Let your favourite problems guide you
Assignment: Use your favourite problems to guide your life.
A Mission Statement is something I both want and absolutely do not want! Yes, I want clarity and direction, but without being pinned down. Do you know the feeling?
A friend put me onto this article from Tiago Forte about using your favourite problems to guide your life.
They are questions that will never be answered, koans if you like, but that serve as an answer to the question, What is your life for?
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
A work in progress
I’m sharing my first draft below and will continue to update this post. The main document lives on the desktop of my computer (in fact it’s the only document that’s allowed to live there!)
Screen saver from Waldersten
Your list of questions will change continuously. I mean some questions will be there for the rest of your life, they may change only subtly. Some will be continually edited as you understand the question more deeply. Others will be dropped and still others added.
My favourite problems (1st draft)
How do I bring the Dharma alive in my life?
How can I help others bring the Dharma alive in their own ways?
What would have to happen for me to enjoy learning Swedish?
How can I spend more time on analogue projects, DIY, gardening, sewing etc. yet make them part of the newsletter, which is digital?
What would stop me from taking my wife for granted, even though we are settled together?
How does insight into reality, outside of time and space, relate to the path/process?
How do I connect with my kids, while allowing our separate individuality?
What’s the maximum amount of work I can do on the newsletter in analogue form, before moving to the computer?
How can I stay in touch with friends in a more analogue way?
What would it look like to have a physically active life, without ‘exercising’?
Starting my list I realise it’s difficult to formulate good questions, mine aren’t there yet, but the process of doing so feels helpful.
If you come up with a good question yourself, do share it in the comments. It’s super helpful to see how others formulate their questions.
