12 Favorite Problems: How to Spark Genius With the Power of Open Questions

The key to this exercise is to make them open-ended questions that don’t necessarily have a single answer.

how the mind of a great intuitionist such as Feynman operated. He, too, focused on principles first, building off examples that cut straight to the heart of what the problem represented rather than focusing on superficial features. His ability to do this was also built off an impressive library of stored physics and math patterns. His mental calcul

There is probably a certain set of problems that you notice in your life that others don’t seem to find quite as vexing. Great people throughout the ages have also locked onto a problem (or set of them) and spent their life surrounding and attacking it. Do you recognize others who are attacking some of the same problems that vex you?

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, and people will say, “How did he do it?

THE NEXT TIME you’re tempted to engage in problem solving, try problem finding instead. Ask yourself, Am I asking the right question? If I changed my perspective, how would the problem change? How can I frame the question in terms of strategy, instead of tactics? How do I flip the thumbtack box and view this resource in terms of its form, not its f