Better Problems
An Open Letter to My Professional Network
Do not hire me to create better solutions. Hire me to discover better problems.
Hire me to help you recognize your solutions as problems and your problems as solutions.
Don't hire me to help you win. Hire me to be defeated, in the words of Rilke, by ever-greater things.
Don't hire me to help you respond to the petty urgencies of corporate life. Hire me to help your employers and clients grow out of their pettiness.
Don't hire me to provide prefabricated responses to predefined issues. Hire me to define the issues obstructing your path to better problems.
What Are ‘Better Problems’?
Sometimes, they're high-quality problems in which even the worst-case scenario yields desirable outcomes.
Sometimes, better problems emerge after their predecessors are incinerated in eureka moments.
They are better problems because they fuel growth and discovery. Working on them yields a positive ROI well beyond predefined outcomes. The problem-solvers feel energized instead of feeling drained.
How Do We Reach Better Problems?
We move toward the horizon of better problems — and better versions of ourselves — largely by clearing away the bullshit that pollutes our path. We grow through the daily work of decontamination.
So, I'll conclude this post with a cautionary note brought to mind by the recent death of Harry G. Frankfurt, the Princeton philosopher and pioneering explorer of bullshit.
Frankfurt distinguished bullshit from lying and other forms of misrepresentation. Bullshit, he argued, is “not germane to the enterprise of describing reality.” The bullshitter sins not by making untrue statements, but by not even trying to speak truthfully. Frankfurt writes:
Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides…in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether.
On the path to better problems, beware the bullshitter, and remember the ancient parable about the elephant groped by blind men. The elephant can reclaim its wholeness simply by ignoring the blind gropers (or shaking them off, depending on circumstances). Likewise, we can clear the path to better problems by ignoring anyone who either ignores reality or regards reality as the opposite of magic.
