06/26/2023

What To Work On

a problem worth solving

Some banal platitudes – Life is short and you don’t know if you’re getting another shot at it. Time is moving by too fast. Are you spending your life working on the right things? You’re a problem solver. There are a lot of important problems in the world worth solving, a lot of them you can play a part in solving. Climate change, cancer, food security, sustainable energy transition, poverty and economic challenges, aging/longevity, you get the point. You want to “make an impact on the world” and be respected for your work. You’re getting stressed out – what is a problem worth solving? How do you know what to work on? 

I don’t have advice on this but Richard Feynman does. 

In a letter dated February 3rd, 1966, included in the anthology Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman (1918-1988) timelessly describes “worthwhile problems.” 

The letter is part of a chain of communication that started with a former student, Koichi Mano, who had written to extend his congratulations on the Nobel prize to Feynman. 

Feynman asked Mano what he was doing. Mano responded: “studying the Coherence theory with some applications to the propagation of electromagnetic waves through turbulent atmosphere … a humble and down-to-earth type of problem.”

Richard P. Feynman to Koichi Mano
February 3. 1966 

Dear Koichi,

I was very happy to hear from you, and that you have such a position in the Research Laboratories. 

Unfortunately your letter made me unhappy for you seem to be truly sad. It seems that the influence of your teacher has been to give you a false idea of what are worthwhile problems. The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it. I would advise you to take even simpler, or as you say, humbler, problems until you find some you can really solve easily, no matter how trivial. You will get the pleasure of success, and of helping your fellow man, even if it is only to answer a question in the mind of a colleague less able than you. You must not take away from yourself these pleasures because you have some erroneous idea of what is worthwhile.

You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods. But at the same time I had another Ph.D. Student (Albert Hibbs) whose thesis was on how it is that the winds build up waves blowing over water in the sea. I accepted him as a student because he came to me with the problem he wanted to solve. With you I made a mistake, I gave you the problem instead of letting you find your own; and left you with a wrong idea of what is interesting or pleasant or important to work on (namely those problems you see you may do something about). I am sorry, excuse me. I hope by this letter to correct it a little.

I have worked on innumerable problems that you would call humble, but which I enjoyed and felt very good about because I sometimes could partially succeed. For example, experiments on the coefficient of friction on highly polished surfaces, to try to learn something about how friction worked (failure). Or, how elastic properties of crystals depend on the forces between the atoms in them, or how to make electroplated metal stick to plastic objects (like radio knobs). Or, how neutrons diffuse out of Uranium. Or, the reflection of electromagnetic waves from films coating glass. The development of shock waves in explosions. The design of a neutron counter. Why some elements capture electrons from the L-orbits, but not the K-orbits. General theory of how to fold paper to make a certain type of child’s toy (called flexagons). The energy levels in the light nuclei. The theory of turbulence (I have spent several years on it without success). Plus all the “grander” problems of quantum theory.
No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself – it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher’s ideals are.

Best of luck and happiness.

Sincerely,
Richard P. Feynman.

I hope this resonates with you as it did me.

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