Interesting to contrast this with Richard Hamming's advice:
Another trait, it took me a while to notice. 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 know
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. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence
because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't
know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work
with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although
people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work
on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.
And also grad students. Everyone who stops by has a legitimate reason (need signature on some random form, question about a homework, etc.) but the cumulative effect is to prevent coherent thought.
9. Keep organized. My experience has been that young people who do well in academia are exceptionally good at keeping on top of things: correspondence, deadlines, juggling different projects, etc. This is especially true the less you work collaboratively. If you're on your own, it's very easy to become a chaos.
