Producing Your Life’s Work, Leads to Great Work

How you do meaningful great work

Reviewing PG’s Essay and What it Teaches Us

After reading “The Practice” and “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”, and prior to that, “Good to Great”, “100 Million Dollar Offers”, “Simple Scaling”, listening to numerous informative podcast episodes over the last two years, I have really fallen in love with the concept of finding your life’s work and learning how to achieve truly great work.

Paul Graham lays out “How to Do Great Work” in his essay based off with experience and philosophical-based perspective that has so much value coming from someone like Paul and his reputation. Here are a few top takeaways from his essay that stood out to me:

1. Work on your own projects

2. Curiosity makes you a target for luck

3. Make something you want to use or need

4. Cumulative compounding of work is difficult to fight through the early slower stages: daily consistent work over long period of time yield quality and results

5. Keep an eye out for what’s wrong or missing to find ideas on where to focus; these are often overlooked by others

6. Clear out distractions to allow for room for great work

7. New ideas required original thought and a different way of thinking than predecessors

8. Comparing ideas, problems, and solutions from once industry to another can help yield powerful ideas

9. Quality of colleagues and headcount often is significantly more powerful than quantity

10. Morale level drives a correlating level of great work

11. Audience compounds with consistency and quality, requires consistent, long-term mindset

12. Spend time with those who give you energy, reducing time with those who reduce your energy

13. Great work: scientific, “ability, interest, effort, and luck”. Luck can’t be influenced by definition, effort is assumed, leaving ability and interest where you can directly make an impact in your work

Once you learn how to do great work, you will be on your path pursuing your “Life’s Work”.

Christensen’s Perspective

Clay Christensen, renowned author, business advisor, investor, and teacher, takes a different approach focused on the deep reflection of how you will measure your own life. “How Will You Measure Your Life” takes a view of what’s important. When you realize your time is limited, when you lose someone, or have a near-death experience on your own, how will that shape what matters. Typically, those events help you get closer to the root of your purpose and impact, and how you help and treat others along the way. Christensen takes what you work on and how you act, and pushes you to consider how it helps this world or people you love. Here are a few lessons that stood out to me:

1. Learning

2. Increased scope and importance of responsibilities

3. Contributions to others

4. Recognition for your results

5. Keep purpose in mind with everything we do

6. Short-term thinking often leads to short-term problems, frustrations, and thinking

7. Don’t give in on your character or standards as those situations continue throughout one’s life

What does this all mean? If you want to live in the moment, yet also appreciate your life’s work when it’s nearing its end, living with intention in what you do and making a positive impact are a strong guide with everything you do. Working on great work that you develop a love or passion for, and doing meaningful and high quality work, will help on that journey.

Consider what you can do, what opportunities are showing up, and how you can align and harness those attributes into development of work you are proud of making a difference for others - that’s where the magic and meaning lies.

Your relationships and impact on people will mean more than anything else. Paul Graham paves the way for how to start and continue professional research to position yourself to find and create great work, while Christensen explains how you will measure the impact and meaning of that work, and your life overall.

Hopefully, this added a little value to your business or your career. Thank you for reading. Please repost or share with someone who may benefit from this edition.

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