This weekend, I finished reading “In Code: A Mathematical Journey
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.
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The small, private elementary school that I attended held an awards ceremony at the close of each school year. Each class had a poem or a saying that it recited during this ceremony. Only three of these stand out from the five ceremonies that I went through — second through sixth grades. I remember my sister having to recite a shortened version of “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”, by Beatrix Potter when she was in first grade — my second grade year. In fifth grade, I remember reciting “The Gettysburg Address”. However, sixth grade was the year that stood out the most for me for, in that year, we had to memorize and recite “If—” by Rudyard Kipling.
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.
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Do you feel like you are busy all day? Seth Godin commented on modern procrastination:
“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
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I have begun reading through “The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever”
To all of us the thought of heaven is dear—
Why not be sure of it and make it here?
No doubt there is a heaven yonder too,
But ’tis so far away—and you are near.
Now, from what I understand, Omar Khayyám like both women and wine a great deal and there is a good chance that the translation of this quatrain by Richard Le Gallienne is really showing his love of chasing women — specifically the “and you are near”. However, I interpret this quatrain thusly: we all like the idea of heaven, but what if it doesn’t exist? Is it not better to try and make the best of the life we have — to “make [heaven] here”? At the very least, our Earthly life is here and now while heaven “[is] so far away” So, I interpret this as an urging to live our lives to the fullest here on Earth — a very happy message.
What is your interpretation?
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I want to continue my discussion on Richard Hamming’s “You and Your Research” and, to do so, it will be helpful to know a little bit about what Richard Hamming did at Bell Labs (once part of AT&T). Hamming was a mathematician by training, but worked in the computing center in Bell Labs. In his speech, he made the following statement:
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?
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