A chat between brothers
It’s a relaxed morning. Two brothers are sitting in the backyard of their comfortable home in San Francisco, California. They’re sitting across each other, with a table in between them. Two sober glasses of water sit on top of that table. Both have a sense of nervous excitement and joy on their faces as they’re about to start recording a conversation about something rather important.
Jack Altman1: “Sam wanted to give some advice on how to have an impact on the world, but since he couldn’t interview himself - here I am”
Sam Altman2: “Thank you taking the time”.
Jack Altman: “I know you spend a lot of time thinking about what to work on, so can you talk a little about how to pick what’s important to work on?”
Sam Altman: “I think you want to look at the intersection of three things.
What you’re good at
What you enjoy
Where you can create value for the world
And in my opinion, if you can’t work somewhere in the intersections of these three, it is very difficult to have an impact on the world. I think most people just fall into what they work on, and they don’t give it much thought. And sometimes there is benefit to that, sometimes you have to try stuff to figure out what you like, but I really do think that it is worth upfront thought about what you’re going to spend most of your waking time doing”.
One common trait in successful and incredibly smart people is that they carefully choose what they work on. They don’t fall into working on anything that they happen to find employment in, and even if that’s how they start - they pivot to work on problems that interest them. As Sam said above, it is incredibly important to decide what you’ll spend countless living hours working on. It is not a trivial decision. Your decision will decide whether you’ll have any influential impact on the world or if you’ll wither away namelessly. In other words, as a friend recently said to me, “Bada game khelna padega”.
I write about choosing what to work on extremely aware that this choice simply does not exist, or is at least very hard to exercise for many people (poor individuals work in whatever will pay them, people with less education do not have many opportunities in the first place, people under various financial and social constraints find it much harder to actually do what they want to).
The idea behind writing this piece is two folds. First, is to argue that it is worth asking ‘What do I want to work on?’ Second, to offer a rough framework of general values to optimize for and then, in whatever room they have for taking decisions, coupled with the values they seek to optimize for, take the decision on what they want to work on.
The same old
Most of us go through schools not really having a choice of what we want to study. Even choices that we make at secondary or senior secondary levels are not our own choices in the strictest sense. They’re overwhelmingly shaped by our parents, friends, what is considered to have ‘scope’ and sometimes, which courses one’s crush is taking. This pattern is continued even in selecting what to major in. Because the same stereotypes that make us choose one field or subject over the other play out while deciding what to read in college. And given that most people will end up working in the field in which they hold a degree, which in the first place was not a free and conscious choice3 - most people at least start working in areas and on problems that they don’t actually want to work on.
Which is why most people realize what they’re working on is not something they actually want to work on, much later into their career. Given that most people have to work for a living, one would want to maximize and optimize some values, while deprioritizing others. Although, these values are different for everyone - what is important that people choose what they want to work on.
And the earlier one can decide what they want to work on, the better. For the world at large, and of course - for the person.
The choice
You want to list down values and factors you want to optimize for and then rate the possible options you have accordingly. The values themselves and the number of values will change with time. But the idea is that such a decision matrix will help you with two things:
Make you think about which values you want to optimize for (a question most of the workforce never asks, year by year, as they spend countless years doing something they would not do, if not for the money)
Once you have the factors and values ready, then allow you to rank your possible work prospects accordingly.
I’ve seen countless individuals waste away their lives working in areas and on problems that brings them no joy, or meaning. I know many argue that it is best to treat your job, as just that - you job, an activity that brings you money. But can an individual be expected to shut off all emotions and mindlessly work for more than half of the day without adversely being affected by it - if it is not something they even remotely enjoy?
Mayoshi Son, CEO of Softbank group used to use this decisional matrix to decide which business to enter.
Son methodically worked his way through different ideas, from writing software to launching a chain of hospitals. Once he had enough options, Son compared them to each other in a massive matrix that rated the ideas on four dimensions:
How likely Son would fall (and stay) in love with the business.
How unique the business was.
How likely it was that the business could become number one in Japan in ten years.
How much growth there was in the business’s industry.
Taken from Softbank: Twilight of an empire.
The great thing about asking yourself what you want to work on repeatedly is that it allows you to understand more about yourself. It makes you think hard about which problems you think are important in general, and which issues are important for you that you’d be willing to dedicate your precious and limited time to.
A formula that Elon Musk works by to decide what to work on is: utility delta * Number of people it will effect. Delta is a mathematical operator (operation) that signifies the rate of change of a quantity with respect to some other quantity. In this case utility delta means how much increase in any kind of utility does the product or idea bring. The reason why this formula works is that if you do something that is really useful but only for few people, that’s great. If you do something that is moderately useful but for a lot of people, that’s great too.
Taken from my earlier piece on the same topic, Problem Solving and What to do with your Life?
Going back to Sam Altman, in one of popular posts by the name of ‘The days are long but the decades are short’, Sam talks about the advice he would give to young people. Sam writes:
How to succeed: pick the right thing to do (this is critical and usually ignored), focus, believe in yourself (especially when others tell you it’s not going to work), develop personal connections with people that will help you, learn to identify talented people, and work hard. It’s hard to identify what to work on because original thought is hard.
On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work. Work very hard—a surprising number of people will be offended that you choose to work hard—but not so hard that the rest of your life passes you by. Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you’ll probably end up in a pretty good place. Figure out your own productivity system—don’t waste time being unorganized, working at suboptimal times, etc. Don’t be afraid to take some career risks, especially early on. Most people pick their career fairly randomly—really think hard about what you like, what fields are going to be successful, and try to talk to people in those fields
If you’re young, do yourself a favor and read this piece.
Now let’s go to Paul Graham, co founder of YCombinator (An early stage VC firm whose portfolio companies have a combined value of more than $1 Trillion) for some advice. As far as I am concerned, he is one of the smartest people on this planet, and his essays are a gold mine for any curious mind.
Paul tells us,
It was not till I was in college that the idea of work finally broke free from the idea of making a living. Then the important question became not how to make money, but what to work on. Ideally these coincided, but some spectacular boundary cases (like Einstein in the patent office) proved they weren't identical.
It is not so that making money and doing what you love are orthogonal to each other. Look at any entrepreneur, they did what they wanted to do i.e. build something of value to the world and earned enormous profits out of it. People think that when people do what they love, the only payback is some metaphysical sort of satisfaction. Tell that to Patrick Collison, who just wanted to better the payments infrastructure of the internet. In this pursuit, he ended up co founding Stripe, the payments company; and is now sitting on top of more than $8 Billion of personal fortune. It is a cliché, but in order for you to do something extremely well, you will have to like it. PG elaborates on this here.
To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." Do what you love doesn't mean, do what you would like to do most this second. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn't mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month. To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool. I think the best test is one Gino Lee taught me: to try to do things that would make your friends say wow.
The real test, PG says, is if one would the same work without being paid. The point of this question is to clarify is whether what you’re doing is because you want to do it, or whether it is only because you are getting paid to do it. Because if only money is the incentive, chances are, you’ll probably never do a great job at it. Because you’re not doing it for the sake of just the activity.
These bits above were taken from How to do what you love by Paul Graham. It is the best possible guide on how to choose what to do. If you’re young, please read the whole article.
Ask and ye shall find
So, now that you’re somewhat convinced that it is important to ask yourself what you want to work on, how do you actually decide what you should work on? In order to frame an answer to that question, consider some of the following factors4:
Find the intersection of what you’re good at, what you enjoy, and where you can create value for the world.
Do what you’d do even if you weren’t paid to do it.
Find the problems your skill set suits best, and then find the most important problem that you want to work on. Or, you can go backwards. Choose the most important problem you want to work for, and then develop and acquire suitable skill sets. (One way to choose the problem you want to work on is to ask yourself ‘If I had no constraints whatsoever, what do I do with my Life?’)
Find something at the periphery of of something that pays you decently, something you think is bloody cool to work on, gives you a sense of adding value to the world at large, occupies your mind even after you've left actively working on it, makes you want to talk about it to your friends and family, you believe is an important problem that if solved in any measure whatsoever will propel the world forward etc.
A few additional reflections:
Don’t do anything only because it offers you status (Because the cost of acquiring the status will be the time and energy that you could otherwise put into doing things that you actually like, and care for)
There is often a trade off between earning more money and doing what you love, but not necessarily. In fact, at the margin - the most money is earned while doing what you love.
Your ideas about what you want to work on will probably keep changing (at least at micro level if not macro). Don’t let that scare you. Know that as long as you have some idea of what you want to do - you’re in the right direction.
I’ll leave you with this excerpt from one of PG’s pieces.
It's hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. So don't underestimate this task. And don't feel bad if you haven't succeeded yet. In fact, if you admit to yourself that you're discontented, you're a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If you're surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find contemptible, odds are they're lying to themselves. Not necessarily, but probably.
If the only thing you take from this post is the awareness that you need to find out what you want to work on, that’s enough. Finding the answer is a process. What is important is for us to start on this journey.
Sam Altman is currently the CEO of OpenAI - the same institute that recently launched ChatGPT - the AI chatbot that has impressed everyone. He is a entrepreneur, investor, programmer and has served as a president of YCombinator (An early stage VC firm whose portfolio companies have a combined value of more than $1 Trillion).
It can also be argued that because of lack of information one has while entering college, even the best informed decisions are very likely to change through college. Because the experience of studying in a college is so fundamentally different and perspective altering that, the new quantum of information gained is significant and may substantially alter the choices made by any student as to what they aim to do in life.
There’s actually a lot more literature than I have cited here. Most prominently, the massive(ly popular) post by Tim Urban titled ‘How to pick a career (that actually fits you)’.
Quite idealistic. Haha, I get where you're coming from. And I agree with it too. This is how I would also want to take decisions.
But there's a certain presumption of ambition here. What about people who are not as ambitious? What about people who want a quiet life? Whose basis of existence isn't the delta of utility? I'm not looking to add value to wherever I go, for example. What then?