Newsletter #4: an obsessive interest in a topic you consider impactful
6 minutes reading time.
Hey there,
The last newsletter talked about the importance of execution. Today, I want to address the concept of working on something that matters.
We tend to think that the ingredients of greatness are hard work + luck. What if there is a third ingredient that is not as obvious as the other two: an obsessive interest in a topic you consider impactful.
To explain that I would like to use Hamming's famous double-barreled question:
"What are the most important problems in your field, and why aren't you working on one of them?"
Unfortunately, it's quite rare for most people to slow down, stop and reflect on what they are doing for a living. Yet, we can't deny that life is short, we need to ask ourselves whether we want to work on mediocre challenges or want to seek the biggest problems out there and give our best to solve them.
When I read Hamming's question for the first time, I was definitely a tad shaken. Am I really working on the biggest challenges in my field and if not what I can do to get there?
That chain of thoughts made me wonder if that thinking applies to everyone. Do people really care about working on big, impactful projects or what you do for a living is secondary to other activities in one's life? This brings me to the concept of missionaries VS mercenaries. Whereas mercenaries are described as opportunistic, short term payoff focused while missionaries are strategic, thinking of their job as a marathon, not a sprint.
My opinion here is that we are all missionaries, as we all want to do first-class work on something that matters. But we often feel that our circumstances have forced us to join projects that are not intrinsically rewarding, thus becoming mercenaries overtime to compensate for the lack of meaning in what we do.
Next time you are embarking on a new project/job/degree I want to encourage you to find a field you consider impactful. Take the missionary approach, you will face less resistance as you will be genuinely interested in the work. Then you will discover that depth is a by-product of interest. And with depth and interest, you will end up being great in what you do.
Articles worth reading:
The Best Entrepreneurs Are Missionaries, Not Mercenaries - the most important trait, Doerr argues, the critical distinction that separates high-impact entrepreneurs from those who don’t make a big difference, is less about what they do and more about what they believe and how they behave.
This 1 Quote From Kobe Bryant Is All You Need to Know About His Success - Bryant's work ethic is legendary (and that's an understatement). The article builds towards a single and punchy thought "The accomplishments you achieve are an afterthought to the process it takes to get there. The work is the dream."
Standing on the shoulders of giants - Every year, Benedict Evans produces a big presentation digging into macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. This year, ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’ looks at what it means that 4bn people have a smartphone; we connected everyone, and now we wonder what the Next Big Thing is, but meanwhile, connecting everyone means we connected all the problems. Tech is becoming a regulated industry, but we don’t really know what that will mean.
Yuval Noah Harari: How to Survive the 21st Century- Davos 2020 - As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, humanity faces so many issues and questions, that it is really hard to know what to focus on. Three problems pose existential challenges to our species: nuclear war, ecological collapse and technological disruption.
A quote worth mentioning:
Japanese writer Haruki Murakami on kindness and disagreement:
"Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right."
A book recommendation:
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari - In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Definitely my favorite book of 2019, I am planning to read it at least once a year, that's how impactful it was.
Onwards and Upwards!