Richard Feynman approach to Solving Problems
“Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!” is the biography of the Nobel Prize in physics, Richard Feynman. As a young boy interested in electronics, he was asked to fix things even when claiming to be unprepared for the job. His approach was simply thinking about the problem at hand and realizing the solution in his mind. He then gained the reputation for fixing radios just by thinking.
Feynman's ability to not rushing to a solution highlights the importance of first grasping the problem in its entirety and only then coming up with potential solutions. After all, can you come up with a solution if the problem is unknown? You can. But the process is random rather than thought through.
This year, I signed up for two classes — Social Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurship. In both, the process of developing a plan for a new venture never began with the solution. But in the understanding of an existing necessity, that is, a problem that has not yet been solved.
There is a reason why I highlighted the sentence "He fixes radios by thinking" when reading this book. It has nothing to do with radios, but with the interest in improving the ability to think critically, to think better. Rushing to a solution is always an available option. The question is how effective will it be? Will it be enough to fix the radio?
“I always do that, get into something and see how far I can go.”