Stop trying to solve your hardest problem

All of the effort to build the Great Wall of China seems quaint in a world that has airplanes. (Photo by Hanson Lu)

What I learned from writing songs is that the process cannot be forced.

I came up with a melody in 2010 that didn’t get lyrics until 2020. I wrote other songs in the meantime, but that particular one had to gestate for awhile. It ended up being about a disagreement about the design of the Panama Canal, which I learned about in a David McCullough book that I didn’t read until 2020.

For the melody to fulfill its destiny, I had to learn something new. I had to grow and change.

Counterintuitive though it is, I believe that hammering away at our hardest problems is similarly pointless. It seems like the efficient thing to do. It seems like the right thing to do. It's the first domino, and if you can knock that one out, you can get everything else to fall down. But here's the thing: If you knew how to solve it, you would have already solved it by now.

It seems to me that solving our biggest, deepest, foundational problems requires transformation. We've already racked our brains for solutions, and they're not coming. Just like I had to change to finish writing my song, you'll have to be different to solve this problem. And while transformation can happen really quickly, it doesn't happen through forcing or pushing. You have to go out and away and come back again later.

If you have a really challenging problem that's been with you for a while, you can try picking something smaller to tackle. When you shift your focus from that big brick wall you've been trying to leap over (“Should I get a divorce? Should I get a new job? Should I move to a new city? Should I start a business?”), you start to see little problems.

Like so many pill bugs under a log, you uncover all of the little annoyances that you've been putting up with because you're so focused on the idea that if you can just solve the big problem, all the little things will go away. But in fact, the little things are the key to the transformation that will eventually allow you to see the big thing differently.

Compared to your big problem, these annoyances are so small they don't seem worth bothering with, but you're going to address them. Maybe that means taking back the overdue library books. Maybe it means developing a system to ensure that you never run out of toilet paper. Maybe it’s standing up for yourself in a situation in which you'd ordinarily let things go.

Over time, if you keep doing that, you're going to see the world in a different way. And if you see the world in a different way, you're going to find new solutions to your problems. And eventually, you're going to find a solution to your very biggest problem.

It might mean that you’ll make a move you wouldn't be bold enough to make today. It might require knowledge or skills you don't have today. But someday, you will. And it'll all come together. And it won't even seem like that big a deal.

Ferdinand de Lesseps, the Frenchman who developed the Suez Canal, believed that the Panama Canal could be built the same way — at sea level. He was deeply wrong about this, and eventually the canal was built as we know it today with a series of locks. The transition was decades in the making and claimed the lives of thousands of people. I hope your hardest problem is much less trouble to solve.