
Staying Sane in Academia - gnosis
http://blog.regehr.org/archives/308
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jey
Interesting to contrast this with Richard Hamming's advice:

    
    
      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.
      

PG has posted the full essay at <http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html>

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regehr
The source article is one of my absolute favorites. But CS department !=
industrial research lab...

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hugh3
The main difference probably being hundreds of undergraduates?

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regehr
And also grad students. Everyone who stops by has a legitimate reason (need
signature on some random form, question about a homework, etc.) but the
cumulative effect is to prevent coherent thought.

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mbateman
Sounds right to me, except maybe #1. I'd add:

9\. Keep organized. My experience has been that young people who do well in
academia are exceptionally good at keeping on top of things: correspondence,
deadlines, juggling different projects, etc. This is especially true the less
you work collaboratively. If you're on your own, it's very easy to become a
chaos.

