How To Find Interesting Problems
It took a lot of effort to figure out how to make good coffee. I’m glad I did. My mornings are much better because of it. But I often wonder how many things in life are like that; how close I am to discovering them, if I only tried a little harder.
Sometimes I worry there's a thin line between me and ecstasy (as if greatness were only a couple centimeters away).
It makes me wonder about the time we waste searching for interesting work—inevitable, unbreakable time.
People often say "follow your passions". But that passion almost always requires a long period of exploration to find.
Trial and error help you sketch out a landscape of interesting problems; problems close enough you can reach—great enough you can climb. But in the beginning you almost have to guess that it’ll be interesting. And there’s no guarantee it’ll be useful.
Often times I've found the experiences and lessons you’ve learned in one project will set you for the next. They'll build on top of each other until a shape begins to emerge; like blind men outlining the edges of a room. You’ll sharpen your intuition one step at a time.
Usually the things that annoy you are the best hiding spots for interesting problems. And unlike early-stage excitement, annoyance isn't as fleeting. It persists through the monotony of your life. It's generally constant.
And it’s important emotions be present because it’s easy to lose motivation when you first start working. You can encounter all sorts of problems that aren't relevant to your interests when you start searching. You can take a respite from the work, thinking it isn't for you. Eventually, you'll feel so guilty for not working, you'll labor over truly uninteresting problems just so you can be "productive". And that’s when the real trouble starts. Because boring, tedious labor that slowly invades your life isn’t much different from slavery (the major difference being labor tends to go unnoticed).
But a problem that grips you doesn't always remove the tedium involved—just makes it more bearable. As you get better at solving problems, you'll generally find the tedium fades, settles into the background, or even disappears entirely. At its peak, you'll find exploring other peaks never gets easy, but it does get easier.
Technology helps remove the tedium. Experience too. But it seems like a packaged deal—a part of life (at least the Homo Sapien life). Inescapable from the very start.
We come out of the womb twitching, struggling, crawling, exploring a vast space of movements and twitches until finally, we can dance.