Dealing with Problems by Ignoring Them—Part II
The Futility of Problem Solving
Introduction
Well, we thought this was going to be a two-part article, but it turned out that we had a lot more to say about this than we could comfortably squeeze into two posts.
From here on in, in the present article, the ideas we’ll be presenting on the nature of problems and how (and why) not to deal with them are going to get more conceptually challenging than they were in Part I.
We ourselves have got so used to thinking this way and have found these ideas so obvious for so many years, that it is easy for us to forget that our thinking about problems and situations is pretty far removed from the way most people have been taught to think about them.
We wonder too whether the way we think about problems is the way you would have naturally thought about problems yourself had you been left to your own devices, instead of having been taught to think about them in the myriad unhelpful ways we are here setting out to debunk.
Yet we do realize we have to take it slow. We need to let our readers get used to our way of looking at problems gradually, in stages, and not try and force-feed the Strasbourg geese with too many new concepts at once.
For it’s also an incredibly nuanced matter, where the many distinctions we are making do matter, and where the overall topic matters more than almost anything, because it affects the way we do anything and everything that matters to us.
Today’s installment of Change is only Part II of, well, we don’t yet know how many parts of this article. There will be at least a Part III and a Part IV, and we wouldn’t be surprised if there were also a Part V. When we started writing last week on this, we didn’t realize quite how much we had to say. It’s not a question of length, but density. Yeah, it’s a lot.
Again, we thought the idea of routinely dealing with problems by studiously ignoring them was just common sense. It seems, or so we’re told, that it’s comparatively uncommon sense after all.
Stay tuned. Fasten your seatbelts. Or better yet, get ready with your parachute.
—Ellen and James
Dealing with Problems by Ignoring Them—Part II: The Futility of Problem Solving
Having a problem simply means not yet having a solution—not seeing your situation in such a light that your way forward to your goal is clear. Of course, some ways of viewing the situation you are dealing with make it quite impossible ever to attain such clarity.
Asked for help on a case by a young psychotherapist he was supervising, an astute and seasoned clinician1 asked what the problem was. Upon being informed that it was “the symbiotic relationship between mother and daughter,” he replied at once, “I would never let that be the problem.”
A problem is only an avenue of approach we happen to have pursued, where we cannot see our way clear. And guess what? The things we’ve tried didn’t work, and we only chose them in the first place because they were perfectly obvious solutions to what we took the problem to be.
Therefore we had better not take the problem to be that after all. We would clearly be better off ignoring that problem and choosing a different and far easier problem to solve instead—and one which, once solved, will equally get us to where we want to go.
For a problem is but a telltale symptom of an unhelpful perspective to be abandoned at the first opportunity—dropped like a hot potato.
In short, as we shall see, a problem, once encountered, is hardly worth even a moment’s thought. Best to ignore it, and not even give it the time of day.
“If you think you have a problem,” stated the reminder to myself I used to keep on my desk, “think again—you are thinking about it wrong.” If you think you’ve got a big problem on your hands—“big” not in terms of the potential adverse consequences and import but big in the sense of “impossibly challenging”—you are almost certainly trying to solve the wrong problem, which is like trying to get an answer to the wrong question.
An unsolved or apparently unsolvable problem, like an unanswered or apparently unanswerable question, should be an invitation to go back and choose a different problem instead, like asking another question to get at what you are after when your first enquiry draws a blank.
A problem that does not call for its own solution may best be regarded as but a first feeler. Instead of trying to pursue it, we should put out another feeler.
If you think about it, any given problem is only a solution that we cannot get to work. Take any problem you are trying unsuccessfully to solve, and think for a moment: just what is it exactly that tackling this problem is meant to be a solution to?
A problem is, if you like, a would-be solution that’s simply not panning out as we’d hoped. It’s just a currently favoured but unworkable solution to something else. Maybe it’s the first thing you thought of. It often is.
This is why most efforts at so-called “problem-solving” in practical affairs are ultimately quite worthless endeavours: problems that do not readily solve themselves once stated are typically only bad solutions we’re trying desperately to salvage.
Problem-solving is what we find ourselves wasting time on when we take awkward, inappropriate or downright unworkable solutions and struggle to get them somehow to work, against all odds. There’s always an alternative—pick another problem instead.
There is no end to the problem-solving that people can indulge in if they please. Often an unworkable solution is patched up in this way and actually made to work, up to a point.
And then the forced solution typically lands us with problems with the patch itself, problems which are then similarly “solved,” as basically unworkable solution is piled upon unworkable solution and an ever-growing, jerry-built monstrosity hobbles along happily enough, and after a while people learn to live with the monster and even forget it’s there. Sound familiar?
Dealing with a problem is like getting into a parking space. Every driver knows that it is usually best, if at first you don’t succeed, to get out of the space and try a second approach.
Unfortunately, the more ingenious and indefatigable we are the more likely we are to make the best of a bad job and get a really bad solution to work even if it kills us.
And sometimes it does.
Suggested Further Reading:
If you would like to follow-up the ideas in today’s post and explore them further with an example, a good next port of call would be to read Ellen Arkfeld’s “The Problem Doesn’t Need to Be Solved” (2022), where you can also explore what questions to ask yourself when deciding whether a particular problem should be rejected.
…Next week: problems v. difficulties
© Copyright 2010, 2023 Dr James Wilk
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jay Haley (1923-2007), one of the greatest and most influential psychotherapists of his generation. See O’Hanlon and Wilk, Shifting Contexts, New York: Guilford Press, 1987, p. 79.