Why do you do what you do?

I gave a speech design to motivate for Toastmasters this week. Motivation is not my forte. I am much more comfortable with organizing activities or dealing with technical issues. I struggled for a couple weeks trying to think of something meaningful to encourage the club members to attempt. I wanted it to be more than challenging them to eat breakfast every day, or do exercise at least three times a week.


In pondering what to talk about I remembered a story I heard almost twenty years ago. I used Google and tracked it down. Dr. Richard Hamming was a scientist. He worked on the Manhattan project and then spent thirty years at Bell Labs. In addition to doing research Dr. Hamming was interested in the process of discovery. He came to the conclusion that many researchers were working on less important problems. Great Scientists were great partly because they were willing to tackle hard problems.

I found the story in a speech he gave in 1986. In You and Your Research he recounts how he would visit different tables in the cafeteria at lunch time. He would get together with the physicists and listen to what they were working on. He also hung out with the mathematicians and chemists at their tables. At one point he asked three questions:

1) What are the big problems in your area of research?
2) What are you working on at Bell Labs?
3) If you are not working on the big problems why are you at Bell Labs?

This didn't always make him very popular.


I pondered this story for awhile and gave a speech around these three similar questions. I wanted each person to ask themselves:

1) Why am I doing what I am doing?
2) Is there something more important that I should be working on?
3) If so, why am I not working on it?

I challenged each person to ask themselves these questions at least three times a day for two weeks. I gave out the questions so they could put them in their wallet, or on their computer, or at home on the refrigerator.

I'd like to pass on the same challenge to our readers. I encourage you to pause now and then and think about your answers to these questions. Life can be very, very hectic. It is easy to get distracted by something good and miss things that are truly vital. Try it for two weeks. I'd be curious to hear what happens to you after answering these questions for fourteen days.


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