I can’t find it now, but it says something to the effect of “researchers with closed doors are more productive now, but over the long term they lose the pulse of research and become increasingly irrelevant, whereas researchers with open doors are less productive but keep the pulse of research and stay relevant.”
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.
Excellent, thank you! I’ve seen that selection quoted elsewhere before but am not sure I’ve read the full text of its source, it’s good.
I like that RSS reader, once I get an RSS feed setup (any recommendations on FOSS ways to do this?) I’ll subscribe using that and tweak the filters over time.
This is from Richard Hamming’s You and Your Research. The relevant part:
Excellent, thank you! I’ve seen that selection quoted elsewhere before but am not sure I’ve read the full text of its source, it’s good.
I like that RSS reader, once I get an RSS feed setup (any recommendations on FOSS ways to do this?) I’ll subscribe using that and tweak the filters over time.