Links
https://blog.samaltman.com/advice-for-ambitious-19-year-olds https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html https://patrickcollison.com/advice https://ldeming.posthaven.com/advice-for-ambitious-teenagers Non-Trivial Course Notes
Work
4 Steps to great work:
- Choose a field (Do what’s excitingly ambitious)
- Choosing a field requires active search and not passive drifting. Go deep into different fields you might be interested in, try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books. Sample many different types of work and identify what you enjoy.
- Get to one of the frontiers of knowledge
- Notice gaps
- Explore them
Personal
Most value is created in contrarian ideas about the future, so train yourself to be an original thinker. There’s a common nexus around this is almost every single one of those sources.
Listen to criticism with the assumption that it’s true and choose whether or not to act on it.
If you’re not striving to be the best, you might even miss good.
Avoid affectation.
Startups
Identifying a company with a breakout trajectory
- The idea is solid and there is demand.
- It has traction or has the potential to gain traction.
If you’re forcing yourself to think of a startup idea just to think of an idea, you shouldn’t start up.