You and Your Research

The race is not to the one who works hardest! You need to work on the right problem at the right time and in the right way—Richard W. Hamming

What does it take to become a great scientist? Though there is no IKEA-style manual, ample means exist to learn, including Richard W. Hamming's talk titled "You and Your Research." What does one of the most eminent computer scientists of the 20th century say?

Identify the important things

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.

You can be efficient (doing things right) but not effective (doing the right things).:

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.—Abraham Lincoln

But how do we identify the essential things?

Not that you should merely work on random things, but on small things which seem to you to have the possibility of future growth

Hamming's advice is bittersweet; predicting the future is only easy in hindsight. We cannot know for sure, but we can be better prepared. This brings us to the next point.

Embrace uncertainty

Great people can tolerate ambiguity; they can both believe and disbelieve at the same time

This type of non-dual thinking is a common trait of great performers. This is a delicate game with a sweet spot in the middle:

If you believe too much, you will not likely see the chances for significant improvements; if you do not believe enough, you will be filled with doubts and get very little done

For more actionable advice, we can turn to recent research in psychology, borrowed from Adam Grant's book Think Again:

Confidence is a measure of how much you believe in yourself. Evidence shows that’s distinct from how much you believe in your methods. You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present. That’s the sweet spot of confidence.

We should detach ourselves from the tools we have. Excellence does not imply success if the time is not right.

Be in the right position

A problem is important partly because there is a possible attack on it and not just because of its inherent importance.

The importance of positioning goes beyond science. It was a key tenet in the investment philosophy of the legendary duo of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Besides being a tool to nudge ourselves toward success, positioning emphasizes the optimal amalgam of confidence and humility. Having the right tools at the wrong time will not bring us ahead. By inverting the last statement, we get powerful selection criteria for the important problems to work on:

Do we have the right tools? Is this the right time?

Those problems that pass muster will be dwellers of the adjacent possible, the narrow stretch of land around the frontiers of science.

Be a team player

you should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it. Do not in the process try to make yourself indispensable

Science is a collaborative effort; the only way is to push the frontiers together. There is no room for overcomplicating the simple to look more important by pseudo-math and littering your writing with the exotic fruits of English grammar.

Give away your ideas

I have long held the attitude of telling everyone freely of my ideas, and in my long career I have had only one important idea “stolen” by another person.

There is ample evidence that what drives innovation is the free flow of ideas. However, our egos can interfere and make us think we must cling to our brainchildren. I believe that sharing our ideas is the reasonable way—it is even self-serving. First, we get feedback that weeds out our many bad ideas. Second, it will make more of our ideas become reality, as at some point, we will have more than we can handle. Third, transcending science, giving away our ideas will help fight our ego. We should be content when someone else realizes our good ideas. This is what matters for science; this way, we can focus on the ideas we are uniquely suited to bring about.

We all started by borrowing ideas from our mentors. It is time to pay it forward.

Explore, indulge your creativity

At the urging of others, for some years I set aside Friday afternoons for “great thoughts.”

Locking on the important things is a continuous quest fueled by our curiosity. It is like a journey to an unknown land: long, full of dead-ends and unknown outcomes. However, these small steps on the path will compound and steer the random walk of our research toward solving important problems. Staying zoomed in, progress might make sense on the micro level, but the risk is too high that our work will dissolve in the sea of macro-level insignificance.

if you are to be a leader into the future, rather than a follower of others, I am now saying it seems to me to be necessary for you to look at the bigger picture on a regular, frequent basis for many years

Make a good idea look like a good one

I am sorry to have to point this out; many scientists and others think good ideas will win out automatically and need not be carefully presented. They are wrong; many a good idea has had to be rediscovered because it was not well presented the first time, years before!

For those who moan, "Why can't we only do science?" I would remind you how Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein were both proponents of simplicity. Here, the path is the destination: thinking about the problem makes the idea clearer, and the loose ends get tied up.

Final words

it is nice to end up where you wanted to be, but the person you are when you get there is far more important.

Developing your character, as a review by Nobel laureate economist James Heckman concluded, predicts and produces success in life.

This requires us to Do Hard Things, and I couldn't agree more with Richard W. Hamming that we should!

Dig Deeper

• You and Your Research by Richard W. Hamming

• Do Hard Things by Steve Magness

• Hidden Potential, Think Again, Give and Take by Adam Grant

• Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson

• Anatomy of a Breakthrough by Adam Alter

• Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread by Alex Pentland