I took a bit of a gamble last year by joining Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain course. It is a cohort-based course that promises to “organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.”1
The gamble hasn’t paid off yet–I can’t in good faith recommend the course unless you have a decent amount of disposable income and are a particular kind of “knowledge worker”–but one of the exercises from early in the course has been on my mind.
Richard Feynman, according to Tiago Forte and others, suggested everyone have a set of favorite–or “worthwhile”–problems to solve.
“The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to.“ –Richard Feynman in a letter to his student.
These problems become the lens through which you filter information that comes to you throughout your day-to-day work. A friend posts an interesting article on social media… does it relate to one of your favorite problems? You are inspired by the latest movie or documentary… how can you leverage that motivation to keep working on your problems? A thought comes to you in the shower or during a conversation with a friend… will it guide you to a solution for a problem?
During one of the live sessions, we took some time to write out our own favorite problems. Here are mine taken from my notes for that day:
My 12(ish) Favorite/Worthwhile Problems
- How can I make time for all of my curiosities and passions while being productive and not a wasteman?
- What does my family need from me that I am not providing? How can I become capable of providing it?
- How do my wife & I make time for ourselves (together and individually) while giving enough attention to our children?
- What can I do to make daily tasks, activities, and chores feel like a breeze so I can progress from surviving to thriving?
- How can I increase my confidence and learn my value/worth?
- How can I apply my various skills, tools, knowledge for a financially rewarding career?
- How can I make better/quicker/more accurate decisions?
- How can continuing education in the chiropractic profession be elevated with current technology and pedagogy?
- How can I help World Spine Care grow revenue and create more impact?
- How can I efficiently consume the latest scientific information and develop a valuable perspective without losing quality? How can I help others do the same?
- Why is bias so difficult to recognize and discard?
- How do I reconcile my past identities with who I am now and who I want to become?
- How can you reconcile competing healthy habits?
- How do you build a personal brand with many disparate aspects?
I’ll share more in-depth thoughts on some of these favorite problems in future posts.
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But, really, it’s a supposed to be a method to help people with lots of ideas floating in their heads to express them in a more efficient way–e.g. actually publish or create rather than perpetually dwelling on the ideas–and to earn a living doing so. ↩︎