food for thought

I found this talk by Richard Hamming thought-provoking. It's about doing great (rather than merely good) research. One of the things he says is that you should ask yourself "what are the important problems in my field and why aren't I working on them?".[*] That struck a chord because at the moment I'm not sure what I want to be doing, or where I want to be -- and if I don't know where I'm going it's not very likely I'll end up there by fluke. The trouble is that that kind of goal-setting requires significant mental effort, so I tend to procrastinate by doing something else; it's always easier and more short-term satisfying to do the little things that are immediately to hand and give you an easy fix of "completed this!" satisfaction.

So in some sense the most important problem in my "field" is "what do I want to do with my life?" and I should start working seriously on it...

[*] Aside: why does "why am I not" collapse into "why aren't I" and not "why amn't I" ?