Solving Problems the Right Way

Sometimes people naturally know the best way to solve a problem. Other times though, they don’t. There are lots of different ways the initial approach could be a mistake. Maybe it will never work. Or it might take several times the effort of another option. Either way, the sooner you recognize you are solving your problem the wrong way, the less resources you waste trying something that is either doomed to failure, or “only” many times the work of a different approach.

The best tool I have found to catch these mistakes is by listening to the voice in my head that asks, “Should it really be this hard?” I developed this approach in college when doing my homework and sometimes chose the wrong method to apply. I would struggle with the solution, and nothing seemed to work. I would ask myself “should it really be this hard?” and generally the answer was no (or at least, a tentative “I don’t think so?”).

That single question has much broader applicability than just homework problems in school. I use it now when I am writing code, trying to make a decision with a group of people, working with clients, deciding how to tackle a home improvement project, or teaching people when to think about how they are solving a problem. The more you keep it tip-of-tongue that you could try a different method, the more your intuition will be at the ready to jump in with that signal.

If you think solving a given problem should not be as hard as it seems to be, your next step is to figure out what might be an easier way to solve it. There are generally three categories of ways to make a problem easier to solve. One is obvious: use a different method. The second is a little trickier and involves recognizing which features of the problem are making it harder than you think it should be so they could be tweaked. The last is the hardest of all: realizing you misunderstood the problem to begin with.

On the other hand, if you go through this process and do not find a better approach, then you get evidence your original path was the right one. There are many things in life that are not easy, and just because something is hard does not mean necessarily that you are doing it wrong. But, if there is a better path and you miss it because you didn’t bother to look, that is when it is fair to say you have made a mistake and are not solving your problem the right way.