In his book, the Craftsman, Richard Sennet talks about the liminal space between problem-solving and problem-finding as crucial to the mastery of skill. An idea that I have come across in a few difference spaces is to keep a list of the problems you want to spend your time on — the ones you want to be thinking about everyday over the course of years.

So, here is a living list of the problems that I want to stay focused on.

(1) How can we build around cooperative models rather than competitive ones?

Capitalism has been fuelled by a misguided belief that a free market based on competition would create a better world. That myth has failed us and led to rampant ecological and societal disaster. It's time for something else. I believe that the most important value for our survival and betterment is cooperation.

(2) How can better public spaces make better cities?

Our cities have been eroded by private interest for decades. They have been built around cars, leading to lifestyles disconnected from nature and one another. This has had a particularly negative effect on the most vulnerable members of our communities — the poor, the elderly, those with physical and mental disabilities, and kids. Better public spaces can address these issues and improve the quality of life in our cities.

(3) How and why do people move from self-interest to selflessness? What inspires it? What gets in the way? Is this an innate human tension or is it learned?

This has been an ethical question at the core of a lot of my career. It first surfaced while I was working with teenagers and trying to understand how to get them to give time and energy to things that put others before themselves. What I realized was that they were not inherently selfish, in fact many of them seemed to want to be better, but they were growing up in upper-middle class suburbia and being conditioned into lifestyles that seemed opposed to selflessness. This shifted my energy into wondering how to inspire people within that context to act against their own self interest for the sake of others.

(4) How can slow and deliberate thinking remain an asset in a culture that rewards a faster pace? Is it possible to stay slow in my approach to learning and thinking about problems?

In contrast to the Facebook motto, 'move fast and break things', I want to cultivate an approach to problem solving that is slower, perhaps almost hard to see in the micro. I am drawn to what the writer, Josie Sparrow, calls mole work; in which the depth and hiddenness is the point. In a way, this problem defines the approach I want to take to all of these problems: one that is slow, deliberate, and intentional.

(5) How can communication remain ethical in the attention economy? What value can it add beyond just competing with more noise? Is there a way to remain hopeful, delightful, and challenging without being reduced to advertising?

In the attention economy, advertising is the lowest form of communication. It exists purely to compete and dominate in order to turn attention into transaction. It cheapens communication entirely. My interest is in pursuing ethical communication that inspires positive change in people.

(6) What will be the collective impact of technology, and specifically AI, on our ability to think and learn? Is our need for immediate and endless gratification eroding the ability to focus and slowly build skills over a longer period of time?

Technology enables speed, convenience, and quantity. AI has applied this to information and learning. I am concerned about the impact this will have on our collective human ability to ask questions and come to conclusions, to problem solve, and to learn. There is a history of forgetting skills as machine convenience takes over. Will this happen to our ability to take a thought from start to finish?