What's Your Problem?

Hey,

This week I’m thinking about problems. Really, 99% of our waking life is spent solving problems (maybe our dreaming life, too!). Whether professional, personal, or somewhere in between—If you did a quick mental inventory—I'm sure you’d find that most of your calendar consists of… problems to solve.

What if we’re investing that unrecoverable time and effort into solving the wrong problems? Maybe an idea at work is a loser, but you and your team keep trying to save it instead of cutting your losses and moving on. Or, you find yourself renting a carpet cleaning machine to remove the stain from a rug, which you don’t really love anyway. Or, your having the same little ‘silly’ argument with a loved one every few days and can’t see a way out.

We can see these problems in a new way by taking a step to the side… and learning another approach that will seem as ironic as it is liberating. You might even be able to use it to discover the meaning of life… 🙂

It’s called reframing. Although the concept has existed for a long time, Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg packaged it into a wonderful book called What’s Your Problem? This week on Good Authority, Thomas and I explored this not-novel-but-ridiculously-powerful approach to problem-solving, which is all about defining the right problem before jumping into solution mode.

This is so difficult for us, especially when emotions are high at work or home, because we have to resist the primal impulse to solve and fix the situation to alleviate the frustration or pain we’re feeling.

The secret to making the pain go away—for good—is to resist that impulse for a beat and use this simple framework as your guide:

1. What problem am I trying to solve or fix?

2. Why am I trying to solve or fix it?

3. Is that a problem or the symptom of something else? (the answer here is usually counter-intuitive)

4. How can I reframe the problem in a new way?

Thomas often highlights The Slow Elevator Problem, a beautiful case study demonstrating how quickly we solve the wrong problem.

You can apply this technique to literally any problem you have, trust me—even your mortality problem. How do you know when you're on the right track? When the solutions you want to try now are materially different than the ones you were about to!

But, you don’t have to take my word for it… Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, said this about Thomas and his latest book, “Thomas makes a compelling case that we often start solving a problem before thinking deeply about whether we are solving the right problem. If you want the superpower of solving better problems, read this book."

Thanks for listening. I’d love to know what problems you worked on this week.

Jonathan

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