I have notes on Hamming's presentation,
"You and your research" elsewhere.

Here I summarize key points of the Q&A session.
These are all my paraphrase;
Hamming's words are "in quotes";
my comments are [in brackets].

- Think first: don't read too much

"If you want to think new thoughts that are different,
 then do what a lot of creative people do --
 get the problem reasonably clear
 and then refuse to look at any answers
 until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it."

"If you read all the time what other people have done,
 you will think the way they thought."

- Talk to stimulating people: people who suggest related directions
  Don't talk to people who just say "yes, yes",
  and don't just stay in your office.

- Change fields periodically: you use up your ideas
  Every 7 years or so, move to a different (but related) field.

- Books are important long-term: they give orientation
  They should get at the essence, and needn't be complete.

- Research is more "single-handed" [or small group];
  management is vision -- "what needs to be done", and the broader the vision,
  the higher in management.
  They are simply different.

--------------------------------------------------------
Ok, here are some comments from the talk itself

- Steady, hard work, intelligently applied, is the key to success
  [What is meant by "intelligently applied" is the main content of the rest.]
"The steady application of effort with a little bit more work,
 intelligently applied is what does it.
 That's the trouble; drive, misapplied, doesn't get you anywhere.
 I've often wondered why so many of my good friends at Bell Labs who worked as hard or harder than I did,
 didn't have so much to show for it.
 The misapplication of effort is a very serious matter.
 Just hard work is not enough - it must be applied sensibly."

- Good work isn't particularly healthy
  + You neglect the rest of your life (it takes time)
  + You stress (you need to care about it)
  
  [There is a trade-off between the life and the work, d'apres Yeats "The Choice".
   See also Grothendieck's remarks on his "spiritual stagnation",
   following 25 years of focused work in mathematics,
   in "Récoltes et Semailles", discussed in:
   http://www.ams.org/notices/200410/fea-grothendieck-part2.pdf
  ]