- Jun 2023
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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When I create a new note, I write and link it as usual. Then I call up a saved search in The Archive via shortcut. I then go through the notes of my favorites and see if the fresh note is usable for one of my favorites. In doing so, I make an effort to find a connection. This effort trains my divergent thinking. Afterward, I try to understand the nature of the connection from the fresh piece of paper. In this way, I train my convergent thinking.
Sascha's process of incoporating the problems into the ZK workflow
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Not all favorites are problems! I don’t phrase everything as a problem. For example, I am writing a collection of short stories set in a prison valley. It is also part of my list of favorites. I think Feynman has 12 favorite problems because as a physicist, you mainly solve problems. But as a writer, you don’t only solve problems, you write texts. There are different types of opportunities, not just problems.
Not everything has to be a problem in the literal sense of the word; it's a tool for generating creative insight by means of prompting and relational thinking.
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This technique is another demonstration of Feynman’s genius. It is simple and efficient: Maintain a collection of 12 favorite problems. Whenever you learn something new, check if it helps you with one of your 12 favorite problems. 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 lie 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, and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!”
Effective problem-solving method that can be incorporated with ease in the Zettelkasten technique.
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- Mar 2023
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radiolab.org radiolab.org
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Listened to on 2023-03-11
Much like Richard Feynman kept a list of his 12 favorite problems, Maurice Hilleman kept a running list of diseases for which he was working on developing vaccines to remedy.
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- Feb 2023
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2zY7l2tzoQ
Ugh... another short mediocre introduction. Repeats the origin myth.
Seems to take a very Ahrens' based framing, but screws up a few pieces. More focus on "hub notes" and completely misses the idea of an index somehow?!?
The last section of 2+ minutes really goes off the rails and recommends converting notes from other places and muddles about "Favorite problems" (ostensibly a reference to Feynman's 12 Favorite Problems, but isn't direct about it?).
Also encourages the "Feynman technique"...
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- Jan 2023
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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When I create a new note, I write and link it as usual. Then I call up a saved search in The Archive via shortcut. I then go through the notes of my favorites and see if the fresh note is usable for one of my favorites. In doing so, I make an effort to find a connection. This effort trains my divergent thinking.
Sascha Fast juxtaposes his new notes with his own favorite problems to see if they have any connections with respect to improving on or solving them.
This practice is somewhat similar to Marshall Kirkpatrick's conceptualization of triangle thinking, but rather than being randomly generated with respect to each other, the new things are always generated toward important questions he's actively working on or toward.
This helps to increase the changes of forward progress in specific areas rather than undirected random progress.
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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 lie 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, and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!”
Gian-Carlo Rota (1997): Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught, Notices of the American Mathematical Society 1, 1997, Vol. 44, pp. 22-25.
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- Nov 2022
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billyoppenheimer.com billyoppenheimer.com
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When I come across interesting information, I highlight then comment a corresponding question:
Every studio has a slate.
What is the source for this?
It's highly related to having a direction in life, or the famous example of Feynman's 12 Favorite Problems that he always kept in mind to slowly be working at.
Part of having a list of purpose dovetails to how one builds their identity too.
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- May 2022
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Local file Local file
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As told in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman byJames Gleick
Forte cleverly combines a story about Feynman from Genius with a quote about Feynman's 12 favorite problems from a piece by Rota. Did they both appear in Gleick's Genius together and Forte quoted them separately, or did he actively use his commonplace to do the juxtaposition for him and thus create a nice juxtaposition himself or was it Gleick's juxtaposition?
The answer will reveal whether Forte is actively using his system for creative and productive work or if the practice is Gleick's.
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new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to seewhether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, andpeople will say, “How did he do it? He must 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
Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts (Boston: Birkhäuser Boston, 1997), 202.
Richard Feynman indicated in an interview that he kept a dozen of his favorite problems at the top of his mind. As he encountered new results and tricks, he tried applying them to those problems in hopes of either solving them or in coming up with new ideas. Over time by random but combinatorial chance, solutions or ideas would present themselves as ideas were juxtaposed.
One would suspect that Feynman hadn't actually read Raymond Llull, but this technique sounds very similar to the Llullan combinatorial arts from centuries earlier, albeit in a much more simplified form.
Can we find evidence of Feynman having read or interacted with Llull? Was it independently created or was he influenced?
I had an example of this on 2022-05-28 in Dan Allosso's book club on Equality in the closing minutes where a bit of inspiration hit me to combine the ideas of memes, evolution, and Indigenous knowledge and storytelling to our current political situation. Several of them are problems and ideas I've been working with over years or months, and they came together all at once to present a surprising and useful new combination. #examples
Link this also to the idea of diffuse thinking as a means of solving problems. One can combine the idea of diffuse thinking with combinatorial creativity to super-charge one's problem solving and idea generation capacity this way. What would one call this combination? It definitely needs a name. Llullan combinatorial diffusion, perhaps? To some extent Llull was doing this already as part of his practice, it's just that he didn't know or write explicitly about the diffuse thinking portion (to my knowledge), though this doesn't mean that he wasn't the beneficiary of it in actual practice, particularly when it's known that many of his time practiced lectio divina and meditated on their ideas. Alternately meditating on ideas and then "walking away" from them will by force cause diffuse thinking to be triggered.
Are there people for whom diffuse thinking doesn't work from a physiological perspective? What type of neurodiversity does this cause?
Tags
- diffuse thinking
- juxtaposition
- commonplace books
- flâneur
- cognitive neuropsychology
- psychology
- combinatorial creativity
- neurodiversity
- James Gleick
- Llullan combinatorial arts
- quotes
- meditation
- Richard Feynman
- Feynman's 12 Favorite Problems
- Llullan combinatorial diffusion
- cross-disciplinary studies
- lectio divina
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