Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, on how he made discoveries:
“You have to keep a dozen of your favourite problems constantly present in your mind. Although by and large they will lay in a dormant state, every time you hear a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your 12 problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, ‘How did he do it? He must be a genius!‘”
The Concept
12 problems = Life-level questions you carry with you. Open questions that genuinely bother you—things you keep coming back to.
The filter: Every time you encounter new information, test it: “Does this help answer any of my 12?”
Why It Works
| Without 12 Problems | With 12 Problems |
|---|---|
| Passive consumption: “That’s interesting” | Active filtering: “That’s interesting because it explains X” |
| Information accumulates randomly | Information clusters around questions you care about |
| Ideas feel disconnected | Ideas become potential answers |
How to Find Your 12
Step 1: Write down questions you keep coming back to. What bothers you? What do you wonder about repeatedly?
Step 2: Look for similarities across your questions. If these are symptoms, what’s the underlying cause?
Step 3: The pattern reveals your lens—your unique angle on the world.
Example (Vicky Zhao’s 12)
- What is the role of a specialized generalist?
- How can I tell what’s noise and what’s signal?
- What’s more important: serendipity or intention?
- What’s more important: perception or truth?
- How do we develop our taste?
- How can I hold two opposing ideas at the same time and function?
Her pattern: Duality management. Holding multiple things together. That’s why she writes about intersectional thinking.
Practical Use in Zettelkasten
- Create a permanent note for each of your 12 problems
- When processing any input, ask: “Does this connect to one of my 12?”
- If yes → Link the new note to that problem
- Over time, each problem becomes a hub with supporting ideas beneath it
See Per-Note Questions for how this works at the individual note level.
The Key Insight
Your 12 problems reveal what makes your perspective unique. Two people can read the same book and extract completely different insights because they’re testing against different questions.
Common Trap
Picking “impressive” questions. Your 12 should be questions you actually return to, not questions you think you should care about. If it doesn’t genuinely bother you, it won’t act as a filter.
North: Where does this comes from?
- Richard Feynman (originator)
- Question-Driven Learning (broader principle)
East: What opposes this?
- Passive Consumption (no filter, everything is equally “interesting”)
- Topic-Based Organization (organizes by subject, not by question)
South: Where this leads?
- Per-Note Questions (applying the concept at note level)
- Finding Your Unique Lens (your 12 reveal your perspective)
- Generating New Ideas (filtered inputs lead to relevant outputs)
West: What is similar?
- Socratic Method (learning through questions)
- Research Questions (academic version of driving questions)
- Jobs To Be Done (product version: what job is this solving?)