When Paul Graham uses a phrase like "great work" I can't help but only consider it as being synonymous to "work that generates a big return for the investor" in his context of Y Combinator
> 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.
He wrote a lot about this. For example he built an e-commerce meta platform in Lisp that would allow anyone to build and customise their own shops that was far ahead of anything that existed at the time.
Per Graham's own definition, the founding to Y Combinator. Setting aside critiques, some of his influential essays ("Ramen profitable", "Do things that don't scale", "Founder mode", "Beating the averages", "Schelp blindness", etc) also fit the bill.
It's a nice post, with a lot of valuable insights. There is one that I disagree with though: "Never abandon the root node".
There are plenty of instances that show that in reality this is not what happens, and in fact this is often a necessary step of reinventing yourself if things really aren't working for you. The mid-life crisis is a famous example of this, or even the quarter-life crisis. In some specific psychological circles this is referred to as "disintegration". Sometimes carefully backtracking is simply not enough, and growth needs this kind large shock to the system.
this is one of the common conundrums of life. but for someone living in the grey, this stuff might push them over the edge to be great. that is the point of this article
It's not like I wanted to play it in the background. In this particular case, I rather watch the talk than reading the essay if it's available. It's just interesting to have this option now which wasn't possible before.
Is this supposed to be relatable?
- William James Sidis
I think all the parts were invented by other people, but he got the right mix to make it work.
It's also like the wheel. Before it was a huge problem and no one know how to solve it. Now it's invisible.
Note that all modern versions use enhanced variants with a lot or trick to make it better.
There are plenty of instances that show that in reality this is not what happens, and in fact this is often a necessary step of reinventing yourself if things really aren't working for you. The mid-life crisis is a famous example of this, or even the quarter-life crisis. In some specific psychological circles this is referred to as "disintegration". Sometimes carefully backtracking is simply not enough, and growth needs this kind large shock to the system.
https://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html
The people who would benefit from the advice (resourceful people full of free time that are doing nothing meaningful) will likely ignore it anyway.