Since before Emily was born, Ashley and I have paid the extra money every month for digital cable because we wanted to get high-definition channels. However, the past few months, I have realized at we, as a family, really watch very little TV. Further, the TV that we do watch is mainly found either on the local channels or on Netflix Instant. So, after talking it over with Ashley, we are going to drop cable entirely in favor of receiving our local HD channels over e air. The one show that we really enjoy and are current on that is not on local networks can easily be downloaded to the Apple TV for a small charge per episode. All in all, I expect this to be a fairly easy transition that should save us somewhere around $70-80 every month.

The second challenge for September is more of a personal challenge for me. Since I do most of the cooking around here, when I get home and don’t feel like making anything, it has become entirely to easy for me to declare that we are going out to eat. Lately, we have been eating out at least one weeknight and just about every meal except for breakfast on the weekends. Also, this does not count the 3–4 days a week that I have been eating lunch out instead of taking a lunch or coming home to eat. Now, that is really ridiculous since I work five minutes from home and it almost certainly takes me longer to grab something for lunch that to come home and heat up leftovers or make a sandwich. So, for the month of September, I am challenging myself to not eat out unless it is meaningful to me. I am making an exception for Ashley and my date night this Saturday and I am debating whether or not I will make an exception for the weekly lunch group I meet with. Hopefully, by the end of this month, I will have broken the eating out habit. It is a bit on the embarrassing side, but we spent almost $500 on eating out this last month so by breaking this habit for me, we will probably save at least 80% of that for September.

These personal spending cuts are inspired by financial reading, but the reason is not really austerity related. While the amounts that we spend, both of cable and dining out, are high, neither one is really breaking the bank for us. Granted, I can find better things to do with the money, but this challenge is more about just making myself do it.

When learning something new, I have a tendency to split my efforts into multiple strata. First, I get a broad overview of the topic and try to just get a feel for the basics. At this point, I am not concerned with doing calculations or working any types of problems. I just was to get a rough feel for the topic. As I study, I make a note of topics that interest me further. Once I feel like I have a good overview, I pick the most interesting topic and dig a deeper into it. This is the point where I start to try to apply what I am learning, either by working problems or writing programs. However, I never really go too deep on any one topic—I tend to bounce around all of the topics that interest me, chipping away at the terminology bit by bit, working a little more, until I feel like I have a good enough understanding of the topic to satisfy my interest.

So, where do I fall along the holism—reductionism line? Well, I would say that, in general, I take a more holistic view of research. To me, the whole is more important than the individual parts. I only want to know enough of the parts so that I feel like I have a good enough understanding of the whole. I think that plays into my Jack of All Trades syndrome. If I can grasp the Big Picture of a topic, it is infinitely more valuable to me than if I become an expert in all of the little pieces.

1. Is what you are doing important?
2. Why do you do it?

I came to the conclusion that my endless pursuit of knowledge was not very important in the grand scheme of things, since I was not sharing it with other people. Afterwards, Ashley and I were talking about the different levels of importance. She made the point that, although I did not feel like what I was doing was important, my pursuit of learning set a very good example for Emily and, on that level, it was important.

There is no absolute scale in importance. How important an activity is lies in the context in which it is viewed. If you feel that your job is not very important, maybe you are demonstrating a good work ethic to your coworkers or your children. Each activity must be viewed through the prism of your life to find its significance. If you find an activity important enough to spend your time on it, do the be you can. If it is important to you, there is a good chance it is important to someone else as well.

There are many highly respected motives which may lead men to prosecute research, but three which are much more important than the rest. The first (without which the rest must come to nothing) is intellectual curiosity, desire to know the truth. Then, professional pride, anxiety to be satisfied with one’s performance, the shame that overcomes any self-respecting craftsman when his work is unworthy of his talent. Finally, ambition, desire for reputation, and the position, even the power or the money, which it brings. It may be fine to feel, when you have done your work, that you have added to the happiness or alleviated the sufferings of others, but that will not be why you did it. So if a mathematician, or a chemist, or even a physiologist, were to tell me that the driving force in his work had been the desired to benefit humanity, then I should not believe him (nor should I think the better of him if I did). His dominant motives have been those which I have stated, and in which, surely, there is nothing of which any decent man need be ashamed.

It is important to note that Hardy attributes these motives to be the driving reasons why people perform research; obviously, there are other professions, such as teaching or social work as a few examples, that may have alternate, altruistic motives.

Reflecting these motives back on myself, I find that they fit fairly well in that order. First and foremost, I want to know the answer to the question that I am pursuing. As an aside, I find myself asking questions during the most random times and wanting to know the answer. The other night while giving Em a bath, I couldn’t remember what eigenvalues and eigenvectors were, so I had to fetch my Linear Algebra text and look it up while Em was entertained with bath crayons. There was no particular reason why this flitted through my head, but it did and I had to know the answer. What can I say, I am a little weird. Secondly, when I am writing software, I want my programs to work correctly when other people get their hands on them. Finally, I want to be thought of well in whatever I am doing. Luckily, the first two motives usually help to drive this third one along.

I especially like Hardy’s statement that “there is nothing of which any decent man need be ashamed”. Yes, doing things for the greater good is noble, but if you do not get joy and satisfaction from what you do, you will become burned out and no longer want to do it. Maybe you get joy and satisfaction merely knowing that you are helping others; for me, there also has to be the hint that I am going to learn something new.

A man who sets out to justify his existence and his activities has to distinguish two different questions. The first is whether the work which he does is worth doing; and the second is why he does it, whatever its value may be.

Hardy says that, if you want to justify yourself, you have to answer the following questions:

1. Is what you are doing important?
2. Why do you do it?

If you cannot tell, I spend a lot of time trying to answer these two questions about myself. In the essay, Hardy states that the second question is a fairly easy one to answer but that the first is “is often very difficult, and the answer very discouraging”.

In this case, I want to justify my never-ending quest for more knowledge. So, let’s take the easy way out and answer the second question first. Why do I do it? Well, I study things simply because I enjoy it. My mind is like a sponge, soaking up new information, so it comes easy to me — it always has, much to my sister’s dismay (sorry Sis!). I like to be able to distill what I know down to the essentials and explain new concepts to people, not because I want to feel superior to them, but because I generally want to be able to share what I know with them and help them out if possible. Reading this, it sounds like I should go into teaching someday — that is a possibility I have considered once Em gets into college. Right now, I am having too much fun learning new things and applying them as an engineer. So, attacking the first question, is what I am doing important? Unfortunately, at this stage, I would say it is not. While I am spending a lot of time learning new things, I do not spend nearly enough time sharing them with other people. As Em gets older I am sharing more and more of my love of discovery with her. One of the things I most look forward to is working on Science Fair projects with her and helping to foster the same love of science that her mother and I share. As it is now, I try to answer her questions in ways that a 3 year old can understand.

Beyond fostering a love of learning in my daughter, what can I do to make what I do important? At this point, I would say learning how to share my knowledge more effectively with other people. Perhaps I finally need to get to the Toastmasters meetings that I have been meaning to attend. Writing here has helped give me a bit of an outlet. Are there any topics that people wish me to expound on?

[Bode replied] “You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.” What Bode was saying was this: “Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.” Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice out-produce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity! [I]t is very much like compound interest … given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.

Fundamentally, this is why I spend so much time reading and studying so many different subjects. As I gather information, I form more connections between the topics in my brain. This is a variation on Metcalfe’s Law, which derives the value of a network as approaching the square of the number of nodes in a network as the number of nodes gets large — specifically:

Now you can see the value in thinking that one more hour a day. By thinking one more hour, you can learn one more thing. However, that one thing can possibly be combined with every thing else you have learned in new and interesting ways. This also goes back to the classical education movement and the trivium that I discussed a few weeks ago. As you gain more and more information in the grammar stage of learning — about any topic — you can build more connections between the information and make more reasoned arguments during the logic and rhetoric stages of learning.

Throughout the book, I found myself identifying with Sarah. Although I have never done any work on the same level as she has, I can understand the drive to understand something fully and to be able to explain it simply to other people. So, if you are interested in cryptography or you are just interested in getting a glimmer into how my mind works, check out this book. You won’t be disappointed.

To me, “If—” is a philosophy for how I try to live my life. The poem instructs me to stand for what I believe is right, but to still consider the advice of others. It teaches patience and to turn the other cheek. It teaches to keep working hard, even when life seems to kick you when you are down. Most importantly, it exemplifies what it means to be a Man.

To this day, “If—” is still one of my favorite poems and I have read it many times over the last eighteen years. If you have never read it, I urge you to give it a try. As for me, I think it is time for me to memorize it again.

“Honey, how was your day?”
“Oh, I was busy, incredibly busy.”
“I get that you were busy. But did you do anything important?”
Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn’t mean mattered.

He states that it is incredibly easy for knowledge workers to be busy because there are so many interesting distractions. We can do any number of things that feel like work, but are really just keeping us busy, such as responding to email. Knowledge workers know that there is always email to respond to; it never stops. However, is this busy work really providing value?

This reminds me of Stephen Covey’s Time Matrix from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Too often we spend time focusing on Urgent and Not Important (Quadrant of Deception) tasks. However, as knowledge workers, we should be knocking out the Urgent and Important (Quadrant of Necessity) tasks quickly, and then spending as much of the rest of our time on Not Urgent and Important (Quadrant of Quality and Personal Leadership) tasks. This is where we provide the most value. Where are you spending your time? How can you change your focus to work on the Important tasks?

I finally adopted what I called “Great Thoughts Time.” When I went to lunch Friday noon, I would only discuss great thoughts after that. By great thoughts I mean ones like: “What will be the role of computers in all of AT&T?”, “How will computers change science?” For example, I came up with the observation at that time that nine out of ten experiments were done in the lab and one in ten on the computer. I made a remark to the vice presidents one time that it would be reversed, i.e. nine out of ten experiments would be done on the computer and one in ten in the lab. They knew I was a crazy mathematician and had no sense of reality. I knew they were wrong and they’ve been proved wrong while I have been proved right. They built laboratories when they didn’t need them. I saw that computers were transforming science because I spent a lot of time asking “What will be the impact of computers on science and how can I change it?” I asked myself, “How is it going to change Bell Labs?”

What is this significance of this quote? It isn’t that Richard Hamming happened to be right about the change in proportion of lab-based experiments versus computer-based simulation. No, the quote is significant because it shows the power of thinking about the Big Picture. Richard Hamming took 10% of his time at work to think about the broader scope of computing, specifically at AT&T, but also how computers would change the face of science in general.

Google is one of the companies that has become famous in the technology community for setting aside, not 10%, but 20% of its engineering time for working on problems that are not specific to the engineers’ job functions. Several of Google’s strategic projects such as Google Mail, Google News, and Google Reader, initially came out of some engineer’s 20% time. The founders at Google have realized that taking a bit of time to let your mind explore options that are not necessarily relevant to the job at hand can lead to great ideas down the road.

What can you do if your company either does not, or cannot, allow you even 10% of your time to think Great Thoughts? Well, in that case, I recommend spending some amount of time outside of work thinking your Great Thoughts and setting aside some time to do so. If you want to set aside a scant 10% of your “working time” to thinking Great Thoughts, you only need to set aside another 4.5 hours outside of work to bring your Great Thoughts time to 10% of your typical work week. Now, I know everybody is super busy, but given that you have the Other 8 Hours for five days a week, plus two days of 16 hours each on the weekend, I am talking about spending only around 6% of your otherwise free time in a week trying to think of Great Thoughts. While it would be better to dedicate most of that time in a large block, splitting it up into 1–2 hour increments should work just as well. Is that too big a commitment to make?