. That means it has everything a new idea needs except scale,

and that tends to follow. [22] The alternative to starting with something small and evolving it is to plan in advance what you're going to do. And planning does usually seem the more responsible choice. It sounds more organized to say "we're going to do x and then y and then z" than "we're going to try x and see what happens." And it is more organized;

it just doesn't work as well. Planning per se isn't good. It's sometimes necessary,but it's a necessary evil — a response to unforgiving conditions. It's something you have to do because you're working with inflexible media,

or because you need to coordinate the efforts of a lot of people. If you keep projects small and use flexible media,you don't have to plan as much,and your designs can evolve instead. Take as much risk as you can afford. In an efficient market,

risk is proportionate to reward,so don't look for certainty,but for a bet with high expected value. If you're not failing occasionally,

you're probably being too conservative. Though conservatism is usually associated with the old,it's the young who tend to make this mistake. Inexperience makes them fear risk,

but it's when you're young that you can afford the most. Even a project that fails can be valuable. In the process of working on it,

you'll have crossed territory few others have seen,and encountered questions few others have asked. And there's probably no better source of questions than the ones you encounter in trying to do something slightly too hard. Use the advantages of youth when you have them,

and the advantages of age once you have those. The advantages of youth are energy,time,optimism,and freedom. The advantages of age are knowledge,efficiency,money,

and power. With effort you can acquire some of the latter when young and keep some of the former when old. The old also have the advantage of knowing which advantages they have. The young often have them without realizing it. The biggest is probably time. The young have no idea how rich they are in time. The best way to turn this time to advantage is to use it in slightly frivolous ways:

to learn about something you don't need to know about,just out of curiosity,or to try building something just because it would be cool,

or to become freakishly good at something. That "slightly" is an important qualification. Spend time lavishly when you're young,

but don't simply waste it. There's a big difference between doing something you worry might be a waste of time and doing something you know for sure will be. The former is at least a bet,

and possibly a better one than you think. [23] The most subtle advantage of youth,or more precisely of inexperience,is that you're seeing everything with fresh eyes. When your brain embraces an idea for the first time,

sometimes the two don't fit together perfectly. Usually the problem is with your brain,but occasionally it's with the idea. A piece of it sticks out awkwardly and jabs you when you think about it. People who are used to the idea have learned to ignore it,

but you have the opportunity not to. [24] So when you're learning about something for the first time,pay attention to things that seem wrong or missing. You'll be tempted to ignore them,

since there's a 99% chance the problem is with you. And you may have to set aside your misgivings temporarily to keep progressing. But don't forget about them. When you've gotten further into the subject,

come back and check if they're still there. If they're still viable in the light of your present knowledge,they probably represent an undiscovered idea. One of the most valuable kinds of knowledge you get from experience is to know what you don't have to worry about. The young know all the things that could matter,

but not their relative importance. So they worry equally about everything,when they should worry much more about a few things and hardly at all about the rest. But what you don't know is only half the problem with inexperience. The other half is what you do know that ain't so. You arrive at adulthood with your head full of nonsense — bad habits you've acquired and false things you've been taught — and you won't be able to do great work till you clear away at least the nonsense in the way of whatever type of work you want to do. Much of the nonsense left in your head is left there by schools. We're so used to schools that we unconsciously treat going to school as identical with learning,

but in fact schools have all sorts of strange qualities that warp our ideas about learning and thinking. For example,schools induce passivity. Since you were a small child,

there was an authority at the front of the class telling all of you what you had to learn and then measuring whether you did. But neither classes nor tests are intrinsic to learning;they're just artifacts of the way schools are usually designed. The sooner you overcome this passivity,

the better. If you're still in school,try thinking of your education as your project,and your teachers as working for you rather than vice versa. That may seem a stretch,

but it's not merely some weird thought experiment. It's the truth economically,and in the best case it's the truth intellectually as well. The best teachers don't want to be your bosses. They'd prefer it if you pushed ahead,

using them as a source of advice,rather than being pulled by them through the material. Schools also give you a misleading impression of what work is like. In school they tell you what the problems are,

and they're almost always soluble using no more than you've been taught so far. In real life you have to figure out what the problems are,

and you often don't know if they're soluble at all. But perhaps the worst thing schools do to you is train you to win by hacking the test. You can't do great work by doing that. You can't trick God. So stop looking for that kind of shortcut. The way to beat the system is to focus on problems and solutions that others have overlooked,

not to skimp on the work itself. Don't think of yourself as dependent on some gatekeeper giving you a "big break." Even if this were true,

the best way to get it would be to focus on doing good work rather than chasing influential people. And don't take rejection by committees to heart. The qualities that impress admissions officers and prize committees are quite different from those required to do great work. The decisions of selection committees are only meaningful to the extent that they're part of a feedback loop,

and very few are. People new to a field will often copy existing work. There's nothing inherently bad about that. There's no better way to learn how something works than by trying to reproduce it. Nor does copying necessarily make your work unoriginal. Originality is the presence of new ideas,

not the absence of old ones. There's a good way to copy and a bad way. If you're going to copy something,do it openly instead of furtively,or worse still,

unconsciously. This is what's meant by the famously misattributed phrase "Great artists steal." The really dangerous kind of copying,

the kind that gives copying a bad name,is the kind that's done without realizing it,because you're nothing more than a train running on tracks laid down by someone else. But at the other extreme,

copying can be a sign of superiority rather than subordination. [25] In many fields it's almost inevitable that your early work will be in some sense based on other people's. Projects rarely arise in a vacuum. They're usually a reaction to previous work. When you're first starting out,

you don't have any previous work;if you're going to react to something,it has to be someone else's. Once you're established,

you can react to your own. But while the former gets called derivative and the latter doesn't,structurally the two cases are more similar than they seem. Oddly enough,

the very novelty of the most novel ideas sometimes makes them seem at first to be more derivative than they are. New discoveries often have to be conceived initially as variations of existing things,

even by their discoverers,because there isn't yet the conceptual vocabulary to express them. There are definitely some dangers to copying,

though. One is that you'll tend to copy old things — things that were in their day at the frontier of knowledge,but no longer are. And when you do copy something,

don't copy every feature of it. Some will make you ridiculous if you do. Don't copy the manner of an eminent 50 year old professor if you're 18,

for example,or the idiom of a Renaissance poem hundreds of years later. Some of the features of things you admire are flaws they succeeded despite. Indeed,

the features that are easiest to imitate are the most likely to be the flaws. This is particularly true for behavior. Some talented people are jerks,

and this sometimes makes it seem to the inexperienced that being a jerk is part of being talented. It isn't;being talented is merely how they get away with it. One of the most powerful kinds of copying is to copy something from one field into another. History is so full of chance discoveries of this type that it's probably worth giving chance a hand by deliberately learning about other kinds of work. You can take ideas from quite distant fields if you let them be metaphors. Negative examples can be as inspiring as positive ones. In fact you can sometimes learn more from things done badly than from things done well;

sometimes it only becomes clear what's needed when it's missing. If a lot of the best people in your field are collected in one place,

it's usually a good idea to visit for a while. It will increase your ambition,and also,by showing you that these people are human,

increase your self-confidence. [26] If you're earnest you'll probably get a warmer welcome than you might expect. 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. It may take some effort to find the people who are really good,

though. Doing great work has such prestige that in some places,particularly universities,there's a polite fiction that everyone is engaged in it. And that is far from true. People within universities can't say so openly,

but the quality of the work being done in different departments varies immensely. Some departments have people doing great work;

others have in the past;others never have. Seek out the best colleagues. There are a lot of projects that can't be done alone,

and even if you're working on one that can be,it's good to have other people to encourage you and to bounce ideas off. Colleagues don't just affect your work,

though;they also affect you. So work with people you want to become like,because you will. Quality is more important than quantity in colleagues. It's better to have one or two great ones than a building full of pretty good ones. In fact it's not merely better,

but necessary,judging from history:the degree to which great work happens in clusters suggests that one's colleagues often make the difference between doing great work and not. How do you know when you have sufficiently good colleagues?

In my experience,when you do,you know. Which means if you're unsure,you probably don't. But it may be possible to give a more concrete answer than that. Here's an attempt:

sufficiently good colleagues offer surprising insights. They can see and do things that you can't. So if you have a handful of colleagues good enough to keep you on your toes in this sense,

you're probably over the threshold. Most of us can benefit from collaborating with colleagues,but some projects require people on a larger scale,

and starting one of those is not for everyone. If you want to run a project like that,you'll have to become a manager,and managing well takes aptitude and interest like any other kind of work. If you don't have them,

there is no middle path:you must either force yourself to learn management as a second language,or avoid such projects. [27] Husband your morale. It's the basis of everything when you're working on ambitious projects. You have to nurture and protect it like a living organism. 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. Indeed,work can to some extent protect you from your problems. If you choose work that's pure,

its very difficulties will serve as a refuge from the difficulties of everyday life. If this is escapism,it's a very productive form of it,and one that has been used by some of the greatest minds in history. Morale compounds via work:

high morale helps you do good work,which increases your morale and helps you do even better work. But this cycle also operates in the other direction:

if you're not doing good work,that can demoralize you and make it even harder to. Since it matters so much for this cycle to be running in the right direction,

it can be a good idea to switch to easier work when you're stuck,just so you start to get something done. One of the biggest mistakes ambitious people make is to allow setbacks to destroy their morale all at once,

like a balloon bursting. You can inoculate yourself against this by explicitly considering setbacks a part of your process. Solving hard problems always involves some backtracking. Doing great work is a depth-first search whose root node is the desire to. So "If at first you don't succeed,

try,try again" isn't quite right. It should be:If at first you don't succeed,either try again,or backtrack and then try again. "Never give up" is also not quite right. Obviously there are times when it's the right choice to eject. A more precise version would be:

Never let setbacks panic you into backtracking more than you need to. Corollary:Never abandon the root node. It's not necessarily a bad sign if work is a struggle,

any more than it's a bad sign to be out of breath while running. It depends how fast you're running. So learn to distinguish good pain from bad. Good pain is a sign of effort;

bad pain is a sign of damage. An audience is a critical component of morale. If you're a scholar,your audience may be your peers;

in the arts,it may be an audience in the traditional sense. Either way it doesn't need to be big. The value of an audience doesn't grow anything like linearly with its size. Which is bad news if you're famous,

but good news if you're just starting out,because it means a small but dedicated audience can be enough to sustain you. If a handful of people genuinely love what you're doing,

that's enough. To the extent you can,avoid letting intermediaries come between you and your audience. In some types of work this is inevitable,

but it's so liberating to escape it that you might be better off switching to an adjacent type if that will let you go direct. [28] The people you spend time with will also have a big effect on your morale. You'll find there are some who increase your energy and others who decrease it,

and the effect someone has is not always what you'd expect. Seek out the people who increase your energy and avoid those who decrease it. Though of course if there's someone you need to take care of,

that takes precedence. Don't marry someone who doesn't understand that you need to work,or sees your work as competition for your attention. If you're ambitious,you need to work;

it's almost like a medical condition;so someone who won't let you work either doesn't understand you,or does and doesn't care. Ultimately morale is physical. You think with your body,so it's important to take care of it. That means exercising regularly,

eating and sleeping well,and avoiding the more dangerous kinds of drugs. Running and walking are particularly good forms of exercise because they're good for thinking. [29] People who do great work are not necessarily happier than everyone else,

but they're happier than they'd be if they didn't. In fact,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. It's ok to want to impress other people,

but choose the right people. The opinion of people you respect is signal. Fame,which is the opinion of a much larger group you might or might not respect,

just adds noise. The prestige of a type of work is at best a trailing indicator and sometimes completely mistaken. If you do anything well enough,

you'll make it prestigious. So the question to ask about a type of work is not how much prestige it has,but how well it could be done. Competition can be an effective motivator,

but don't let it choose the problem for you;don't let yourself get drawn into chasing something just because others are. In fact,

don't let competitors make you do anything much more specific than work harder. Curiosity is the best guide. Your curiosity never lies,

and it knows more than you do about what's worth paying attention to. Notice how often that word has come up. If you asked an oracle the secret to doing great work and the oracle replied with a single word,

my bet would be on "curiosity." That doesn't translate directly to advice. It's not enough just to be curious,and you can't command curiosity anyway. But you can nurture it and let it drive you. 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. Believe it or not,

I tried to make this essay as short as I could. But its length at least means it acts as a filter. If you made it this far,

you must be interested in doing great work. And if so you're already further along than you might realize,because the set of people willing to want to is small. The factors in doing great work are factors in the literal,

mathematical sense,and they are:ability,interest,effort,and luck. Luck by definition you can't do anything about,so we can ignore that. And we can assume effort,

if you do in fact want to do great work. So the problem boils down to ability and interest. Can you find a kind of work where your ability and interest will combine to yield an explosion of new ideas?

Here there are grounds for optimism. There are so many different ways to do great work,and even more that are still undiscovered. Out of all those different types of work,

the one you're most suited for is probably a pretty close match. Probably a comically close match. It's just a question of finding it,

and how far into it your ability and interest can take you. And you can only answer that by trying. Many more people could try to do great work than do. What holds them back is a combination of modesty and fear. It seems presumptuous to try to be Newton or Shakespeare. It also seems hard;

surely if you tried something like that,you'd fail. Presumably the calculation is rarely explicit. Few people consciously decide not to try to do great work. But that's what's going on subconsciously;

they shy away from the question. So I'm going to pull a sneaky trick on you. Do you want to do great work,or not?Now you have to decide consciously. Sorry about that. I wouldn't have done it to a general audience. But we already know you're interested. Don't worry about being presumptuous. You don't have to tell anyone. And if it's too hard and you fail,

so what?Lots of people have worse problems than that. In fact you'll be lucky if it's the worst problem you have. Yes,

you'll have to work hard. But again,lots of people have to work hard. And if you're working on something you find very interesting,

which you necessarily will if you're on the right path,the work will probably feel less burdensome than a lot of your peers'. The discoveries are out there,

waiting to be made. Why not by you?Notes [1] I don't think you could give a precise definition of what counts as great work. Doing great work means doing something important so well that you expand people's ideas of what's possible. But there's no threshold for importance. It's a matter of degree,

and often hard to judge at the time anyway. So I'd rather people focused on developing their interests rather than worrying about whether they're important or not. Just try to do something amazing,

and leave it to future generations to say if you succeeded. [2] A lot of standup comedy is based on noticing anomalies in everyday life. "Did you ever notice...?

" New ideas come from doing this about nontrivial things. Which may help explain why people's reaction to a new idea is often the first half of laughing:

Ha![3] That second qualifier is critical. If you're excited about something most authorities discount,but you can't give a more precise explanation than "they don't get it,

" then you're starting to drift into the territory of cranks. [4] Finding something to work on is not simply a matter of finding a match between the current version of you and a list of known problems. You'll often have to coevolve with the problem. That's why it can sometimes be so hard to figure out what to work on. The search space is huge. It's the cartesian product of all possible types of work,

both known and yet to be discovered,and all possible future versions of you. There's no way you could search this whole space,

so you have to rely on heuristics to generate promising paths through it and hope the best matches will be clustered. Which they will not always be;

different types of work have been collected together as much by accidents of history as by the intrinsic similarities between them. [5] There are many reasons curious people are more likely to do great work,

but one of the more subtle is that,by casting a wide net,they're more likely to find the right thing to work on in the first place. [6] It can also be dangerous to make things for an audience you feel is less sophisticated than you,

if that causes you to talk down to them. You can make a lot of money doing that,if you do it in a sufficiently cynical way,

but it's not the route to great work. Not that anyone using this m.o. would care. [7] This idea I learned from Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology,

which I recommend to anyone ambitious to do great work,in any field. [8] Just as we overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do over several years,

we overestimate the damage done by procrastinating for a day and underestimate the damage done by procrastinating for several years. [9] You can't usually get paid for doing exactly what you want,

especially early on. There are two options:get paid for doing work close to what you want and hope to push it closer,or get paid for doing something else entirely and do your own projects on the side. Both can work,

but both have drawbacks:in the first approach your work is compromised by default,and in the second you have to fight to get time to do it. [10] If you set your life up right,

it will deliver the focus-relax cycle automatically. The perfect setup is an office you work in and that you walk to and from. [11] There may be some very unworldly people who do great work without consciously trying to. If you want to expand this rule to cover that case,

it becomes:Don't try to be anything except the best. [12] This gets more complicated in work like acting,where the goal is to adopt a fake persona. But even here it's possible to be affected. Perhaps the rule in such fields should be to avoid unintentional affectation. [13] It's safe to have beliefs that you treat as unquestionable if and only if they're also unfalsifiable. For example,

it's safe to have the principle that everyone should be treated equally under the law,because a sentence with a "should" in it isn't really a statement about the world and is therefore hard to disprove. And if there's no evidence that could disprove one of your principles,

there can't be any facts you'd need to ignore in order to preserve it. [14] Affectation is easier to cure than intellectual dishonesty. Affectation is often a shortcoming of the young that burns off in time,

while intellectual dishonesty is more of a character flaw. [15] Obviously you don't have to be working at the exact moment you have the idea,

but you'll probably have been working fairly recently. [16] Some say psychoactive drugs have a similar effect. I'm skeptical,

but also almost totally ignorant of their effects. [17] For example you might give the nth most important topic (m-1)/m^n of your attention,

for some m > 1. You couldn't allocate your attention so precisely,of course,but this at least gives an idea of a reasonable distribution. [18] The principles defining a religion have to be mistaken. Otherwise anyone might adopt them,

and there would be nothing to distinguish the adherents of the religion from everyone else. [19] It might be a good exercise to try writing down a list of questions you wondered about in your youth. You might find you're now in a position to do something about some of them. [20] The connection between originality and uncertainty causes a strange phenomenon:

because the conventional-minded are more certain than the independent-minded,this tends to give them the upper hand in disputes,

even though they're generally stupider. The best lack all conviction,while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. [21] Derived from Linus Pauling's "If you want to have good ideas,

you must have many ideas." [22] Attacking a project as a "toy" is similar to attacking a statement as "inappropriate." It means that no more substantial criticism can be made to stick. [23] One way to tell whether you're wasting time is to ask if you're producing or consuming. Writing computer games is less likely to be a waste of time than playing them,

and playing games where you create something is less likely to be a waste of time than playing games where you don't. [24] Another related advantage is that if you haven't said anything publicly yet,

you won't be biased toward evidence that supports your earlier conclusions. With sufficient integrity you could achieve eternal youth in this respect,

but few manage to. For most people,having previously published opinions has an effect similar to ideology,just in quantity 1. [25] In the early 1630s Daniel Mytens made a painting of Henrietta Maria handing a laurel wreath to Charles I. Van Dyck then painted his own version to show how much better he was. [26] I'm being deliberately vague about what a place is. As of this writing,

being in the same physical place has advantages that are hard to duplicate,but that could change. [27] This is false when the work the other people have to do is very constrained,

as with SETI@home or Bitcoin. It may be possible to expand the area in which it's false by defining similarly restricted protocols with more freedom of action in the nodes. [28] Corollary:

Building something that enables people to go around intermediaries and engage directly with their audience is probably a good idea. [29] It may be helpful always to walk or run the same route,

because that frees attention for thinking. It feels that way to me,and there is some historical evidence for it. Thanks to Trevor Blackwell,Daniel Gackle,

Pam Graham,Tom Howard,Patrick Hsu,Steve Huffman,Jessica Livingston,Henry Lloyd-Baker,Bob Metcalfe,Ben Miller,Robert Morris,Michael Nielsen,Courtenay Pipkin,Joris Poort,

Mieke Roos,Rajat Suri,Harj Taggar,Garry Tan,and my younger son for suggestions and for reading drafts.