What is the type of work that you should be focusing on?
The work you choose needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that offers scope to do great work.
How to do great work?
Stay in action. Learn about a bunch of different things.
The way to figure out what to work on is by working. If you're not sure what to work on, guess. But pick something and get going. You'll probably guess wrong some of the time, but that's fine. It's good to know about multiple things; some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields.
"Cast a wide net". Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions.
Along with the above of exploring different things, that doesn't mean that different things are equal.
Don't divide your attention evenly between many topics though, or you'll spread yourself too thin. You want to distribute it according to something more like a power law. Be professionally curious about a few topics and idly curious about many more.
Originality in choosing problems seems to matter even more than originality in solving them. That's what distinguishes the people who discover whole new fields. So what might seem to be merely the initial step — deciding what to work on — is in a sense the key to the whole game.
Doing great work is a depth-first search whose root node is the desire to. So "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" isn't quite right. It should be: If at first you don't succeed, either try again, or backtrack and then try again. Corollary: Never abandon the root node.
How to approach great work?
In some ways it's easier to try to be the best than to try merely to be good.
Competition can be an effective motivator, but don't let it choose the problem for you; don't let yourself get drawn into chasing something just because others are. In fact, don't let competitors make you do anything much more specific than work harder.
Boldly chase outlier ideas
Ambition comes in two forms, one that precedes interest in the subject and one that grows out of it.
It's not a defect in your character that it may be hard to get started. People have different activation energies, BUT there is always an activation energy required. Never back down.
Don't worry about this... Work has a sort of activation energy, both per day and per project. It's usually a mistake to lie to yourself if you want to do great work, but this is one of the rare cases where it isn't. When I'm reluctant to start work in the morning, I often trick myself by saying "I'll just read over what I've got so far." Five minutes later I've found something that seems mistaken or incomplete, and I'm off.
This is one case where the young have an advantage. They're more optimistic, and even though one of the sources of their optimism is ignorance, in this case ignorance can sometimes beat knowledge.
Miscellaneous quotes that are loved.
Knowledge expands fractally, and from a distance its edges look smooth, but once you learn enough to get close to one, they turn out to be full of gaps.
The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive. Sometimes they converge, and that combination is the most powerful of all. But always preserve excitingness.
