“Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren’t sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.”
John Carmack
Carmack is pushing back against the notion that success comes from having the right idea or the perfect plan up front. Instead, he’s saying it comes from sustained, disciplined effort—showing up, staying focused, and making steady progress. This aligns with his well-documented work ethic; he has spoken publicly about maintaining roughly 60-hour work weeks throughout his career, emphasizing long stretches of uninterrupted focus.
The last line—“do it both ways and see which works better”—is particularly characteristic of Carmack’s engineering mindset. Rather than spending time debating the theoretically correct approach, he advocates for just building both options and letting the results speak for themselves. This is a practical, empirical approach: don’t get stuck deliberating when you could be testing.
In short, the quote is Carmack distilling his philosophy into a few sentences: grand visions matter less than consistent effort, and when in doubt, experiment rather than theorize. It’s advice rooted in decades of building things that actually shipped.
Re: Definitions of terms (Primary source)
A Slashdot comment by John Carmack arguing that coming up with a game concept is the easy part—the real value in game design comes from the hands-on process of building and testing.
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“The modern age has richly rewarded people with a combination of high intelligence and high agency. Now that many aspects of intelligence are successfully being automated, it seems likely that people with relatively lower intelligence but exceptional agency will come into their own if they are willing to egolessly accept AI advice.”
— John Carmack Primary source“It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source“The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte Disputed“I think that to keep trying new solutions is the way to do everything.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“If a man has failed, you will find he has dreamed instead of working. There is no way to success in our art, but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary sourceFocus Work Goals Progress Success