Paul Graham：How to Do Great Work, Excerpt 5

The best questions grow in the answering. You notice a thread protruding from the current paradigm and try pulling on it, and it just gets longer and longer. So don't require a question to be obviously big before you try answering it. You can rarely predict that. It's hard enough even to notice the thread, let alone to predict how much will unravel if you pull on it. It's better to be promiscuously curious — to pull a little bit on a lot of threads, and see what happens. Big things start small. The initial versions of big things were often just experiments, or side projects, or talks, which then grew into something bigger. So start lots of small things. Being prolific is underrated. The more different things you try, the greater the chance of discovering something new.

Source： https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html
Locator：Essay, additional excerpt 5 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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