“He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important.”

—  Richard Hamming

You and Your Research (1986)
Context: I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important.

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Richard Hamming 90
American mathematician and information theorist 1915–1998

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