How to Work Hard

How to Work Hard. An essay by Paul Graham, June 2021.

No way around it

Anyone who's been through school knows what hard work involves. So what's left to learn? Plenty, says Graham.

As a kid, he wondered if sheer brilliance let you skip the effort. Some subjects came easily, and famous people made it all look easy.

Now he knows: there's no way around it. Those subjects were easy because standards were low. The stars had years of practice.

Three ingredients

Great work takes three things: natural ability, practice and effort. Any two get you fairly far. The very best needs all three.

Bill Gates was among the smartest people in business, and among the hardest working. He said he never took a day off in his twenties.

Messi's coaches remember his dedication, not his talent. And Wodehouse, who made writing look effortless, rewrote sentences ten or twenty times.

The most gifted also worked the hardest. You need both.

Rare squared

Obvious? Yet we half believe it's one or the other: gifted, or a grinder.

Partly that's arithmetic. Great talent is rare, and so is great drive. People with both are rare squared.

Most people have lots of one, less of the other. And since you can't change your talent, great work comes down to working very hard.

When no one sets the goal

Hard work is fairly easy when someone else sets clear goals, as in school: don't fool yourself, don't stall, don't drift, don't quit.

The harder skill is working toward goals that are vague, and that nobody hands you.

It starts with feeling you ought to work when no one's asking. For Graham, idleness sets off alarm bells: work may not get him anywhere, but idling surely won't.

His one datable moment: he quit TV at thirteen. Patrick Collison recalls the same shift at thirteen or fourteen.

What real work is

Oddly, school was the biggest obstacle: it made work look pointless. He first had to discover what real work looks like, and only then could he want it.

G. H. Hardy was the same. Math meant exams and beating rivals, until a book by Jordan, in college, showed him the real thing.

So you must see past two kinds of fake: subjects warped for teaching kids, and work that's bogus by nature.

Real work feels solid: all of it necessary. Once Graham saw that shape, his drive fit it exactly.

How many hours

How many hours a day? Not every waking one. Past a point, quality starts to drop.

That point varies. For Graham's hardest writing or programming, it's about five hours. Running a startup, he could work nonstop, for three years at least.

You find the limit only by crossing it, while watching quality. Be honest both ways: notice laziness, and notice overwork.

Overwork isn't admirable. It's worse work, done to show off, if only to yourself. And the limit shifts, so keep checking.

Once you get rolling

Working hard doesn't mean constantly forcing yourself. Graham only pushes when starting something, or when he hits a snag.

Once he's rolling, he keeps going. What keeps him going depends on the work.

At Viaweb, fear of failure drove him. Every task done put more distance between him and the beast behind him.

With essays, it's the flaws. He dithers between them, like a dog circling before it lies down. Once he starts, some error pulls him along.

Aim at the center

Many problems have a hard core, ringed by easier stuff. Working hard means aiming as near the core as you can without stalling.

Some days you'll only manage the edges. The same goes for your life: steer toward the most ambitious problems.

But aim at the real center, not the consensus. The consensus is often wrong, and that's an opening.

Harder isn't always better, though. If ambitious work comes easier to you, take it. Great work is often an easy way to do something hard.

What suits you

You also need work that suits you. That's not just talent: being seven feet tall doesn't oblige you to play basketball.

Interests matter even more. Deep interest makes people work harder than discipline ever could.

But interests are harder to spot. Talents get judged in childhood; an interest may not ripen till your twenties, or later.

And watch for false signals. Is it real interest, or the money, the admiration, or your parents' wishes?

A calling, or not

Movies say everyone has a calling. Mozart did: he knew as a child. Newton roamed from field to field.

We may wish he'd skipped the alchemy, but that's hindsight. No voice was calling him. Some lives never converge.

For them, choosing the work is part of working hard. Besides effort and results, a third question: stay, or switch?

How long do you give it? What counts as good results? Graham's best test: do you find it interesting? You're best placed to judge.

Honest at every point

Notice the thread through all of it: at every step, it depends on being honest with yourself.

Graham sums it up: “Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11.”

It's a system. Know real work, find what suits you, aim at the core, judge yourself constantly, and work as long as quality holds.

It's too complex to cheat. But stay honest and clear-sighted, and it settles into the right shape, and you'll get more done than almost anyone.

In short

There's no shortcut: the best work takes ability, practice and effort.

Learn what real work is, and find the kind that truly interests you.

Aim at the true center, for as many hours as quality allows.

At every step, be honest with yourself.

The original is better than this. Read it: paulgraham.com/hwh.html