Richard Feynman was one of the most prolific scientists and inventors of his time. He won the Nobel Prize for contributions to quantum electrodynamics which revolutionised our understanding of the behaviour of subatomic particles, helped discover the cause of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, taught himself safe-cracking, pioneered quantum computing, introduced nanotechnology and authored several books.
During a lecture at MIT, mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota, recalled:
“Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit.”
Thinking of this today, I devised a list of my current favourite problems. They are the issues I think and write about, and the questions I look for answers to in my work.
My favourite problems
- What questions do we need to ask to get to the heart of what really matters?
- How can we live a life that fills us with the joy of living?
- How can we cut through the noise to find and focus on what’s most valuable to us?
- How can we do work that energises us rather than work that drains us?
- How can we align our lives more closely with our humanity?
- How can we remove pain to make space for inner peace?
- How can we improve our relationship with ourselves?
Why these questions matter to me
We’re getting progressively unhappy and unhealthy. We have more opportunity than ever to live a good life but we are becoming progressively unhealthy and unhappy. Medical science and technology have made unprecedented advances but depression, anxiety, obesity and substance use rates have been increasing.
The more connection there is the less connected we are. More and more of us feel isolated, lonely and misunderstood. By virtue of that we are surrounded by people who are also longing for connection, but we don’t connect. We’re connected with technology but disconnected from our humanity.
We’re working towards unhappiness. We spend years working very hard toward the things we think will make us happy. And when we get there we feel empty.
We’ve been trying to understand life, but not humanity. The main vehicle we have for navigating life is ourselves. But we aren’t very curious about ourselves. We study physics, biology, chemistry, medicine. We’re trying to understand the mechanics of life and who we are, but are we understanding the essence of who we are?
We’ve organised life in a way that doesn’t serve us. We’ve been trying to promote our survival and well-being for 300,000 years. We’ve built countries, institutions and technology to that end—to help us live a good life. But we are more unhappy, unhealthy and depressed than ever.
Solving the wrong problems. We have unprecedented ability to solve problems. But are we solving the right problems?
We treat the world as separate to who we are. But life really is indivisible from humanity.