Overview
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The Implicit Trade-off: The question of following your passion always implies choosing between interest and income. People pay you for what they want, not what you want, unless both align.
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Strange Tastes Pay Well: Success comes easier when you love something lucrative that few others enjoy. Bill Gates loved running a software company for customers—a rare taste that paid extraordinarily well.
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The Midwit Peak: If you don't need much money, follow your interests. If you want moderate wealth, you usually can't afford to. But for extreme wealth through startups, working on what interests you becomes optimal again—Apple, Google, and Facebook all started as fun projects.
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Ignorance Creates False Ties: When you can't choose between passion and money, it's not a balanced decision—you simply lack knowledge about what makes you happy, what work is really like, and how well you'd perform.
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Reduce Uncertainty Through Action: Start working on interesting things immediately to learn more about yourself. Don't wait for college to end or internships to begin.
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Stay Upwind: When uncertain, choose options that preserve future flexibility. Math is upwind of economics because switching from math to economics is easier than the reverse.
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Great Work Requires Interest: If you want to do great work, you must work on what interests you most. Ambitious curiosity cannot be manufactured.
Takeaways
Paul Graham wrote this essay in September 2024. The key insight is that extreme wealth and great work both require following your interests, while moderate wealth typically doesn't allow for it.
The root of great work is a sort of ambitious curiosity, and you can't manufacture that.