Many people act as if they believe there is a problem, the rest of us should simply believe them.
I had a colleague who said, “A problem on your part does not make an emergency on mine.” It stuck with me because I tend to want to solve problems for people. I’d help with the most mundane and unnecessary things because it helped someone else out. Over time, this led to me spending more and more time solving problems for others.
Some people choose to experience the bump in the road as an insurmountable mountain. Others drive over it without even realizing it was there in the first place. If the bump was a real problem, the one driving over it without thinking may be missing the bottom of their car. But if it wasn’t real, the person stopped at it is just wasting time.
The ability to solve problems begins with understanding the nature of the problem. Step 1 is to identify whether there is actually a problem. Step 2 is to identify if the problem is correctly understood. These seem fundamental, but they are easy to miss along the way in our eagnerness to get to work.