Psychological stages of Problem-solving

Hi,

We all go through an infinite number of problems in our life. Some of them we're able to solve, some we keep settling throughout our lives, some take years, and some we have to leave to fate. If you think I'm only talking professionally, I’ll just remind you we're humans and life is way beyond desks and computers.?

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Recently, I have been in similar situations, one of those circumstances where the universe is throwing one ball after the other and I just have to hold my racket up, swinging it continuously to keep knocking them off?(I'm not saying I have been successful at it, but I'm managing).?But as I have been going through it day by day, I have figured that to progressively slide into any problem's solution, you just essentially have to make it through 3 phases-

The Anxiety- "Why is this happening to me ?"

The Sherlock- "Let us Analyse till we die"

Steve Jobs- "That was fun!"

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The graph that you see hasn't been copied or referenced or inspired from, this is a graph that I made?(Since we learned a lot of KOOL and insightful graphs this year from @SP Jain School of Global Management),?while I have been struggling through some of my speed breakers.?

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"WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?"

This is the stage where you know something terrible has happened and it is somewhat beyond your control (actually way beyond in my case, but in that case, you try to bring it closer to your control; see what I mean? ) where you want to just punch anyone who comes in front of you while you're trying to absorb all the aspects of that particular problem. In this stage, your anxiety is at its peak. This is where you start questioning if your life will ever be the same again or not (If you don't question it, then may it is not as dramatic as mine! Or maybe I'm too dramatic). The awareness of the complexity of the issue also starts increasing and everything starts happening at once. After mentally and consciously accepting the problem you start analyzing it and your degree of analysis starts increasing with every passing fraction of time.

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Now when you do that you transition into "The Sherlock Stage"?

How do you know you have reached the Sherlock stage?

While your degree of analysis of the problem increases, after a certain point, it reaches saturation, and by saturation, I don't mean there is anything more to discover about the issue and analyze. But, past this point, you start getting back to the same sub-issues of the problems. The discoveries that you make afterward aren't adding significantly to your analysis anymore or are not contributing enough to solve the problem. They are just good-to-know and not need-to-know information. When this happens that everything else you're finding out is leading you back to the same /similar information whatsoever, That's your cue to have reached "THE SHERLOCK STAGE

"The Sherlock Stage"

The Sherlock stage is when you have the entire problem analyzed and you're mentally beginning to solve it. This is a very crucial stage because a lot of us get so lost and so tired dealing with the anxiety around analysis, that we either pick the most convenient alternative in front of us, try blaming it on others, or give up and leave. This is the most exhausting part because let us face it - If we all knew how to save the earth, we would have done it! We claim we know the solution but when it comes to executing it, we either struggle with our demons, society, or someone sitting behind a desk telling us how can we still keep the job. In the Sherlock stage, the Analysis has reached saturation, the anxiety is still at its peak as to what can we do next, the complexity is stable as you have reached the most complex stage. This is where your solutions start unfolding.?

“We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizon, to understand that our present situation is natural nor inevitable and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine….”

-???????Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

The biggest challenge with humans is that we keep forgetting this. Your fortunate times are not an indication of your future and will never avoid the inevitable challenges that come your way. The more you grow, the more you have to solve through those possibilities. In this stage, if you still have the courage and the spirit of life, you manage to come up with a very obvious solution to this problem, but of course, the universe has other plans for you, this solution would come up with multiple parts of ifs and buts and which is why you'll respectfully throw it into the trash. Next up, you have a slightly modified version of the previous solution but still a brand new one to the same problem. Now you try to explore the repercussions of implementing this solution. And it's only human, we try to look at the worst-case scenarios first followed by the best case. While you are closer to reaching a solution and solving your problem entirely, you transition into "THAT WAS FUN!"

THE STEVE JOBS

This is the last stage and please don't stop reading, you haven't solved your problem yet!

In this stage, your anxieties, your degree of analysis, your complexities, etc are declining day by day. The amazing about this stage is you haven't solved your problem yet but yet you start being comfortable with its presence, because having done your analysis and having been through the anxiety, you know now It will not kill you (At at least?unless your stars say so!). We feel okay about it now because we know the prospective solutions and we are somewhere close to solving it. This is the stage where you have to identify for yourself if you have those possible fixes!

I'm not going to tell you what happens at the end of the curve because I have a very different journey than yours. Someone might have solved it, for now, someone might have parked it for the future, someone else might have lost the battle, someone else might have come out to be a billionaire. Choose your story!

I don't know who needed to hear this but I just knew someone else might be struggling too and this is just a validation that we're only humans and the hiccups are inevitable. When you finally go through it all and look back realizing that you have grown through it too, You realize?THAT WAS FUN! Acknowledge, Resolve and Embrace the learnings.

P.S. Most important of all - If you aren't surrounded by people encouraging you all the time to deal with the stages of these curves, you're in the wrong group.

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