After reading this essay several years ago, I started asking all visiting professors, "What are the important problems in your field?" (I'm a PhD student in Astrophysics.)
I realized something. Contrary to the article, most great scientists don't really care what the answer to that question is. Most great scientists love a topic, and through the greatness of their research, make the topic important.
The universe is wonderful in that way. You can study something as lowly as a comet, and it can help you understand how the universe began. Scientists who can tie these subjects together are great scientists.
To tie this thread into startups. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's implementation that matters.
The transcript of the talk is not by pg, but Richard Hamming. [0], [1] I found this particular talk poking through the links on 'Good & Bad Procrastination'. [2] Does anyone have a definitive list of pg articles on the site? It never ceases to amaze how many I find going through the links.
Reference
[0] Richard Hamming Obit., 'Richard Wesley Hamming, mathematician, pioneer computer scientist, and professor'
doh, thx. In all the time I've been reading this has alluded me. Should have guessed a compressed title ... [some time later] ... double doh! it's in the menu.
I was thinking the other day about why it was that so many of the smartest people work only a couple hours a day, which relates to the open door theory proposed in this speech. Joel Spolsky mentioned doing this in the article linked to from here yesterday, and I remember Chris Sacca saying that people really only did an hour or two of quality work every day at Google. My thinking was that the people we typically think of as smart are the people who are innovative and come up with new ideas. And new ideas tend to come from combining two or more fields. Which would give people who are a little bit ADD a huge advantage, though at the same time reducing the amount of actual work they are able to do on a day to day basis.
I agree, up to the last part that "at the same time reducing the amount of actual work they are able to do on a day to day basis". It is well known that time is not directly proportional to productivity. It's more like time x skill = productivity. So the most productive people probably work fewer hours, but are more productive than the average person working 8 hours a day. See Mythical Man Month by Brooks and Great Hackers by pg ( http://paulgraham.com/gh.html ).
After reading this essay several years ago, I started asking all visiting professors, "What are the important problems in your field?" (I'm a PhD student in Astrophysics.)
I realized something. Contrary to the article, most great scientists don't really care what the answer to that question is. Most great scientists love a topic, and through the greatness of their research, make the topic important.
The universe is wonderful in that way. You can study something as lowly as a comet, and it can help you understand how the universe began. Scientists who can tie these subjects together are great scientists.
To tie this thread into startups. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's implementation that matters.