As you grow and scale, the problems you will be tasked to solve will become bigger and bigger. If you are putting yourself in front of enough problems and solving them effectively, the next logical path for you is to challenge yourself with harder problems. When you are on this trajectory, generally, you tend to be on the right path. The bigger problems you can solve, the bigger rewards you will achieve. The relationship between the two is linear in nature. The only way to solve bigger problems is to analyze and expose yourself to them and the difficulty they may present.
The snowball effect of problem solving
The more problems you can get in front of, the more solutions you will find and the more progress you can make. It’s a clear and concise relationship. Every time you solve a problem, it puts you in a better position to be able to solve future ones that are perhaps bigger more effectively. This creates a snowball effect. Solving problems allows you to add more tools to your toolbelt that can then in turn create more solutions for a larger variety of problems or even allow you to tackle bigger ones.
High level Vs. low level problems
The most effective way to use your time is to solve as many problems as possible, however, it is key to make sure your time is spent solving HIGH QUALITY problems rather than time killers. People love to feel busy. They flood their days with tasks to do and problems to solve, but what people don’t like is pain. Solving hard problems is painful, so as a result people tend to gravitate towards easier issues to make their day feel as busy as possible. This is a trap so many of us fall into. The trap has been set by the clock punching standard we have established with America’s workforce. They often have more time on the clock than problems to solve, so they in turn create easy problems for themselves to solve and look for distractions to kill time. This is what happens when you’re paid for your TIME rather than your RESULTS. Results-based problem solving is the key to problem solving efficiency and making sure your time is well spent on the things that truly matter. When something is difficult to solve and a solution may not present itself right away, that usually means you’re on the right track.
Think about the problems you are faced with with the end in mind. Ask yourself questions like, “If I solved this problem, what would be the net result(s)?”. Something as simple as this can ensure that you don’t spend time on BS problems. Believe or not, we all have fallen victim to this at times, mostly because we are subconsciously programmed to shy away from difficulty. Breaking down problems with simple questions will lead you to complex and rewarding answers. Peel back the onion a little bit and understand why you’re doing what you’re doing before you do it. Time and energy are finite, and spending it on the wrong problems is doing yourself a disservice to the highest degree.
How to gravitate towards the right problems
In order to get in front of the right problem, you will need to fight your basic human instinct to stay away from challenges. This instinct may have helped us in the past before civilization when we needed to preserve our energy to focus on the few things that really mattered (food, water, shelter, etc.), but today this instinct does us a disservice. In the modern age, solving difficult problems is what we are rewarded for. Knowing and understanding this will ensure we are gravitating towards the right problems rather than what feels easier and more expedient. With that being said, difficult problems require a lot of time and energy, both of which are finite. How do we solve difficult problems while maintaining enough of these resources to do so effectively?
Time and energy
Multitasking is promoted today almost as heroic and a desirable trait to possess. This lie has perpetuated society deeply. This works if you are solving easy day to day problems and trying to stay busy, but it isn’t effective when you are solving bigger issues. Spending your time and energy on focusing on one big problem to solve is the best way to manage these resources and come up with the best solutions. For me, I always look for an underlying issue that surrounds the smaller issues I am dealing with so I can focus on solving the big problems that will inherently take care of the smaller ones. There are a couple of deals right now that I am looking for capital on. Instead of scrambling to tackle these smaller issues solely and stop at that, I have realized that my bottleneck and overarching problem is capital. Focusing my time and attention on building more relationships with capital partners is the BIG PROBLEM that would solve all the subservient problems beneath it. If I can focus the largest portion of my time and energy on that ONE THING, all my other current problems would take little to no effort to solve.
Solving big problems is about managing your finite resources effectively and focusing on solving the underlying big problem that will resolve all your smaller ones. Don’t compromise meaningful for busy or settle for easy when you can really make serious progress by challenging yourself with difficulty.