Rohan Rajiv talking about the difference between hard and valuable problems.
[…] there’s very little correlation between a problem being difficult and a problem being valuable.
It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming the two travel together. If something is taking all our effort and ingenuity, surely it must matter — and we take the struggle itself as proof we’re doing important work.
But difficulty and value sit on separate axes. Plenty of brutally hard problems are worth little once solved. And some of the most valuable ones are relatively simple — but executing them well is worth a lot.