Irene Nemirovsky

Had a good walk in Stanford trhis morning. I think I may not have been meant for higher education or research.
That I got this far is fortunate and lucky enough.

A great article on needing time for true thought. Read the whole article at : 
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2006_10_13/opportunities_stealing_time

"I am very occupied with the courses, so that my real free time is less than in Bern."
--A. Einstein, in a letter to M. Besso, 1909

In his latest book, Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness, scientist and historian John Rigden analyzes Albert Einstein's landmark year, in which he published 5 seminal papers that changed physics forever. As you probably know, Einstein wasn't in a university or laboratory at this time: He was a junior patent clerk in the Swiss patent office in Bern. When he wrote that letter to Besso, he was a professor at the University of Zurich. It seems odd to most of us now, but the isolation and free time that Einstein enjoyed while goldbricking in the patent office may have contributed to his extraordinary intellectual productivity. Einstein's "alternative career" may have contributed to some of the most important breakthroughs in the history of science.

As you know, science and engineering are creative activities. We rely on inspiration and serendipity to generate the insights and make the connections that are the kernel of new inventions and discoveries. Creativity requires many things: a prepared mind, obstacles to overcome, and time. What Einstein had in 1905--and what he had less of by 1909 when he wrote to Besso--was time: time to think, time to tinker, time to explore.

It is not uncommon for faculty to long for the relatively simple days of grad school and postdoc: Back then, they had TIME! Sometimes you can find yourself with so many interruptions and emergencies in succession that the e-mail you began to compose at 8 a.m. is still unfinished by the time you head to lunch! 

This isn't just frustrating and stressful; it can be corrosive to your creativity, smothering the spark at the core of your intellectual engine. Can you imagine what it would be like if painters, playwrights, and composers had to produce their product in 5- to 10-minute bites between committee meetings and proposal reviews?

Stealing time

Creating time to think, explore, and tinker is critical to your effectiveness as a creative individual--as a scientist. Without time to explore, your chances of making a breakthrough are vastly diminished. And no matter where you end up professionally, your effectiveness--and your happiness--will depend on how well you manage your time.

Killing the time vampires

Time vampires are those small, seemingly helpful or innocuous things that nibble away at your day without really adding value to it. 

1. Keep e-mail in its place. Open Outlook only twice a day. 
2. Manage your interactions with the people around you. It's easy to get caught up in enjoyable, unplanned conversations with friends and colleagues. This may require a certain amount of tact and patience: You don't want to alienate others in your thirst for privacy.
3. Create meeting-free Fridays. When I started work at a large national laboratory, lots of meetings were inserted into my workweek. Given the time I spent preparing, attending, assimilating, and following up those meetings, it was little wonder that I struggled to spend 20% of my time on productive research!  I worked half days on Sundays, in peace and quiet, to get caught up on my real work.

Creating mind oases

1. Spend at least one 3-hour chunk of time each week outside your office. any place where you can isolate yourself and read, review, and cogitate. Walking stimulates thoughts and connections differently than sitting idle does. So get out and take a walk.
2. Think about big problems. In research, it's easy to get down to tiny details very quickly and spend the bulk of your time there. Making a habit of mentally stretching yourself from time to time can be intellectually stimulating and a lot of fun. This can be even more fruitful when done in conversation with the right people.
3. The trick to maintaining your professional (and personal) sanity is knowing what tasks you can afford NOT to do--not trying to pack ever more tasks into the same day. 

Even Einstein worried about his  career and whether he was on track apparently :
Einstein the Nobody

Character, the secret to a meaningful life ?

I came across this great (month old) article on NYtimes today. I thought it a tremendously useful and courageous contribution by these schools to teach the importance of character and to attempt to instill it. It may be even more important than academic grades. It may make all the difference especially in families where there aren't resources or a long background of education. The Gates foundation would do well to serve such efforts.

What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? 

From one of the comments :


Einstein himself said that had he been a junior professor rather than a clerk in the Swiss patent office, he might not have developed his thinking as he did. Being a junior professor would have obligated him to publish, as a clerk he earned a living and physics was his hobby. A faculty position, he said, would have made it hard to avoid "superficial analysis" - i.e. produce results to ensure promotion.

How can you create a learning environment that allows curiosity to predominate? Can it be done? John Holt addressed these issues in his classic "How Children Fail". It seems his ideas were never heeded and now we have Seligman with his Positive Psychology industry focusing on individual character traits while ignoring the social context in which the schools exist.

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/the-100-rules-for-being-an-entrepreneur/

 Try not to hire people. You’ll have to hire people to expand your business. But it’s a good discipline to really question if you need each and every hire.


Exercise. Same as above. If you are unhealthy, your product will be unhealthy.


Fire employees immediately. If an employee gets “the disease” he needs to be fired. If they ask for more money all the time. If they bad mouth you to other employees. If you even think they are talking behind your back, fire them. The disease has no cure. And it’s very contagious. Show no mercy. Show the employee the door. There are no second chances because the disease is incurable.


Don’t go to a lot of parties or “meetups” with other entrepreneurs. Work instead while they are partying.


 Ideas are worthless. If you have an idea worth pursuing, then just make it. You can build any website for cheap. Hire a programmer and make a demo. Get at least one person to sign up and use your service. If you want to make Facebook pages for plumbers, find one plumber who will give you $10 to make his Facebook page. Just do it.

No friction. The harder it is for a consumer to sign up, the less consumers you will have. No confirmation emails, sign up forms, etc. The easier the better.

TTA) No fiction, part 2. If you are making a website, have as much content as you can on the front page. You don’t want people to have to click to a second or third page if you can avoid it. Stuff that first page with content. You aren’t Google. (And, 10 Unusual Things You Didn’t Know About Google)

UU)     No friction, part 3. Say “yes” to any opportunity that gets you in a room with a big decision maker. Doesn’t matter if it costs you money.

By Steve Jobs :

When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through."
– Playboy magazine 1985

On motivation

"That's been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."
– Business Week 1998

On money

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful … that's what matters to me."
– Wall Street Journal 1993

"The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people – as remarkable as the telephone."
– Playboy 1985

On work

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."
– Stanford commencement speech 2005

• “If Apple becomes a place where computers are a commodity item, where the romance is gone, and where people forget that computers are the most incredible invention that man has ever invented, I’ll feel I have lost Apple. But if I’m a million miles away, and all those people still feel those things … then I will feel that my genes are still there.”
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• “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
• “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
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• “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”
• “Innovation … comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”
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• “ ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”