What Should You Work On?

David Perell on the most consequential question most ambitious people get wrong: what to work on. He argues the default modern answer — find your passion, pick a niche, optimise for credibility — produces narrower lives than its promoters claim. His alternative is a more idiosyncratic search: triangulate between what you're irrationally interested in, what the market actually values, and what's only obvious to you because of your specific history. The piece is short, dense with examples, and built around the idea that the best work usually sits in the gap between consensus and personal obsession.