Richard Feynman is one of the greatest physicists that have ever lived. He was a polymath - he excelled in a number of different areas. He played the violin, he was an amateur safe cracker, he played a critical role in identifying the problems in The Challenger Disaster, he is a best-selling author (some of my favourite books of his include Surely you must be joking Mr. Feynman and Six Easy Pieces) and he won the Nobel Prize (along with other physicists) for their work on quantum electrodynamics.
Although this is tangentially related, I would say that his books have helped me develop a deeper understanding of what it means to understand something. He has a story of his childhood when his Dad taught him about birds and that knowing the name of a bird did not mean that you understood what a bird was. His book Six Easy Pieces also breaks down physics into something easily understandable and while I wouldn't say that I don't know anything about physics, I would say that he has broken it down into something that anyone can understand (which is a sign that you have a mastery of the subject and that you deeply understand it).
Back to the approach to problems - I remember reading a story about Feynman's prowess to solving problems. He was an expert problem solver and after solving a number of very challenging problems in physics, he was asked how he managed to solve these challenging problems and why he was such a great problem solver. I have been thinking about his approach since. He said that when he is faced with challenging problems, he keeps the problems in his working memory, say he has eight physics problems in his mind at any one time. He then explored other subject areas such as biology, mathematics, chemistry, etc. and as he encountered different approaches to solving problems / solutions in those other subject areas, he would apply that solution to each of the eight problems in his working memory to see if it yielded a new approach or result. In this way, he was able to solve very difficult problems, leveraging solutions in other areas of his life that he encountered.
Okay, but how can this help you with your career? I'm not sure but I can give you examples of where I have done this in my own career.
Take stock of what you have learned from other areas of your life
I've made a concerted effort to improve some skills that I believe will multiply your expertise - these skills include public speaking, communication, writing. James Altucher has a concept called 'idea sex' where he takes different ideas that are not new but merges or combines them in a way that is new. I do the same thing but with different skills that I have learned - for example, I learned a ton about writing and self-publishing and have leveraged many of those skills in my job as a consultant (you have to be able to write well and write effectively for much of that work). I constantly think about how books or publishing can be used either to increase awareness of consulting (say publishing a playbook of consulting services and leaving these in dentist's offices) or to expand my Toastmaster's club reach (maybe there's a way to compile stories from each of the members and leave these as a key takeaway for guests).
Have a healthy curiosity for things that you don't really understand
When I first started consulting, I had a very subtle interest in design. I liked well-designed products but I wasn't sure how I could use some of that interest and passion in the work that I did. Luckily, I'd say that I had an unofficial mentor in my good friend Shawn and he showed me two things: one, you can't wait for projects to be creative or fun, you have to take the initiative in making the projects that way yourself and two, don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. It was around that time that I met Shawn that I started to incorporate more and more 'design' elements into my presentations and reports. I started to look at things from the client's point of view to see how I could make things easier for them to understand or to read. And that's when I started to leverage different media - the time was over for PowerPoint presentations or Word reports, the world was moving to video, audio, motion graphics, animations and more dynamic content.
Leverage tools and approaches from other industries or sectors
As the world demanded more and more dynamic content (think about these days where we have Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook feeds and other social media), I started to take a look at what the publishing industry was doing to combat or adapt to this. I saw that almost everyone had e-mail lists. I saw that books and magazines were slowly dying and the move to digital was becoming increasingly important to have a footprint in the market. I saw that websites were no longer big monstrosities that were hard to navigate - it was usually one page that changed as you selected different options in the navigation bar. Again, this was all due to our demand for dynamic content and our decreasing attention spans. I also saw that consulting was very slow to adapt to this trend so I asked myself, how could we use websites on our projects? How can we use digital magazines to deliver content to our clients? How could we create engaging videos rather than developing lengthy essay-like word reports on our projects?
What's the key takeaway here? I think there are a few:
- Keep your eyes open to how you can use other related experiences in your life to 'multiply' or expand your career
- Notice the trends that are happening in other industries or sectors and identify where your industry or sector falls along that trend - are they ahead of the curve? Behind the curve? Act accordingly
- If other industries are ahead of you, figure out what they are doing differently and find ways to apply that to your job or organization