I\u2019m reading the essay \u201cHow to do Great Work\u201d by Paul Graham for the 3rd time, I think. Every time something new strikes me and grabs my attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Great work happens through excitingly ambitious projects,\u201d he says \u2014 humble side projects that make us more curious and more excited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sure, we all have our duties in life; certain responsibilities. The younger you are, the fewer they are, but still \u2014 school, homework, uni, work, etc. And most of us don\u2019t have the greatest aptitude or interest in these. Rather, we have our own interests, hobbies, and curiosities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are, indeed, the ones from which great work can occur \u2014 topics we have a genuine interest in. The best way to express these interests is through personal projects. It\u2019s like turning theory into practice, transforming an asset into a tangible form, or achieving a greater degree of expertise in our topic of interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A personal project could literally be anything, I\u2019d argue. But the main criteria for a personal project are that it should be tangible and well-defined. I used to make this mistake: \u201cattend more events & meet people,\u201d \u201clearn physics,\u201d or \u201cmaster filmmaking\u201d are not projects, even though they appear so. Since they are just abstract, undefined goals \u2014 or more like manifestations \u2014 you\u2019ll also lack interest, curiosity, excitement, and motivation to act on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, they could look like this: \u201crun a marathon in 3 months\u201d if your interest is running, or \u201ccreate a short documentary movie\u201d if you\u2019re into filmmaking, or \u201csolve a physics problem every day for a month\u201d if you\u2019re currently excited about physics, and so on. There is an endless spectrum of possibilities for exciting projects across various topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, it\u2019s not just the expression of our interest and curiosity, or the probability that something great will occur from them, that makes us want to work on excitingly ambitious projects. It\u2019s also the best method to learn, master, and get good at something. So, don\u2019t wait to become a theory expert before starting that interesting project \u2014 go experiment. Get some idea about the topic and the context, and then directly plunge into practice. Go run that half marathon before your full marathon instead of watching \u201chow to run a marathon and what gear to buy\u201d tutorials. Go shoot and edit that first video \u2014 it won\u2019t be the best, but it will teach you more than hours of watching \u201chow-to\u201d videos or taking courses ever could. Make that first ugly design project to get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, as you might have realized, both \u201cget some idea\u201d and \u201cjump into practice\u201d parts are essential to set some foundation and actually master the thing. But to give an idea \u2014 and to call it a thumbs-up rule \u2014 a 20\/80 ratio, depending on the subject, is useful. It might be less than 20% theory while studying maths, or more while learning to code, but the majority of your time and energy should go into practice \u2014 projects. You\u2019ll learn much more theory and learn how to implement it in that 80% of practice than in the 20% of theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your projects, of course, should also be continuous \u2014 speaking of a single field of interest \u2014 one after another, iterating on the previous one, getting better and better as well as more exciting and interesting over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to get project ideas? By becoming more advanced and more interested in the topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to become more advanced and more interested in a topic? By doing projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you think you don\u2019t have any interests (which is very unlikely \u2014 you\u2019ve probably just not noticed them yet), try out new and possibly interesting but also useful things until you find some from which exciting projects could occur. Work on them. If they work out for you, stick to them; if not, continue experimenting. Thus, avoid both drifting around passively and expecting something interesting to come find you, as well as keeping this experimenting phase too long and jumping from topic to topic. It\u2019s a challenge to find the sweet spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, do not let \u201cwork\u201d to be defined as something you do not want to but have to do, but rather something you enjoy doing. The only way to do so is to work on exciting, ambitious, and interesting projects. If you get lost in you responsibilities, you won\u2019t enjoy working.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m reading the essay \u201cHow to do Great Work\u201d by Paul Graham for the 3rd time, I think. Every time something new strikes me and grabs my attention.\u00a0 “Great work happens through excitingly ambitious projects,\u201d he says \u2014 humble side projects that make us more curious and more excited. Sure, we all have our duties […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpermert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpermert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpermert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpermert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpermert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3757"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/alpermert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3786,"href":"https:\/\/alpermert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757\/revisions\/3786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpermert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpermert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpermert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpermert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}