On Thinkers and Doers - By Rohit - Strange Loop Canon

One difference is, scientists tend to care about impact of their work, whereas engineers tend to only care if their solution is practical.

And while we have done pretty well with respect to doers in the last few decades, we’ve done much worse with thinkers. Our world, since the second half of the previous century, has in fact moved to being mostly about doers and not thinkers.

The single biggest commonality that every thinker you’d consider as a generational genius has had is room to think. Sometimes enforced, like with Newton and the plague years, sometimes chosen, like Darwin and his extended voyages, and sometimes through creative work life balance, like Einstein during his patent clerk years.

Another key difference seems to be motivation - scientists are motivated by discovery and understanding, whereas engineers are motivated by application and use.

Its not a pure argument to reduce the number of hours worked, though that might be a result. Its a more holistic push to reduce the pressure to pursue short-term distractions to keep the red queen race going.

The only way out from this rat race I can see is to re-create a safe space. When you are no longer consumed by the worry that is career sustenance and growth, at least a subset of folks might choose to work on what they think is important. Signalling will never fully die of course, but perhaps we can dampen it.

There are thinkers and there are doers. Oftentimes the thinkers do things, and doers have to think about what they’re doing. But the distinction is helpful, as dichotomies so often are, to illustrate something fundamental about the way we approach the world.