Paul Graham: “The Top Idea in Your Mind”
I recently realized that I underestimated the importance of what people think about in the shower in the morning. I knew before that great ideas often came to my mind at this time. Now I will say more: you are unlikely to be able to do something truly outstanding if you do not think about it in your soul.Probably everyone who worked on complex problems is familiar with this phenomenon: you make every effort to figure it out, fail, start doing something else - and suddenly you see a solution. These are thoughts that come to mind when you are not trying to think purposefully. I am more and more confident that to solve difficult problems this way of thinking is not only useful, but necessary. The problem is that in doing so, you can only indirectly control your thought process. [1]I think most people have one main idea in their head at any time. This is what a person begins to think about if he allows his thoughts to flow freely. And this main idea, as a rule, gets all the benefits of the type of thinking that I wrote about above. So, if you allowed an inappropriate idea to become the main one, it will turn into a natural disaster.I realized this after an idea that I would not want to see there twice seized my head for a long time.I noticed that startups manage to do much less if they start looking for money, but I managed to understand why this happens only after we found them ourselves. The problem is not the time spent on meetings with investors. The problem is that as soon as you start attracting investments, attracting investments becomes your main idea. And you begin to think about it in the shower in the morning. So, you stop thinking about other things.I hated looking for investors when I ran Viaweb, but forgot why I hated doing so. When we were looking for money for Y Combinator, I remembered why. Money issues are very likely to become your main idea. Just because they have to become her. Finding an investor is not easy. This is not a thing that happens by itself. There will be no investment until you allow them to become the thing that you think about in your soul. And after that, you will almost cease to advance in all other matters that you are working on. [2](I heard similar complaints from my fellow professors. Today, professors seem to have turned into professional fundraisers who, in addition to finding money, do a little research. Maybe it's time to fix it.)It struck me so much that over the next ten years I was able to think only about what I wanted. The difference between this time and when I could not do this was great. But I don’t think that this problem is relevant only for me, because almost every startup I have seen slows down in its development when it starts looking for investments or negotiations about takeover.You cannot directly control the free flow of your thoughts. If you control them, they are not free. But you can manage them indirectly, controlling what situations you allow yourself to fall into. This was a lesson for me: watch carefully what you allow to become important for you. Drive yourself into situations in which the most urgent problem is the one you want to think about.Of course, you cannot fully control this. Any emergency will knock out all other thoughts from your head. But, fighting emergency situations, you have a good opportunity to indirectly influence what ideas become central in your mind.I found that there are two types of thoughts that should be avoided the most: thoughts that crowd out interesting ideas, like the Nile perch, of other fish from a pond. The first type I mentioned: these are thoughts about money. Receiving money by definition attracts all the attention. Another type is thoughts about argumentation in disputes. They can also captivate, because they skillfully disguise themselves as really interesting ideas. But there is no real content in them! Therefore, avoid disputes if you want to be able to do real things. [3]Even Newton fell into this trap. After the publication of his color theory in 1672, he plunged into fruitless discussion for years, and ultimately decided to stop publishing:I realized that I had become a slave to Philosophy, but if I free myself from the need to answer Mr. Linus and allow him to oppose me, I will be forced to forever break with Philosophy, with the exception of that part of which I am engaged for my own satisfaction. Since I believe that a person should either decide not to express any new thoughts in public, or unwittingly stand up for their protection. [4]
Linus and his students in Liege were among his most stubborn critics. According to Westfall, Newton’s biographer, he responds to criticism too emotionally:by the time Newton wrote these lines, his “slavery” consisted of writing five letters to Liege, with a total volume of 14 pages, throughout the year.
But I understand Newton well. The problem was not in 14 pages, but in the fact that this stupid argument all the time did not go out of his head, which so wanted to think about other things.It turns out that the tactics of “turn the other cheek” have their own advantages. The one who insults you does double harm: firstly, he actually insults you, and secondly, it takes away your time that you spend thinking about it. If you learn to ignore insults, you can avoid at least the second part. I realized that I could, to some extent, not think about the unpleasant things that people do to me, saying to myself: this does not deserve a place in my head. I am always happy to find that I forgot the details of the disputes - this means that I did not think about them. My wife thinks that I am more generous than she is, but in fact my motives are purely selfish.I suspect many people are not sure exactly what the main idea now owns their head. I myself am often mistaken about this. Often I take for the main idea the one that I would like to see the main, and not the one that is in reality. In fact, the main idea is easy to figure out: just take a shower. What topic do your thoughts return to all the time? If this is not what you would like to think about, you might want to change something.Notes
[1] Sure, there is already a name for this type of thinking, but I prefer to call it "natural thinking."[2] This was especially noticeable in our case, because we quite easily received funds from two investors, but the process lasted for months with both. Moving large sums of money is never something that people are careless about. The need to pay attention to this increases with an increase in the amount; this function may not be linear, but, of course, monotonous.[3] Conclusion: do not become an administrator, otherwise your work will consist of resolving monetary issues and disputes.[4] Letters to Oldenburg, cited by Westfall, Richard, Life of Isaac Newton, p. 107.First published here Egor Zaikin and saved me from oblivion from the web archive.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/undefined/
All Articles