Hamming: You and Your Research

Richard Hamming's talk on You and Your Research had a profound impact on my professional career. The video is available on Youtube, and I've noted a few particularly relevant quotes with timestamps below.

(02:32) As far as I know, and as far as you know, you have one life to lead. You might as well lead a life you would like to have, and I suggest you a life of doing something signficant, by your definition of significant...
(14:50) If what you're doing is not important or not likely to be important, why are you doing it? ... It's that simple. If you don't work on important problems, you are not going to do important things except by the dumbest of dumb luck.
(17:40) When you have a vision, you will go a long way. Without a vision of what you're going to do and where you're going to be, you're not going to get very far. It's that simple. You have to get a vision of what you are going to do and be, and then pursue it.
(26:44) Let me reorganize my life. Let me quit spending my time reading nonsense magazines and thumbing through the newspaper—they're not very important to my career. Let's spend my time studying things for my career.
(27:50) It's not hard to do, you just do it.

His book The Art of Doing Science and Engineering is also worth reading.