“Do not quench your inspiration and imagination; do not become the slave of your model.”
Vincent Van Gogh
How was it that Einstein managed to find a solution that changed our world when many of his contemporaries were working in the same field without success? It’s simple. Good questions result in meaningful answers.
It’s really down to the problem that he was working on. Whilst he was working on the theory of relativity and the problem in his model of the world, his contemporaries were working on a very different problem.
Their problem went something like this: “How can nature appear to act that way when we know that it can’t?” Vast sums of money went into the experiments to research this perceived problem. No solution was found, because they were looking for an answer that did not exist.
Einstein on the other hand was asking himself a different question. “What would nature be like if it did act the way we observe it to act?” And by asking the right question he found an answer in E=MC2.
The fact is that Einstein would have failed if he had pursued the wrong problem. So, we learn to form a problem or question that enables you to seek and recognise a solution. Ask yourself how many challenges you’re unable to solve because you’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist?
Great ideas are too different from our current thinking, and too similar to non-solutions to be casually recognised. The trick is to write a problem statement down. Get it out of your head so you can see it clearly. When we know what to look for, the probability of finding great solution soars.
