How To Solve Impossible Problems In 3 Steps Every Time (Breaking Down Peter Thiel’s Question)
There’s nothing you weren’t born to do.
I was born in the winter of 1990, to a conservative Indian household in New Delhi, and brought up with the values of a family led by public servants. My first brush with the concept of an ‘impossible’ reality was in 1997, after Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone came out. Rowling had me reading her paperbacks in the loo, and because it was the pre-internet age in India, people around me didn’t know what to do with a potterhead.
I can safely claim that I had a realization of nearly the same magnitude twenty years later in 2017, when I bought Peter Thiel’s Zero To One (Kindle Edition) on an impulse. I vaguely remember being semi-unhappy/semi-clueless at the time about what I wanted to do, professionally. Thiel’s much-hyped interview question (The ‘contrarian’ question) kept me busy thinking and quizzing people for a little over a year.
What is one important truth that a very few people agree with you on?
It is at once, a very simple, and a very powerful question to ask. It forces you to aggressively review the validity of your own assumptions by evaluating it within an unbiased (and potentially imaginary/speculative) control group — an almost dream-come-true process if you’re someone who constantly comes up with new ideas.
It’s easy to have a great idea that potentially solves an unsolvable problem. But mapping out the specifics of how to get there can be a momentous task in itself — measuring an idea with the pros-vs-cons logic is a potential deterrent against the execution of that task itself.
Questioning whether you’re capable of executing an idea in its nascency, is counter-productive.
It makes much more sense to have a filter/criteria that we can all (reasonably) agree upon, as far as feasibility is concerned. That’s where the contrarian question becomes so important. For the sake of avoiding an oversimplification and resisting the fear of an unnecessary analytical approach, I am breaking down the question into three essential steps, which simultaneously establish the validity of this test/protocol, and help you form the right questions in your head.
Focus On The Problem
Focus on the problem that you see.
Forget about what you’re thinking of doing to solve it. Just focus on the problem and try to understand if you have voluntarily or inadvertently added to the problem in any capacity. For example — the fact that you have less money in your checking account is not a “universal problem” because solving it wouldn’t significantly affect the lives of anyone other than yourself. Whereas, a problem that impacts an entire community, of which you had no role to play, is a valid problem to solve. As Thiel points out, we do not live in an ideal world. That means, anything that stands in the way of what’s happening right now and your perceived vision of an ideal world, can be recognized and named as a ‘problem’. As an example again —The clear lack of consistent global academic standards, is the kind of broad-layer problem that can be further broken down into geographic/demographic hyperlocal instances, for you to start solving. But then again, it’s not something only you or a select few people can see right now.
Thiel explains this in the context of establishing potential monopolies, as opposed to launching a me-too solution that mimics what someone else is doing, with the only real differentiator being the impact and scale of your execution. But if you’re a little more diligent in your approach towards picking the right ‘impossible’ problem, you will end up getting closer to the goal of solving it.
In a nutshell — Before trying to solve an impossible problem, prove to yourself that it is definitely a problem, and that it definitely seems impossible to solve. That takes care of almost all essential filtering, so that you can move to step two.
Ask yourself WHY you want to solve this problem.
If you ask me, this is where it really gets ‘contrarian’ from a standard entrepreneurial viewpoint. The problem you’re trying to solve — why is it so important to do it right now? And why do you want to put in the effort to do it yourself?
I’m asking you to evaluate your own priorities about solving this particular problem as opposed to other activities that you find enjoyable. For example, do you feel inclined to solve your impossible problem more than you feel inclined to eat a hearty dinner? Does your problem statement talk to you at a personal level? Does it really itch and gnaw away at your instincts till you give in and start solving it? If not, it’s time to keep looking for ideas. Because at the end of the day, even before we start analyzing whether we’re equipped to do something well, we need to know if we really want to do it.
Seems like a redundant step, but you know, it never hurts to ask the right questions at the right time. I know this because I have two failed content-based entrepreneurial attempts behind me. One of my ‘solutions’ actually failed after generating 9900% profitability on the first sale, mainly because I wasn’t focused on the ‘why’ of it that much. That failed business was into brand strategy, and my ‘sale’ was an over-glorified domain name auction.
In hindsight, buying and selling domain names is probably not as exciting to me as the idea of trying out a new workout regime. Since 2016, I’ve become somewhat of a fitness fanboy, and I totally freak out if I miss going to the gym — and you may have your own little personal quirks that let you stay sane through the week. Point is, whatever new ‘problem’ that you’re tying to solve in the world, needs to excite you at least as much as your existing daily essential habits. If not, all the technological firepower and money in the world will not get you past the finish line.
You can only scratch successfully and get some pleasure out of the entire act if it’s a real itch. There is no workaround to this.
The Final Step — Are you ready to imagine a world where this problem has been solved?
This is actually the easiest part of the three step process. Once you’ve validated that a problem is an actual problem that significantly impacts the lives of other people around you, and established that you are more than reasonably motivated to solve this problem, you need to get some alone time and try to imagine a world where this problem has been solved.
If your chosen problem is extremely tangible, let’s say — an idealistic world condition that involves the plight of economically deprived classes, then an effective implementation of your solution would imply that world poverty will go down significantly.
To analyze whether world poverty is an important problem worth solving, try to imagine a world with perfect wealth distribution. Does that picture look like something you would consider an ideal environment? If it appeals to you, it’s the right direction to pursue.
If you’re a techie trying to solve a communication gap that has passed the first two checks, trying to build an “impossible app” that’s going to change the world, can you see yourself fitting into a world and being happy when everyone around you (mostly) is spending a considerable amount of time using your app and actually adding value to their lives?
An easy way to get a neutral answer to this question, is to mentally picture someone you really hate/don’t like/don’t identify with as the hypothetical leader/CEO/founder-figure running this “solution” (or app, or business, or product), and ask yourself if you would still install it/apply it in your own life to solve said problem. This test is hard to fail.
The real secret to solving an impossible problem, is to remove yourself from the equation as much as possible and once you’ve zeroed in on the fine print surrounding your idea, hire yourself to solve it.
But…more on that later. My name is Shom, and these are just my views.
