Changing Perspectives
March 4th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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One problem-solving technique you should master is changing perspectives to redefine the problem.
The way you define a problem is often the key to solving it. Take a current problem from your life that you’re having difficulty solving. Then ask yourself: How can this problem be redefined as a financial problem? A health problem? A time management problem? A human resource or staffing problem? A technology problem? A prioritization problem? A communication problem? An education problem?
Here’s a simple example. Let’s say you’re a guy who really wants to have a girlfriend, but you’re becoming frustrated by a lack of progress in this area. How have you been defining the problem? As a problem meeting the right person? How else could you define it? Maybe your real problem is your career, which forces you to work in a male dominated industry — might the problem be a lot easier to solve if you worked in a female-dominated industry? Maybe your hobbies keep you homebound and alone, so you have to go out of your way to meet new people instead of naturally encountering them in the course of your normal life. Maybe your communication skills are poor, turning people away before they get a chance to know you. Maybe you’re putting everything else first in your life, and you’re not giving this problem the attention it requires. Maybe your finances are so poor you can’t afford to go out much.
Consider how the problem would change if you were to tackle it via one of these alternate definitions. What would happen to the problem if… you were a masterful and confident communicator? your income doubled? you worked in a totally different industry? you moved? you made it your #1 priority in life? you recruited a partner to help you solve it? you read 20 books on the subject?
Some problems that are really tough to solve via one route will more easily succumb to another approach. For example, many problems can be solved just by throwing enough money at them. While obviously money can’t solve every problem, money can hire a personal assistant, a nanny, a housekeeper, a private tutor, a personal coach, a personal trainer, etc.
A simple perspective change can open up a whole new world of possible solutions. When you consider only one perspective — one limited way of defining the problem — you automatically rule out an enormous number of potentially viable solutions. But blanket the problem with a multi-perspective attack, and your odds of success increase dramatically.
Often we fall into a pattern of being stuck with a single favorite perspective. I.e. if all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. My personal weakness is technology. I love solving problems via technology — a little PHP and MySQL can automate just about anything — so I often get stuck trying to solve problems via technology when they’d be more easily solved another way. It’s hard to break the favorite-perspective addiction, but when you start thinking through what it costs in terms of overall effectiveness, that helps provide the push needed to branch out.
You can use this approach with business problems too. Reframe your current big challenge as a marketing problem, a sales problem, a product development problem, a financing problem, a hiring problem, a “not firing” problem, a focus problem, a procedures problem, a values problem, etc.
Sometimes you’ll find that a multi-perspective solution is best. You may see that there are two or three perspectives which individually aren’t sufficient, but together they can provide a complete solution.
Pull out one of your big hairy problems, and try it for yourself. See what the problem looks like from different angles. What would happen if you threw money at your weight loss problem by setting up a home gym and hiring a personal trainer? What if you threw people and brainpower at your financial difficulties by forming a mastermind group? What about throwing education at your spiritual troubles by studying the lives of people you admire?
March 5th, 2005 at 3:56 am
This article is absolutely outstanding! I’ve been using this technique for years, but I was never able to explain it as well as you do. This technique helped me a lot.
Additional things and questions to consider:
What would you do with your life if you were really rich, and had almost none of your current problems? Make a list of things you would do. Then, consider if they are worth doing in your current situation, and if you can do them in your current situation, with your current resources.
When faced with a problem, try to find several solutions for it. Even if at first this seems to be an useless exercise in time your thinking becomes more flexible and you start to see more and better solutions to problems.
About the girlfriend problem:
If you are very overweight, you may think:
1. I’ll lose weight,
2. I’ll get some nice clothes and groom myself
3. I’ll date.
This is WRONG, because it will take you several months to lose weight, and then you will lose focus, you will lose interest. Perhaps you will also feel bad because losing weight makes you feel bad physically, and you won’t feel like going out with girls then.
I know from my experience that it’s much much better to do it like this:
You have 2 obstacles to overcome: your physical looks, and the fact that you don’t socialize. It’s far better to begin with the end – to start by socializing with girls as much as you can.
Try to socialize as much as you can. Talk to girls, etc. Go out. Find ways to meet girls. At first just try to socialize and to talk to as many girls as possible and to find as many ways to meet girls as possible. Don’t hit on them just yet, just talk and socialize.
Try to become funny. Etc.
Many girls may reject you for being overweight, but just socializing without losing weight can get you a girlfriend.
However, if you don’t get a girlfriend this way, then you will be VERY motivated to lose weight: “Look, I can talk with these girls, they are very nice, I like them, and if I just lost weight, I could easily get a girlfriend” … so.. you will have a very strong motivation.
This is a general life principle: start with the end.
You want to build a business? It’s often best to just start producing and selling what you want, instead of waiting to build a large factory, and then discovering that in fact there is no demand for your product.
March 5th, 2005 at 6:48 pm
*slips in to the blog* Really just want to comment about your articles for game developers but didn’t see any feedback bit. I’d just like to say that they’re awesome and I appreciate you taking the time to write them and share them for free with the public.
March 5th, 2005 at 10:26 pm
Very interesting technique, and well written. In an odd coincidence, I read your post just after I posted on my own blog (http://blog.dwayne.melancon.net/blog/_archives/2005/3/5/400274.html) about what it would be like if there was suddenly a Sarbanes-Oxley Act for how you manage your life.
I found thinking about how I manage my life from that perspective really gave me a lot to think about.
Keep up the great work.
March 7th, 2005 at 4:52 am
Hey Steve! I’m interested in finding out some of the problems you tried solving via a technology perspective, but found it easier to solve from another perspective. Have you got any good examples you’d like to share with us? One that comes to mind is when you focused on marketing your games to get more money rather than spending those hours on more programming. Any other examples?
March 7th, 2005 at 5:18 am
Many times even if a problem can be solved via technology, you don’t need to be the one to implement that technology — someone else can be contracted to do it more cheaply than you could. This is a challenge I’m running into right now. I need to become a lot better at outsourcing tasks even when I have the skills to do them myself. For example, if a certain professional speaker can get paid $7500 for a speech, s/he should focus on that and not do $50/hr technical work. Even if the person is a technical whiz, that technical work should be outsourced, at least to the degree that it allows the speaker to focus on finishing more of the higher-payoff work. It’s not just about money either; you could say that anything a speaker does outside of harvesting, preparing, and communicating ideas should be outsourced, so that the speaker can be as effective as possible.
In game development work, I’d often encounter situations where I’d begin programming a game feature and see that it would take a lot longer to implement than I wanted. I could have just plowed on through, but… The marketing/sales perspective showed me that the feature wasn’t worth the required implementation effort. The design perspective allowed me to change the design to eliminate the need for the feature entirely or to replace it with something easier to implement. That’s one reason I really liked the role of designer-programmer (or even better, designer-programmer-marketer), since you can make multi-perspective decisions quickly and intelligently.
June 7th, 2005 at 5:34 am
An introduction to 4G – Predicting Relationships
This post is designed to introduce some of the ideas surrounding 4G and its applications. In essence, 4G articulates and predicts relationships (Social Relationships) and culture (Social Groups) in a systematic and logical manner. Also present within 4…
June 7th, 2005 at 5:41 am
Hi Steve,
Interesting post
I’ve cited this on my own blog in a piece which looks at how relationships can be predicted.
Bruce