12 Favorite Problems: A Compass for your Knowledge Management
Probably this sounds familiar: when consuming and saving information that interests you, do you feel like you don't have a useful filter in place? You might be saving pieces of information here and there, but without having a plan or a compass to help you decide what's worthy of getting into your system and taking up your time.
Enter Richard Feynman’s Twelve Favorite Problems framework.
Feynman, an american nobel prize winner physicist worked with a set of questions to guide his thinking:
“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.”
We like to give the word problems a switch and turn it into questions. This rewording opens up possibilities and turns the problems into gifts!
How do I formulate my twelve favorite questions?
We enjoy Eva Keiffenheim’s approach and questions to guide us through the process of arriving at our own questions:
- What are you curious about?
- What have you always pursued?
- What puzzles you about life and society?
- Which problems you can’t stop thinking about?
In addition, we recommend that you stay with question words such as “what and how” -- which provide a more wholesome approach than the inquisitive “why or by when”.
We have summed up some of the benefits about reflecting upon your favorite questions:
- They go far beyond projects, jobs, phases.
- They help you point out those things that always have intrigued you.
- They help you interact with your knowledge and be in a conversation mindset instead of a consumer mindset.
- They invite you to play and to try different things.
- They can also be a compass for your purpose and/or other life areas
If you take time to give shape to your questions you will find that they are generative. By formulating them with curiosity and gratitude they become a world unto themselves. Some of your problems will be very concrete and some will be very broad, some will go beyond your job, your career.
There will be problems that are more philosophical and others that are more theoretical. The important thing is that you connect with them. One begins to live in and with the question, or as Rilke says:
If one lives the questions, one may gradually, without realizing it, live into the answers some strange day.
