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If You’re Feeling Confused, This Simple Question Will Help You Get Back on Track
How to tap into your hidden potential and do first-class work.
In his illustrious career, mathematician Richard Hamming contributed significantly to the fields of computer engineering and telecommunications. He won plenty of awards for his work. (They even named an award after him.)
Hamming spent most of his productive years at Bell Labs (or AT&T). About four years after joining the company, he came across John Tukey, a scientist at the same firm.
By Hamming’s admission, John Tukey was a genius. What irked Hamming was the fact that Tukey was younger than him. One day, Hamming stormed into his boss’s office and demanded to know how John Tukey could know so much at such a young age.
His boss leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and said, “You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.”
Hamming also built a notorious reputation for himself at Bell Labs by asking his peers the following question:
“If what you are doing is not important, and if you don’t think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?”
