took me a few sittings to finish this great read, how to do great work ft. @paulg

"doing great work is a depth-first search whose root node is the desire to" http://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html 1/

"some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields" 2/

"as you grow older and your taste in projects evolves, exciting and important will converge" 3/

"knowledge expands fractally, and from a distance, its edges look smooth, but once you learn enough to get close to one, they turn out to be full of gaps; the next step is to notice them" 4/

"many discoveries have come from asking questions about things that everyone else took for granted" 5/

"when it comes to figuring out what to work on, you're on your own" 6/

"you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions. When in doubt, optimize for interestingness" 7/

"the trouble with planning is that it only works for achievements you can describe in advance" 8/

"people who do great things don't get a lot done every day. They get something done, rather than nothing. If you do work that compounds, you'll get exponential growth" 9/

"to see new ideas, you need an exceptionally sharp eye for the truth. You're trying to see more truth than others have seen so far" 10/

"be the one who puts things out there rather than the one who sits back and offers sophisticated-sounding criticisms of them" 11/

"curiosity feeds originality by giving it new things to work on. But the relationship is closer than that. Curiosity is itself a kind of originality; it's roughly to questions what originality is to answers" 12/

"broken models of the world leave a trail of clues where they bash against reality. Most people don't want to see these clues. It would be an understatement to say that they're attached to their current model" 13/

"every cherished but mistaken principle is surrounded by a dead zone of valuable ideas that are unexplored because they contradict it" 14/

"great work often takes something that already exists and shows its latent potential ... there's no hype or hurry. Opportunists and critics are both occupied elsewhere" 15/

"in the popular picture, experts are certain. But actually the more puzzled you are, the better, so long as (a) the things you're puzzled about matter, and (b) no one else understands them either" 16/

"even a project that fails can be valuable. In the process of working on it, you'll have crossed territory few others have seen, and encountered questions few others have asked" 17/

"use the advantages of youth when you have them, and the advantages of age once you have those. The advantages of youth are energy, time, optimism, and freedom. The advantages of age are knowledge, efficiency, money, and power" 18/

"new discoveries often have to be conceived initially as variations of existing things, even by their discoverers, because there isn't yet the conceptual vocabulary to express them" 19/

"some talented people are jerks, and this sometimes makes it seem to the inexperienced that being a jerk is part of being talented. It isn't; being talented is merely how they get away with it" 20/

"doing great work has such prestige that in some places, particularly universities, there's a polite fiction that everyone is engaged in it. And that is far from true" 21/

"the degree to which great work happens in clusters suggests that one's colleagues often make the difference between doing great work and not ... sufficiently good colleagues offer surprising insights" 22/

"you're more likely to do great work if you're an optimist, and more likely to if you think of yourself as lucky than if you think of yourself as a victim" 23/

"can you find a kind of work where your ability and interest will combine to yield an explosion of new ideas?"

"questions don't just lead to answers, but also to more questions" 24/24

path to great work ft. paul graham

The future of work, especially the gig economy, will be led by token incentivised Web3 products.

Enough of dismissals for tokenised Web3 products in such a short span, bear market furthered the notion, and that it happened which, once again, made everyone take too many notes... 

but most dismissals are hollow, lack substance, and unsurpisingly, don't direct to a relevant argument that could convince: "hey, we don't need this."

at the same time, not to deny most tokenised Web3 products were poorly thought, poorly executed, had no real problem statement.

everyone ran after money, everyone suddenly realised it's the easiest route to money, and ofc, everyone wanted more money, so much money, and what we got in return is a meme: "Web3 will fix this."

and the dream run hit the wall. portfolios, companies, funds, everything blasted.

long story short, all that has transpired in last few months is a testament to the very fact that there's no easy money.

and what came out of it is it led to the conversations around value-driven PMF, rightly so—and also, a debate about tokenised versus value-led.

"the promise to pay the bearer the value of the note" narrates the whole idea that structured the legitimacy of banknotes, thanks to the Bank of England.

legitimacy arrived after the underlying value was established, and once the value was realised, the banknotes were exchanged.

hinting at the age-old proposal of give and take, combined with the feature of reliability, is the future of work where gig workers will exchange labour for returns, and eventually, end up becoming stakeholders in the platforms.

stakeholders will create value for platforms, and the platforms will return value to stakeholders—give and take.

what we will then witness is the merger of value-led and token-led Web3 products, where legitimacy will be provided by value, and token will then become a byproduct.

a glance at the current state of platforms for gig workers only points to "it is broken," and god bless, it has been same for decades now.

ten similar platforms, everyone talking the same, doing the same, and none offers legitimacy, doesn't surprise you? that's the thing.

cuz that's where Web2 platforms hit the limit, and no acceptance of the same could only take further to yet another pivot or an acquisition where all of biz model is altered to make it...sustainable.

no questions asked, everyone moves on, and problem statement appears boring.

and obviously, which is not the case, and which is where, bear with me, gig economy finds itself taken to the equitable space of token incentivised Web3 products where workers are:

workers
stakeholders
distributed
governed

and the entire process is called "value creation." fin.

the future of tokenised Web3 products

unable to wrap my head around a question: why do I need another investment app that offers 10% annual returns on a stable coin?

that's not all, for that to acquire, I first need to transfer USDT or USDC from a crypto wallet to that app's wallet. still, that's not all...

so first step, I add funds to, say, Binance wallet, then buy USDT, and follow a few steps to transfer USDT to the app's wallet (+pay network fee to do exactly that) cuz I'm looking to earn 10% returns on my investment...

but I can directly do that on Binance by opting in for Flexible Earnings via Earn feature and earn 10% APY (btw compounding ftw).

I can redeem them anytime, I can convert those USDT to any other coin anytime, and I can sell them anytime...

then why do I need that investment app? very, very strange!

the use-case first appeared to be for mass adoption, but once you add layers to reach the end goal, it hits the dead end right there.

friction should be the last ask, which is rather the first step here...

when the users first have to have a wallet, they are aware of the basics of crypto...

then why would they want to jump from one end to another when they can just diversify their portfolio, manage it, and put them to work through staking or flexible earnings or yield farming?

the next question directly pops up: who's the target audience here? again strange, really strange.

coz those who know it know how to make the best use of the stable coins they own, and those who don't know it, a 10% return might appear lucrative but friction kills it all...

not to forget, we have mutual funds, bonds, fixed deposits that offer returns if we're just looking for returns here.

and if the user is a little more aware, reliable platforms exist that offer 9-11% returns on bonds...and it's very, very lucrative for the audience you want...

it's perplexing that product > reasoning when you know reasoning trumps everything else.

and it's rather more perplexing when you know it doesn't help mass adoption in whichever way you see it.

friction isn't a healthy proposition cuz that's all you're left with.