Problems Well Handled

I've posted a lot about the collision of the same idea from two different, unrelated sources. When that happens, we should pay close attention - here's one on problems and goals.

Around this time each year, I re-read Essentialism and Atomic Habits to remind myself of the goals worth chasing and how to execute on them.

As part of those re-reads, I try to find a podcast or two with each of the authors to pull out additional insights or context that I might have missed. This year, Greg McKeown appeared on Modern Wisdom and this quote stood out:

"The reward for climbing the mountain is that there are other mountains...people assume if you get to the top of one all the problems disappear, but no one gets to escape the mortal experience. What that means is that if you want to keep making progress, you have to live in a state of familiar with discomfort. You're either on the edge of your ability, facing fear and taking new risks, or you become stagnant in whatever level of success you happen to be at."

This reminded me of one of my favorite paragraphs from Brad Jacobs' How to Make a Few Billion Dollars.

Problems (mountains) are an asset, not something to avoid, but to run toward and being good at solving problems means being rewarded with bigger problems to solve. Instead of the unproductive and default attitude of "not again", we should become "familiar with discomfort" as McKeown put it and add "this is an opportunity to create value" as Jacobs wrote below.

This feels like a good framework for goal setting in the new year - which problems do I want to solve and where do I want to create value?

"The path to success is paved with problems well handled."