Page 218 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

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ichard Feynman, the bongo-playing, Nobel Prize–winning physicist, was a
R happy-go-lucky guy. But there were a few years—the best and worst of his
life—when his exuberance was challenged.
In the early 1940s, Feynman’s beloved wife, Arlene, lay in a distant hospital,
deathly ill with tuberculosis. He only rarely could get away to see her because he
was in the isolated New Mexico town of Los Alamos, working on one of the

most important projects of World War II—the top-secret Manhattan Project.
Back then, Feynman was nobody famous. No special privileges were afforded
him.
To help keep his mind occupied when his workday ended and anxiety or
boredom reared its head, Feynman began a focused effort to peer into people’s
deepest, darkest secrets: He began figuring out how to open safes.

Becoming an accomplished safecracker isn’t easy. Feynman developed his
intuition, mastering the internal structures of the locks, practicing like a concert
pianist so his fingers could swiftly run through remaining permutations if he
could discover the first numbers of a combination.
Eventually, Feynman happened to learn of a professional locksmith who had
recently been hired at Los Alamos—a real expert who could open a safe in
seconds.

An expert, right at hand! Feynman realized if only he could befriend this
man, the deepest secrets of safecracking would be his.

IN THIS BOOK we’ve explored new ways of looking at how you learn. Sometimes,
as we’ve discovered, your desire to figure things out right now is what
prevents you from being able to figure things out. It’s almost as if, when you
reach too quickly with your right hand, your left hand automatically latches on
and holds you back.
Great artists, scientists, engineers, and chess masters like Magnus Carlsen

tap into the natural rhythm of their brains by first intently focusing their
attention, working hard to get the problem well in mind. Then they switch their
attention elsewhere. This alternation between focused and diffuse methods of