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This seems relevant, an anecdote from Richard Hamming's "You and Your Research" [0]. Take it as you will. > Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noti
by tel 12y ago
This seems relevant, an anecdote from Richard Hamming's "You and Your Research" [0]. Take it as you will.
> 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. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. 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.
(Edit: Originally, incorrectly thought this was from Feynman)
[0] http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
- mhartl 12y agoThe author appears to be Richard Hamming, not Feynman.
- tel 12y agoWhoops! I thought it was Feynman, searched that, and pulled the first response without reading more closely. Totally my mistake!
- varunjuice 12y agoIs it still as useful now that we know its not Feynman? :)
- nitrogen 12y agoHamming is an important figure in history as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming
- gfodor 12y agoHamming not Feynman
- jimbokun 12y agoOuch. This is one of those comments that hits a little close to home.
- marcosdumay 12y agoIt's a great thought. But it must be corrected to the reality that Hamming was working at AT&T labs at their peak productivity times. Networking certainly is extremely important, the question is: Is networking with the people on a networking event usefull at all? Because not all people are equal.
- c0nfused 12y agoNo not all people or networking events are equal, but unless you attend the events or meet people you aren't going to know the difference from a distance.
- tel 12y agoI agree with that correction, but it feels like a matter of severity over one of form. Keeping yourself open to the distraction of outside ideas helps you to have the "pulse" of the industry, of course. The question is a matter of balacing risks, expenditure, and capacity building: do you have quality enough signal in your networks to be able to reliably gain from participating in them?
- edpichler 12y agoThis is what I call a perfect answer.
- plongeur 12y agoSeems to me like the 80/20 paradox: The "tangential stuff" is the essential 20% of the business that takes 80% of the effort to implement. The stuff "the world is" is what you see and get celebrated for - which looks like 80% but takes actually only 20% of the competence and energy to realize. This is why those talking the most - those who make the big plans and work out the "strategies" make the most money and the fastest career - but the engineers who are doing the actual work - who make those ideas real do not get much credit.