It might seem like it was sheer accident that I happened to find that particular book at that particular moment that answered that particular question. But, such moments of serendipity are, in fact, the natural consequence of a practice I picked up from Nobel Prize-winning scientist Richard Feynman.
It’s a practice that’s changed my life. Maybe it will change yours.
Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve 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!’
My box of tools was different from everybody else’s, and they had tried all their tools on it before giving the problem to me.
-- Richard Feynman, https://fortelabs.com/blog/12-favorite-problems-how-to-spark-genius-with-the-power-of-open-questions/