Problems

There’s three types of problems in life. I’ve come up with the logical, most overly simplistic solutions to all three of them. Knowing this won’t solve all your problems easily, but it does help create a clearer picture. With a clearer picture, you can devise a strategy faster. It’s helped me realize what the problem I’m facing at the moment is, and thus how to solve it.

The three types (I’ve named) are: problems of choice, problems of balance, and problems of ignorance.

Problems of choice.

These are the problems when you have no idea what to do. These are the typical questions like, “what should I study in college?” or, “should I go to college?”. Who to date, what to do with your life, what industry to pursue, what flavor ice cream to eat, etc. These are all problems where you have no idea what path is the best to choose.

How do you solve it? You experiment. You do a breadth-first search instead of a depth-first. You ask other people what their experience is. Finally, you draw from past experience and try to guess what’s best. But essentially, you just have to try things out. That’s why they have career day at schools. That’s why ice cream shops let you try a small sample.

If you have no idea and no way of knowing, then you can’t be held responsible for making a wrong choice. You should only make sure you own your decision and be clear as to why you made it.

Problems of balance.

These are the problems you get when you need to be accurate. You have to push for what you want, but not too hard. You have to be brave, but not stupid. You want to work out, but you don’t want to over train. You want to party, but you don’t want to go out too much.

Every action you take or thing you consume has decreasing marginal value: each new action/thing will give you a little more pleasure than the last one. Eventually, you reach a point where it’s negative. Too much of anything is bad for you (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication).

How do you solve it? There’s two important strategies. First, you go from one extreme to the other. You try being way too nice and then being too much of an asshole. Once you see that neither one works, you try landing somewhere else along the spectrum.

The other strategy is making a choice: on which side would you rather err? When driving, I’d rather err on the side of being too careful. When preparing for a pitch, I’d rather be a little overprepared rather than underprepared. On the other hand, I’d rather be 15 minute early than 5 minutes late. I’d rather have my meat a little bit raw, and be able to cook it more, than over cook it.

You always want to strive for a better balance. But you also have to realize that the only way to know what the balance is is to go on both sides of it. You also have to know that you won’t always get it right, so you better decide on which side you’d rather err.

Problems of ignorance.

This is the problem of not knowing what you don’t know. It’s hard to describe because, well, I obviously don’t know what I don’t know. For example I didn’t know that adding water to a hot pan might ruin it. I also had no idea that you could make enough passive income from internet marketing that you never had to work a day in your life. I had no idea that my school would leave me so terribly prepared for the real life. And like that, there are many things I can’t prepare for because I just have no idea.

How do you solve this? You ask people older than you. You do things that you usually would never do. You stay curious and you ask weird questions. The only way to find out about things you’re not usually exposed to is either by accident, or by purposefully going ways you wouldn’t otherwise have gone.

Read a newspaper from a different publishing house. Pick up a book from an author you hate. Listen to a genre you’ve never even heard of before. Ask someone from an entirely different industry out to lunch.

The real problem.

What I told you is pretty easy to figure out. Nevertheless, it’s nice to put words to it to be able to identify things quickly. The answers are pretty general. But that’s the point: they’re strategies you can use to find your unique answers to your unique problems. I can’t save you the effort of searching. But at least now I can save you some time of trying to solve the problem by just wandering what the hell is going on.