> I'm not sure how this logic works. If you have low-hanging fruit, you don't need genius-quality work. One of the things that got me thinking about this origi

> I'm not sure how this logic works. If you have low-hanging fruit, you don't need genius-quality work. One of the things that got me thinking about this originally was reading that there were massive improvements in safety and efficiency in surgery when they started adopting processes and checklists from engineering. Whoever adopted, tested, and perfected that made a genius quality contribution to medicine, but it was (relatively) low hanging fruit. I think it's more possible to make that sort of high impact, important contribution now than ever before. > But then again, I'm skeptical of anyone that claims that genius is easy. I wrote - "But honestly, I don’t think it’s very hard to do genius-quality work, if you decide to try. Most people don’t try. But if you did try, I think you could do some." So I wouldn't say it's easy, but I don't think it's so hard either. My feeling is that almost anyone could produce some really important works if they decided to try. How many people are trying, really? Everyone I know that's trying to do really important stuff is generally doing really important stuff. > Plus, I do believe that there's more to it than hard work. Anyone can work hard, and I know plenty of hard workers who definitely don't do genius quality work. But are they specifically trying to make large, permanent impacts on important fields? Repeatedly, persistently trying? Putting in hard work in boring, safe areas is unlikely to produce genius quality work. But looking at really hard problems or not-yet-done things and trying to do them? I think if you keep trying, you're likely to produce something of significant value. Or maybe I'm mistaken, I don't know. But I generally see people who plant a flag and say, "I will try to do things that are massively important" - those people I see eventually making breakthroughs and contributions. I think a lot of people just don't plant that flag.