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execution is necessary for success, but direction is what sets apart merely impressive and truly great accomplishment. though being better at execution can make you better at direction, because it enables you to work on directions that others discard as impossible.
Thomas Kwa's Effectiveness is a Conjunction of Multipliers seems relevant. He factors multipliers into judgment (sort of maps to your 'direction', or research taste I guess), ambition (which counts hard work as a driver), and risk appetite. Some domains seem to reward hard work superlinearly, probably worth looking out for those. You shouldn't skip leg day because you'd miss out on multipliers (that phrase came from SBF of all people). Also finding multipliers is hard and information-gathering is particularly valuable when it helps you find a multiplier an... (read more)
I usually think of execution as compute and direction as discernment. Compute = ability to work through specific directions effectively, discernment = ability to decide which of two directions is more promising. Probably success is upper-bounded by the product of the two, in a sufficiently informal way.
25ryan_greenblatt
execution also lets you try directions out faster to get some signal