I’ve worked with many scientists. Almost everyone have said that the most important thing that keeps them going are the technical challenges – the harder the better. And I’m one of them.
I had always been attributing this to the sense of accomplishment scientists are craving for. However, in the real world, most people usually are not knowledgeable at all how easy or difficult those scientific tasks are. Furthermore, when it is done the scientists usually don’t even bother to tell people how hard it is. They usually are more than satisfied by stating very dryly “here is what we wanted…, and here is how I did it. Thank you very much.”
So why would they still fight for the most difficult tasks and shun away from the routine and easy ones, even though people could give them equal if not more accolade for accomplishing more of the easy tasks? Here is my “new theory” – based on an interesting psychological phenomenon.
A psychologist researcher friend once told me that misery is the mother of happiness. Because euphoria is rare and unsustainable, people often experience it very briefly when long-lasting suffering suddenly stops. In other words, for a scientist that euphoria comes when the days, weeks or months of hard labor and utter frustration suddenly produces a beautiful scientific solution. Because that moment is such a high, and we’ve all been there before, the everyday hard work on a hard problem suddenly takes on a play quality.
Well, maybe next week I’ll explain why golf is so addictive using the same theory.