Is this important?
Figuring out what to work on in life
I was initially going to write about problems and/or spaces that I think are important. I was then going to go on about all the solutions we should have for them, and why one of these problems may be what I should work on. Half way through I realised I was bs’ing myself, so that won’t be happening.
I’m reflecting on this question again because I have found myself back at the beginning. After pursuing for a year what I still believe to be an important problem, I ultimately failed. Naturally, I wanted to pursue another important problem and so started exploring other ideas, one of them being Charter Cities and another X (I would rather not share what this is as I am still working on this, and want to avoid the feeling of fake accomplishment).
When exploring X, I interrogated the life out of it. “Is this important?” I would ask myself several times a day, oftentimes spending hours trying to find a conclusive answer. When exploring Charter Cities, however, it never even crossed my mind to ask “Is this Important?” because it seemed so obviously important.
After discussing this out loud with a friend, it became clear that both were important, with X arguably being even more important. The difference came down to glamour, to put it crudely. One is a city, the other is essentially a developer tool.
I understand now that absence of glamour does not mean absence of importance. If something is important, and will lead to more important things (as Richard Hamming says) then it remains important. However, that does not make it glamorous and I should not confuse the two.
Does this mean that I should optimise purely for importance, independent of glamour? I don’t know. That’s probably the lesson I would take away from this if this were a Pixar movie, but alas it is not. The real question is “Is importance alone enough to keep me motivated?”. Fortunately, and unfortunately for me, I will get my answer soon enough.
** On a separate note I’m not sure how correlated importance and glamour are in problems, and I would be curious to find out (if you have data on this feel free to send it my way).
I've actually always thought about things, too, and it'll be nice to hear people's thoughts. I know there are important problems and there are interesting/exciting problems. However, I'm always trying to find problems that are both interesting and important to work on because an important problem might necessarily be interesting. I might get bored along the way.
I've heard other people say that it's better to optimize for importance because when those types of problems are solved, they help a larger number of people. Still, I think the person who set's out to solve the problems should always ask what they want to achieve personally since working on interesting/exiting problems or important problems both have their own tradeoffs.
I've been working on next generation Special Economic Zones (essentially Charter Cities) for 20 years. It is a long slog, and because so much depends on progress with governments, I often focus on other things while getting to the next stage. But it is definitely extremely important, which is why I've stayed involved for the long haul.