• 30 Dec 18
  

  You should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it, so they will indeed say, ``Yes, I've stood on so and so's shoulders and I saw further.'' The essence of science is cumulative. By changing a problem slightly you can often do great work rather than merely good work. Instead of attacking isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an isolated problem except as characteristic of a class.
  
  In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don't succeed are: they don't work on important problems, they don't become emotionally involved, they don't try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don't.
  
  when you do choose a path, for heaven's sake be aware of what you have done and the choice you have made. Don't try to do both sides.

• 05 Sep 18
  

  mahler

  ``You and Your Research''
  J. F. Kaiser Bell Communications Research 445 South Street Morristown, NJ 07962-1910 jfk@bellcore.com At a seminar in the Bell Communications Research Colloquia Series, Dr. Richard W.

  Pocket @shapr ifttt twitter

• 06 Jul 17
  

  sandesh

  philosophy productivity advice education great self-help habits Self-Improvement career

• 04 Jun 17
  

  David Harper

  pocket

• 02 Jun 17
  

  turknyt
• 26 Apr 17
  

  lukechen131838
  • the question ``Why do so few scientists make significant  contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?''
  • each of you has one life to live.
  • Why shouldn't you do  significant things in this one life
  • You don't have to tell other  people, but shouldn't you say to yourself, ``Yes, I would like to do something  significant.''
  • Luck favors the  prepared mind

  3 more annotations...

• 21 Dec 16
  

  gingenhagen

  programming social

• 25 Sep 16
  

  Shruti aditya
• 22 Jul 16
  

  Boris Mann

  "If you do not work on important problems, you will not do important work."
  
  #Truth
  #DoImportantWork
  @SOSVvc https://t.co/v9Ab0m3Edt
  – Sean OSullivan (sean_sosv) http://twitter.com/sean_sosv/status/756418484439879680

  via:sean_sosv DoImportantWork Truth

• 17 Jun 16
  

  Andrei Bursuc

  ``You and Your Research'' by Richard Hamming https://t.co/GO8XLCTukq good stuff

• 09 Jun 16
  

  Kei Kreutler
• 14 Apr 16
  

  soukoki

  LeisureTime

• 27 Mar 16
  

  Nick Jankowski

  research academia

• 06 Mar 16
  

  Aaron Johannes
• 19 Jan 16
  

  te1farac
  • Why do so few scientists make significant  contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run
  • From his more than  forty years of experience, thirty of which were at Bell Laboratories, he has  made a number of direct observations, asked very pointed questions of scientists  about what, how, and why they did things, studied the lives of great scientists  and great contributions, and has done introspection and studied theories of  creativity
  • When I came to Bell Labs, I came into a very productive department. Bode was  the department head at the time; Shannon was there, and there were other people.  I continued examining the questions, ``Why?'' and ``What is the difference?'' I  continued subsequently by reading biographies, autobiographies, asking people  questions such as: ``How did you come to do this?'' I tried to find out what are  the differences. And that's what this talk is about.
  • and many people have it including great  scientists, is that usually when they were young they had independent thoughts  and had the courage to pursue them. For example, Einstein, somewhere around 12  or 14, asked himself the question, ``What would a light wave look like if I went  with the velocity of light to look at it?''
  • One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage.
  • Courage is one  of the things that Shannon had supremely. You have only to think of his major  theorem. He wants to create a method of coding, but he doesn't know what to do  so he makes a random code. Then he is stuck. And then he asks the impossible  question, ``What would the average random code do?'' He then proves that the  average code is arbitrarily good, and that therefore there must be at least one  good code. Who but a man of infinite courage could have dared to think those  thoughts?
  • When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did  Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great  scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little  acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right  off.
  • The Institute for Advanced Study  in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any  institution has created,
  • What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound  interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person  who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice  outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you  learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it  is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is  a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person  who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be  tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I  spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and  I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of  my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to  neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question  about this.
  • Darwin writes in his autobiography that he found it necessary to write down  every piece of evidence which appeared to contradict his beliefs because  otherwise they would disappear from his mind.
  • What important  problems are you working on?'
  • In the fall, Dave McCall stopped me in the hall and said, ``Hamming, that  remark of yours got underneath my skin. I thought about it all summer, i.e. what  were the important problems in my field. I haven't changed my research,'' he  says, ``but I think it was well worthwhile.'' And I said, ``Thank you Dave,''  and went on. I noticed a couple of months later he was made the head of the  department. I noticed the other day he was a Member of the National Academy of  Engineering. I noticed he has succeeded. I have never heard the names of any of  the other fellows at that table mentioned in science and scientific circles.  They were unable to ask themselves, ``What are the important problems in my  field?''
  • Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts  about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if  you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and  tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you  don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you  do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all  kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world  is and what might be important.
  • I have now come down to a topic which is very distasteful; it is not  sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it. `Selling' to a scientist is an  awkward thing to do. It's very ugly; you shouldn't have to do it. The world is  supposed to be waiting, and when you do something great, they should rush out  and welcome it.
  • I know enough not to let my  clothes, my appearance, my manners get in the way of what I care about.

  13 more annotations...

• 15 Jan 16
  

  sanjayp30
• 03 Dec 15
  

  mayatitan
  • If you want to do great work, you clearly must work on important  problems, and you should have an idea.
• 17 Sep 15
  

  isajaques
  • What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound  interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person  who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice  outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you  learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it  is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is  a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person  who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be  tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I  spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and  I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of  my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to  neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question  about this.
  • The misapplication of  effort is a very serious matter. Just hard work is not enough - it must be  applied sensibly.
  • It took me a while to discover its importance. Most people like to  believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very  well.
  • Darwin writes in his autobiography that he found it necessary to write down  every piece of evidence which appeared to contradict his beliefs because  otherwise they would disappear from his mind. When you find apparent flaws  you've got to be sensitive and keep track of those things, and keep an eye out  for how they can be explained or how the theory can be changed to fit them.
  • Most  great scientists are completely committed to their problem. Those who don't  become committed seldom produce outstanding, first-class work.
  • Now again, emotional commitment is not enough
  • Keep your subconscious  starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully  and get the answer in the morning, free.
  • Most of the time the audience wants a broad general talk and  wants much more survey and background than the speaker is willing to give.
  • The tendency is to give a  highly restricted, safe talk; this is usually ineffective. Furthermore, many  talks are filled with far too much information
  • If you want to do something, don't ask, do it.  Present him with an accomplished fact. Don't give him a chance to tell you `No'.
  • You should dress according to the expectations of the audience spoken to. If  I am going to give an address at the MIT computer center, I dress with a bolo  and an old corduroy jacket or something else. I know enough not to let my  clothes, my appearance, my manners get in the way of what I care about. An  enormous number of scientists feel they must assert their ego and do their thing  their way.
  • ``The appearance of conforming gets you a long way.'' If  you chose to assert your ego in any number of ways, ``I am going to do it my  way,'' you pay a small steady price throughout the whole of your professional  career. And this, over a whole lifetime, adds up to an enormous amount of  needless trouble.
  • Which do you want to be? The person who changes the  system or the person who does first-class science? Which person is it that you  want to be? Be clear, when you fight the system and struggle with it, what you  are doing, how far to go out of amusement, and how much to waste your effort  fighting the system. My advice is to let somebody else do it and you get on with  becoming a first-class scientist. Very few of you have the ability to both  reform the system and become a first-class scientist.
  • I bragged  about something so I'd have to perform.

  12 more annotations...

• 11 Sep 15
  

  Joy Robinson

  research science productivity advice

• 12 Jul 15
  

  Sampath R

  speech inspiring

  speech

  • I saw I was a stooge.
  • Yes, I would like to do  first-class work.
  • I have  to get you to drop modesty and say to yourself, ``
  • Our society frowns on people who set out to do really good  work
  • Yes, I would like to do something  significant
  • Pasteur who said, ``Luck favors the  prepared mind.'' And I think that says it the way I believe it
  • . The prepared mind sooner or later finds  something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do  is luck, but that you do something is not.
  • Newton said, ``If others would think as hard as I did,  then they would get similar results
  • ill Pfann, the fellow who did zone melting,  came into my office one day. He had this idea dimly in his mind about what he  wanted and he had some equations. It was pretty clear to me that this man didn't  know much mathematics and he wasn't really articulate
  • fellow named Clogston. I met him when I was working on a  problem with John Pierce's group and I didn't think he had much. I asked my  friends who had been with him at school, ``Was he like that in graduate  school?'' ``Yes,'' they replied. Well I would have fired the fellow, but J. R.  Pierce was smart and kept him on. Clogston finally did the Clogston cable. After  that there was a steady stream of good ideas. One success brought him confidence  and courage.
  • Once  you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you  can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.
  • One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage
  • ourage is one  of the things that Shannon had supremely.
  • When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems
  • They then turned it around the other way and said, ``But  of course, this is what it is'' and got an important result. So ideal working  conditions are very strange. The ones you want aren't always the best ones for  you
  • You observe that most great scientists have  tremendous drive
  • John was a genius and I clearly  was not.
  • How can anybody my  age know as much as John Tukey does
  • `You would be surprised  Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many  years.'' I simply slunk out of the office
  • Knowledge and productivity are like compound  interest
  • Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person  who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice  outproduce the former
  • The more you know, the more you learn; the more you  learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it  is very much like compound interest.
  • I don't want to give you a rate, but it is  a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person  who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be  tremendously more productive over a lifetime
  • I took Bode's remark to heart; I  spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and  I found, in fact, I could get more work done
  • I don't like to say it in front of  my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to  neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question  about this
  • Most people like to  believe something is or is not true
  • They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice  the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement  theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too  much you won't get started.
  • Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very  well.
  • It requires a lovely balance
  • But most great  scientists are well aware of why their theories are true and they are also well  aware of some slight misfits which don't quite fit and they don't forget it
  • Darwin writes in his autobiography that he found it necessary to write down  every piece of evidence which appeared to contradict his beliefs because  otherwise they would disappear from his mind
  • When you find apparent flaws  you've got to be sensitive and keep track of those things
  • keep an eye out  for how they can be explained or how the theory can be changed to fit them.
  • Those are often the great contributions.
  • Great contributions are rarely done by  adding another decimal place
  • It comes down to an emotional commitment.
  • Most  great scientists are completely committed to their problem
  • Those who don't  become committed seldom produce outstanding, first-class work
  • Everybody who has studied  creativity is driven finally to saying, ``creativity comes out of your  subconscious
  • I think I can tell you the reason why
  • emotional commitment is not enough
  • It is a necessary condition  apparently
  • Well, one of the reasons is drive and commitment. The people who do great  work with less ability but who are committed to it, get more done that those who  have great skill and dabble in it, who work during the day and go home and do  other things and come back and work the next day.
  • hey don't work on important  problems, they don't become emotionally involved, they don't try and change what  is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still  important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don't. They keep  saying that it is a matter of luck. I've told you how easy it is; furthermore  I've told you how to reform. Therefore, go forth and become great scientists!

  42 more annotations...

• 06 Jul 15
  
• 21 Jun 15
  

  Guilherme Pedrosa

  misc

• 05 Jun 15
  

  bomb_peng
  • One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage
  • Once  you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you  can.
  • they have courage.  They will go forward under incredible circumstances; they think and continue to  think.
  • When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems.
  • I took Bode's remark to heart; I  spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and  I found, in fact, I could get more work done.
  • I don't like to say it in front of  my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to  neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question  about this.
  • the idea is that solid work,  steadily applied, gets you surprisingly far
  • The steady application of effort  with a little bit more work, intelligently applied is what does it.  That's the trouble; drive, misapplied, doesn't get you anywhere.
  • I've often  wondered why so many of my good friends at Bell Labs who worked as hard or  harder than I did, didn't have so much to show for it. The misapplication of  effort is a very serious matter. Just hard work is not enough - it must be  applied sensibly.
  • Most people like to  believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very  well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice  the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement  theory.
  • If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too  much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance.
  • creativity comes out of your  subconscious
  • For those who don't get  committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things  and doesn't produce the big result.
  • ``What are the important problems in my  field?''
  • If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important  work.
  • The average scientist, so far as I  can make out, spends almost all his time working on problems which he believes  will not be important and he also doesn't believe that they will lead to  important problems
  • But the average scientist does routine  safe work almost all the time and so he (or she) doesn't produce much. It's that  simple. If you want to do great work, you clearly must work on important  problems, and you should have an idea.
  • I thought hard about where was my field going, where were the  opportunities, and what were the important things to do. Let me go there so  there is a chance I can do important things.
  • Most great scientists know many important problems. They have something  between 10 and 20 important problems for which they are looking for an attack
  • Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts  about people who work with the door open or the door closed
  • He who works with the door open gets all  kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world  is and what might be important.
  • But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work  with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although  people who work with doors closed often work harder
  • omehow they seem to work  on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame
  • It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it.
  • `Hamming's Method of Integrating Differential Equations
  • No, I should be in the mass production of  a variable product. I should be concerned with all of next year's  problems, not just the one in front of my face
  • You should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it,  so they will indeed say, ``Yes, I've stood on so and so's shoulders and I saw  further.'' The essence of science is cumulative. By changing a problem slightly  you can often do great work rather than merely good work.
  • Now if you are much of a mathematician you know that the effort to generalize  often means that the solution is simple
  • it is not  sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it.
  • you must learn to give reasonably  formal talks, and you also must learn to give informal talks. We had a lot of  so-called `back room scientists.' In a conference, they would keep quiet. Three  weeks later after a decision was made they filed a report saying why you should  do so and so. Well, it was too late. They would not stand up right in the middle  of a hot conference, in the middle of activity, and say, ``We should do this for  these reasons.'' You need to master that form of communication as well as  prepared speeches.
  • The technical person wants to give a highly limited  technical talk. Most of the time the audience wants a broad general talk and  wants much more survey and background than the speaker is willing to give.
  • You  should paint a general picture to say why it's important, and then slowly give a  sketch of what was done.
  • The speaker names a topic and suddenly  plunges into the details he's solved. Few people in the audience may follow.
  • Let me summarize. You've got to work on important problems. I deny that it is  all luck, but I admit there is a fair element of luck. I subscribe to Pasteur's  ``Luck favors the prepared mind.'' I favor heavily what I did. Friday afternoons  for years - great thoughts only - means that I committed 10% of my time trying  to understand the bigger problems in the field, i.e. what was and what was not  important. I found in the early days I had believed `this' and yet had spent all  week marching in `that' direction. It was kind of foolish. If I really believe  the action is over there, why do I march in this direction? I either had to  change my goal or change what I did. So I changed something I did and I marched  in the direction I thought was important. It's that easy
  • Now you might tell me you haven't got control over what you have to work on.  Well, when you first begin, you may not. But once you're moderately successful,  there are more people asking for results than you can deliver and you have some  power of choice, but not completely.
  • But I am telling you how you can get what you want in  spite of top management. You have to sell your ideas there also
  • You can educate your bosses.  It's a hard job.
  • the value is in the struggle more than it is in the  result. The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be worthwhile in  itself. The success and fame are sort of dividends, in my opinion.
  • For example, my opinion, to this day, is that there are in  the mathematics department at Bell Labs quite a few people far more able and far  better endowed than I, but they didn't produce as much.
  • Well, one of the reasons is drive and commitment.
  • who work during the day and go home and do  other things and come back and work the next day.
  • Another fault is anger. Often a scientist becomes angry, and this is no way  to handle things. Amusement, yes, anger, no. Anger is misdirected. You should  follow and cooperate rather than struggle against the system all the time.
  • Another thing you should look for is the positive side of things instead of  the negative.
  • I used my ego to make myself behave the way I wanted to. I bragged  about something so I'd have to perform.
  • I think you need to know how to convert a  situation from one view to another which would increase the chance of success.
  • I think you  need to learn to use yourself
  • In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have  greatness within their grasp don't succeed are: they don't work on important  problems, they don't become emotionally involved, they don't try and change what  is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still  important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don't. They keep  saying that it is a matter of luck. I've told you how easy it is; furthermore  I've told you how to reform. Therefore, go forth and become great scientists!
  • But if you want to be a great scientist you're  going to have to put up with stress
  • But nice guys end last, is what Leo  Durocher said. If you want to lead a nice happy life with a lot of recreation  and everything else, you'll lead a nice life.
  • You can lead a nice life; you can be a nice  guy or you can be a great scientist
  • It doesn't seem to me they have the desire for greatness;
  • they lack the courage  to do it.
  • we  just came through a tremendously successful war.
  • And our success, I think, gave us courage and self confidence;

  52 more annotations...

• 21 Apr 15
  

  Sanyam Jain
  • There are  wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear,  and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think
  • stooge
  • why is this talk important? I think it is important because, as far as I  know, each of you has one life to live
  • ``Yes, I would like to do  first-class work.'' Our society frowns on people who set out to do really good  work. You're not supposed to; luck is supposed to descend on you and you do  great things by chance. Well, that's a kind of dumb thing to say. I say, why  shouldn't you set out to do something significant. You don't have to tell other  people, but shouldn't you say to yourself, ``Yes, I would like to do something  significant.''
  • the major  objection is that people think great science is done by luck
  • The prepared mind sooner or later finds  something important and does it
  • Newton said, ``If others would think as hard as I did,  then they would get similar results.''
  • One of the characteristics you see, and many people have it including great  scientists, is that usually when they were young they had independent thoughts  and had the courage to pursue them. For example, Einstein, somewhere around 12  or 14, asked himself the question, ``What would a light wave look like if I went  with the velocity of light to look at it?''
  • One success brought him confidence  and courage.
  • One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once  you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you  can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.
  • He wants to create a method of coding, but he doesn't know what to do  so he makes a random code. Then he is stuck. And then he asks the impossible  question, ``What would the average random code do?'' He then proves that the  average code is arbitrarily good, and that therefore there must be at least one  good code. Who but a man of infinite courage could have dared to think those  thoughts? That is the characteristic of great scientists; they have courage.  They will go forward under incredible circumstances; they think and continue to  think.
  • When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems.
  • They fail to continue to plant the little  acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right  off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find  that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.
  • What  most people think are the best working conditions, are not. Very clearly they  are not because people are often most productive when working conditions are  bad. One of the better times of the Cambridge Physical Laboratories was when  they had practically shacks - they did some of the best physics ever.
  • I could go  to the West Coast and get a job with the airplane companies without any trouble,  but the exciting people were at Bell Labs and the fellows out there in the  airplane companies were not.
  • f you look carefully you will see that often the great  scientists, by turning the problem around a bit, changed a defect to an asset.  For example, many scientists when they found they couldn't do a problem finally  began to study why not. They then turned it around the other way and said, ``But  of course, this is what it is'' and got an important result. So ideal working  conditions are very strange. The ones you want aren't always the best ones for  you.
  • You would be surprised  Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many  years
  • Knowledge and productivity are like compound  interest
  • Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person  who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice  outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you  learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it  is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is  a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person  who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be  tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I  spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and  I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of  my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to  neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question  about this.
  • the idea is that solid work,  steadily applied, gets you surprisingly far.
  • Most people like to  believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very  well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice  the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement  theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too  much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance.
  • When you find apparent flaws  you've got to be sensitive and keep track of those things, and keep an eye out  for how they can be explained or how the theory can be changed to fit them.  Those are often the great contributions. Great contributions are rarely done by  adding another decimal place. It comes down to an emotional commitment. Most  great scientists are completely committed to their problem. Those who don't  become committed seldom produce outstanding, first-class work.
  • Now again, emotional commitment is not enough. It is a necessary condition  apparently. And I think I can tell you the reason why. Everybody who has studied  creativity is driven finally to saying, ``creativity comes out of your  subconscious.'' Somehow, suddenly, there it is. It just appears. Well, we know  very little about the subconscious; but one thing you are pretty well aware of  is that your dreams also come out of your subconscious. And you're aware your  dreams are, to a fair extent, a reworking of the experiences of the day. If you  are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your  subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one  morning, or on some afternoon, and there's the answer. For those who don't get  committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things  and doesn't produce the big result. So the way to manage yourself is that when  you have a real important problem you don't let anything else get the center of  your attention - you keep your thoughts on the problem. Keep your subconscious  starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully  and get the answer in the morning, free.
  • What are  the important problems of your field?''
  • What important  problems are you working on?
  • 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?
  • Great scientists have thought through, in a  careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye  on wondering how to attack them.
  • If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important  work. It's perfectly obvious
  • t's not the consequence  that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack.
  • The average scientist, so far as I  can make out, spends almost all his time working on problems which he believes  will not be important and he also doesn't believe that they will lead to  important problems.
  • You can't  always know exactly where to be, but you can keep active in places where  something might happen. And even if you believe that great science is a matter  of luck, you can stand on a mountain top where lightning strikes; you don't have  to hide in the valley where you're safe. But the average scientist does routine  safe work almost all the time and so he (or she) doesn't produce much. It's that  simple. If you want to do great work, you clearly must work on important  problems, and you should have an idea.
  • I thought hard about where was my field going, where were the  opportunities, and what were the important things to do. Let me go there so  there is a chance I can do important things.
  • The great scientists, when an opportunity opens up, get after it and they  pursue it. They drop all other things. They get rid of other things and they get  after an idea because they had already thought the thing through. Their minds  are prepared; they see the opportunity and they go after it. Now of course lots  of times it doesn't work out, but you don't have to hit many of them to do some  great science.
  • He who works with the door open gets all  kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world  is and what might be important.
  • conned
  • By changing  the problem slightly, I did important work rather than trivial work.
  • If I have seen further than others, it is because I've  stood on the shoulders of giants.
  • You should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it,  so they will indeed say, ``Yes, I've stood on so and so's shoulders and I saw  further.'' The essence of science is cumulative. By changing a problem slightly  you can often do great work rather than merely good work. Instead of attacking  isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an  isolated problem except as characteristic of a class.
  • you know that the effort to generalize  often means that the solution is simple
  • `It is a poor workman who blames his  tools - the good man gets on with the job, given what he's got, and gets the  best answer he can
  • You must  present it so well that they will set aside what they are doing, look at what  you've done, read it, and come back and say, ``Yes, that was good.'' I suggest  that when you open a journal, as you turn the pages, you ask why you read some  articles and not others. You had better write your report so when it is  published in the Physical Review, or wherever else you want it, as the readers  are turning the pages they won't just turn your pages but they will stop and  read yours. If they don't stop and read it, you won't get credit.
  • You have to learn to write  clearly and well so that people will read it, you must learn to give reasonably  formal talks, and you also must learn to give informal talks
  • The technical person wants to give a highly limited  technical talk. Most of the time the audience wants a broad general talk and  wants much more survey and background than the speaker is willing to give. As a  result, many talks are ineffective. The speaker names a topic and suddenly  plunges into the details he's solved. Few people in the audience may follow. You  should paint a general picture to say why it's important, and then slowly give a  sketch of what was done. Then a larger number of people will say, ``Yes, Joe has  done that,'' or ``Mary has done that; I really see where it is; yes, Mary really  gave a good talk; I understand what Mary has done.''

  • Let me summarize. You've got to work on important problems. I deny that it is  all luck, but I admit there is a fair element of luck. I subscribe to Pasteur's  ``Luck favors the prepared mind.'' I favor heavily what I did. Friday afternoons  for years - great thoughts only - means that I committed 10% of my time trying  to understand the bigger problems in the field, i.e. what was and what was not  important. I found in the early days I had believed `this' and yet had spent all  week marching in `that' direction. It was kind of foolish. If I really believe  the action is over there, why do I march in this direction? I either had to  change my goal or change what I did. So I changed something I did and I marched  in the direction I thought was important. It's that easy.

     
  • Is the effort to be a great scientist  worth it?
  • The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be worthwhile in  itself. The success and fame are sort of dividends, in my opinion.
  • Why do so many of the people who  have great promise, fail?
  • The people who do great  work with less ability but who are committed to it, get more done that those who  have great skill and dabble in it, who work during the day and go home and do  other things and come back and work the next day. They don't have the deep  commitment that is apparently necessary for really first-class work. They turn  out lots of good work, but we were talking, remember, about first-class work.  There is a difference. Good people, very talented people, almost always turn out  good work. We're talking about the outstanding work, the type of work that gets  the Nobel Prize and gets recognition.
  • one of the reasons is drive and commitment.
  • he second thing is, I think, the problem of personality defects.
  • Look, if you  adopt the present method and do what you can do single-handedly, you can go just  that far and no farther than you can do single-handedly. If you will learn to  work with the system, you can go as far as the system will support you.'' And,  he never went any further. He had his personality defect of wanting total  control and was not willing to recognize that you need the support of the  system.
  • You find this happening again and again; good scientists will fight the  system rather than learn to work with the system and take advantage of all the  system has to offer. It has a lot, if you learn how to use it. It takes  patience, but you can learn how to use the system pretty well, and you can learn  how to get around it. After all, if you want a decision `No', you just go to  your boss and get a `No' easy. If you want to do something, don't ask, do it.  Present him with an accomplished fact. Don't give him a chance to tell you `No'.  But if you want a `No', it's easy to get a `No'.
  • Another personality defect is ego assertion
  • was I going to assert my ego and dress the way I wanted to and have  it steadily drain my effort from my professional life, or was I going to appear  to conform better? I decided I would make an effort to appear to conform  properly. The moment I did, I got much better service. And now, as an old  colorful character, I get better service than other people.

  • You should dress according to the expectations of the audience spoken to. If  I am going to give an address at the MIT computer center, I dress with a bolo  and an old corduroy jacket or something else. I know enough not to let my  clothes, my appearance, my manners get in the way of what I care about. An  enormous number of scientists feel they must assert their ego and do their thing  their way. They have got to be able to do this, that, or the other thing, and  they pay a steady price.

     
  • `The appearance of conforming gets you a long way.'' If  you chose to assert your ego in any number of ways, ``I am going to do it my  way,'' you pay a small steady price throughout the whole of your professional  career. And this, over a whole lifetime, adds up to an enormous amount of  needless trouble.
  • By taking the trouble to tell jokes to the secretaries and being a little  friendly, I got superb secretarial help
  • By realizing you have to use the system and  studying how to get the system to do your work, you learn how to adapt the  system to your desires. Or you can fight it steadily, as a small undeclared war,  for the whole of your life.

  • My advice is to let somebody else do it and you get on with  becoming a first-class scientist. Very few of you have the ability to both  reform the system and become a first-class scientist.

     
  • Another thing you should look for is the positive side of things instead of  the negative
  • I have found that it paid to  say, ``Oh yes, I'll get the answer for you Tuesday,'' not having any idea how to  do it. By Sunday night I was really hard thinking on how I was going to deliver  by Tuesday.
  • I often put my pride on the line and sometimes I failed, but as I  said, like a cornered rat I'm surprised how often I did a good job. I think you  need to learn to use yourself. I think you need to know how to convert a  situation from one view to another which would increase the chance of success.
  • You can tell other people  all the alibis you want. I don't mind. But to yourself try to be honest.
  • If you really want to be a first-class scientist you need to know yourself,  your weaknesses, your strengths, and your bad faults, like my egotism. How can  you convert a fault to an asset? How can you convert a situation where you  haven't got enough manpower to move into a direction when that's exactly what  you need to do? I say again that I have seen, as I studied the history, the  successful scientist changed the viewpoint and what was a defect became an  asset.
  • n summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have  greatness within their grasp don't succeed are: they don't work on important  problems, they don't become emotionally involved, they don't try and change what  is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still  important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don't. They keep  saying that it is a matter of luck. I've told you how easy it is; furthermore  I've told you how to reform. Therefore, go forth and become great scientists!
  • Yes, it does. If you don't get emotionally involved, it  doesn't. I had incipient ulcers most of the years that I was at Bell Labs. I  have since gone off to the Naval Postgraduate School and laid back somewhat, and  now my health is much better. But if you want to be a great scientist you're  going to have to put up with stress. You can lead a nice life; you can be a nice  guy or you can be a great scientist. But nice guys end last, is what Leo  Durocher said. If you want to lead a nice happy life with a lot of recreation  and everything else, you'll lead a nice life.
  • I'll quote Ed David more. Ed David was concerned about the  general loss of nerve in our society. It does seem to me that we've gone through  various periods. Coming out of the war, coming out of Los Alamos where we built  the bomb, coming out of building the radars and so on, there came into the  mathematics department, and the research area, a group of people with a lot of  guts. They've just seen things done; they've just won a war which was fantastic.  We had reasons for having courage and therefore we did a great deal. I can't  arrange that situation to do it again. I cannot blame the present generation for  not having it, but I agree with what you say; I just cannot attach blame to it.  It doesn't seem to me they have the desire for greatness; they lack the courage  to do it. But we had, because we were in a favorable circumstance to have it; we  just came through a tremendously successful war. In the war we were looking  very, very bad for a long while; it was a very desperate struggle as you well  know. And our success, I think, gave us courage and self confidence; that's why  you see, beginning in the late forties through the fifties, a tremendous  productivity at the labs which was stimulated from the earlier times. Because  many of us were earlier forced to learn other things - we were forced to learn  the things we didn't want to learn, we were forced to have an open door - and  then we could exploit those things we learned. It is true, and I can't do  anything about it; I cannot blame the present generation either. It's just a  fact.
  • Once that was a very popular thing, but it seems not to have  paid off. For myself I find it desirable to talk to other people; but a session  of brainstorming is seldom worthwhile. I do go in to strictly talk to somebody  and say, ``Look, I think there has to be something here. Here's what I think I  see ...'' and then begin talking back and forth. But you want to pick capable  people. To use another analogy, you know the idea called the `critical mass.' If  you have enough stuff you have critical mass. There is also the idea I used to  call `sound absorbers'. When you get too many sound absorbers, you give out an  idea and they merely say, ``Yes, yes, yes.'' What you want to do is get that  critical mass in action; ``Yes, that reminds me of so and so,'' or, ``Have you  thought about that or this?'' When you talk to other people, you want to get rid  of those sound absorbers who are nice people but merely say, ``Oh yes,'' and to  find those who will stimulate you right back.
  • For example, you couldn't talk to John Pierce without being stimulated very  quickly. There were a group of other people I used to talk with. For example  there was Ed Gilbert; I used to go down to his office regularly and ask him  questions and listen and come back stimulated. I picked my people carefully with  whom I did or whom I didn't brainstorm because the sound absorbers are a curse.  They are just nice guys; they fill the whole space and they contribute nothing  except they absorb ideas and the new ideas just die away instead of echoing on.  Yes, I find it necessary to talk to people. I think people with closed doors  fail to do this so they fail to get their ideas sharpened, such as ``Did you  ever notice something over here?'' I never knew anything about it - I can go  over and look. Somebody points the way. On my visit here, I have already found  several books that I must read when I get home. I talk to people and ask  questions when I think they can answer me and give me clues that I do not know  about. I go out and look!
  • I believed, in my early days, that you should spend at least  as much time in the polish and presentation as you did in the original research.  Now at least 50% of the time must go for the presentation. It's a big, big  number.
  • f you  read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they  thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a  lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to  look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you  would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one. So  yes, you need to keep up. You need to keep up more to find out what the problems  are than to read to find the solutions. The reading is necessary to know what is  going on and what is possible. But reading to get the solutions does not seem to  be the way to do great research. So I'll give you two answers.
  • You read; but it  is not the amount, it is the way you read that counts
  • true greatness is when your name is like ampere,  watt, and fourier - when it's spelled with a lower case letter. That's how the  hamming window came about.
  • In the short-haul, papers are very important if you want to  stimulate someone tomorrow. If you want to get recognition long-haul, it seems  to me writing books is more contribution because most of us need orientation. In  this day of practically infinite knowledge, we need orientation to find our way.  Let me tell you what infinite knowledge is. Since from the time of Newton to  now, we have come close to doubling knowledge every 17 years, more or less. And  we cope with that, essentially, by specialization. In the next 340 years at that  rate, there will be 20 doublings, i.e. a million, and there will be a million  fields of specialty for every one field now. It isn't going to happen. The  present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools.  I believe that books which try to digest, coordinate, get rid of the  duplication, get rid of the less fruitful methods and present the underlying  ideas clearly of what we know now, will be the things the future generations  will value. Public talks are necessary; private talks are necessary; written  papers are necessary. But I am inclined to believe that, in the long-haul, books  which leave out what's not essential are more important than books which tell  you everything because you don't want to know everything. I don't want to know  that much about penguins is the usual reply. You just want to know the essence.
  • You have to change. You get tired after a while; you use up your originality  in one field. You need to get something nearby

  • What happens to the old fellows is that  they get a technique going; they keep on using it. They were marching in that  direction which was right then, but the world changes. There's the new  direction; but the old fellows are still marching in their former direction.  

     
  • it takes effort  and energy. It takes courage to say, ``Yes, I will give up my great  reputation.'' For example, when error correcting codes were well launched,  having these theories, I said, ``Hamming, you are going to quit reading papers  in the field; you are going to ignore it completely; you are going to try and do  something else other than coast on that.'' I deliberately refused to go on in  that field. I wouldn't even read papers to try to force myself to have a chance  to do something else. I managed myself, which is what I'm preaching in this  whole talk. Knowing many of my own faults, I manage myself. I have a lot of  faults, so I've got a lot of problems, i.e. a lot of possibilities of  management.
  • When your  vision of what you want to do is what you can do single-handedly, then you  should pursue it
  • he day your vision, what you think needs to be done, is  bigger than what you can do single-handedly, then you have to move toward  management. And the bigger the vision is, the farther in management you have to  go. If you have a vision of what the whole laboratory should be, or the whole  Bell System, you have to get there to make it happen. You can't make it happen  from the bottom very easily. It depends upon what goals and what desires you  have. And as they change in life, you have to be prepared to change. I chose to  avoid management because I preferred to do what I could do single-handedly. But  that's the choice that I made, and it is biased. Each person is entitled to  their choice. Keep an open mind. But when you do choose a path, for heaven's  sake be aware of what you have done and the choice you have made. Don't try to  do both sides.

  • At Bell Labs everyone expected good work from me - it was a  big help. Everybody expects you to do a good job, so you do, if you've got  pride. I think it's very valuable to have first-class people around. I sought  out the best people. The moment that physics table lost the best people, I left.  The moment I saw that the same was true of the chemistry table, I left. I tried  to go with people who had great ability so I could learn from them and who would  expect great results out of me. By deliberately managing myself, I think I did  much better than laissez faire.

     
  • . No matter what directions came up in the future, this man would  do great work. And sure enough, he did do great work.

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• 06 Apr 15
  

  achiffa
  • I have now come down to a topic which is very distasteful; it is not  sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it. `Selling' to a scientist is an  awkward thing to do. It's very ugly; you shouldn't have to do it. The world is  supposed to be waiting, and when you do something great, they should rush out  and welcome it. But the fact is everyone is busy with their own work. You must  present it so well that they will set aside what they are doing, look at what  you've done, read it, and come back and say, ``Yes, that was good.'' I suggest  that when you open a journal, as you turn the pages, you ask why you read some  articles and not others. You had better write your report so when it is  published in the Physical Review, or wherever else you want it, as the readers  are turning the pages they won't just turn your pages but they will stop and  read yours. If they don't stop and read it, you won't get credit.
  • I gave  the military person the answers late Friday afternoon. I then went to  Schelkunoff's office and sat down; as the man goes out I say, ``You see  Schelkunoff, this fellow has nothing under his arm; but I gave him the  answers.'' On Monday morning Schelkunoff called him up and said, ``Did you come  in to work over the weekend?'' I could hear, as it were, a pause as the fellow  ran through his mind of what was going to happen; but he knew he would have had  to sign in, and he'd better not say he had when he hadn't, so he said he hadn't.  Ever after that Schelkunoff said, ``You set your deadlines; you can change  them.''
  • One lesson was sufficient to educate my boss as to why I didn't want to do  big jobs that displaced exploratory research and why I was justified in not  doing crash jobs which absorb all the research computing facilities. I wanted  instead to use the facilities to compute a large number of small problems.
  • Which do you want to be? The person who changes the  system or the person who does first-class science? Which person is it that you  want to be?

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• 19 Jan 15
  

  talbronstien
  • Luck favors the  prepared mind
  • If others would think as hard as I did,  then they would get similar results
  • One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage
  • Knowledge and productivity are like compound  interest
  • Just hard work is not enough - it must be  applied sensibly
  • If you  are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your  subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one  morning, or on some afternoon, and there's the answer
  • Friday afternoons  for years - great thoughts only - means that I committed 10% of my time trying  to understand the bigger problems in the field, i.e. what was and what was not  important
  • But if you want to be a great scientist you're  going to have to put up with stress. You can lead a nice life; you can be a nice  guy or you can be a great scientist

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• 18 Jan 15
  

  Jordan Goldman

  J. F. Kaiser Bell Communications Research 445 South Street Morristown, NJ 07962-1910jfk@bellcore.com At a seminar in the Bell Communications Research Colloquia Series, Dr. Richard W.

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• 23 Nov 14
  

  doloreel
  • If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too  much you won't get started.
  • Darwin writes in his autobiography that he found it necessary to write down  every piece of evidence which appeared to contradict his beliefs because  otherwise they would disappear from his mind.
  • I  think it is very definitely worth the struggle to try and do first-class work  because the truth is, the value is in the struggle more than it is in the  result.
  • The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be worthwhile in  itself. The success and fame are sort of dividends, in my opinion.

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• 08 Nov 14
  

  daqiang

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• 02 Nov 14
  

  Jose Alvarez-Cornett 

  research you hamming

• 29 Oct 14
  

  Bruno Melo

  research science productivity advice education academia career philosophy

• 23 Oct 14
  

  Josu Uztarroz

  If you want to do great work, whatever work you do, you'll gain a lot from reading this http://t.co/IgRz2Dr6Id

• 24 Jun 14
  

  adriennetran
  • When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did  Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great  scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little  acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right  off. And that isn't the way things go.
  • I think that if you look carefully you will see that often the great  scientists, by turning the problem around a bit, changed a defect to an asset
  • ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound  interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person  who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice  outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you  learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it  is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is  a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person  who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be  tremendously more productive over a lifetime.
  • but the idea is that solid work,  steadily applied,
  • If you  are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your  subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one  morning, or on some afternoon, and there's the answer. For those who don't get  committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things  and doesn't produce the big result. So the way to manage yourself is that when  you have a real important problem you don't let anything else get the center of  your attention - you keep your thoughts on the problem. Keep your subconscious  starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully  and get the answer in the morning, free.
  • ``Hamming, that  remark of yours got underneath my skin. I thought about it all summer, i.e. what  were the important problems in my field. I haven't changed my research,'' he  says, ``but I think it was well worthwhile.'' And I said, ``Thank you Dave,''  and went on. I noticed a couple of months later he was made the head of the  department. I noticed the other day he was a Member of the National Academy of  Engineering. I noticed he has succeeded. I have never heard the names of any of  the other fellows at that table mentioned in science and scientific circles.  They were unable to ask themselves, ``What are the important problems in my  field?''
  • `It is a poor workman who blames his  tools - the good man gets on with the job, given what he's got, and gets the  best answer he can.'
  • You had better write your report so when it is  published in the Physical Review, or wherever else you want it, as the readers  are turning the pages they won't just turn your pages but they will stop and  read yours. If they don't stop and read it, you won't get credit.
  • We had a lot of  so-called `back room scientists.' In a conference, they would keep quiet. Three  weeks later after a decision was made they filed a report saying why you should  do so and so. Well, it was too late. They would not stand up right in the middle  of a hot conference, in the middle of activity, and say, ``We should do this for  these reasons.'' You need to master that form of communication as well as  prepared speeches.
  • You  should paint a general picture to say why it's important, and then slowly give a  sketch of what was done.
  • I didn't say you should  conform; I said ``The appearance of conforming gets you a long way.''

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• 05 Jun 14
  

  James Malcolm

  "You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I...

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• 21 Mar 14
  

  Call Me What You Want

  research productivity Richard Hamming academia philosophy Bill Pfann zone melting

  • We are being forced to run problems all the  time. We can't do research because were too busy operating and running the  computing machines.'' Finally the message got through. They were going to move  computing out of research to someplace else. I was persona non grata to say the  least and I was surprised that people didn't kick my shins because everybody was  having their toy taken away from them. I went in to Ed David's office and said,  ``Look Ed, you've got to give your researchers a machine. If you give them a  great big machine, we'll be back in the same trouble we were before, so busy  keeping it going we can't think. Give them the smallest machine you can because  they are very able people. They will learn how to do things on a small machine  instead of mass computing.'' As far as I'm concerned, that's how UNIX arose. We  gave them a moderately small machine and they decided to make it do great  things. They had to come up with a system to do it on. It is called UNIX!
  • If you  read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they  thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a  lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to  look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you  would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one.
  • Luck favors a  prepared mind; luck favors a prepared person. It is not guaranteed; I don't  guarantee success as being absolutely certain. I'd say luck changes the odds,  but there is some definite control on the part of the individual.

  1 more annotation...

• 05 Feb 14
  

  hurd_45
• 30 Jan 14
  

  sanguine otaku

  science productivity philosophy excel

  • I will talk mainly about science  because that is what I have studied. But so far as I know, and I've been told by  others, much of what I say applies to many fields. Outstanding work is  characterized very much the same way in most fields, but I will confine myself  to science.
  • I have  to get you to drop modesty and say to yourself, ``Yes, I would like to do  first-class work.''
  • Our society frowns on people who set out to do really good  work. You're not supposed to; luck is supposed to descend on you and you do  great things by chance. Well, that's a kind of dumb thing to say. I say, why  shouldn't you set out to do something significant. You don't have to tell other  people, but shouldn't you say to yourself, ``Yes, I would like to do something  significant.''
  • I claim that luck will  not cover everything. And I will cite Pasteur who said, ``Luck favors the  prepared mind.'' And I think that says it the way I believe it. There is indeed  an element of luck, and no, there isn't. The prepared mind sooner or later finds  something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do  is luck, but that you do something is not.
  • I want to dispose of this  matter of luck as being the sole criterion whether you do great work or not. I  claim you have some, but not total, control over it. And I will quote, finally,  Newton on the matter. Newton said, ``If others would think as hard as I did,  then they would get similar results.''
  • One of the characteristics you see, and many people have it including great  scientists, is that usually when they were young they had independent thoughts  and had the courage to pursue them. For example, Einstein, somewhere around 12  or 14, asked himself the question, ``What would a light wave look like if I went  with the velocity of light to look at it?'' Now he knew that electromagnetic  theory says you cannot have a stationary local maximum. But if he moved along  with the velocity of light, he would see a local maximum. He could see a  contradiction at the age of 12, 14, or somewhere around there, that everything  was not right and that the velocity of light had something peculiar.
  • Is it luck  that he finally created special relativity? Early on, he had laid down some of  the pieces by thinking of the fragments. Now that's the necessary but not  sufficient condition. All of these items I will talk about are both luck and not  luck.
  • How about having lots of `brains?' It sounds good. Most of you in this room  probably have more than enough brains to do first-class work. But great work is  something else than mere brains. Brains are measured in various ways. In  mathematics, theoretical physics, astrophysics, typically brains correlates to a  great extent with the ability to manipulate symbols. And so the typical IQ test  is apt to score them fairly high. On the other hand, in other fields it is  something different. For example, Bill Pfann, the fellow who did zone melting,  came into my office one day. He had this idea dimly in his mind about what he  wanted and he had some equations. It was pretty clear to me that this man didn't  know much mathematics and he wasn't really articulate. His problem seemed  interesting so I took it home and did a little work. I finally showed him how to  run computers so he could compute his own answers. I gave him the power to  compute. He went ahead, with negligible recognition from his own department, but  ultimately he has collected all the prizes in the field. Once he got well  started, his shyness, his awkwardness, his inarticulateness, fell away and he  became much more productive in many other ways. Certainly he became much more  articulate.
  • One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once  you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you  can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.
  • Who but a man of infinite courage could have dared to think those  thoughts? That is the characteristic of great scientists; they have courage.  They will go forward under incredible circumstances; they think and continue to  think.
  • This brings up the subject, out of order perhaps, of working conditions. What  most people think are the best working conditions, are not. Very clearly they  are not because people are often most productive when working conditions are  bad. One of the better times of the Cambridge Physical Laboratories was when  they had practically shacks - they did some of the best physics ever.
  • Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have  tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had  tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered  that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly  was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my  age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his  hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised  Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many  years.'' I simply slunk out of the office!
  • ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound  interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person  who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice  outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you  learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it  is very much like compound interest.
  • I  spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and  I found, in fact, I could get more work done.
  • I don't like to say it in front of  my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to  neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question  about this.
  • ``Genius is 99% perspiration and 1%  inspiration.'' He may have been exaggerating, but the idea is that solid work,  steadily applied, gets you surprisingly far. The steady application of effort  with a little bit more work, intelligently applied is what does it.  That's the trouble; drive, misapplied, doesn't get you anywhere. I've often  wondered why so many of my good friends at Bell Labs who worked as hard or  harder than I did, didn't have so much to show for it. The misapplication of  effort is a very serious matter. Just hard work is not enough - it must be  applied sensibly.
  • It comes down to an emotional commitment. Most  great scientists are completely committed to their problem. Those who don't  become committed seldom produce outstanding, first-class work.
  • ``creativity comes out of your  subconscious.''
  • If you  are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your  subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one  morning, or on some afternoon, and there's the answer. For those who don't get  committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things  and doesn't produce the big result. So the way to manage yourself is that when  you have a real important problem you don't let anything else get the center of  your attention - you keep your thoughts on the problem. Keep your subconscious  starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully  and get the answer in the morning, free.
  • I went over and said, ``Do you mind if I join you?'' They can't say  no, so I started eating with them for a while. 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?''  I wasn't welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with! That was  in the spring.
  • I noticed he has succeeded. I have never heard the names of any of  the other fellows at that table mentioned in science and scientific circles.  They were unable to ask themselves, ``What are the important problems in my  field?''
  • I spoke earlier about planting acorns so that oaks will grow. You can't  always know exactly where to be, but you can keep active in places where  something might happen. And even if you believe that great science is a matter  of luck, you can stand on a mountain top where lightning strikes; you don't have  to hide in the valley where you're safe. But the average scientist does routine  safe work almost all the time and so he (or she) doesn't produce much. It's that  simple. If you want to do great work, you clearly must work on important  problems, and you should have an idea.
  • ``It is a poor workman who blames his  tools - the good man gets on with the job, given what he's got, and gets the  best answer he can.''
  • Let me summarize. You've got to work on important problems. I deny that it is  all luck, but I admit there is a fair element of luck. I subscribe to Pasteur's  ``Luck favors the prepared mind.'' I favor heavily what I did. Friday afternoons  for years - great thoughts only - means that I committed 10% of my time trying  to understand the bigger problems in the field, i.e. what was and what was not  important. I found in the early days I had believed `this' and yet had spent all  week marching in `that' direction. It was kind of foolish. If I really believe  the action is over there, why do I march in this direction? I either had to  change my goal or change what I did. So I changed something I did and I marched  in the direction I thought was important. It's that easy.
  • ``Is the effort to be a great scientist  worth it?''
  • ``Yes, doing really first-class work, and knowing  it, is as good as wine, women and song put together,'' or if it's a woman she  says, ``It is as good as wine, men and song put together.''
  • I  think it is very definitely worth the struggle to try and do first-class work  because the truth is, the value is in the struggle more than it is in the  result. The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be worthwhile in  itself. The success and fame are sort of dividends, in my opinion.
  • Well, one of the reasons is drive and commitment. The people who do great  work with less ability but who are committed to it, get more done that those who  have great skill and dabble in it, who work during the day and go home and do  other things and come back and work the next day. They don't have the deep  commitment that is apparently necessary for really first-class work. They turn  out lots of good work, but we were talking, remember, about first-class work.  There is a difference. Good people, very talented people, almost always turn out  good work. We're talking about the outstanding work, the type of work that gets  the Nobel Prize and gets recognition.
  • You find this happening again and again; good scientists will fight the  system rather than learn to work with the system and take advantage of all the  system has to offer. It has a lot, if you learn how to use it. It takes  patience, but you can learn how to use the system pretty well, and you can learn  how to get around it. After all, if you want a decision `No', you just go to  your boss and get a `No' easy. If you want to do something, don't ask, do it.  Present him with an accomplished fact. Don't give him a chance to tell you `No'.  But if you want a `No', it's easy to get a `No'.
  • Another fault is anger. Often a scientist becomes angry, and this is no way  to handle things. Amusement, yes, anger, no. Anger is misdirected. You should  follow and cooperate rather than struggle against the system all the time.
  • Another thing you should look for is the positive side of things instead of  the negative. I have already given you several examples, and there are many,  many more; how, given the situation, by changing the way I looked at it, I  converted what was apparently a defect to an asset. I'll give you another  example. I am an egotistical person; there is no doubt about it. I knew that  most people who took a sabbatical to write a book, didn't finish it on time. So  before I left, I told all my friends that when I come back, that book was going  to be done! Yes, I would have it done - I'd have been ashamed to come back  without it! I used my ego to make myself behave the way I wanted to. I bragged  about something so I'd have to perform. I found out many times, like a cornered  rat in a real trap, I was surprisingly capable. I have found that it paid to  say, ``Oh yes, I'll get the answer for you Tuesday,'' not having any idea how to  do it. By Sunday night I was really hard thinking on how I was going to deliver  by Tuesday. I often put my pride on the line and sometimes I failed, but as I  said, like a cornered rat I'm surprised how often I did a good job. I think you  need to learn to use yourself. I think you need to know how to convert a  situation from one view to another which would increase the chance of success.
  • Now self-delusion in humans is very, very common. There are enumerable ways  of you changing a thing and kidding yourself and making it look some other way.  When you ask, ``Why didn't you do such and such,'' the person has a thousand  alibis. If you look at the history of science, usually these days there are 10  people right there ready, and we pay off for the person who is there first. The  other nine fellows say, ``Well, I had the idea but I didn't do it and so on and  so on.'' There are so many alibis. Why weren't you first? Why didn't you do it  right? Don't try an alibi. Don't try and kid yourself. You can tell other people  all the alibis you want. I don't mind. But to yourself try to be honest.
  • In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have  greatness within their grasp don't succeed are: they don't work on important  problems, they don't become emotionally involved, they don't try and change what  is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still  important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don't. They keep  saying that it is a matter of luck. I've told you how easy it is; furthermore  I've told you how to reform. Therefore, go forth and become great scientists!

  31 more annotations...

• 29 Jan 14
  

  shmaristotle
  • After all, if you want a decision `No', you just go to  your boss and get a `No' easy. If you want to do something, don't ask, do it.  Present him with an accomplished fact. Don't give him a chance to tell you `No'.  But if you want a `No', it's easy to get a `N

  • Many a second-rate fellow gets caught up in some little twitting of the  system, and carries it through to warfare. He expends his energy in a foolish  project. Now you are going to tell me that somebody has to change the system. I  agree; somebody's has to. Which do you want to be? The person who changes the  system or the person who does first-class science? Which person is it that you  want to be? Be clear, when you fight the system and struggle with it, what you  are doing, how far to go out of amusement, and how much to waste your effort  fighting the system. My advice is to let somebody else do it and you get on with  becoming a first-class scientist. Very few of you have the ability to both  reform the system and become a first-class scientist.

     
  • Since from the time of Newton to  now, we have come close to doubling knowledge every 17 years, more or less. And  we cope with that, essentially, by specialization. In the next 340 years at that  rate, there will be 20 doublings, i.e. a million, and there will be a million  fields of specialty for every one field now. It isn't going to happen. The  present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools.  I believe that books which try to digest, coordinate, get rid of the  duplication, get rid of the less fruitful methods and present the underlying  ideas clearly of what we know now, will be the things the future generations  will value. Public talks are necessary; private talks are necessary; written  papers are necessary. But I am inclined to believe that, in the long-haul, books  which leave out what's not essential are more important than books which tell  you everything because you don't want to know everything. I don't want to know  that much about penguins is the usual reply. You just want to know the essence.
  • I deliberately refused to go on in  that field. I wouldn't even read papers to try to force myself to have a chance  to do something else. I managed myself, which is what I'm preaching in this  whole talk. Knowing many of my own faults, I manage myself. I have a lot of  faults, so I've got a lot of problems, i.e. a lot of possibilities of  management.
  • When your  vision of what you want to do is what you can do single-handedly, then you  should pursue it. The day your vision, what you think needs to be done, is  bigger than what you can do single-handedly, then you have to move toward  management.
  • Each person is entitled to  their choice. Keep an open mind. But when you do choose a path, for heaven's  sake be aware of what you have done and the choice you have made. Don't try to  do both sides.
  • I think it's very valuable to have first-class people around. I sought  out the best people. The moment that physics table lost the best people, I left.  The moment I saw that the same was true of the chemistry table, I left. I tried  to go with people who had great ability so I could learn from them

  5 more annotations...

• 20 Jan 14
  

  Ivan Tishchenko

  inspiration great talk people reread

• 24 Dec 13
  

  Sungil Park

  http://t.co/cwfawnZIDu 내 박사과정중 가장 크게 자극받았던 Dr Hammings 의 강연 녹취록. 대학원이나 R&D 하는분들에게 제일 권하고 싶은 글.

• 21 Oct 13
  

  Mark Frisse

  Richard Hamming
  You and Your Research
  
  Transcription of the
  Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar
  7 March 1986J. F. Kaiser
  Bell Communications Research
  445 South Street
  Morristown, NJ 07962-1910
  jfk@bellcore.com"

  Education

• 16 Sep 13
  

  James Holyhead

  pdf research resources

• 05 Sep 13
  

  Miguel M
• 07 Aug 13
  

  christinahahaha
  • How about having lots of `brains?' It sounds good. Most of you in this room  probably have more than enough brains to do first-class work. But great work is  something else than mere brains.
  • One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once  you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you  can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.
  • The third one, Brattain,  practically with tears in his eyes, said, ``I know about this Nobel-Prize effect  and I am not going to let it affect me; I am going to remain good old Walter  Brattain.'' Well I said to myself, ``That is nice.'' But in a few weeks I saw it  was affecting him. Now he could only work on great problems.
  • When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did  Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great  scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little  acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right  off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find  that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you. In fact I will  give you my favorite quotation of many years. The Institute for Advanced Study  in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any  institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by  what they did after. Not that they weren't good afterwards, but they were superb  before they got there and were only good afterwards.
  • This brings up the subject, out of order perhaps, of working conditions. What  most people think are the best working conditions, are not. Very clearly they  are not because people are often most productive when working conditions are  bad. One of the better times of the Cambridge Physical Laboratories was when  they had practically shacks - they did some of the best physics ever.
  • Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have  tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had  tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered  that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly  was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my  age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his  hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised  Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many  years.'' I simply slunk out of the office!
  • I don't like to say it in front of  my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to  neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question  about this.
  • There's another trait on the side which I want to talk about; that trait is  ambiguity. It took me a while to discover its importance. Most people like to  believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very  well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice  the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement  theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too  much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance. But most great  scientists are well aware of why their theories are true and they are also well  aware of some slight misfits which don't quite fit and they don't forget it.  Darwin writes in his autobiography that he found it necessary to write down  every piece of evidence which appeared to contradict his beliefs because  otherwise they would disappear from his mind. When you find apparent flaws  you've got to be sensitive and keep track of those things, and keep an eye out  for how they can be explained or how the theory can be changed to fit them.
  • They can't say  no, so I started eating with them for a while.
  • I wasn't welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with! That was  in the spring.
  • I have never heard the names of any of  the other fellows at that table mentioned in science and scientific circles.  They were unable to ask themselves, ``What are the important problems in my  field?''
  • If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important  work. It's perfectly obvious.
  • The average scientist, so far as I  can make out, spends almost all his time working on problems which he believes  will not be important and he also doesn't believe that they will lead to  important problems.
  • But the average scientist does routine  safe work almost all the time and so he (or she) doesn't produce much. It's that  simple. If you want to do great work, you clearly must work on important  problems, and you should have an idea.
  • Along those lines at some urging from John Tukey and others, I finally  adopted what I called ``Great Thoughts Time.'' When I went to lunch Friday noon,  I would only discuss great thoughts after that.
  • But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work  with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although  people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work  on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.
  • In the same way, when using the machine up in the attic in the early days, I  was solving one problem after another after another; a fair number were  successful and there were a few failures. I went home one Friday after finishing  a problem, and curiously enough I wasn't happy; I was depressed. I could see  life being a long sequence of one problem after another after another. After  quite a while of thinking I decided, ``No, I should be in the mass production of  a variable product. I should be concerned with all of next year's  problems, not just the one in front of my face.''
  • These days we stand on each other's feet!
  • ``It is a poor workman who blames his  tools - the good man gets on with the job, given what he's got, and gets the  best answer he can.''
  • `Selling' to a scientist is an  awkward thing to do. It's very ugly; you shouldn't have to do it.
  • There are three things you have to do in selling. You have to learn to write  clearly and well so that people will read it, you must learn to give reasonably  formal talks, and you also must learn to give informal talks. We had a lot of  so-called `back room scientists.' In a conference, they would keep quiet. Three  weeks later after a decision was made they filed a report saying why you should  do so and so. Well, it was too late. They would not stand up right in the middle  of a hot conference, in the middle of activity, and say, ``We should do this for  these reasons.'' You need to master that form of communication as well as  prepared speeches.
  • When I first started, I got practically physically ill while giving a speech,  and I was very, very nervous.
  • Why do so many of the people who  have great promise, fail?
  • The second thing is, I think, the problem of personality defects.
  • After all, if you want a decision `No', you just go to  your boss and get a `No' easy. If you want to do something, don't ask, do it.  Present him with an accomplished fact. Don't give him a chance to tell you `No'.  But if you want a `No', it's easy to get a `No'.
  • If  I am going to give an address at the MIT computer center, I dress with a bolo  and an old corduroy jacket or something else. I know enough not to let my  clothes, my appearance, my manners get in the way of what I care about.
  • John Tukey almost always dressed very casually. He would go into an important  office and it would take a long time before the other fellow realized that this  is a first-class man and he had better listen. For a long time John has had to  overcome this kind of hostility. It's wasted effort! I didn't say you should  conform; I said ``The appearance of conforming gets you a long way.'' If  you chose to assert your ego in any number of ways, ``I am going to do it my  way,'' you pay a small steady price throughout the whole of your professional  career. And this, over a whole lifetime, adds up to an enormous amount of  needless trouble.
  • By taking the trouble to tell jokes to the secretaries and being a little  friendly, I got superb secretarial help. For instance, one time for some idiot  reason all the reproducing services at Murray Hill were tied up. Don't ask me  how, but they were. I wanted something done. My secretary called up somebody at  Holmdel, hopped the company car, made the hour-long trip down and got it  reproduced, and then came back. It was a payoff for the times I had made an  effort to cheer her up, tell her jokes and be friendly; it was that little extra  work that later paid off for me. By realizing you have to use the system and  studying how to get the system to do your work, you learn how to adapt the  system to your desires. Or you can fight it steadily, as a small undeclared war,  for the whole of your life.
  • Not that you shouldn't  occasionally!
  • sheer love of it.
  • You can't be an original  scientist without having some other original characteristics. But many a  scientist has let his quirks in other places make him pay a far higher price  than is necessary for the ego satisfaction he or she gets. I'm not against all  ego assertion; I'm against some.
  • Another fault is anger. Often a scientist becomes angry, and this is no way  to handle things. Amusement, yes, anger, no. Anger is misdirected. You should  follow and cooperate rather than struggle against the system all the time
  • sometimes I failed, but as I  said, like a cornered rat I'm surprised how often I did a good job. I think you  need to learn to use yourself.
  • In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have  greatness within their grasp don't succeed are: they don't work on important  problems, they don't become emotionally involved, they don't try and change what  is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still  important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don't. They keep  saying that it is a matter of luck. I've told you how easy it is; furthermore  I've told you how to reform. Therefore, go forth and become great scientists!
  • Hamming: Yes, it does. If you don't get emotionally involved, it  doesn't. I had incipient ulcers most of the years that I was at Bell Labs. I  have since gone off to the Naval Postgraduate School and laid back somewhat, and  now my health is much better. But if you want to be a great scientist you're  going to have to put up with stress. You can lead a nice life; you can be a nice  guy or you can be a great scientist. But nice guys end last, is what Leo  Durocher said. If you want to lead a nice happy life with a lot of recreation  and everything else, you'll lead a nice life.
  • Hamming: Once that was a very popular thing, but it seems not to have  paid off. For myself I find it desirable to talk to other people; but a session  of brainstorming is seldom worthwhile. I do go in to strictly talk to somebody  and say, ``Look, I think there has to be something here. Here's what I think I  see ...'' and then begin talking back and forth. But you want to pick capable  people. To use another analogy, you know the idea called the `critical mass.' If  you have enough stuff you have critical mass. There is also the idea I used to  call `sound absorbers'. When you get too many sound absorbers, you give out an  idea and they merely say, ``Yes, yes, yes.'' What you want to do is get that  critical mass in action; ``Yes, that reminds me of so and so,'' or, ``Have you  thought about that or this?'' When you talk to other people, you want to get rid  of those sound absorbers who are nice people but merely say, ``Oh yes,'' and to  find those who will stimulate you right back.

  • Hamming: I believed, in my early days, that you should spend at least  as much time in the polish and presentation as you did in the original research.  Now at least 50% of the time must go for the presentation. It's a big, big  number.

     
  • Tukey
  • ``Hamming  window.''
  • twitted
  • I said true greatness is when your name is like ampere,  watt, and fourier - when it's spelled with a lower case letter. That's how the  hamming window came about.
  • Some things you could do are the following. Somewhere around  every seven years make a significant, if not complete, shift in your field.  Thus, I shifted from numerical analysis, to hardware, to software, and so on,  periodically, because you tend to use up your ideas. When you go to a new field,  you have to start over as a baby. You are no longer the big mukity muk

  40 more annotations...

• 06 Aug 13
  

  violetta ashirova
• 19 Jul 13
  

  Mazen Melibari
  • Why do so few scientists make significant  contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?
• 10 Jul 13
  

  k0v4ryp

  programming research advice career lecture

• 

  Hamid Mukhtar
  • After  that there was a steady stream of good ideas. One success brought him confidence  and courage.
  • One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once  you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you  can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.
  • That is the characteristic of great scientists; they have courage.  They will go forward under incredible circumstances; they think and continue to  think.
  • Age is another factor which the physicists particularly worry about. They  always are saying that you have got to do it when you are young or you will  never do it. Einstein did things very early, and all the quantum mechanic  fellows were disgustingly young when they did their best work. Most  mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and astrophysicists do what we consider  their best work when they are young. It is not that they don't do good work in  their old age but what we value most is often what they did early. On the other  hand, in music, politics and literature, often what we consider their best work  was done late. I don't know how whatever field you are in fits this scale, but  age has some effect.
  • When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did  Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great  scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little  acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right  off. And that isn't the way things go.
  • This brings up the subject, out of order perhaps, of working conditions. What  most people think are the best working conditions, are not. Very clearly they  are not because people are often most productive when working conditions are  bad.
  • I think that if you look carefully you will see that often the great  scientists, by turning the problem around a bit, changed a defect to an asset.
  • Knowledge and productivity are like compound  interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person  who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice  outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you  learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it  is very much like compound interest.
  • I  spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and  I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of  my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to  neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question  about this.
  • The misapplication of  effort is a very serious matter. Just hard work is not enough - it must be  applied sensibly.
  • Most people like to  believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very  well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice  the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement  theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too  much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance.
  • When you find apparent flaws  you've got to be sensitive and keep track of those things, and keep an eye out  for how they can be explained or how the theory can be changed to fit them.
  • It comes down to an emotional commitment. Most  great scientists are completely committed to their problem. Those who don't  become committed seldom produce outstanding, first-class work.
  • If you  are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your  subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one  morning, or on some afternoon, and there's the answer.
  • For those who don't get  committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things  and doesn't produce the big result. So the way to manage yourself is that when  you have a real important problem you don't let anything else get the center of  your attention - you keep your thoughts on the problem. Keep your subconscious  starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully  and get the answer in the morning, free.
  • In the fall, Dave McCall stopped me in the hall and said, ``Hamming, that  remark of yours got underneath my skin. I thought about it all summer, i.e. what  were the important problems in my field. I haven't changed my research,'' he  says, ``but I think it was well worthwhile.'' And I said, ``Thank you Dave,''  and went on. I noticed a couple of months later he was made the head of the  department. I noticed the other day he was a Member of the National Academy of  Engineering. I noticed he has succeeded. I have never heard the names of any of  the other fellows at that table mentioned in science and scientific circles.  They were unable to ask themselves, ``What are the important problems in my  field?''
  • If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important  work. It's perfectly obvious. Great scientists have thought through, in a  careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye  on wondering how to attack them.
  • It's not the consequence  that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack.
  • The average scientist, so far as I  can make out, spends almost all his time working on problems which he believes  will not be important and he also doesn't believe that they will lead to  important problems.
  • But the average scientist does routine  safe work almost all the time and so he (or she) doesn't produce much. It's that  simple. If you want to do great work, you clearly must work on important  problems, and you should have an idea.
  • I spent a lot of time asking ``What  will be the impact of computers on science and how can I change it?'' I asked  myself, ``How is it going to change Bell Labs?'' I remarked one time, in the  same address, that more than one-half of the people at Bell Labs will be  interacting closely with computing machines before I leave. Well, you all have  terminals now. I thought hard about where was my field going, where were the  opportunities, and what were the important things to do. Let me go there so  there is a chance I can do important things.
  • The great scientists, when an opportunity opens up, get after it and they  pursue it. They drop all other things. They get rid of other things and they get  after an idea because they had already thought the thing through. Their minds  are prepared; they see the opportunity and they go after it.
  • Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts  about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if  you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and  tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you  don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you  do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all  kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world  is and what might be important.
  • It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it
  • By changing  the problem slightly, I did important work rather than trivial work.

  23 more annotations...

• 19 Jun 13
  

  Steve Lawford
• 03 Jun 13
  

  Jose Garcia

  inspiration

• 22 Apr 13
  

  Pablo Stafforini

  instapaper richard_hamming

  • There  was a fellow at Bell Labs, a very, very, smart guy. He was always in the  library; he read everything. If you wanted references, you went to him and he  gave you all kinds of references. But in the middle of forming these theories, I  formed a proposition: there would be no effect named after him in the long run.  He is now retired from Bell Labs and is an Adjunct Professor. He was very  valuable; I'm not questioning that. He wrote some very good Physical Review  articles; but there's no effect named after him because he read too much. If you  read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they  thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a  lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to  look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you  would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one. So  yes, you need to keep up. You need to keep up more to find out what the problems  are than to read to find the solutions. The reading is necessary to know what is  going on and what is possible. But reading to get the solutions does not seem to  be the way to do great research. So I'll give you two answers. You read; but it  is not the amount, it is the way you read that counts.
• 03 Apr 13
  

  phronetic04

  • Richard Hamming

      

    ``You and Your Research''

      

    Transcription of the
    Bell Communications Research Colloquium  Seminar
    7 March 1986

      

    J. F. Kaiser
    Bell Communications Research
    445 South  Street
    Morristown, NJ 07962-1910
• 08 Mar 13
  

  vivek jagtap
• 20 Jan 13
  

  Angela Maiers

  Scientists

• 21 Dec 12
  

  Hermann Schumacher

  History Bellcore

• 28 Nov 12
  

  Y A
• 07 Jun 12
  

  Brandon Irwin

  Research

• 10 May 12
  

  aminggs

  Dr. Richard W. Hamming, a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and a retired Bell Labs scientist, gave a very interesting and stimulating talk, `You and Your Research' to an overflow audience of some 200 Bellcore staff member

  inlink:raganwald numericalcomputation computerscience belllabs philosophy productivity advice career research science transcript richard-hamming import:delicious

• 10 Mar 12
  

  perhakansson

  Richard Hamming

• 01 Feb 12
  

  varun1garg
• 18 Jan 12
  

  Richard Hamming, ``You and Your Research''
  Transcription of the 
  Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar 
  7 March 1986

  research science productivity education lifestyle professionalism

• 11 Jan 12
  

  Hutch Carpenter

  Shared by Ev

  science productivity innovation

• 10 Jan 12
  

  Melissa Lim

  Did I tweet this before? Anyway, good (re)read for new year: You and Your Research (I'd call it: How to do Great Work): http://t.co/ZB09UP4d

• 09 Jan 12
  

  colin davitt

  twitter reserach phd

• 31 Dec 11
  

  Tom Kern
• 04 Dec 11
  

  Indranil Sinharoy
  • Why do so few scientists make significant  contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run
  • he talk is about what he has learned in terms of the properties of  the individual scientists, their abilities, traits, working habits, attitudes,  and philosophy
  • he brought so many unorthodox ideas and views
  • I became very interested in the  difference between those who do and those who might have done.
  • I saw I was a stooge
  • Outstanding work is  characterized very much the same way in most fields,
  • Yes, I would like to do  first-class work.
  • Luck favors the  prepared mind.
  • The prepared mind sooner or later finds  something important and does it
  • Newton said, ``If others would think as hard as I did,  then they would get similar results.''
  • the courage to pursue them
  • independent thoughts
  • Now that's the necessary but not  sufficient condition.
  • In  mathematics, theoretical physics, astrophysics, typically brains correlates to a  great extent with the ability to manipulate symbols
  • It was pretty clear to me that this man didn't  know much mathematics and he wasn't really articulate. His problem seemed  interesting so I took it home and did a little work. I finally showed him how to  run computers so he could compute his own answers. I gave him the power to  compute. He went ahead, with negligible recognition from his own department, but  ultimately he has collected all the prizes in the field. Once he got well  started, his shyness, his awkwardness, his inarticulateness, fell away and he  became much more productive in many other ways. Certainly he became much more  articulate.
  • One success brought him confidence  and courage.
  • One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage.
  • Once  you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you  can.
  • They will go forward under incredible circumstances; they think and continue to  think.
  • I don't know how whatever field you are in fits this scale, but  age has some effect.
  • When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems
  • So that is another reason why you find  that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.
  • The Institute for Advanced Study  in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any  institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by  what they did after
  • Very clearly they  are not because people are often most productive when working conditions are  bad
  • What appeared at first to  me as a defect forced me into automatic programming very early.
  • What appears to  be a fault, often, by a change of viewpoint, turns out to be one of the greatest  assets you can have. But you are not likely to think that when you first look  the thing and say
  • the matter of drive
  • Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person  who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice  outproduce the former.
  • Knowledge and productivity are like compound  interest.
  • The more you know, the more you learn; the more you  learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it  is very much like compound interest.
  • Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person  who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be  tremendously more productive over a lifetime.
  • I needed to study. You have to  neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question  about this.
  • On this matter of drive Edison says, ``Genius is 99% perspiration and 1%  inspiration.''
  • intelligently applied
  • Just hard work is not enough - it must be  applied sensibly.
  • The misapplication of  effort is a very serious matter
  • that trait is  ambiguity
  • Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very  well
  • They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice  the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement  theory
  • Most  great scientists are completely committed to their problem. Those who don't  become committed seldom produce outstanding, first-class work.
  • is not enough. It is a necessary condition  apparently
  • emotional commitment
  • Now again,
  • If you  are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your  subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem
  • For those who don't get  committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things  and doesn't produce the big result.
  • o the way to manage yourself is that when  you have a real important problem you don't let anything else get the center of  your attention - you keep your thoughts on the problem.
  • 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?''
  • What are the important problems in my  field
  • If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important  work.
  • Great scientists have thought through, in a  careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye  on wondering how to attack them.
  • It's not the consequence  that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack. That is  what makes a problem important.
  • f you want to do great work, you clearly must work on important  problems, and you should have an idea.
  • I thought hard about where was my field going, where were the  opportunities, and what were the important things to do. Let me go there so  there is a chance I can do important things.
  • Most great scientists know many important problems. They have something  between 10 and 20 important problems for which they are looking for an attack.
  • door open or the door closed
  • But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work  with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although  people who work with doors closed often work harder.

  54 more annotations...

• 03 Dec 11
  

  Hans Henderson

  science philosophy education inspiration career_advice read

• 24 Nov 11
  

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• 27 Oct 11
  

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  research science education academia

• 27 Aug 11
  

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  research:how-to

• 08 Jun 11
  

  vahid kh

  Search Engine, Java, Class, JAR, Java Archive, Maven, maven2, ibiblio, NoClassDefFoundError, ClassNotFoundException, Java Developers, findJAR, jarFISH, serFISH, free services

  article research

• 16 May 11
  

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  edu_grad

• 29 Mar 11
  

  amalias

  great article

  research science education academia

• 27 Jan 11
  

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  speach research

• 07 Jan 11
  

  Tim Su

  article

• 09 Oct 10
  

  jamiur rahman

  research science advice career education inspiration learning philosophy productivity hamming tips

• 11 Sep 10
  

  golloween

  productivity priorities 80_20

• 24 Aug 10
  

  Tor Bjornrud

  research writing readme deliciousImport

• 21 Jun 10
  

  Ivan Pepelnjak

  career education motivation

• 20 Jun 10
  

  Ruo Hai

  tips research advice delicious

• 17 Jun 10
  

  Larry Gadallah

  engineering research reference toread

• 07 Apr 10
  

  Giacomo Benincasa

  Dr. Richard W. Hamming, gave a very interesting and stimulating talk, `You and Your Research'

  Hamming speech motivational for:@twitter

• 05 Mar 10
  

  Jeevanjyoti Chakraborty

  Hammond research science career education academia

• 11 Feb 10
  

  Tom Riddle

  hamming window fame you research compound interest knowledge learning

• 20 Jan 10
  

  Nicolas Palopoli

  At a seminar in the Bell Communications Research Colloquia Series, Dr. Richard W. Hamming, a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and a retired Bell Labs scientist, gave a very interesting and stimulating talk, `You and Your

  ciencia opinión

• 04 Jan 10
  

  Chris

  research phd criticalthinking

• 03 Jan 10
  

  Paulo Gaspar

  productivity research tips science career creativity inspiration interesting-very _must-read

• 18 Dec 09
  

  Nick Goffee

  research phd toread

• 17 Dec 09
  

  Hilary Cross

  education reference productivity inspiration

• 25 Nov 09
  

  Arthur C

  Excellent and not sugar-coated advice on how to do great research

  Research Advice

  • The prepared mind sooner or later finds  something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do  is luck, but that you do something is not.
  • One of the characteristics you see, and many people have it including great  scientists, is that usually when they were young they had independent thoughts  and had the courage to pursue them.
  • How about having lots of `brains?' It sounds good. Most of you in this room  probably have more than enough brains to do first-class work. But great work is  something else than mere brains.
  • I finally showed him how to  run computers so he could compute his own answers. I gave him the power to  compute.
  • One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once  you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you  can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.
  • The great  scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little  acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right  off. And that isn't the way things go.
  • changed a defect to an asset.  For example, many scientists when they found they couldn't do a problem finally  began to study why not.
  • ``You would be surprised  Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many  years.''
  • The more you know, the more you learn; the more you  learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it  is very much like compound interest.
  • the one person  who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be  tremendously more productive over a lifetime.
  • The steady application of effort  with a little bit more work, intelligently applied is what does it.
  • that trait is  ambiguity.
  • Great scientists
  • They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice  the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement  theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too  much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance.
  • Darwin writes in his autobiography that he found it necessary to write down  every piece of evidence which appeared to contradict his beliefs because  otherwise they would disappear from his mind.
  • It comes down to an emotional commitment. Most  great scientists are completely committed to their problem.
  • If you  are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your  subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem.
  • If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important  work. It's perfectly obvious.
  • They have something  between 10 and 20 important problems for which they are looking for an attack.  And when they see a new idea come up, one hears them say ``Well that bears on  this problem.''
  • The great scientists, when an opportunity opens up, get after it and they  pursue it. They drop all other things. They get rid of other things and they get  after an idea because they had already thought the thing through. Their minds  are prepared;
  • ``It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it.''
  • And I realized that in truth the problem  was not just to get the answer; it was to demonstrate for the first time, and  beyond question, that I could beat the analog computer on its own ground with a  digital machine.
  • I should be concerned with all of next year's  problems, not just the one in front of my face.''
  • I attacked the major problem
  • You should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it,  so they will indeed say, ``Yes, I've stood on so and so's shoulders and I saw  further.'' The essence of science is cumulative.
  • ``It is a poor workman who blames his  tools - the good man gets on with the job, given what he's got, and gets the  best answer he can.''
  • you can either do it in such a fashion that people can  indeed build on what you've done, or you can do it in such a fashion that the  next person has to essentially duplicate again what you've done.
  • it is not  sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it.
  • There are three things you have to do in selling. You have to learn to write  clearly and well so that people will read it, you must learn to give reasonably  formal talks, and you also must learn to give informal talks.
  • Most of the time the audience wants a broad general talk and  wants much more survey and background than the speaker is willing to give. As a  result, many talks are ineffective. The speaker names a topic and suddenly  plunges into the details he's solved. Few people in the audience may follow. You  should paint a general picture to say why it's important, and then slowly give a  sketch of what was done. Then a larger number of people will say, ``Yes, Joe has  done that,'' or ``Mary has done that; I really see where it is; yes, Mary really  gave a good talk; I understand what Mary has done.'' The tendency is to give a  highly restricted, safe talk; this is usually ineffective. Furthermore, many  talks are filled with far too much information.
  • I  think it is very definitely worth the struggle to try and do first-class work  because the truth is, the value is in the struggle more than it is in the  result. The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be worthwhile in  itself.
  • You find this happening again and again; good scientists will fight the  system rather than learn to work with the system and take advantage of all the  system has to offer.
  • An  enormous number of scientists feel they must assert their ego and do their thing  their way. They have got to be able to do this, that, or the other thing, and  they pay a steady price.
  • I used my ego to make myself behave the way I wanted to. I bragged  about something so I'd have to perform. I found out many times, like a cornered  rat in a real trap, I was surprisingly capable.
  • hen you ask, ``Why didn't you do such and such,'' the person has a thousand  alibis. If you look at the history of science, usually these days there are 10  people right there ready, and we pay off for the person who is there first. The  other nine fellows say, ``Well, I had the idea but I didn't do it and so on and  so on.'' There are so many alibis.
  • If you really want to be a first-class scientist you need to know yourself,  your weaknesses, your strengths, and your bad faults, like my egotism. How can  you convert a fault to an asset?
  • What about personal stress?
  • I had incipient ulcers most of the years that I was at Bell Labs.
  • Yes, it does.
  • But if you want to be a great scientist you're  going to have to put up with stress.
  • But what I sense among the young people these days is a real  concern over the risk taking in a highly competitive environment.
  • Coming out of the war, coming out of Los Alamos where we built  the bomb, coming out of building the radars and so on, there came into the  mathematics department, and the research area, a group of people with a lot of  guts. They've just seen things done; they've just won a war which was fantastic.  We had reasons for having courage and therefore we did a great deal.
  • I cannot blame the present generation for  not having it, but
  • It doesn't seem to me they have the desire for greatness; they lack the courage  to do it.
  • we  just came through a tremendously successful war. In the war we were looking  very, very bad for a long while; it was a very desperate struggle as you well  know. And our success, I think, gave us courage and self confidence; that's why  you see, beginning in the late forties through the fifties, a tremendous  productivity at the labs which was stimulated from the earlier times. Because  many of us were earlier forced to learn other things - we were forced to learn  the things we didn't want to learn, we were forced to have an open door - and  then we could exploit those things we learned.
  • brainstorming
  • seems not to have  paid off

  • I do go in to strictly talk to somebody  and say, ``Look, I think there has to be something here. Here's what I think I  see ...'' and then begin talking back and forth. But you want to pick capable  people. To use another analogy, you know the idea called the `critical mass.' If  you have enough stuff you have critical mass. There is also the idea I used to  call `sound absorbers'. When you get too many sound absorbers, you give out an  idea and they merely say, ``Yes, yes, yes.'' What you want to do is get that  critical mass in action; ``Yes, that reminds me of so and so,'' or, ``Have you  thought about that or this?'' When you talk to other people, you want to get rid  of those sound absorbers who are nice people but merely say, ``Oh yes,'' and to  find those who will stimulate you right back.

     
  • What kind of tradeoffs did you make in allocating your time  for reading and writing and actually doing research?
  • I believed, in my early days, that you should spend at least  as much time in the polish and presentation as you did in the original research.  Now at least 50% of the time must go for the presentation. It's a big, big  number.
  • How much effort should go into library work?
  • If you  read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they  thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a  lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to  look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you  would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one. So  yes, you need to keep up. You need to keep up more to find out what the problems  are than to read to find the solutions.
  • In the short-haul, papers are very important if you want to  stimulate someone tomorrow. If you want to get recognition long-haul, it seems  to me writing books is more contribution because most of us need orientation. In  this day of practically infinite knowledge, we need orientation to find our way.
  • Since from the time of Newton to  now, we have come close to doubling knowledge every 17 years, more or less. And  we cope with that, essentially, by specialization. In the next 340 years at that  rate, there will be 20 doublings, i.e. a million, and there will be a million  fields of specialty for every one field now. It isn't going to happen. The  present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools.  I believe that books which try to digest, coordinate, get rid of the  duplication, get rid of the less fruitful methods and present the underlying  ideas clearly of what we know now, will be the things the future generations  will value.
  • Somewhere around  every seven years make a significant, if not complete, shift in your field.
  • because you tend to use up your ideas. When you go to a new field,  you have to start over as a baby. You are no longer the big mukity muk and you  can start back there and you can start planting those acorns which will become  the giant oaks.
  • You have to change. You get tired after a while; you use up your originality  in one field. You need to get something nearby. I'm not saying that you shift  from music to theoretical physics to English literature; I mean within your  field you should shift areas so that you don't go stale.
  • I'm serious. What happens to the old fellows is that  they get a technique going; they keep on using it. They were marching in that  direction which was right then, but the world changes. There's the new  direction; but the old fellows are still marching in their former direction.
  • You need to get into a new field to get new viewpoints, and before you  use up all the old ones. You can do something about this, but it takes effort  and energy. It takes courage to say, ``Yes, I will give up my great  reputation.''
  • At Bell Labs everyone expected good work from me - it was a  big help. Everybody expects you to do a good job, so you do, if you've got  pride. I think it's very valuable to have first-class people around. I sought  out the best people. The moment that physics table lost the best people, I left.
  • I tried  to go with people who had great ability so I could learn from them and who would  expect great results out of me.
  • Go forth, then, and do great work!

  60 more annotations...

• 14 Nov 09
  

  Mark Nelson

  • Instead of attacking  isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an  isolated problem except as characteristic of a class.

     

    Now if you are much of a mathematician you know that the effort to generalize  often means that the solution is simple. Often by stopping and saying, ``This is  the problem he wants but this is characteristic of so and so. Yes, I can attack  the whole class with a far superior method than the particular one because I was  earlier embedded in needless detail.'' The business of abstraction frequently  makes things simple. Furthermore, I filed away the methods and prepared for the  future problems.
  • If you  read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they  thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a  lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to  look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you  would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one.
• 20 Oct 09
  

  Alex Ko

  research self-improvement collaboration collective-intelligence

  • One lesson was sufficient to educate my boss as to why I didn't want to do  big jobs that displaced exploratory research and why I was justified in not  doing crash jobs which absorb all the research computing facilities. I wanted  instead to use the facilities to compute a large number of small problems.  Again, in the early days, I was limited in computing capacity and it was clear,  in my area, that a ``mathematician had no use for machines.'' But I needed more  machine capacity. Every time I had to tell some scientist in some other area,  ``No I can't; I haven't the machine capacity,'' he complained. I said ``Go tell  your Vice President that Hamming needs more computing capacity.'' After a  while I could see what was happening up there at the top; many people said to my  Vice President, ``Your man needs more computing capacity.'' I got it!
  • You can educate your bosses.  It's a hard job. In this talk I'm only viewing from the bottom up; I'm not  viewing from the top down. But I am telling you how

    you can get what you want in  spite of top management. You have to sell your ideas there also.
  • The people who do great  work with less ability but who are committed to it, get more done that those who  have great skill and dabble in it, who work during the day and go home and do  other things and come back and work the next day. They don't have the deep  commitment that is apparently necessary for really first-class work. They turn  out lots of good work, but we were talking, remember, about first-class work.  There is a difference. Good people, very talented people, almost always turn out  good work.
  • personality defect of wanting total  control and was not willing to recognize that you need the support of the  system
  • If you want to do something, don't ask, do it.  Present him with an accomplished fact. Don't give him a chance to tell you `No'
  • UNIX was never a  deliverable!
  • Management can do very little. If you want to talk about  managing research, that's a totally different talk. I'd take another hour doing  that. This talk is about how the individual gets very successful research done  in spite of anything the management does or in spite of any other opposition.
  • I find it desirable to talk to other people; but a session  of brainstorming is seldom worthwhile
  • I picked my people carefully with  whom I did or whom I didn't brainstorm because the sound absorbers are a curse.  They are just nice guys; they fill the whole space and they contribute nothing  except they absorb ideas and the new ideas just die away instead of echoing on.
  • Yes, I find it necessary to talk to people. I think people with closed doors  fail to do this so they fail to get their ideas sharpened, such as ``Did you  ever notice something over here?'' I never knew anything about it - I can go  over and look. Somebody points the way. On my visit here, I have already found  several books that I must read when I get home. I talk to people and ask  questions when I think they can answer me and give me clues that I do not know  about. I go out and look!
  • If you  read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they  thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a  lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to  look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you  would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one.
  • there's no effect named after him because he read too much
  • You read; but it  is not the amount, it is the way you read that counts.
  • The  present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools.  I believe that books which try to digest, coordinate, get rid of the  duplication, get rid of the less fruitful methods and present the underlying  ideas clearly of what we know now, will be the things the future generations  will value.

  12 more annotations...

• 13 Oct 09
  

  Jef Martens

  Bookmarks Afstuderen onderzoek how-to

• 15 Sep 09
  

  Aditya Banerjee

  research science productivity advice philosophy education hamming inspiration for:@twitter

• 31 Aug 09
  

  jmanning2k

  philosophy programming productivity career

• 31 Jul 09
  

  Maciej Gawinecki
• 17 Jul 09
  

  Varna Sri Raman

  Reading Articles Lectures

• 29 Jun 09
  

  Leo Horovitz

  research science productivity advice philosophy hamming careers

• 

  Ben Ceschi

  delicious

• 27 Jun 09
  

  research

Public Stiky Notes

• 
  Hans Wobbe on 2009-05-11
  annotate...

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