I’m not a science person. I did study Mathematics back in undergrad and was involved in some topology projects, but I’m afraid that was my last real encounter with the hard-core scientific world. However, I’m always curious about science, about how things work and why they work that way.
A friend of mine who’s doing Ph.D. recommended me this book series of Richard Feynman, a well-known physicist in the 20th century who received the Nobel Prize at the age of 37 (over-achieverrrr!), and who, apart from his full-time academic career, held a personal painting exhibition, played drums in numerous occasions including some ballet performances, and claimed his fame as a safecracker back in the days when he worked in Los Alamos.
A truly intelligent person knows how to manage his/her time effectively and is usually surprisingly good in multiple fields apart from his/her core. Feynman is undoubtedly one of the few.
I was a bit hesitated to open the book because I just couldn’t imagine how reader-friendly the content could be with the author being a full-time world famous physics professor. The technical aspect of any of his academic work could totally drown me. My friend encouraged me to give it a try, “It’s basically a book for everyone!”
Indeed, it was an easy and delightful read. Feynman’s sense of humor was vividly shown on the paper and made me laugh out loud at times.
Nevertheless, my feeling towards this book was a mix of love and hate – he had a complicated personality that often annoyed me. I didn’t at all agree with his values towards the relationship, and his sexual promiscuity certainly fit himself into a stereotype of a typical over-achiever (didn’t mean to offend anyone). Additionally, he was just sometimes too smart and his impatience to showcase his exceptional intelligence earned him some good rolling eyes.
Otherwise, I really liked the book. Some very good learnings I’d like to share:
- Don’t fully rely on the schools to teach us things. We need to be proactive in learning and self-teaching through readings, watching videos, going to the lectures etc. And this is the secrete to becoming outstanding among the peers.
- Only after Feynman studied advanced calculus by himself during his leisure time at graduate school did he realize how much easier it could be to solve complicated integral problems. And the useful tools in that book were never taught in class. Because of these tools, he became popular among his peers as he was on the top of the list every time they encountered difficult integral problems.
- His friend in Maths department recommended him this book over a casual conversation. And these opportunities didn’t come at random, instead, he earned it himself. Apart from working on his concentration (Physics), he actively participated in study groups in fields he had no expertise in, which earned him a good number of fresh cross-disciplinary perspectives.
- Always stay curious and be bold to question the unquestioned. There’s nothing wrong with being a mindful follower (who knows what they are doing and why they are doing it), but a blind follower (who follows either because other people are doing it or because it seems to be a shortcut to success) may eventually have their time and efforts wasted.
- Feynman gave a casual example. He bumped into a painter and the painter told him he could get the color of yellow by mixing red and white paints. Despite of the expertise of that painter, Feynman challenged him and paid for the painter to get the paints to do the experiment. Those who overheard the conversation told Feynman it would be a waste of time and money because that painter was the expert. It turned out that Feynman was right, and that it was the painter who remembered it wrong.
- It’s common for us to feel the kind of pressure when in conversation with some big figures. Our inner voice would come out and tell us to keep the mouths shut and just listen and follow. But it was those who had the gut to break the mold that created history and advanced the development of the society.
- The book also mentioned that, when Feynman was a junior staff, the big figures often asked to have him in the meeting because he was the only one in their working group who wouldn’t fear the power and authority and spoke up whenever he had questions.
- Don’t lock ourselves in just one field. It’s great to be an expert in a vertical domain, but we also need to keep an open eye to the rest, which is usually 99.9% of the world. The world is no longer flat, and the cross-disciplinary perspectives make us a better person both professionally and personally.
- Apart from his relentless efforts to mingle with students from other fields back in graduate school, Feynman explored multiple fields (such as Biology) after he became Caltech professor. He spent a summer in a biology lab just to get some new perspectives, and he went to Brazil for research during his sabbatical, which got his Portuguese very well polished. It didn’t mean he was going to start fresh and leave behind everything in the past; instead, the new try-outs, combined with his past experiences, opened some new windows for him.
- When we find something is hard to understand (especially some abstract theoretical stuff), making analogies is one quick way to save us from getting stuck.
- Feynman studied some Maths but couldn’t speak the same language with those Ph.D students majored in Maths when he was at Princeton. One trick he always used was that he would ask the students to give him a specific example or analogy of what the theory indicated. Concrete examples helped him relate the unknown to something he definitely knew. Based off that, he could either come up with counter examples to challenge the theories, or follow up with more examples to beef up his understanding of the theories.
- I believe this is also why he taught so well as professor, because he was able to interpret complicated definitions through understandable and vivid examples. This is what makes a professor from good to great – he was able to not only deal with the complicated, but also pass the knowledge onto the next generations in a simplified way.
- How to nudge those successful people to share their experiences and secrets to success with you? Make them proud.
- Feynman shared one story about how his father, a salesman, figured out the tricks of a mindreader they met at a carnival. They found this mindreader who could always guess the colors and names right but none of them was able to find out how. As a result, his father went up to the mindreader for a private conversation, and soon came back with a whole lens of the tricks the mindreader used. Feynman wondered how, and his father said, “I just went to applaud his work, and he got so excited and proud that he couldn’t help sharing everything with me.”
- Therefore, don’t hesitate to give a little bit of (or more) compliment and applause, and we may be able to get more than we expected.
- Find something that make us feel living, and dedicate our life to it.
- Feynman said explicitly in his book, “I don’t believe I can do without teaching. At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution.”
- Know who we are, and set our own expectations, regardless of what other people think about us.
- Having gone through some tremendous psychological burdens, Feynman realized, “I have no responsibility to live up to what other people think I ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”
- Feynman ended the book with one last chapter emphasizing scientific integrity, and I wanted make this an ending to my article as well. I’ve heard so many ugly stories triggered by lack of integrity in both the science and business world: intentionally manipulate the data to make the experiment results fit; cheat on financial and operational numbers to maintain a good stock rating; sell the products that don’t work as good as what they claimed in the ads…And most of the time, they need a bigger lie to cover those in the past, and the snowball keeps growing.
- “I have just one wish for you – the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity i have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.”
SweetS 