#168 - Are you solving a higher class of problems today compared to yesterday?
You will always have problems but are they better than yesterday's?
Thank you to all those who participated in the poll last weekend. The responses suggested that you are happy for this newsletter to be both about mindset and skillset needed to make better decisions and have a better career and life. Though I suspect there’s a bias in the data because it only reflects the views of those who participated.
Anyway, for now, I’ll continue to keep my territory large—contrary to popular advice on finding a sub-niche and sticking to it—and put all my thoughts on personal development, career design, and decision-making into this newsletter.
On to issue #168…
No matter who you are or what you do, there’s a consequence to solving problems. It is inevitable. The problems you solve today will create opportunities tomorrow, no doubt. They will also bring you a new set of problems.
There’s no problem-free marker for measuring progress you’re making at work (or in life). You will ALWAYS have problems.
What you need to ask yourself—and this is what I would suggest to anyone harboring questions about their job—is a simple question:
Am I solving a higher class of problems?
Imagine yourself at the foot of the stairs on the ground floor of an infinitely tall walk-up. The immediate challenge before you is to climb the flight of stairs to the first floor. That’s the problem you have to solve first. What happens when you do that and you find yourself on the landing of the first floor? You now have another flight of stairs to climb, this time to the second floor. On and on it goes. No matter what floor you’re on, you have another one higher to walk up. That’s the definition of progress.
Few complain, ‘Man, we’re on the thirty-sixth floor and still there’s more climbing to do.’ The view on the thirty-sixth floor is different—spectacular even—from the view on the ground. You see so much more in your field of vision. You can connect so many more dots. That is often enough to give you a lift, even though there’s more climbing to be done. Ambitious climbers love the earned satisfaction of being in this type of situation.
The same kind of people start complaining when they find themselves on the ground floor every time. They hate it when they work hard to climb a couple of floors, and then something happens—-some org restructure or some shift in strategy or some process reengineering —and they’re back to ground zero. Again and again it happens for project after project because there’s some bug in the org’s operating system that is left unfixed. At some point, these people start wondering, all of this climbing for what? Nothing. Should I even bother to climb when I know the consequences?
The issue is not with the climbing. It is with making the same climb over and over again.
This is the pointlessness of modern knowledge work for far too many people.
So, if you feel like you’re having questions about the meaning of what you do at work or, more preemptively you want to do a self check-in at work, ask yourself this question:
Am I solving a higher class of problems today compared to yesterday?
If the answer is yes, go on and examine how. Find the formula that worked for you. Optimize the process so that you can find yourself on even higher floors with even more spectacular vantage points.
If the answer is no, you’ve got some thinking to do. What is the reason behind it? Is the situation going to change?
I won’t be naive here and suggest that’s all there’s to it. There are a hundred contextual reasons when even after recognizing the futility of your situation you decide to stay on. But equally important, many, especially those in the early stages of their career, may lack the clarity to break down the dissatisfaction they feel everyday at work. This is for them.
PS: If you’re someone who resonates with the described situation, and are looking for an outside-in perspective, feel free to DM me. I would be happy to listen to you and share my observations—no obligations.
👋Hi, I’m Satyajit and welcome to my newsletter. I learn from the best with the goal of unpacking lessons that help make decisions for a better career and a better life.
Nice way of putting it. It can be quite intimidating and thus discouraging to look at what you THINK the next highest class of problems is (which is often simply looking too many floors up).
Incidentally the quote on my linkedin banner is "the reason that we don't see our problems is that the means by which we solve them are the source."
Part of my frustration in software is that I've been forced back down to the ground floor at least six times as new technologies and methods are created for doing the exact same thing I was doing thirty years ago. But now they are more complicated and require broader and deeper understanding than before. Nothing like learning how to deploy a website for the umpteenth time in one's life.
Not that I want to be the guy doing that, but as you said, we all have our reasons for staying roughly where we are.