1-2-3 about Richard Feynman
Post #4 (5 min read)
Happy Monday!
I hope you had an amazing weekend.
Allow me to give a brief about Richard Feynman before I share 1 interesting story, 2 quotes to think about and 3 short lessons from him for you to read this week.
Richard Feynman was an American theoretical physicist, who was widely regarded as the most brilliant, influential, and iconoclastic figure in his field in the post-World War II era. Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga and then finally became a much-loved professor of undergraduate physics at Caltech.
1 STORY FOR YOU
He fixes radios by thinking!
One day I got a telephone call: 'Mister, are you Richard Feynman?' 'Yes.' This is a hotel. We have a radio that doesn't work and would like it repaired. We understand you might be able to do something about it.'
‘But I’m only a little boy’ I said. 'Yes, we know that, but we'd like you to come over anyway.' It was a hotel that my aunt was running, but I didn't know that. I went over there with a big screwdriver in my back pocket. Well, I was small, so any screwdriver looked big in my back pocket.
I went up to the radio and tried to fix it. I didn't know anything about it, but there was also a handyman at the hotel, and either he noticed, or I noticed, a loose knob on the rheostat—to turn up the volume—so that it wasn't turning the shaft. He went off and filed something, and fixed it up so it worked. The next radio I tried to fix didn't work at all. That was easy: it wasn't plugged in right. As the repair jobs got more and more complicated, I got better and better, and more elaborate.
The main reason people hired me was the Depression. They didn't have any money to fix their radios, and they'd hear about this kid who would do it for less. So I'd climb on roofs to fix antennas and all kinds of stuff. I got a series of lessons of ever-increasing difficulty.
One job was really sensational. I was working at the time for a printer, and a man who knew that printer knew I was trying to get jobs fixing radios, so he sent a fellow around to the print shop to pick me up. The guy is obviously poor—his car is a complete wreck—and we go to his house which is in a cheap part of town. On the way, I say, 'What's the trouble with the radio?' He says, 'When I turn it on it makes a noise, and after a while, the noise stops and everything's all right, but I don't like the noise at the beginning.' I think to myself: 'What the hell! If he hasn't got any money, you'd think he could stand a little noise for a while.' And all the time, on the way to his house, he's saying things like, 'Do you know anything about radios? How do you know about radios—you're just a little boy!' He's putting me down the whole way, and I'm thinking what's the matter with him? So it makes a little noise. But when we got there I went over to the radio and turned it on. Little noise? My God! No wonder the poor guy couldn’t stand it. The thing began to roar and wobble—WUH BUH BUH BUH BUH.
So I started to think ‘how can that happen?’ I was walking back & forth, thinking and I realise one way it can happen is that the tubes are heating up in the wrong order that is, the amplifier's all hot, the tubes are ready to go, and there's nothing feeding in, or something wrong in the beginning part—the RF part—and therefore it's making a lot of noise, picking up something. And when the RF circuit's finally going, and the grid voltages are adjusted, everything's all right.
So the guy says, 'What are you doing? You come to fix the radio, but you're only walking back and forth!' I say, 'I'm thinking!'
Then I said to myself, All right, take the tubes out, and reverse the order completely in the set.' So I changed the tubes around, stepped to the front of the radio, turned the thing on, and it's as quiet as a lamb: it waits until it heats up, and then plays perfectly - no noise.
When a person has been negative to you, and then you do something like that, they're usually a hundred per cent the other way, kind of to compensate. He got me other jobs, and kept telling everybody what a tremendous genius I was, saying, 'He fixes radios by thinking!' The whole idea of thinking, to fix a radio—a little boy that, stops and thinks, and figures out how to do it—he never thought that was possible.
2 QUOTES FROM HIM
You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird… I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.
3 LEARNINGS FOR YOU
Be obsessed
Find and pursue something interesting that delights you especially, so you become a kind of temporary expert in some phenomenon that you heard about. It’s the way to save your soul — then you can always say, “Well, at least the other guys don’t know anything about this!”
Five Productivity Strategy by Feynman which have helped me a lot when I am learning something new.
Stop trying to know-it-all.
Don't worry about what others are thinking.
Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do.
Have a sense of humour and talk honestly.
Teach others what you know.
Don’t be afraid of being wrong.
“Don't get frightened by not knowing things. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about. It doesn't frighten me.”
Being wrong isn't a bad thing like they teach you in school. It is an opportunity to learn something.
He was an amazing person and while reading his book “Surely You are Joking Mr Feynman” I have started to be more curious about life and it’s workings. I hope he inspires you as much as he has inspired me!
That’s it from me, until next Monday!
Would love to know if you have any feedback or want me to write about someone who you think is amazing at what they do! Please share it if you liked the post!