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<title>Paul Graham Essay Summaries</title>
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<div class="page-header"><h1>Schlep Blindness</h1></div>
<p>Schlep was originally a Yiddish word but has passed into general use in the US. It means a tedious, unpleasant task.</p>
<p>No one likes schleps, but hackers especially dislike them.</p>
<p>Schleps should be dealt with the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in. Which is not to say you should seek out unpleasant work per se, but that you should never shrink from it if it's on the path to something great.</p>
<p>The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious. Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps. That's schlep blindness.</p>
<p>The phenomenon isn't limited to startups. Most people don't consciously decide not to be in as good physical shape as Olympic athletes, for example. Their unconscious mind decides for them, shrinking from the work involved.</p>
<p>The most striking example I know of schlep blindness is Stripe. Everyone knew that payment processing was a problem, but no one wanted to go through the schlep of solving it (dealing with banks, fraud, security, regulations…). Stripe did, and made a lot of money from doing so.</p>
<p>How do you overcome schlep blindness? Frankly, the most valuable antidote to schlep blindness is probably ignorance. Most successful founders would probably say that if they'd known when they were starting their company about the obstacles they'd have to overcome, they might never have started it.</p>
<p>Ignorance can't solve everything though. The trick I recommend is to take yourself out of the picture. Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?”.</p>
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