
The Top Idea in Your Mind (2010) - hyperpallium
http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html
======
zuhayeer
"Everyone who's worked on difficult problems is probably familiar with the
phenomenon of working hard to figure something out, failing, and then suddenly
seeing the answer a bit later while doing something else"

Uncanny how much this happens, I'll be playing Smash or eating cereal when I
have sudden moments of clarity on problems I've been at for days

~~~
amelius
Yes it makes me wonder if there's another consciousness in my brain, with its
own thoughts and feelings.

~~~
Infinitesimus
The most compelling reasons I've seen all come back to the Default Mode
Network (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network)
).

I'm no neuroscientist but I think there's a lot to uncover about how that
influences our creativity and maybe that can influence how we design
intelligent systems down the line.

------
coder1001
"I've found there are two types of thoughts especially worth avoiding...

One I've already mentioned: thoughts about money.

The other is disputes. So avoid disputes if you want to get real work done."

~~~
baxtr
_“[3] Corollary: Avoid becoming an administrator, or your job will consist of
dealing with money and disputes._ “

~~~
nickthemagicman
Is that why lawyers do so well? They just get paid to handle this stuff?

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knzhou
This essay really gets better with age. When I first read it I was a kid who
thought the advice was pointless -- I already spent all my time thinking about
physics problems, what else was there to do? But focus on the good stuff got
harder with age.

~~~
baxtr
Absolutely. For me it’s because of two reasons. When you’re young, you feel
like you have unlimited time. When you’re old you know that's not so true
anymore. Also, when you’re young you have much more time at your disposal. The
older you get, the more your job and your family will take a toll on your
time, until you realize one day that the only time you have for yourself is
when you take a shower.

~~~
iamwil
sometimes not even.

------
harish_yadav
This where I would like people to consider the Psychological concepts of
Focussed Mind and Diffused mode of thinking. Barbara Oakley's course on
Coursera named, "Learning how to learn" talks a lot about it. It is an
interesting read and would totally recommend it.

So a parallel to the Top Idea in your mind would be a diffused mode of
thinking stuck on a single problem. The course touches a lot on this.

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ege_erdogan
An addition to money and disputes could be 'things beyond your control.' If
something is bothering your mind, yet there is nothing nothing you can, or
will be able to, do about it, then there is no reason to bother with it.

------
gridspy
I'm really suffering from Covid on the brain lately. I have had to just stop
reading about global news beyond a skim. Stay safe out there!

~~~
fierarul
Just do what everybody else does: try to make Covid charts, or Python models
or whatever. Seems to me half the people I follow are somehow coding something
related to Covid. I'm updating
[http://covid.410go.net/](http://covid.410go.net/) mostly for myself because I
want to track the current dimension of Covid (ie. infectious people, not total
cases) and at least it's been an interesting exercise in dealing with the
somewhat messy data Johns Hopkins kindly provides.

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bassdigit
"So avoid disputes if you want to get real work done."

There is an exception: When a dispute forces you to view a topic from a
different angle, like in rubber duck debugging.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging)

------
gumby
The phrase is "top of mind"

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presiozo
It would appear that this applies to politicians pretty much all the time.

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monkin
I like PG for his personal brand building skills he is like Trump[1], but on
smaller scale. He can write about anything, and people will call it gold which
opens up gigantic possibilities. It's true master level, not like junior PR
copycats from Medium trying to make noise with rewritten articles.

[1] Yes, Trump! You can dislike him as much as you want, but his personal
brand building is also on master level.

~~~
tabtab
PG doesn't brag incessantly. Both produce a large stream of consciousness that
may have nice tidbits and sayings. But the real test is to see if such ideas
can be turned into a consistent algorithm or formulas that one can test via
historical scenarios or in practice. Just because you have a cool-sounding
idea doesn't mean it will usually fly in practice.

T has made some interesting claims about success in business, but they
conflict with works such as Dale Carnegie's classic HTWFAIP, which better
matches life as I have observed it. But some trolls and demagogues do gain
success as counted in money and power. There is more to one strategy in life,
but HTWFAIP is probably easier for the average person to use effectively.
Plus, trolls and demagogues tend to generate new regulations that prevent
later T&D's from pulling the same tricks. There's kind of a first-mover-
advantage to jerk-hood, like people selling Purell at huge markups.

------
0xCMP
There’s an https error. Here is the archive
[https://archive.is/NgXhA](https://archive.is/NgXhA)

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hypertexthero
This is one reason why we need a universal basic income for all human beings.
See also:
[https://www.economicsecurityproject.org/guaranteedincome/](https://www.economicsecurityproject.org/guaranteedincome/)

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martijn_himself
PG's best writings are the ones where he writes about what he knows. He
obviously knows a lot about ideas, how to execute on them, raising money,
disputes that come with it. This is a very good example.

It's when he writes about things he doesn't know much about that his essays
become incoherent and confused.

~~~
amelius
That's not why. From now on PG should only write about things he thought about
in the shower.

~~~
teapourer
Brilliant.

~~~
grabbalacious
Or bath. Douglas Adams endorsed baths for such purposes!

I'm just glad PG is writing them. I don't mind if they're not always in his
sphere. That's the point of essays: to try to sort out our thinking in new
areas (from the French word _essayer_ ).

------
bonjourmr
No https PG?

