Paul Graham: Fashionable Problems

I observe the same pattern in many different areas: despite the fact that many people worked hard in their field, only a small part of the space of possibilities was explored because they all worked on the same things.

Even the smartest, most inventive people are surprisingly conservative when they decide what to work on. People who have never dreamed of being a pop singer are somehow involved in working on pop (fashion) tasks.

If you want to try working on non-teaching tasks, one of the best places to search is in areas that, according to people, have already been fully studied: essay writing, Lisp, venture capital investments - you can find a general pattern here. If you can find a new approach in a large but long plowed field, the value of what you discover will be multiplied by its huge surface area.

The best defense against getting involved in pop music can be a sincere love for what you do. Then you will continue to work on it, even if you make the same mistake as the others, but do not attach importance to it.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/undefined/