Paul Graham
Wrote the essays that built the startups
Personal Growth
Graham sold a company to Yahoo, co-founded Y Combinator, and has been writing essays about work, ambition and thinking clearly since long before either. He revises obsessively and it shows: the sentences are plain, the arguments are load-bearing, and a surprising number of the ideas Silicon Valley repeats came from one of these pages first.
Read when you cannot decide what is worth working on
- 01
The way to figure out what to work on is by working.
How to Do Great Work · 2023
- 02
You can't write or program well in units of an hour.
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule · 2009
- 03
A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake.
Schlep Blindness · 2012
- 04
The more willful you are, the more disciplined you have to be.
The Anatomy of Determination · 2009
- 05
The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
Keep Your Identity Small · 2009
- 06
The discoveries are out there, waiting to be made. Why not by you?
How to Do Great Work · 2023
- 07
The best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.
Keep Your Identity Small · 2009
- 08
If you're not failing occasionally, you're probably being too conservative.
How to Do Great Work · 2023
- 09
The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive.
How to Do Great Work · 2023
- 10
Always be learning. If you're not learning, you're probably not on a path that leads to superlinear returns.
Superlinear Returns · 2023
- 11
The cost of an interruption is not just the time it takes, but that it breaks the time on either side in half.
Good and Bad Procrastination · 2005
- 12
There are things founders can do that managers can't, and not doing them feels wrong to founders, because it is.
Founder Mode · 2024
- 13
A genuine interest in something is a very powerful motivator — for some people, the most powerful motivator of all.
Earnestness · 2020
- 14
Ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule · 2009
- 15
To be hapless is to be battered by circumstances — to let the world have its way with you, instead of having your way with the world.
Relentlessly Resourceful · 2009
