#276 Paul Graham’s Essays Part 2

There are some kinds of work that you can't do well without thinking differently from your peers. Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. You see this pattern with startup owners. You don't want to start a startup to do something that everyone agrees is a good idea. Or there will already be other companies doing it.

You have to do something that sounds to most other people like a bad idea. But that you know isn't. Like writing software for a tiny computer used by a few thousand hobbyists, or starting a site to let people rent airbeds on strangers' floors. He's referencing Microsoft and Airbnb there. Do you want to do the kind of work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else?

Independent mindedness seems to be more a matter of nature than nurture. Which means if you pick the wrong type of work. You're going to be unhappy. If you're naturally independent minded, you're going to find it frustrating to be a middle manager. And if you're naturally conventional minded, you're going to be sailing into a headwind.

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