How to Do Great Work

Paul Graham’s essay How to Do Great Work is perhaps his most comprehensive piece—a distillation of patterns he’s observed across fields. As a PhD student, I found it both validating and challenging.

The Four-Step Framework

Graham breaks down great work into four steps:

1. Choose your field - Find work combining natural aptitude with deep interest
2. Learn to the frontier - Develop expertise to reach the edge of current knowledge
3. Notice the gaps - Identify problems others overlook
4. Explore promising ones - Chase outlier ideas, especially when ignored by others

This maps surprisingly well to the PhD journey. We choose a field, spend years learning the frontier through coursework and literature reviews, and (hopefully) find gaps worth exploring.

Curiosity as the Engine

Graham writes: “There’s a kind of excited curiosity that’s both the engine and the rudder of great work.”

This resonates deeply. The projects where I’ve done my best work weren’t driven by obligation or external pressure—they were driven by genuine curiosity. When you’re authentically interested, you naturally put in more hours, think about problems in the shower, and persist through setbacks.

The Danger of Per-Project Procrastination

One insight hit particularly hard: the most dangerous form of procrastination isn’t daily—it’s yearly. You can appear productive while avoiding the project that actually matters.

Graham suggests periodically asking: “Am I working on what I most want to work on?”

As PhD students, it’s easy to fill time with side projects, paper reviews, and administrative tasks while avoiding the core research that feels hard and uncertain. This question is worth asking regularly.

On Earnestness

Graham identifies earnestness as essential—intellectual honesty, informality, and innocent boldness. Being earnest means:

• Admitting mistakes readily
• Avoiding affectation and pretense
• Taking intellectual risks

In academia, there’s pressure to appear polished and authoritative. But the researchers I admire most are the ones who freely admit uncertainty and engage with ideas rather than defending positions.

Start Small, Iterate

Rather than extensive planning, Graham advocates: “make successive versions. Great things are almost always made in successive versions.”

This is liberating. You don’t need a perfect plan. You need to start, get feedback, and iterate. The first version of any paper, system, or idea will be rough—that’s not failure, that’s the process.

My Takeaways

1. Follow curiosity, not prestige. Work on what genuinely excites you, not what seems impressive.
2. Protect big blocks of time. Fragmented attention kills deep work.
3. Ask the uncomfortable question. Am I working on what I most want to work on?
4. Be earnest. Intellectual honesty compounds over time.

The essay ends with a direct challenge: “Do you want to do great work, or not? Now you have to decide consciously.”

I’ve decided. The question is whether my daily choices reflect that decision.

What does “great work” mean to you? I’d love to hear your thoughts at persdre@gmail.com.