How To Have Zero Problems
You don't have as many problems as you think you do.
Most Personal Problems Are Your Own Fault
In the past, we humans have learned to control the world outside of us, but we had very little control over the world inside of us.
Yuval Noah Harari
Most of your personal problems stem from you lacking clearly defined priorities.
Problems and stress are overwhelming the entire population at all times, especially the "grown ups." Most people don't know where to start in trying to fix their problems. Even more don't even know what their problems are in the first place. They can't define them in basic terms.
If you want to have less problems in life, you need to ruthlessly prioritize minimal goals.
Let me explain.
Here's A Personal Story
I always remember looking back to when I was 18, and I had just discovered the idea of improving oneself. I had a vision of what (I thought) I was capable of, and I wanted it more than anything. I wanted to stop suffering as much as I was, not even that I knew why I was suffering in the first place, but anyway.
The morning gym sessions, the hour of reading before bed, the college deadlines on the horizon; it all seemed to be going great - for the first two days of each week, that is.
By Wednesday morning I'd be burned out, and I would rest and get nothing done until the following Monday.
I felt so overwhelmed all the time. I always felt like I didn't know what to be doing, how much to be doing, when to be doing it, and why. I had no plan, and thus, no real purpose for my actions or habits - nothing to get me to change. Nothing was written down with precision.
I was wondering in a desert. And the fear didn't come from not knowing where to go, but in some sense it came from having too many options of where I could go.
I just had a mental list of "things I needed to do," with no time carved out of my calendar to do each thing. That constant feeling that I was running out of time was so oppressive on my soul.
In truth, I was spreading myself too thin because I was trying to achieve too much.
I made no progress in the gym. I wasn't absorbing anything that I was reading. I spent my whole day sitting in the college library only to get a few hundred words written at best. I was frustrated constantly, and I felt lost.
I'd have been better off just saying f*ck it, stopping my aimless wandering around the desert in the midst of chaos, and picking one direction to move in and sticking to it. It might not have been the right decision, but I'd have gotten a lot more done with my actions.
Less Needs = Less Problems
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. - Confucius
The more goals you have, the more problems you'll have if you fail to achieve them. Now I don't mean that you should not have any goals. Our positive emotion systems literally work in relation to us moving towards a specific goal (and not so much in actually achieving them), but the key word here is specific.
Separate the wheat from the chaff, cut off any of the dead wood, so to speak. You need a highly specific, quality amount of goals.
Here's the idea: ruthless prioritization and minimal needs.
I had to learn to focus on what truly mattered, the minimum amount of work needed for success (I actually wrote about this in my last newsletter below)
I cut my lifting sessions in half, I read for 2 hours a week, and did only an hour of college work a day. My productivity went through the roof because I had:
Only focused on doing what was necessary in reaching my small, but clearly defined, list of goals
Started restricting myself to only completing the minimum effective dose (quality work instead of quantity)
Written down minimal and well defined priorities; anything else was just noise and distraction
The key to eliminating your life problems is to have less of them.
You must ruthlessly prioritize and focus on what truly matters, minimizing unnecessary needs and obligations.
You'll come to see how by identifying your minimal priorities, eliminating all other pointless rubbish and distraction, and by adopting a system for staying locked in towards a few, specific goals, you'll get more done with less effort and you'll become stress free.
Don't try to make life any more chaotic than it needs to be. You won't help yourself.
Adopt The 80/20 Principle
The default human mind is an inherently disorderly place to be.
Ryan A. Bush, Designing the Mind
We always seem to be doing something.
Growing up, whenever I asked most of the people in my life, "what do you need to do today," I usually got one of these types of responses (in a bitter, resentful tone):
They wouldn't tell me, and would say they had a lot more to do than me (because I was a kid)
They would start off by telling me their list of things they needed to do, but would change the conversation back to me, on how few things I needed to do (again, because I was a kid)
They would tell me they've forgotten what they had to do full stop. Then, the overwhelm and stress would become visually obvious in their behaviour and stance (which is the exact problem at hand here)
I'm not trying to disregard these types of responses. I actually think it's a unique way of trying to tackle the very problem I'm trying to solve, just not in the right way. And I know this bitter, resentful feeling all too well, as if the world is on your shoulders, and you need to just let everyone around you know that "I'm always super stressed."
But this is the exact problem I'm trying to solve:
There's probably a lot of unnecessary stress in most people.
If you lack clarity you won't be able to see the world clearly. You wouldn't see the finer details looking through a dirty window. The same thing applies to this.
Most people, who feel like they've "so much to do," could benefit from sharpening their objectives, and being deadly clear about what they have to do exactly.
The Minimalist Mindset
If you want less problems in life, you need to ruthlessly prioritize minimal goals.
You need to adopt the minimalist mindset.
By learning to minimize your needs, obligations, and distractions, you'll become able to see things as they are.
You'll have less confusion, less stress, less feelings of overwhelm, and minimal problems for yourself.
By adopting this philosophical change of perspective, you cease from being reactive and become proactive. You learn to view everything as a concrete problem that needs solving. By learning to clearly define your list of goals, and working towards the only real issues that actually need addressing in order to achieve success, you'll change your entire outlook on life.
You don't need to be living inside a chaotic mind. You just need to organize it.
The "Problem Zero" System: 4 Steps to a Problem-Free Life
For all the happiness mankind can gain is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain.
John Dryden
You feel trapped in the chaos of life: problems are always on top of you and you cannot break free.
This is why you need The Problem Zero System. It won't just help you analyze surface-level problems for basic solutions. It will dive deep into the computer code of your own mind, in order to fix the underlying bugs - your problems.
A problem is an unmet need, a "fault in the system", that your computer-like brain is trying to warn you about.
Hear the alarm, find the source of the smoke, and clear it.
Let's begin.
Step 1) Understand Yourself First
Consider the ancient Greek principle to "Know Thyself." What does it mean?
Your personality and temperament is your unique mode of interpretating the world. It's how you perceive and approach a problem.
Life is suffering. There will always be problems. This is why knowledge exists. Aristotle said that the purpose of knowledge is action: human beings use information to influence the outcomes of events, and to minimize suffering (hopefully for noble reasons).
You are a unique user manual for solving a problem, and having an understanding of any user manual will always help you to solve problems more efficiently.
Whatever the circumstances of your life, the understanding of type can make your perceptions clearer, your judgments sounder, and your life closer to your heart's desire.
Isabel Briggs Myers
If you need a starting point for understanding yourself, use the Myers-Briggs framework as a guide.
Ask yourself these basic questions.
Beware of cognitive biases in your answers. These are flaws in our rational thinking that influence our thoughts and decisions. Try to be as honest and objective as possible.
Do you focus more on the outer world (Extraversion) or your own inner world (Introversion)?
Do you focus on particular facts (Sensing) or your gut (Intuition)?
Do you focus on being logical and objective (Thinking) or more empathetic (Feeling) when making decisions?
Are you more close minded (Judging) or open minded (Perceiving)?
You can add the initials together of the four words you've picked to give yourself a distinct personality type, in other words, a general idea as to how you interpret the world in your own unique way.
Try to understand how you naturally approach or define a problem. Don't judge or critique - just observe.
Do you work well in high-paced environments?
Are you quick to become upset?
What's the first thing you attempt to do when trying to change an outcome?
How do you work towards achieving a specific goal?
Study yourself to leverage yourself.
Step 2) View Your Problems As Needs Not Being Met
A problem is a need that isn't being met.
Thus, if you know what personal needs are not being met, you'll understand the root causes of most of your problems.
You need to dig below the surface. Move beyond the first solution that comes to your mind. Address the core needs that are causing you stress and overwhelm.
Redefining problems can give you new insights. By learning to view a problem as an unmet need, you'll gain self-understanding and clarity as to what the source of your suffering actually is.
Labelling yourself as "unmotivated" or "unhappy with my life" means nothing. Carl Jung believed that diagnoses only help the physician, and not the patient, meaning that labels can help you to understand your symptoms, so that you can change some aspect of your life to get rid of said symptoms. The label itself changes nothing.
It's like diagnosing a disease and never treating the symptoms. You need action to foster change.
If you're unhappy with your spending habits, for example, you need to find out why you're unhappy, and focus on changing your behaviors to fulfil your core need that is currently not being met.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
Carl Jung
Another easy way to discover what your core needs are is to write down everything that upsets you.
It can be a hypothetical event, something that someone once said to you, a past experience, an actual problem in your life right now; all of this will help you to understand who it is that's perceiving these things as problems. Life is how you perceive it, as they say.
Step 3) Ruthlessly Prioritize Your Necessary Needs
Only focus on what truly matters when making a change.
Consider Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (in order of necessity):
Physiological
Safety
Love and Belonging
Esteem
Self-Actualization
If a goal or need doesn't align with your physiological or safety needs at minimum, you might need to do some thinking.
Eliminate anything that distracts you from achieving your goal.
If it doesn't build towards your goal, remove it.
Ignore it.
Your time and energy is finite; spend it wisely.
By only focusing on what matters, you'll create more time for doing the things that truly matter to you. The peak of Maslow's pyramid, self-actualization, links back perfectly to Step 1) Understand Yourself First. The more you understand yourself, the higher up you can build your pyramid peak. Understanding yourself will help you to build a more complex, fulfilling life. This is why the unexamined life is not worth living.
If it's not necessary, don't look at it. Define what's important to you and learn to say "no."
Step 4) Adjust Your Expectations For Sustainable Progress
Life is not linear. Thus, your expectations should be adaptable and easy to shape.
Adjust them when necessary. From day-to-day, or week-to-week. Small progress always beats zero progress. Always take your personal limits into account.
By learning to be adaptable, you'll break free from the tyrannical restraint and oppression that fixed, external standards have on your soul.
You don't need to go 110% every day of the week. As long as your doing something more than 0% daily, that's all that matters. You can walk or you can run, but as long as you're doing one of the two, you'll reach the destination at some point. You won't reach any destination, ever, if you don't move at all.
Always choose to do something over doing nothing.
I hope that with this letter, I’ve given you some practical wisdom to help you reduce some of the problems in your life. Doing less is key to achieving more. Always focus on doing quality work, and you'll find that you can still achieve your goals with a lot less input than you think. Read last week's newsletter here to read more about doing less and achieving more.
Ruthless prioritization of minimal needs really is a profound idea.
Thank you for reading.
- Profound Ideas
Love the way this is put together 👌🏻
Really enjoyed reading this - thank you for sharing it ⚡️