The problem is never just the problem..........

.......It's the response to it that defines your team.

from this Tanmay Vora post

Meaning........................

Again and again, people said that life was busy but not meaningful. That experiences and relationships felt meaningless. Or that they didn’t know what they were meant to do in work and life. And it’s worse for the strivers than anyone else: The richer, more technologically advanced the country, the greater the percentage of the population that answers “no” to the question “Do you feel your life has an important purpose or meaning?”

Here’s why: Strivers are great at solving technical problems and answering specific, hard questions. They have been educated and trained to believe that, while the world is incredibly complicated, with enough knowledge and hard work, every problem can be solved.

The truth is, many big, complicated problems can be solved with sheer intellectual horsepower. But meaning is not one of them. “What is the meaning of my life?” is a question that cannot be answered like “How do I build an app for finding concert tickets?” or “How do I create an effective six-month weight-loss program?” Meaning is a question that must be lived, not solved with a Google search or simulated using artificial intelligence. It requires deep contemplation and a commitment to living a real life, full of unsolvable secrets, puzzling riddles, unexplainable bliss, and terrible suffering.

But in all their technical excellence, strivers trivialize their humanness by reducing life’s magnificent inscrutability to a series of complicated but solvable problems. They aren’t just living in a simulation; they are also creating the simulation they are living in.

So, if you’re a young striver, here’s what you need to know: Your life does have meaning, and you can find it. But to find it, you’ll have to think and live fundamentally differently from how you’ve been trained by school, work, media, entertainment, and culture.

-Arthur Brooks, from this edition of The Free Press

If you have ever found yourself trapped..........

 

.............in phone-system hell and would have willingly given anything just to talk to a real, live person, this may make sense to you:

Will AI make our practice more efficient in the future? Definitely. It already is in some ways and we’ll certainly implement more AI-based efficiency tools over time. But AI isn’t going to fix people problems and people problems are eternal.

-Ben Carlson, from here

It's not about the Swiss watch...........

 

The way to find golden ages is not to go looking for them. The way to find them — the way almost all their participants have found them historically — is by following interesting problems. If you're smart and ambitious and honest with yourself, there's no better guide than your taste in problems. Go where interesting problems are, and you'll probably find that other smart and ambitious people have turned up there too. And later they'll look back on what you did together and call it a golden age.

-Paul Graham, from this essay

downstream......................

 

And that’s the funny thing: so many of our problems aren't even the actual problem. They are the downstream effect of some deeper, unseen problem. And the work to actually fix the problem usually has way less to do with fixing and way more with simply learning how to see it clearly in the first place.

-Mark Manson, from this episode

On the importance of sensing problems...

 

Silent acquiescence is the enemy. The key is to get people talking.
Once that happens, you may be surprised at how things can turn around.

-Michael Wade, from this edition

On opportunities...........

 

Everyone searches for opportunities while running from problems, missing that they're the same thing.

Problems aren't obstacles to opportunity, they ARE the opportunity.

-Shane Parrish, from here

It's good for grifting though.................

 

Throwing money at a problem is rarely the solution.

-Phil Knight

start noticing.......................

 

Problems scream for attention while successes only whisper. We're wired to chase whatever's loudest.

Your biggest opportunity isn't hiding in what's broken; it's hiding in what's working that you've stopped noticing.

-Farnum Street

idle hands..........................

 

When we lack real problems, we create imaginary ones; when we lack meaningful work, we perfect the unimportant.

-Farnum Street

Umm.................no

 

Often, I’m waiting for the biggest Jackpot of all: the spontaneous remission of all my problems without any required effort. Someone suggests a way out of my predicament and I go, “Hmm, I dunno, do you have any solutions that involve me doing everything 100% exactly like I’m doing it right now, and getting better outcomes?”

-Adam Mastroianni, as quoted here

vexing.............................

 

Most of the issues that vex humanity daily—ethnic conflict, arms escalation, overpopulation, abortion, environment, endemic poverty, to cite several most persistently before us—cannot be solved without integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with that of the social sciences and humanities.  Only fluency across the boundaries will provide a clear view of the world as it really is, not as seen through the lens of ideologies and religious dogmas or commanded by myopic response to immediate need.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

let things be.......................

 

     What I eventually figured out—not that it ever seems to get particularly easy—is that other people's negative emotions are ultimately a problem that belongs to them.  And you have to allow other people their problems.  This in one more area in which the best thing to do, as a finite human with limited control, is usually not to meddle, but to let things be.

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals

and no solution in sight.............

Politics is about power, and at the heart of the Abrahamic vision is a critique of power.  Power is a fundamental assault on human dignity.  When I exercise power over you, I deny your freedom, and that is dangerous for both of us.  The opening chapters of Genesis are about the abuse of power.   Cain murders his brother Abel, and two chapters later we read, "The Earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence" (Genesis 6:11).

      Abrahamic monotheism is based on the idea that the free God desires the free worship of free human beings.  The historical drama of the Bible turns on the question of how to translate individual freedom into collective freedom.  How do you construct a free society without the constant risk of the strong dominating and exploiting the weak?  That is the issue articulated by the prophets, and it was never completely solved. 

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,  The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

perspectives........................

 

The chief enemy of good decisions is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem.

-Alain de Botton

problem solving.........................

 Accessing the problem-solving power of your mind is not about pushing; it’s about stopping. Mental processes are at their most effective during times of stillness, but we’ve stopped giving ourselves that opportunity. Because we keep forcing our minds to process, we never give them space to think, and by doing so, we take away their ability to solve.

-as cut-and-pasted from here

engagement..................

 

Anything that lets us see a clear connection between effort and consequences—and that helps us feel in control of a challenging situation—is a kind of mental vitamin that helps build resilience and provides a buffer against depression. . . . Flourishing—that of rats and humans alike—seems to require an environment with "open problem spaces" that elicit the kinds of bodily and mental engagement bequeathed us by evolution and cultural development.

-Matthew Crawford, Why We Drive: On Freedom, Risk and Taking Back Control

First world......................................

 ...........................................problems.

via

Of complexities..............

 Of the complexities introduced by the "present vast and delicate division of labor," he wrote, "When everybody is working for everybody, everybody is injured by the mischances of everybody."

-James Grant, Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian

redefinitions..................

 We need to redefine "problems" into opportunities.

Problems are an opportunity to create value.
Problems are an opportunity to strengthen relationships.
Problems are an opportunity to differentiate yourself from others.

Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.

-Farnam Street, from here