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Ask HN: How do you become a better solver of life's problems?

16 points by personlurking ↗ HN
IMHO, part of becoming a better problem-solver lies in one's 1) understanding, 2) approach and 3) execution.

Are there best practices for becoming skilled in one, two or even all three?

7 comments

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shahbaby
The hard part is usually in the execution.

Problem solving usually involves experiencing discomfort.

The ability to push past discomfort is key to solving non-trivial problems. Like a muscle, this ability improves with practice.

The problem could be to lift a heavy weight or to solve a hard coding question. Either way, there is certainly much to be gained from having the right understanding and approach but successful execution is mostly the end result of having a long consistent history of smaller successful executions.

Sun Tzu: "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. "

personlurking
I'm quite high in theorizing/analyzing, which has made me way less likely to exercise the execution muscle. For me, the key to what you said is the discomfort factor, which I'd say analytic types tend to avoid.

I'm at an age/stage where I want to improve upon what I don't know well, including within myself. The main thread seems to be lack of execution, but perhaps it's actually discomfort avoidance.

michaelthiessen
If you want motivation and ideas on how to get better at executing, and get better at embracing discomfort, I highly recommend reading Seth Godin.

Specifically his latest book: http://yourturn.link

ak39
I agree with the list, but I'd say the sequence is backwards:

You're not solving anything if you're not executing. Start with execution based on some initial approach. When the discomfort reaches intolerable levels, find a better approach. You only develop insight (understanding) after a few cycles of modified approaches and changed executions. Understanding comes later.

Like "shahbaby" said, the toughest life problems to solve are the ones which require endurance of high amounts of discomfort.

Let's be tough as nails!

personlurking
An execution-first strategy seems to coincide with the idea of rapid deployment and reiteration. Even if that's "crawl before you can walk", at least it's not "theorize about crawling and walking until you think you have a 360 degree understanding." As someone traditionally way more interested in ideas than action, I'm much better at the latter.

Time for some discomfort

hemantv
An execution only approach will lead to lot of wasted effort and energy. What are you trying to achieve, and maybe what leverage things you can do.

The above advice only works when you are stuck and don't know where to start so it's better to start anywhere. But the limitation starts to show very quickly.

prodboard
Usually it's easiers to advise than to solve your own problems. But to find a way, first of all, it's necessary to calm down, because panic only makes it worse. After that you need to imagine what would you do if it wasn't about you, but about someone else and you had to give some advice.