Choose Your Problems

At school we were told to study hard for exams because good grades unlock choices. The better your grades the more choices you have: in higher education studies, in employment, even in where you live and work.

There’s some truth in this meritocratic view that many of us earn freedom of choice through our accomplishments, but the idea also implies this wonderful freedom where A-grade students can “choose” themselves out of misery and find ‘adulting nirvana.’

What if we flipped the narrative? Hard work does not allow us to choose our destiny, nor to avoid misery. But it does allow us to choose the problems we will face along the way.

Choose Your Problems

You can’t entirely choose your dream job — we’ve all been rejected from one of those, and you can’t choose to run a successful business, though you can put everything in place to try to make it a reality.

But you can choose the sorts of problems you’re likely to encounter on both of these paths. And what better way to test whether you’re truly motivated by your goal? 

If you want the problems that come with starting a successful business, from hiring and supporting a team to fundraising and being the point-person for any unexpected curveballs, you know you really want it.

Problem Tradeoffs

In Feel the fear and do it anyway, Susan Jeffers explains:

Often a lofty goal leaves us paralysed: we might dream of wealth and success, or of a calm, healthy existence but we don’t do anything about it. Why? We like the idea of the end result, but we’re reluctant to trade off any of our current problems for new ones that will bring us closer to our goal.

What if we stopped dreaming of success and started dreaming of the problems we want to be burdened with?

If we’re dreaming of funding a luxury lifestyle, we’re actually dreaming of a series of problems related to stress, long hours and little ‘down time’. To be willing to accept those problems and associated sacrifices is to truly commit to our goal.

On the flip-side, if we work long hours at a stressful job and dream of early retirement, we’re actually dreaming of trading off our current overwork and stress-related problems for problems related to careful budget management and anxiety around unexpected expenses.

Focusing on the problems we choose for ourselves is like peering over the rims of our rose-tinted glasses for a moment, and seeing our dreams for what they truly are.

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The Problem Test

Feeling the call of a dream and unsure whether to act on it? The problem test helps you remove those rose-tinted glasses by picking the problems, rather than the path.

Generate a list of common pitfalls and problems associated with the project you dream of or decision you’d like to make. How do you feel about them? Would you swap any of them for other problems?

ChatGPT kindly generated a lengthy list of problems in response to my prompt: “give me a concise list of all the problems I may encounter when writing a non-fiction book.” Chronologically ordered, I got a brilliant sense of the stings at each stage of the journey.

We often think of the problems under our noses, but forget about those that occur later down the line. My favourite? Negative reviews. Once the book is done and out in the wild, authors think the hardest part is over, but negative reviews could leave you lying awake at night for days.

My follow-up prompt: “write me a concise list of all the problems I may encounter if I choose not to write the non-fiction book I dream of writing.” Cue an extensive list of intangible regrets and lost opportunities.

Neither decision is problem-free, but as Jeffers reminds us, the worst decision is no decision at all. Now I have the power of choice — which problems do I want to pick?

Choosing Problems is Powerful

We often talk about problems as being outside of our control. Even if we didn’t cause the problem directly, we almost always are responsible for the circumstances within which the problem occurs.

No one chooses for their cat to get sick. But they choose the cat, and part of pet ownership is helping the animal through periods of sickness. When the pet owner chose the cat, they inherited a new set of problems.

It’s one thing to embrace our problems as part of the path we’ve chosen, and to learn to live with them. It’s another to pick the problems we’d most like to grapple with as a means to choosing the path we want to pursue. It’s like holding up a mirror to our dreams, seeing them for what they are and chasing them down anyway.

We will never solve all our problems, there are some we need to learn to live with. But our privilege is to choose what kinds of problems we live with. Facing up to those scenarios before we commit leaves us in the best possible place to ditch the victim mindset and embrace the curveballs when they come around.

In short, if you’re unwilling to clear up little presents left by the cat at 3am, maybe cat problems aren’t your problems.

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