What I Learned from Richard Hamming
Richard Hamming (1915–1997) was an American mathematician and the creator of coding theory, which he invented while working at Bell Labs in the 1950’s.
The following lessons and quotes are taken from his talk and book “You & Your Research” (1986), which was recently reprinted by Stripe Press.
“It seems to me it is better to do significant things than to just get along through life to its end.”
Where First-Class Work Comes From
Not luck:
“The major objection cited by people against striving to do great things is the belief that it is all a matter of luck. I have repeatedly cited Pasteur’s remark, “Luck favors the prepared mind.” It both admits there is an element of luck and yet claims to a great extent it is up to you. You prepare yourself to succeed or not, as you choose, from moment to moment by the way you live your life.”
“[Genius] is hard work, applied for long years, which leads to the creative act, and it is rarely just handed to you without any serious effort on your part. Yes, sometimes it just happens, and then it is pure luck. It seems to me to be folly for you to depend solely on luck for the outcome of this one life you have to lead.”
But belief, tenacity, and a focus on the important ideas:
“Among the important properties to have is the belief you can do important things. If you do not work on important problems, how can you expect to do important work? Yet direct observation and direct questioning of people show most scientists spend most of their time working on things they believe are not important and are not likely to lead to important things.”
What It Takes
Self-confidence
Courage can be developed:
“Look at your successes, and pay less attention to failures than you are usually advised to do in the expression, ‘Learn from your mistakes.’”
An Unrelenting Focus On Important Problems
“Doing excellent work provides a goal which is steady in this world of constant change… otherwise you will wander through life like a drunken sailor”
Most successful “great ideas” people keep a list of 10–20 important problems, and compare everything they see, read, hear, solve, and think against that list for insight:
“I strongly recommend taking the time, on a regular basis, to ask the larger questions, and [do] not stay immersed in the sea of detail where almost everyone stays almost all of the time”
“For some years I set aside Friday afternoons for ‘great thoughts.’ Of course, I would answer the telephone, sign a letter, and such trivia, but essentially, once lunch started, I would only think great thoughts — what was the nature of computing, how would it affect the development of science, what was the natural role of computers in Bell Telephone Laboratories, what effect will computers have on AT&T, on science generally?”
“Look over what you have done, and recast it in a proper form. I do not mean give it false importance, nor propagandize for it, nor pretend it is not what it is, but I do say that by presenting it in its basic, fundamental form, it may have a larger range of application than was first thought possible.”
An Open Mind
“Those with closed doors tended to work on slightly the wrong problems, while those who have let their door stay open get less work done but tend to work on the right problems!”
Drive
“Intellectual investment is like compound interest: the more you do, the more you learn how to do, so the more you can do, etc. I do not know what compound interest rate to assign, but it must be well over 6% — one extra hour per day over a lifetime will much more than double the total output. The steady application of a bit more effort has a great total accumulation.”
“You are likely to be saying to yourself you have not the freedom to work on what you believe you should when you want to. I did not either for many years — I had to establish the reputation on my own time that I could do important work, and only then was I given the time to do it.”
