Recently a friend told me to be practical. Upon thinking about it, why he said so was obvious.
Practicality boils down to whether the laws of physics allow it, and does the person has the ability to achieve it with the resources obtainable. If the laws of physics allow it, the only thing that's stopping you is your will. How far are you willing to go to make it work. You can make it work if your 'why' is strong enough. Paul Graham has a word for when the motives are right: earnestness. It means you're doing something for the right reasons and trying as hard as you can.
Many founders are faking it. One is in it for the wealth and fame. The other is genuinely interested in the thing they are doing. That interest is what Graham calls the root of earnestness.
Graham writes:
If you imagine motives as vectors, earnestness means both the direction and the magnitude are right.
...
"The reason motives matter so much in Silicon Valley is that so many people there have the wrong ones. Starting a successful startup makes you rich and famous. So a lot of the people trying to start them are doing it for those reasons. Instead of what? Instead of interest in the problem for its own sake. That is the root of earnestness."
You can see this everywhere if you look.
Elon Musk cared deeply about space travel not advancing fast enough. He built SpaceX. He cared about accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy. So he backed Tesla early, took over it, and pushed it to where it is now. He went to the absolute edge to make these companies survive because he cared about the problems they were solving. He once said "When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor."
It is the opposite of being practical.
If Musk had been practical, SpaceX would never have started. We would not have reusable rockets. We would not have Teslas on the road. Steve Jobs put it differently. You have to be passionate about what you're doing, because it's so hard that any rational person would quit otherwise. Being purely practical is being that rational person.
I can see this in my personal life as well.
When I got selected to my university, I saw that there was no active tech community for students. Even the IEEE Student Branch was dead. I was a freshman who didn't know anything about how the university worked. All I had was this passion to be with my people. People who love technology. That led to starting a cross university society. Which attracted earnest people. Then we rebuilt the IEEE Student Branch from nothing to over 2000 members. Now it is the biggest and most active tech community in the entire university.
Most of the students who joined just to put it on their resume didn't make it through. They left when things got hard. Because they were never in it for the problem itself.
That's the thing about earnestness. When you care about the problem for its own sake, and when you work on it, you attract others who care too. And that's when miracles happen. When you're only in it for the credentials, money or fame, you attract people who are also only in it for the money or fame. And Those people leave when things get hard. Or fuck you up.
This pattern isn't just personal. It's structural.
The problem I see in Sri Lanka is that there are too many practical businessmen and not enough founders who tackle problems they care about. The reason is that most people here don't have the financial or cultural freedom to fail. So "be practical" isn't bad advice. But it means that people will not take on problems that might take years to solve, which may have big risks, but bigger rewards. That's why it becomes increasingly important that you go to an environment that supports that. That you go find your people. Paul Graham writes about how environment influences ambition in Cities and Ambition.
So if you ever get called to be practical for what you care about, you may be on the right path, but in the wrong place talking with the wrong people. If you care about something deep enough, you should do it. Even if the odds are against you. Be a little crazy for what you are passionate about.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Geethika Isuru | 01 June 2026
Thanks to Paul Graham for writing the "Earnestness" & "Cities & Ambition" essays.