[trombonechamp]

Maybe a nitpick, but Aaron Swartz was probably quoting Richard Hamming:

And I started asking, "What are the important problems of your field?" And after a week or so, "What important problems are you working on?" And after some more time I came in one day and said, "If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?" ... If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work.

It is the main idea behind his lecture/essay "You and your Research", which is worth reading: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.pdf or watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw

[gitgud]

Wow you're probably right, I wasn't aware of that paper/talk. I wish discovered this earlier in my career, but I suppose it's not too late for me to work on important problems.