Let me be clear; no one loves a self-help book more than me. It's my favorite reading genre. And I can honestly say there are pivotal moments of my own personal growth that I attribute to self-help material. ![[IMG_1430.jpeg]] But there's a troublesome subtext behind these books, especially the best selling ones, which is: "fix your problems." "Fix your problems" is the path of least resistance to answer the question, "How do I make all of my problems go away?" For example, here are some real titles of best selling self-help books: 1. The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness. 2. The Art of Letting Go: Stop Overthinking, Stop Negative Spirals, and Find Emotional Freedom. 3. How to Be the Love You Seek: Break Cycles, Find Peace, and Heal Your Relationships What people don't write about and probably wouldn't sell well anyway is how to understand your problems, how to live with them, how to be at peace with the fact that you will experience some pain as a result of them for the rest of your life. Sometimes we ask too much of ourselves. When we focus all of our energy on fixing, we are saying that our own basic need for happiness is contingent on conquering the real pain we live with out of existence. There is so much to be gained when someone comes into your life only to turn your attention to the fact that one thing is connected to another and you were never able to see it. That person might show you that your feeling of no one liking you is actually connected to personal struggle you have with rejection because of what happened to you once in the past. Suddenly you feel free...or at least after you swallow a pill of radical honesty that you are the one turning people away. Your problem remains unsolved by the way. You have only gained the clarity that there was another more rational way of looking at things where you have agency in the negative outcomes you keep experiencing. Focus is your steering wheel. Without it, you'll put your energy everywhere stressing out far more than you will thriving from it. The same steering can help us understand basic principles of productivity. ## Solutions should resemble goals, not problems What do we do when tasks are piling up? We tell ourselves we haven't had enough time to do them. We try to solve these problems by repackaging the problem itself as the solution: > "I need more time." Then we give ourselves more time by sacrificing important uses of time in our life. We may find ourselves putting off connecting with others or engaging in self care in the name of keeping our time available quota full. ![[IMG_1431.jpeg]] Yet people who are actually good at this sort of thing don't have more time than we do. They are just skillful at prioritization. They pull closer the tasks that drive what really matters and say no to the ones left over. They must also build that skill on a foundation of being in touch with what really matters for their time on Earth. Cultivating this skill is often the better solution, yet it doesn't resemble the problem—it resembles their goals. We want to be more effective, not more efficient. We want to have a life of purpose, so this means our time is spent on what matters. So let me steer you to the nature of problems and goals so you will understand why we keep slipping into our old ways: Unlike problems, goals are harder to see. Problems show themselves so effortlessly, we often find ourselves expending effort trying not to think of them so often. They are just hitting us in the face whether we want them to or not. Goals are the opposite. They require effort to even come into existence. We have to do the heavy lifting of architecting them. You have to pause to create a goal. Problems crop up like a disease, they inspire prevention efforts. Goals require our faith in their success. They need us to input energy to focus on them. So it makes sense we take the path of least resistance by solutioning in the likeness of our problems. But it makes more sense that we shouldn't. We can give ourselves more time, but we'll never have enough. We will fail if we try to rid ourselves of our problems. Goals however, can actually be met. Once you have a goal, you need a plan to get there and here our delusions continue: ## Don't confuse an outcome with a plan This happens again and again, mostly in my professional life. The team is energized with a new plan. Everything feels right and it's a timely way to cap off a long meeting and chart a path forward. Later on, nothing really happens. The problem is it's not a plan, it's an outcome. ![[b181e810-fe8e-4427-acee-27108cf703c1.jpeg]] ## Abstract and Concrete Politicians know how to use this. People don't align with facts, they align with their values. ```mermaid flowchart LR A[Abstract] <------> B[Concrete] ``` Abstract ideas are intangible. > "Every American has the right to choose what they do with their own body" Concrete ideas are the opposite. > "No one should have to take the vaccine" > "It is a human right to have an abortion" Notice individuals who agree with the abstract statement will agree only with one of the two concrete ones the abstract statement is describing. The antivaxxer and pro-choicer will be bitter enemies in your meeting but will walk out with a sharp understanding of their collaboration points. If you close it up instead with the abstract one, they will be best friends and ultimately have no tangible plan. ![[14e67501-fae4-4651-934a-502aeb801821.jpeg]] This is why you don’t rally your audience about the concrete details, limitations, and applications of a law, but in “protecting our children.” It’s why we have two schools of thoughts in abortion rights that prefer either “pro choice” or “pro life” even though everyone across those groups is both an advocate of individual choice and the preservation of life in general. Political persuasion uses labels to refer to concepts that are actually abstract like _freedom_, _choice, equality,_ and so on. Republicans refer to the restrictive voting laws passed in Georgia in 2021 as _protecting election integrity_ while Democrats denounced them as _voter suppression_. The point is you'll agree with both in the abstract (we should protect election integrity and prevent voter suppression) but will take one side in the concrete (we should/should not allow the public to offer water to people waiting in line to vote). ## Plans and Outcomes Outcomes are confused as plans precisely because they're abstract. * We need to change our culture. * To prevent this from happening again, we need to make sure we communicate with that team. They need to be involved. * Let's get on the same page. Plans are actionable but talking about outcomes isn't a bad thing, they set a vision. They give context for why you're planning anything at all.