>> Fiddly puttering with something that fascinates you is the source of most genuine productivity. (Anything from hardware tinkering, to messing about with cost spreadsheets until you find an efficiency, to writing poetry until it “comes out right”.) Sometimes the best work of this kind doesn’t look grandiose or prestigious at the time you’re doing it.
Hmm, I use to spend quite a bit of time fiddling with assembly language implementations of encryption code to try to squeeze out a few more percent of speed. Pretty sure that is not as productive as more “grandiose” or “prestigious” activities like thinking about philosophy or AI safety, at least for me… I think overall I’m more afraid that someone who could be doing productive “grandiose” work chooses not to in favor of “fiddly puttering”, than the reverse.
suggests really valuable contributions are more bottlenecked on obsession rather than being good at directing attention in a “valuable” direction
For example, for the very ambitious, the bus ticket theory suggests that the way to do great work is to relax a little. Instead of gritting your teeth and diligently pursuing what all your peers agree is the most promising line of research, maybe you should try doing something just for fun. And if you’re stuck, that may be the vector along which to break out.
I suspect this might be a subtler point?
http://paulgraham.com/genius.html
suggests really valuable contributions are more bottlenecked on obsession rather than being good at directing attention in a “valuable” direction