Monday Memo #20
Fall in love with a problem.
The Monday memo is food for thought to fuel your week.
Hi everyone,
Life seems to be full of problems. Big problems and little problems. Problems at home. Problems at work. Social problems. Personal problems, intractable problems, existential problems.
There is a story about the Buddha. He said that we always have 84 problems. If you can solve the 84th problem, the first 83 will resolve themselves. The 84th problem, he said, is that you want to get rid of all the other 83 problems. If you understand that life is full of problems, the other 83 don’t look so bad.
Life is full of problems, and it always will be. You can’t solve all of them. But some problems are so interesting they can help you forget all your other problems.
The history of science, invention and discovery is a history of people who fell in love with problems so deeply that they spent their life exploring them. Since we all have problems, we can all be explorers, by finding a problem we can fall in love with.
Maybe you haven’t yet found a problem you can fall in love with. But maybe there’s a problem you like enough to spend some time with, getting to know each other better.
Exercise.
Here’s your exercise for the week: Just for a moment, stop thinking about your problems as problems. Think about them as curiosities. Which problems stimulate your creative energy? Make a list of problems that interest you, that you are curious about.
Now pick one of those problems and give it some quality time. Take it out on a date. See if there’s a chance you could fall in love with it.
Upcoming:
In our last Collaboratory with Mike Rohde we imagined our problems as objects, animals, machines, monsters. Here’s a nice one by Bill Johnston.
In this week’s Collaboratory with Dan Klyn we will be once again looking at problems, but this time we will be exploring how philosophy can help us think about them. It’s happening this Wednesday, May 1st, from 9 to 10:30 AM Pacific, (that’s Noon to 1:30 PM Eastern, 5 to 6:30 PM BST).
Collaboratories are free for members. Members also get access to the Collaboratory recordings and AI summaries. Become a member today.
Campfire calls.
Our Friday Campfire calls are free to join, anyone is welcome, and we talk about things that are fueling our creative energy and inspiring us. The energy is infectious. Even if you’re stuck, or don’t feel like you have anything interesting to add, if you have the time, join anyway. I promise you’ll enjoy it. Instructions to join the Friday Campfire and/or add it to your calendar.
Collaboratories.
Our Collaboratories are like a conference in possibility, spread out over the course of a year. Twenty-four workshops, on the first and third Wednesday of every month.
Collaboratories are held on the first and third Wednesdays of every month. They are free for members. Members also get access to recordings of previous collaboratories and the full email archive. You also get a warm and fuzzy feeling of being part of a community and supporting our work. It’s only $20/month or $200/year, kinda like Netflix for Possibilitarians. Become a member by upgrading your subscription.
The Collaboratories are a great way to connect on a regular basis and sample ideas of interest to our members in a fun, interactive, mini-conference format. We are planning upcoming Collaboratories with Ingrid Lill, Jono Hey, Jorge Arango, and Mike Parker.
As of this week we have 62 members. The first 100 members will lock in the $20/month, $200/year rate.
If you’re already a member, thank you. You’re making this possible.
More information for members is below.