Meditations for Entrepreneurs #6: Persistent Challenges And Questions Asked The Wrong Way

My continuing project: quoting great thinkers who inspire me, then offering commentary on how it connects with the entrepreneurial game. I hope these meditations will help other entrepreneurs play the bigger game. 

“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.” — Alan Watts

In the course of an entrepreneurial journey, challenges are a constant. Some are solved easily and quickly. Some are more persistent. A few are existential. 

When a challenge remains persistent in spite of sustained efforts to solve it, we need to start looking at the challenge differently. 

If our product is not gaining traction is it that our marketing is ineffective or that our product-market hypothesis isn’t proving out?

If we are feeling burnt out, is it because we’ve haven’t given ourselves time to recharge or that our business has grown and we can’t run it the same way we did when it was just starting out?

If a challenge persists, it’s time to ask the question a different way. 

Often it’s not even about solving the challenge, it’s about understanding what the challenge is trying to teach us. 

So instead of asking, “how do we solve this challenge?", we might ask “looking back in a year, what will need to have done to make this challenge one of the best things to have happened for us?” 

And in asking the question a different way, we find ourselves opened to amazing possibilities.