What is a problem?
First, what exactly is a “problem”?
The diagram in the demo above shows a shift: from the reality where a problem is happening, toward the situation you’d ideally want.
A “problem” is the gap between the ideal you picture and what’s actually happening in reality.
Are you aware of your problem?
Right now, do you have a clear grasp of the problems you’re carrying?
Nobody has a complete picture of all their own problems — there are always ones still to come that haven’t happened yet. And a problem someone else is carrying is often visible only to them. Problems also come in different sizes: something small enough gets waved off unconsciously as “not worth worrying about,” and never even registers as a problem at all. And solving one problem can end up creating another.
Can you actually see your problem right now?
What you can see is still just the surface
Even once you can see a problem and recognize it, what shows up as a visible symptom may only be the tip of the iceberg. Something more essential can be hiding in the part you can’t see — and if so, that hidden, more essential problem is what you actually need to work on.
Behind “I don’t have time,” for instance, there might be something going on that’s actually eating your time. Behind “I can’t save money,” the real cause could be low income, high spending, or even the falling value of money itself.
Treating only the surface never actually solves the problem — the same trouble, or a different one wearing a new shape, just shows up again.
Unconscious prioritizing
Whether you’re aware of it or not, you recognize problems every day and act on them in some order of priority.
The more problems you notice, the more of them there are. But you don’t need to give all of them the same priority — plenty of problems get their priority quietly lowered to “that can wait” without you ever deciding so on purpose.
When something is visibly on fire right in front of you, you have no choice but to raise its priority and try to put it out.
Here’s something worth pausing on: was that problem really this big from the start? If you’d caught it while it was still small, might it never have caught fire at all?
If you have a moment to think right now, it might be worth taking stock of the problems you’re carrying, and getting a head start on the high-priority ones that could grow bigger later. Prioritizing on the fly, reacting only to what’s already burning, may just mean leaving problems you could solve today until they’ve become big ones.
Solving a problem happens through action
Say you have one “problem” right now — how does it actually end up getting solved?
A lucky few resolve themselves if you just wait, but that’s a small minority. Regardless of size or difficulty, most problems get solved because you acted on them.
However precisely you recognize a problem, analyze it, and plan a response, reality doesn’t change until you act. Put the other way around: if you don’t feel any need to act, it probably wasn’t a problem to begin with. If you can honestly say “things are fine as they are,” there’s no need to force a change.
Feeling a problem as a problem, analyzing its causes and possible responses, and then acting — that’s how you arrive at the ideal you had in mind.
How big a problem should be before you tackle it
What is your “problem,” exactly? Is it a big one?
Say your problem is “I’m somehow dissatisfied with life.” What does that “life” actually consist of? Your relationships? The money or time you have to spend? Your car? Your work? Something else?
Holding a problem as one undifferentiated lump, the way “somehow dissatisfied with life” does, leaves you unsure where to even start. A problem that’s too big becomes, on its own, a reason you can’t move.
Break a big problem down into a smaller size. Once you can shrink it down to something you can actually act on, you can start working on it. Even a single complaint like “I don’t have enough time” gets a much clearer shape once you write it out concretely.
- “Somehow dissatisfied with life” turns out to include:
- No time to read
- No time with family
- No time to learn something new
Every one of those is different, even though they all fall under “no time.” Just writing them out in a single text file and lining them up starts to reveal which one is really the trouble, and which one looks easiest to tackle first. Before you try to work it all out in your head, write it down in a file and break it apart.
The file “What Is a Problem.txt,” in the same demo folder, lists common everyday complaints about time, money, health, work, and food. Skimming through it, you’ll likely recognize a few already. Pick one that’s small and easy to start with, and actually use that file to add to it or organize it. Tackling the small problem in front of you is, in the end, the shortest path forward.
What is an “issue”?
What about “issue” — a word close to “problem”? It might sound like splitting hairs, but keeping the two apart makes your thinking easier to organize.
- Problem — the gap between the ideal you picture and what’s actually happening in reality
- Issue — what you need to do to solve that problem
“Too much overtime” is a problem. “Find and cut the wasted work” is an issue.
Only once you take a problem you’ve recognized and translate it into an issue does the next step toward solving it come into view.
From problem to solution
Look at the diagram in the demo once more. Between reality and the ideal, there’s an arrow.
That arrow shows how analyzing a problem, finding the issue in it, and acting on that issue gets you to the ideal you pictured — and that’s the role we want TextTree to play.
Start by writing down, in a plain text file, whatever’s on your mind right now. That alone is often enough for the real problem behind the surface trouble to slowly start taking shape.
Start not from “the problem,” but from whatever’s on your mind.