A short take on how to approach problems and find solutions in life.
I enjoy writing. I enjoy watching movies too. On most days, I prefer watching movies to writing because, after selecting the title, I need not do much there. I can sit back, relax and get into a world where I can identify with the protagonist and enjoy the ride. But in the case of writing though, I have a lot more work to do after selecting the title. This could be the reason for my choice. After all, I am a master procrastinator and my mind monkey is always pushing me away from a productive task.
But, there is a high that I get when I finish writing an article which can’t be matched by even the best movies. Because, in a movie, I can only identify with the protagonist but in my articles, I can make or break a protagonist. And that is why I am here, writing my first post for Medium.
I am a generalist by profession and most of the medium articles are written by specialists. So I had to dig deep to find something that can be appealing to this group of intellectuals. Thus battling for days, I zeroed in on a title. And funnily enough, the pain of searching for a topic led me to this title. It was a problem for which I found a solution and hence this article. Everyone has problems. Some are materialistic, financial, and relationship-based and some are spiritual. If we are happy in one area, we identify a problem in another area. We as a species have evolved to find and fix problems. But, most of us might have come across some problems which seemed impossible to solve. And, we might have solved the same problems after a few days, months or years. The thing is, there is always a solution out there. We have to find it, mind it, mould it and wind it up.
Is it that simple? It may not be but let me narrate a problem here. I live in Canada and I work for a US-based firm. Last year, my work laptop broke in half. The screen got separated from the keyboard section. I used it for almost 4 years and its time to rest had finally come. For a year before that, I had some trouble with some keys. So, I used to carry a Bluetooth keyboard along with my laptop wherever I went. It was a little uncomfortable but I got used to it. Then, I requested a new laptop and it did arrive promptly from the states. Now I knew, I would no longer need a Bluetooth keyboard in my luggage. The laptop was a brand-new Lenovo Thinkpad and it worked like a charm. But, after a couple of months, the issue with the keys recurred albeit in the new laptop. Any sane person would have thought about warranty, but the problem solver in me went back to my Bluetooth keyboard without blinking an eye. There I was, with my laptop, Bluetooth keyboard, a personal laptop and a tablet in the security check at several airports. I am used to this and life went on as usual for almost 8 months. One day last week, I wanted to work on my bed, ironically I could not use my ‘lap’top on my lap without the keyboard extension. That was when I thought. Enough of this, I will get the keys fixed even if it costs me a couple of hundred bucks. I went online, found a laptop repair store with good reviews and dialled them. A sweet woman answered and patiently listened to my issues. She asked me, about the date of purchase and the serial number. I answered and also told her that since this was purchased in the US and because I cannot work without it, I can’t claim the warranty service. Yet, she insisted on getting the serial number and checked for the warranty. And to my happy horror, she told me that my laptop had an extended international warranty and that Lenovo does provide home service. This was the solution I should have found last year but I went with another solution. I contacted Lenovo customer service, got the laptop replaced yesterday and here I am sitting on my bed with ‘lap’top on my lap. This was a silly problem and I found a stupid solution. But, there was an actual solution out there and thanks to the woman on the phone I found it.
Now, there was another problem I tackled this year. This one might not be as silly as the one above. This is about the gigantic problem of scrolling through shorts, be it on Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. Some of us might still be facing this problem. I got introduced to these shorts pretty late in the game. But I found them very interesting and the mind monkey found a cool way to spend his time. Out of every 20 shorts I scrolled through, I found a couple of useful ones, 4 to 5 funny ones and the remaining ones were hard to classify. But, it was addictive and as the name suggested they were shorts. So the guiltiness of wasted time was hard to come by after watching a short as it was hardly a 15 to 30 seconds video. But they ate up big chunks of my days. I found my problem. This time unlike in the case of my laptop, I took time to identify the problem. After all, most of the solutions lie in the problems themselves if we observe them. I timed myself. I found that the shorts ate up around 4 hours of my awake hours that day. It might not have been as much every day but that was a lot of time. I decided to solve this problem. I started looking for solutions.
Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash
1. To delete these apps from my phone. It may work for a day or 2 but then I have a browser on my phone or laptop and I could still log on to watch the shorts after a couple of days. And this solution was like a quick fix with a lot of potentials to fail. So I went on searching
2. I thought of setting up a scheduled time for browsing through these apps. But, this would not work if I get some free time during work hours and feel like scrolling again. Finally,
3. The third solution I found was a concoction.
a. To leave the apps as they were on my phone but decided to only use the home button on Instagram. This way I could still see the content in my feed from the people I followed.
b. To find a platform that had more useful and less classless content – Here – The Medium
c. Installed an app – Flora on my iPhone. This app helped me plant trees on my phone when I am working and if I get distracted, I have to kill a tree to use my phone. So I went back to work.
This is not a perfect solution but it worked for me. These days I scroll through my shorts for 15 mins per day. I see that as a big win for me. So yes, there is always a solution out there.
Some problems are much bigger in scope. Losing your job, losing someone you love, meeting with an accident and many more. These are the problems that not only eat away at you but also make you disinterested sometimes. It might not be all right now. But, we will always come back. As I mentioned earlier, more than half of the problems have solutions within them. We have to take a step back and try to look at the problem as an outsider. If we can’t seem to find a solution, we can try detailing the problem on paper with a pen or on a screen with a stylus. This will sometimes give us clarity that might be missing. We can start listing out the potential solutions starting with the one we think is the most basic or even stupid. But once we start to concretize the solutions, we get to the right one sooner or later. I got this title when I started listing my potential topics to write.
Finally, in some cases, forgetting about the problem might just be the solution we need. All we need to do is to pick the right solution and stick with it. Sometimes, the right solution may seem difficult at the outset but, nothing seems as difficult once we jump in and start taking steps in the right direction. After all, Positivity pays.
Here is a link to the Master Procrastinator I mentioned in the article. This is a wonderful ted talk. Please watch it if you haven’t watched it already. It may indeed give you some solutions.
