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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk about the steps needed to solve complex problems in your personal life and the world at large.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- In difficult times, problems come to the surface.
- Traditional approach: quickly solve the problem and be done with it.
- Problem-solving rooted in cause & effect versus system thinking.
- What is system thinking?
- “When we don’t see a system, we break it.” (Gregory Bateson)
- Avoiding problem replication through accurate diagnosis.
- System Map Drawing.
- For any change in your life/area of dissatisfaction, start looking at the system that created the current emergent.
- Meeting a problem at its actual complexity level.
- Start thinking of your own problems as systems.
- The ease of oversimplifying: even the wrinkles in our brains are becoming shallower (Book ‘The Shallows’).
- We go between indulgence/negligence (during homeostasis) and impatience/un-resourcefulness (during crises).
- Use homeostasis to train our minds in finding personal satisfaction in problem-solving.
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7 steps in the lifecycle of a problem:
- Inception (initial condition of a system)
- Identification (awareness & pain)
- Diagnostic
- Solutions (actions)
- Test-iterate (solutions)
- Maintenance
- Completion (integrated into lifestyle)
- “If I had 60minutes to save the world, I would spend 55 defining the problem.” (Einstein)
- We replace bad systems with slightly better ones.
- Vetting a solution’s effectiveness with time and scale.
- The importance of not letting yourself off the hook when things start to feel better.
- Real solutions involve behavioral change and maintenance.
- The best place to start is with yourself – how to solve problems in your own personal life.
- Connecting the dots with a Personality Type Example: “I am so different from my family”.
- Applying system thinking to your own life.
- Contributing to solving the world’s most complex problems through better thinking.
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11 comments
I like Antonia’s description of our behavior as being impatient during a crisis but negligent during peace.
I think a lot of times people refrain from making changes because it is quite difficult, and often takes longer than we anticipate (so when a change fails to produce good good results immediately, we may give up on it prematurely).
As a personal example, I could see from my previous career direction that the most prominent path for advancement and success would be in increasingly extroverted roles, such as management.
I considered my options and have since switched to another field that I anticipate will allow me to perform at a high level but in roles that fit better with my talents and personality. However, I expect this change will require several years (or more) to fully realize, which is frustrating at times now that I’m in the middle of the process.
I think one challenge our societies may have is simultaneously utilizing both ‘triage’ (rapid solutions during urgent situations) and systems thinking, when appropriate. Triage may be over-used in modern society, but it does have its place as well. And different people may have either of these as a strength.
As an example, I tend to think more in long-term solutions, while my wife is better at dealing with urgent situations. I noticed that, during the beginning of the current pandemic (before lots of people were infected in my country), I took the disease more seriously than she did, perhaps based on its long-term implications. However, I also noticed that, once we started dealing with the presence of higher infection numbers locally and nationally, my wife was more vigilant than I was at recognizing immediate threats for disease transmission and taking appropriate preventative actions.