Karl Popper, the Austrian philosopher of science and a personal hero of mine, famously posited that “All life is problem solving”. Popper’s experimental approach to generating knowledge lays the groundwork of what we know today as the scientific method:  Beliefs about the state of the world should only be valid until proven otherwise. Statements should be expressed in a way that makes them falsifiable, you must be able to test them against reality.

For Popper, problems were statements in search of falsification, but for most of us – employees, entrepreneurs, policy-makers – problems are questions in search of solutions. And while many are excellent problem-solvers, few are excellent problem-framers.
In fact, there’s a lot of value hidden upstream of problem-solving. In our upcoming book, co-author Julia Dhar and I offer five important – yet somewhat counter-intuitive – observations.

1. Problems come with ‘meta data’

From early on, we are expected to answer questions, to find solutions to textbook problems, to complete tests.
By automatically jumping into answer-mode, we miss out on important information: Think of it as ‘meta data’ – information about a problem’s framing and origin – that each problem comes equipped with. Decoding and critically reflecting on the problem at hand before jumping into solving mode can be surprisingly insightful. Reflect on these questions:

• Who framed the problem? And what are their underlying interests?
• Cui bono? (Who benefits from it being solved?)
• Who loses out?
• Why this problem (vs. others?)
• Why now?

2. Problems don’t just exist, we actively choose them.

It is widely assumed that problems simply ‘exist’. They don’t need to be identified; they simply impose themselves on us. This is a mistaken belief. Picking a problem to solve is almost always an active process. This is true for any problem – regardless of whether it emerges in your private or professional life. It is worth the effort to try and elevate the selection process from the subconscious to the conscious level.

Are you facing many problems and not sure where to start? A pragmatic tool that I use all the time is the impact/feasibility matrix: Plot the expected impact of the problem being solved on the y-axis, and the cost or effort of doing so on the x-axis. Invert the x-scale (low cost/effort on the right; high cost/effort on the left) – and you’ll create a useful prioritization matrix. Start with the problems in the top-right corner and work your way down from there.

Next time, before you jump into problem-solving mode right away, take a step back to reflect on who decided that the issue you are facing is a problem worth solving, and think about why they did so, and what their perspective might be.

3. Not every problem needs to be solved

Problems seem apparent when you first encounter them. Even if the path to implementing the solution appears straightforward, it might cause subsequent effects that are hard to factor in.
Policy-makers know these effects as unintended consequences.
If unintended consequences (higher-order effects) outweigh the benefits of your intended solution (first-order effects), you may consider other options – or leave the problem unsolved.

Examples are plentiful:
For some medical conditions, “the cure is worse than the disease”.
Or consider the example of cane toads, originally brought to Australia to kill bugs that lived on sugar cane, but started to disrupt the whole ecosystem.
Or your supplier is charging you more than the market rate, but demanding a lower price might threaten its liquidity, in turn leading to supply uncertainty for your business.

4.    Not every problem needs to be solved immediately.

Many problems seem to demand immediate attention, but oftentimes we confuse importance with urgency. In fact, a consumer research team led by Zhu, Yang and Hsee found a significant ‘urgency effect’ – a mindset of focusing on urgent rather than important tasks.
Their experiments showed that test subjects tend to prioritize tasks with a lower expected reward over tasks with a higher reward, when the former were merely classified as urgent.^[1]

A prioritization model, such as the well-known ‘Eisenhower matrix’ can help when deciding which problems to tackle in which order. It may not surprise you to learn that Dwight D. Eisenhower, a five-star general, supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces during the Second World War and US President, was a master organizer and productivity guru in his time. He saw past the blinders of urgency, coining the phrase, “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.”^[2]

In addition, a surprisingly large number of problems, if left to their own devices, appear to magically take care of themselves. Have you ever found an abandoned, months-old to-do list with a few items checked off and the rest still unchecked? In all likelihood, most of the ‘unchecked’ tasks have either become obsolete or already been taken care of.

5.    Not every problem needs to be solved by you.

 “What would happen if I didn’t tackle this problem?” The what-would-happen-otherwise is known as the ‘counterfactual’ approach. Let’s apply counterfactual thinking to career decisions:
I mentor a number of graduates and young professionals early in their career. In typical millennial fashion (disclosure: I’m a millennial myself), they rank ‘making the world a better place’ high on their lists of job characteristics. Leaving an impact can be achieved in two ways: either by improving the lives of other people or the environment directly (for example as a physician, political campaigner or aid worker), or indirectly by enabling others to do better or more work (for example, by donating to a charitable NGO). The impact of someone working directly on important causes can often be lower than the impact of someone accepting a high-paying job and giving a substantial amount to effective charities.^[3] Because many of the directly impactful ‘doing-good’ positions are in high demand, there’s a lot of competition for them. If one doesn’t take that job as an aid worker, someone else (who is probably similarly skilled) will. So the real impact from that career choice is most likely smaller than its perceived impact – an important distinction.

Although decision making can be daunting and overwhelming, learning how to think first will keep you afloat and thriving instead of drowning in a sea of choices. The introspection required of these strategies can help you create a methodology to approach the unforeseen, to see all of the possibilities of a decision with its gains and/or losses.
No matter what the problem is or where you come at it from, it’s essential to hold up the facts for examination and to test them for falsification, as Popper reiterated throughout his whole academic career. If all life really is problem solving, then framing problems correctly will get you halfway to the answer.

This piece is an edited extract from The Decision Maker’s Playbook (Financial Times Press, London: Sep 2019). You can pre-order it here: US, UK, EU.

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^[1] Meng Zhu, Yang Yang, Christopher K Hsee; ‘The Mere Urgency Effect’, Journal of Consumer Research, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucy008

^[2] Dwight Eisenhower presented a version of the adage in a 1954 speech at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, in which he credited an unnamed “former college president” for it

^[3] This idea is known as ‘earning to give’, and part of a wider philanthropic movement called “Effective Altruism”