Richard Hamming was a mathematician and computer scientist best known for his work on at Bell Labs and his unique views on learning and thinking.
In 1986, he gave a seminal lecture – “You and Your Research” – providing insights on the components of meaningful research and scientific career success.
You and your research could easily be: you and your career, you and your athletic goals. The lecture most resonated with me through a coaching lens; following much of what I’ve learned about success in business ownership and developing athletes.
If you’re looking for a formula on how to win or succeed in any area, enjoy.
- Regularly ask: what are important problems in my field?
- Identify and work on immediate, medium-range, long-term problems.
- Dedicate one afternoon, “Great Thoughts Time”, weekly to think about fundamental questions.
- Keep a notebook with interesting ideas and problems.
- Have courage to tackle challenging problems.
- Build relationships with the best in the field
- Be professional
- Share ideas, learn, and collaborate
- Be willing to change
- Focus on important work during your most productive hours
- Drop less important things for more important
- Knowledge leads to productivity, doing more leads to knowing more
- Learn to overcome fear of failure and a need for recognition
- Say no to activities that do not contribute to main goals
- Stay current, always be learning
- Learn from others’ successes and failures
- Develop broad knowledge across multiple fields
- Challenge conventional wisdom where appropriate
- Commit to excellence vs good enough.
- Excellence comes from consistent, deliberate effort
- Great work requires great sacrifice
- Value is in the struggle more than it is in the result
- Never get too comfortable with your current success
- Develop emotional resilience to persist in the face of setbacks.
- Balance self-confidence with self-honesty.
- Develop inner drive to do significant things.
- Just doing hard work is not enough, it must be applied sensibly
- Great scientists tolerate ambiguity really well; if you believe too much, you never notice the flaws, if you doubt too much, you’ll never get started.
- Luck favors the prepared mind, be ready for opportunities
- Doing significant work requires conscious choice and sustained effort
What strikes me as the most important ingredients to success? Commitment to excellence, patience, engagement, curiosity, flexibility, humility, discomfort, focus, and excellence.
(photo: Multisport Mastery athlete Chris Pritchett, a great example of many of Hamming’s points.
