You will be amazed by what you discover

Neil deGrasse Tyson is Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space.

He recently gave a talk in Boston. Here, from his Q&A session, is everything you need to know about how to lead, how to manage, how to work, and how to live!

Jack, who declares that he is 6 and three-quarter years old:
“What’s the meaning of life?”

Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Meaning in life is something you create, you manufacture for yourself and for others. When I think of meaning in life, I ask: ‘Have I learned something today, that I didn’t know yesterday?’…If I live a day and I don’t know a little bit more that day than the day before, I think I wasted that day…. To learn how things work gives you power to influence events. Gives you power to help people, to help yourself.

“When I think about ‘What’s the meaning of life?,’ to me, that’s not an eternal unanswerable question. Explore nature as much as you possibly can. Occasionally, that means getting your clothes dirty because you might want to jump into puddles when your parents don’t want you to do that. You tell them that I gave you permission.

“You know what else? Have you ever pulled all the pots and pans out of the cabinet and hit them with a wooden spoon? You have my permission [to do that]. You’re still a kid, and part of being a kid is exploring the world around you. [When your parents tell you don’t do that because…] you tell them, ‘Then why did you have me in the first place? Remind them they didn’t have kids so that they could keep having a neat house. Because kids make things messy. And there’s a reason they make things messy because they’re exploring the world around them.

“So your meaning in life will be enhanced if you’re given as much freedom as you can to explore the world. Then when you get older, you will become so close to how the world works, that when a problem arises that needs a solution, you will say ‘I know how to solve that! I’ve been thinking about that ever since I was banging the pans on the kitchen floor.’”

Applying that to your life and your workworld:
How often do you ignore the rules about workplace pots and pans, and play with them even though you were told not to?

How often are you preparing to solve tomorrow’s problems by being messy today? When was the last time you were a kid?

Well, why wasn’t it yesterday, or five minutes from now?

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