I wrote about You and Your Research in a recent post. I did not realize that Paul Graham's blog also includes the Q&A. The following excerpt tells Hamming's view on how to keep the well of creative ideas going.
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, [...] 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.
Hamming uses Clause Shannon, the father of information theory, as an example not to follow. Shannon was an exceptional scientist, so this statement seems to be counterintuitive:
Shannon, I believe, ruined himself. In fact when he left Bell Labs, I said, "That's the end of Shannon's scientific career." I received a lot of flak from my friends who said that Shannon was just as smart as ever. I said, "Yes, he'll be just as smart, but that's the end of his scientific career," and I truly believe it was.
Staying in a field can make you complacent. Just as with the big mukity muk in Breaking Through, Katalin Karikó's memoirs, for whom the field stopped when they got famous. You can push back against complacency by shifting your focus. This helps maintain Beginner's Mind. Philip Tetlock's research also corroborates these anecdotes: experts can become incompetent by clinging to their tools of choice as if the world has stopped.
I would insist on a change because 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.
This is not the romanticized exploration of uncharted territories but a sensible career shift:
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.
Shifting one's career is an act of courage, which is the main point of You and Your Research: developing a good character. Stepping away from fame is a character trait of exceptional scientists such as Richard Feynman and Katalin Karikó.
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.
Surprisingly, changing research direction is good for a scientific career. Developing a Range of skills is often portrayed as a useful strategy for success in the popular press: you can hear about the t-shaped student, not to mention my favorite,
’s .Career shifts help avoid identity foreclosure, as you are not the person only doing X—as collateral; you also don't get bored. The repercussions for science are even better: outsiders' perspectives can lead to breakthroughs, and bad old ideas might disappear faster than one dead scientist at a time.
Dig Deeper
You and Your Research
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?
P2P No. 53 — Beginner's Mind
You do not want to be like the traditional expert. You really don't. As the Zen proverb distils the wisdom of thousands of years, experts tend to become indoctrinated into their fields. Studies show that their performance can even worsen with more experience.
P2P No. 46 — The danger of we have always done it this way
Entering a new field comes with frustration: we are not familiar with how things are done, so we are inefficient. We often fail. We might even dream of the day when every problem and task greets us as an old friend. But under this false facade of safety, danger is lurking. Pioneering computer programmer
P2P No. 38 — Don't fall in love with a story
We tell ourselves stories to understand the world. Narratives drive the economy. But they can be dangerous. And I am not talking about the tooth fairy (sorry if I lifted the veil off that one). A narrative is a means to express a perceived pattern, thus, compressing the information required for understanding. You could memorize all leap years or learn th…