Shownotes Transcript
In this week’s episode we talk about a new thought that comes off the back of themes that we have discussed many times over like finding fulfillment and following your curiosity. The initial idea for this conversation came from an essay titled, “How To Do Great Work” by Paul Graham. It should be noted that Paul Graham is an amazing computer scientist, most famous for his work on Lisp, Viaweb which later became Yahoo Store, and then startup accelerator and seed capital firm Y combinator. First off, the title of the essay itself, “How To Do Great Work,” caught our eye. Something that is so simple such as doing great work seemingly has an enormous amount of depth and layers to achieve.
In order to do great work, you have to first and foremost find something you have a natural aptitude for, something that you are interested in, and finally a field that has room for expansion. The first two are hard enough to check the box on, but in order to know if a field has room for expansion, you have to go to the edge of that field of knowledge. As you dive deeper into the field that you are interested in you will then discover what once looked like the edge of what we know, has new and undiscovered opportunities for you to uncover. These are the gaps that lie all around us that are just waiting to be exposed.
Most people rarely ever find out a way to figure out how to find what fulfills them and in turn how they could possibly churn out good work over a lifetime. You can clearly be good at something, but not love it and the same goes for the opposite, you can have an interest in something, but ultimately just not be that great at it. This episode is all about finding that sweet spot and noticing the gaps that you uniquely fit in. Don’t settle for anything other than greatness!