You and Your Research

I've heard many people quote Hamming about "work only on important problems," but fewer seem to notice the caveat he has in the talk:

"We didn't work on (1) time travel, (2) teleportation, and (3) antigravity. They are not important problems because we do not have an attack. It's not the consequence that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack."

This makes the notion of "important problem" specific to you. In other words, dependent on your particular skills and interests, not on some external measure of worth. So even if you are working on something more "modest," say, what scat tells us about migration patterns of bobcats, that still counts as an "important problem" since you have an attack and can solve it.

Under this reading, Hamming's advice is close to the other famous nugget, "do only what only you can do" (Dijkstra). That is never the way I see it being used in conversation, however. Usually I see it in the context of encouraging people to work on some Big Problem that may not be a good fit for their skills and interest -- which is one of the quickest ways to encourage failure.

I like Hamming's challenge, but I read this quote yesterday, and I think it might be more insightful:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -- Howard Thurman

I get annoyed reading fluff like this. I used to work as a researcher and noticed a lemming like tendency for scientists to flock to the same stuff. It usually isn't until someone discovers something potentially disruptive (or the people who have money latch onto new buzz words) that the flocking changes. I can agree that each field has problems of interest. I'm a computer scientist but I have no interest in trying to solve P=NP. Sure the prominent problems of interest would have useful results to society if solved. However, who is to say that new problems of interest or mental shifts aren't out there. Beckoning to be found. Stretching the field (or individual researcher) is valuable.

This is an insightful post. Sometimes people let themselves off the hook.

Defining which problem is the "most important" is a bit tough, but whatever problem you are working on ought to be very important to you.

So in a sense, the point is to avoid just working for a paycheck and try to do something that means something to you.

This reminds me of the first pg essay I ever read, "Good and Bad Procrastination," which also references Richard Hamming. This essay directed me to his site, and eventually here.

http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

I like pg's treatment a little more. He distills it down to one sentence, "What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?"

This single sentence has pretty much directed much of my work since then. It's so simple it's almost counter-intuitive. I have designed systems to sort "problems" by descending value and taught my users to just work on #1 until it's fixed. But it wasn't until reading pg's corollary to Hamming's work that I did it myself.

Thanks for reminding me.