Going deeper (for ages 14-18)

Paul Graham has a line that's worth memorizing: "The best startups come from founders who looked at something that already existed in the world and noticed how badly it worked."

It is not a quote about innovation. It is a quote about attention.

Most adults stop noticing the broken thing they see every day. The brain optimizes attention by filtering out the familiar. The founder is the person who somehow still notices on day 100 that the thing is broken, when everyone around them is already numb to it.

You are practicing un-numbing. Sit with the person you live with. Notice that the small frictions they accept every day are actual problems they would pay to remove.

If you want to go further, read Paul Graham's essay "How to Get Startup Ideas" at paulgraham.com/startupideas.html. Free. About 25 minutes. The sections on "live in the future" and "schlep blindness" are the most useful for what you're doing right now.