There is the original link of essay - http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html.
What you want to do with your life.
My first priority was to learn what the options were.
What you need to do is discover what you like. You have to work on stuff you like if you want to be good at what you do.
It (Don’t give up on your dreams) implies you’re supposed to be bound by some play you made early on.
What someone else with your ability can do, you can do; and don’t underestimate your abilities.
Look at the options available now, and choose those that will give you the most promising range of options afterward.
It’s not so important what you work on, so long as you’re not wasting your time.
Look for smart people and hard problems.
The best protection is always to be working on hard problems.
Hard means worry: if you’re not worrying that something you’re making will com out badly, or that you won’t be able to understand something you’re studying, then it isn’t hard enough.
You can’t get anything done if you’re always asking why about everything.
In ambitious adults, instead of drying up, curiosity becomes narrow and deep.
If you want to do good work, what you need is great curiosity about a promising question.
Find a question that makes the world interesting.
People who do great things look at that same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that’s compellingly mysterious.
The way to get a big idea to appear in your head is not to hunt for big ideas, but to put in a lot of time on work that interests your, and in the process keep your mind open enough.
Do something hard enough to stretch your.
The most important thing is to be excited about it, because it’s by doing that you learn.
Your life doesn’t have to be shaped by admissions officers. It could be shaped by your own curiosity.
They key to wasting time is distraction.