The concept of “Twelve Favorite Problems” was a knowledge management and building technique discovered in the work of Richard Feynman through the writing of Gian-Carlo Rota and then popularized by folks in the personal knowledge management and productivity spaces such as Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain”.
Forte1 describes the technique as keeping a list of open-ended questions in the back of your mind at all times. This can yield a number of benefits, including helping to triage incoming information, spread ideas across different fields of knowledge, and condition yourself to notice useful information or solutions in daily life.
I’m currently in the process of identifying my questions. I started with a list of questions that cover the variety of work that I’m interested in. That gives me sense of just how broad my interests are and an interface to help prune them. I’ve also set relevant tags with each question.
One thing I noticed about my first attempts at this list of questions and examples from others, including Feynman, was how general they were. I think I was trying hard to make sure all of my interests “fit” inside these questions. Now that I have this interface, I want to work on focusing those interests.
Currently, my twelve favorite problems are:
- How do communities prepare for climate emergencies?climatepreppingsocialismindividualism
- How can people dependent on medicine avoid depending on global supply chains and the pharmaceutical industry?pharmaceuticsdisabilityeugenics
- How can I develop an equitable and effective course?pedagogylabor-based-gradinggrading-contracts
- How can I lead other faculty to reduce harm against marginalized students?professional-developmentmonolingualismplurilingualismmulticulturalismpedagogyideologydisabilityableismneurodivergenceracisminclusiondiversityhabitus
- How can I decenter intersecting systems of privilege in my work and life?misogynywhite-supremacydisabilityneurodivergencefeminism
- How can I become a better and more confident speaker?communicationdata-visualizationanxietyconfidence
- How can I leverage my notes to write effectively?communicationwritingdata-visualization
- How can I wake up early and enjoy it?sleephabitspharmaceutics
- How do I manage autoimmune atrophic gastritis to live my best life as long as possible?healthaaganemiaautoimmune-diseaseshypothyroidismtestosterone
- How can I help others to passionately learn on their own?autodidactismeducationleadershippkmlearning
- How do be an authentic and ethical professor in a colonialist and capitalistic education system?educationideologycapitalismsocialismmarxismfeminismcolonialism
- How can higher education institutions better understand and support linguistic minority students?
Tagging related concepts like capitalism, anticapitalism, socialism. do they need separate tags?
socialism is easier to understand because it is a distinct ideology with its own history and discourse that can be separate from capitalism.
anticapitalism, by its definition, only exists in relationship with capitalism. So anything that is useful to a topic on anticapitalism is also useful in a topic on capitalism and vice versa. right? I think at least enough so. Also for the “serendipity engine” to work, we need these two tags to be discoverable within each other. I.e., ideas tagged “ableism” should be mixed in with ideas tagged “disability” to avoid leading ourselves into thinking they weren’t related. Nested tags could be a solution to this, by having a disability/ableism tag for when we want to specify ideas relating to ableism within the disabilty topic. I kind of want to get rid of nested tags, though, because it always introduces a new question of order; disability/ableism or ableism/disability? But also tags could be developed more organically. I.e., when I have a specific research topic, I search my vault and as I’m working I tag things that are interesting to that topic. This promotes serendipity because it mixes everything together at first, but also records my work