How to Do Great Work | A Reminder

Great work comes from pursuing projects you have a natural aptitude for and find deeply interesting, rather than from following a fixed plan. Choosing a field means learning enough to reach its frontier, noticing the gaps others take for granted, and exploring the promising ones, and since most kinds of work can only be understood by doing them, the choice is usually made by working. Interest drives harder effort than diligence alone, and the advice is to "stay upwind" by doing whatever seems most interesting at each stage. Working in long uninterrupted blocks and tricking oneself past the reluctance to start are offered as practical techniques.