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> To feel guilty because one has not earned one’s salary because one has not had a great idea is the surest way, it seems to me, of making it certain that no gr
by dkarapetyan 12y ago
> To feel guilty because one has not earned one’s salary because one has not had a great idea is the surest way, it seems to me, of making it certain that no great idea will come in the next time either.
Feynman has a similar story about playing with ideas and just enjoying the process instead of worrying about the pressures associated with being great: https://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html https://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html.
- joaorico 12y agoFrom the same book, there's also his comment on Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study from which he refused an invitation: "When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves, OK? So they don't get any ideas for a while: They have every opportunity to do something, and they're not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come. Nothing happens because there's not enough real activity and challenge: You're not in contact with the experimental guys. You don't have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!"