Book Review: Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman

Surely you’re Joking Mr Feynman – Adventures of a curious character : By Richard P Feynman.

Richard P Feynman is a celebrated Physicist. A noble laureate for his work on quantum electrodynamics, he exhibited amazing qualities contrasting with the stereotypical scientist that we imagine. His books called Feynman Lectures are a hot shot favorite in our IITs and among the physicists of the world. Feynman was a genius in every sense of the word. He was a creative genius and a maths + physics guru. He had a special ability to visualize a problem and break down the mathematics involving its characteristics into its physical form. (Did you understand what I just said?) But he was also, a cool dancer, a great drummer, a brilliant nude artist, a safe cracker, a hard core prankster and a celebrated GENIUS. Someone who could create fun, anywhere any time. I am so inspired by this curious character. Hats off.

Anyways, so much so for the introduction. Coming to the book.

This book is semi autobiographical and describes his lighter side. There are no equations in it but a wealth of knowledge. Feynman keeps attributing much of his success to his luck, (he does this not in an IMHO way, but in a ‘can you believe it!!!’ manner) but sparks of his sheer genius can be seen despite the overall modesty. This book is funny, I don’t know how many times I have caught myself smiling my way to glory while reading it in public places. Absolutely entertaining.

In the book he shares about some 20-30 incidents of his life. Each of them have a lot of spice in them. Reading this book, I have surrendered to the fact that there is no full stop to learning. Look at this man, he would have qualified as an amateurish-expert in maybe 10 different fields! The closest we get to “Jack of all, King of quite a few as well”.

He shares his childhood experiences with repairing radios, his fervor for maths, his days at MIT, his days at Princeton, his days of making the first atomic bomb to becoming a professor in Caltech. And in between come lots of practical jokes, the insights of a genius mind, the funny side of some very serious things, adventures with hot club girls, playing in the Rio Carnival and reluctance to take a Nobel Prize.

All in all this is a hilarious book coming from the mind of a damn mischievous man. You can’t help but chuckle all through out.

What I am taking back from this book is

• Have fun all all all along
• Enjoying every moment
• Know the basics well
• The imaginative side of maths and theoretical problems
• Investigating and going till the bottom

I am all inspired to read “The Feynman Lectures” (if I can understand them).

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to have a light and inspiring read.

Richard P Feynman, was for sure a free man and my now favorite genius of all times! My earlier favorites were Da Vinci and Newton. But well, I haven’t read their biographies yet! (Now, I am not comparing renaissance geniuses to the modern day ones, its just that if I would fantasize my life as a genius, it would be closer to Feynman’s than Da Vinci’s.)

Not being able to sleep!

I guess I am forever enthusiastic! Most of my post titles end in an exclamation mark!!!

Wow, I am so charged up after resolving to make this new habit that I am not getting any sleep. All sorts of thoughts about things that I need to do are coming to my mind. Various possibilities!

So I just woke up and updated my “Remember the Milk” with all the things that I wanna do today. Hopefully doing this will give my super charged mind some rest and also some sleep. Among my new possibilities are :-

• Being like a brother to Tanaya
• Contacting Laura Parkin and supporting NEN, both in Bangalore and Bhopal
• Being this absolutely inspirational dude in my next SELP
• Achieving what I am set out to achieve at home

Anyways, gotta sleep and wake up in the next 2 hours, so I better hurry.

My abs are hurting with todays doze of exercise. I did 1 set each of 33 push-ups and 60 sit-ups and squats.

By the way, Deval’s mom has sent me a special home made hair oil to check my hair-loss. Deval says it worked like magic on his dad. Well I have applied it today. Doesn’t smell very good. But Deval says that I can feel the difference in a matter of days. Wow, that sounds amazing.

I took 10 mins to write this post instead of 5. I really gotta build this habit of writing bullet posts. Lesson learned – ‘While trying to find a link, don’t spend anytime reading the unnecessary pages that open up’

The most effective habit!

We are always taking actions even if it doesn’t look like.

For example if I want to earn 30,000 bucks this month. This is my goal. Then every moment I have the choice to take actions that take me towards these goals or to take actions that take me away from them. As Mark Joyner says, “There is no such things as procrastination and laziness. These words are based on an assumption there is no action involved”. But an action like lying down on the bed, dreaming about your goals is also an action. An ineffective action, but an action it is. The impact of the action is that dreaming about my goal rather than working on it is gonna bring stress in my life. The stress will reduce my energy levels and in turn my goal-fulfilling capacity.

So the most effective habit that I can ever build is – “To take actions that take me closer to my target instead of taking actions that take me farther away from them“.

A corollary is – “To take actions that increase my power rather than to take action that decrease my power“.

These two habits have been copied from Joyner’s Simpleology 101 program.

This habit in essence is “the ability to take the hard right instead of the easy wrong“. Every time I take a strengthening decision, I reach closer to my goals. Also it becomes easier for me to take a strengthening decision again. Similarly, every time I take a weakening decision, I move farther away from my goals and my ability to take a strengthening decision becomes harder.

The interesting thing is, we are making this choice all the time. At any specific point of time, we can answer the question – “Is doing whatever I am doing right now (or about to start), taking me (gonna take me) closer to my goal or farther away from my goal”. This question is valid all the time.

I gotta make this habit the no 1 habit in my life. It has to be practiced moment by moment. And I am all charged up to follow it through.

Inspired by this habit I am taking on taking strengthening decisions over the following 3 habits of mine :-

1. Watching Porn. Nothing wrong in it objectively, but I somehow have a 1 to 1 correspondence between watching porn and depression . I take on saying no, every time the urge comes.
2. Over sleeping. When the going gets tough, I get sleeping.
3. Not working my plan. I have built this good habit of planning my work. And this bad habit of not working my plan. I will start taking the strengthening decision of working my plan every time I plan it. And learning from experiences every time I fail to work it out.

Thats it.

So I have a goal of waking up at 5 AM every morning. And its already 12.50 now, so I gotta take the strengthening decision of hitting the sack fast.

This post took me 19 minutes to write. I had set a goal of completing it in 7 minutes. It does not qualify to be a bullet post. Lesson learned – “Always think of what to write before setting the target to complete the post”.