Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness
Shuvomoy Das Gupta went and distilled and collected a lot of advice from Donald Knuth, noted mathematician and computer scientist. I don't agree with everything Knuth puts forward, but a great deal of it resonated with me.
On scheduling daily activities. "I schedule my activities in a somewhat peculiar way. Every day I look at the things that I'm ready to do, and choose the one that I like the least, the one that's least fun — the task that I would most like to procrastinate from doing, but for which I have no good reason for procrastination. This scheduling rule is paradoxical because you might think that I'm never enjoying my work at all; but precisely the opposite is the case, because I like to finish a project. It feels good to know that I've gotten through the hurdles."
|
The Value of Mentorship
I got turned onto Van's YouTube channel through his brother Casey, as I'm sure the vast majority of his audience did. Van's videos are hit or miss for me, but this one was super interesting. He discusses working for Tom Sachs. I particularly liked this insight from Tom to Van:
And probably the most valuable technique that Tom taught me was that that is where your best work is going to come from. This unintentional subconscious like utility to solve a problem, a series of problems. It's not intellectually driven the way that the art historians would have you believe.
|
Found on my Facebook memories from eight years ago, it's an excerpt from an AMA Neil deGrasse Tyson did on Reddit at the time. These days I find him more and more annoying, but what he says here is still good advice:
Q: What can you tell a young man looking for motivation in life itself?
A: The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.
For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.
|
