S6E31: Why trying to figure out a problem might be blocking you from a solution

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Monday, and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. And today, I’m sharing an incredible quote that came from Ed Mylett, who is an entrepreneur, a speaker, a podcaster, and he asks something that I’d never thought about before. Hearing this was a real breakthrough moment for me, so, as always, I wanted to share it with you too!

He said,

Problems need energy to live

And so the concept should be that we solve problems but we don’t have to pour and deplete ourselves of energy. Because the more energy you give something, the more it expands. We need to pour our energy into the solution, not the problem. 90% of your focus, time and energy should be toward to solution, not towards the problem itself.

And it was one of those epiphany moments for me where I could just feel more clarity, it felt like a leap right then and there. Because when we are faced with a difficulty, it’s so natural to think we should throw everything at it, and then to respond to that need by obsessing over the problem itself. And so we end up looping round and round the same thoughts of how the problem is unfair or inconvenient, doing some kind of post-mortem of previous conversations or situations, drawing parallels, doubting ourselves, forecasting how this issue right here right now might be a sign of things to come, comparing ourselves with our friends and telling ourselves why they would never get into this sort of mess. 

All that energy feels productive. It feels like we’re dedicating our time and focus and energy to the problem, so we deserve a solution. We’re in the ballpark, we’re putting the time in, the solution should just come eventually. 

But the energy isn’t even looking for a solution. 

The energy is looking to make us feel worse about the problem. The energy is going to make the problem feel bigger. More threatening. More existential.

And how can we find solutions from that mental space? We’ve spent all this time, beating ourselves up about whatever it is, attaching all sorts of meaning to it, we are not going to jump from that into problem-solving mode. We’re far more likely to either need a nap, need to escape as far away from the problem as possible because we now associsate it with feeling, awful, or to seek distractions. We have no energy left, and a lot of the time, we’re filling that space with resentment and doubt.

I cannot believe I’d never thought about this before.  

So, what does it look like to pour energy into the solution instead of the problem? 

It might look like taking the problem, and fanning it out into as many questions as you can. I have already touched on this in two podcast episodes before, so I’ll link those in the show notes, but in short, make the problem into researchable, objective, what, who, how, when questions.

So an example of magnifying the problem, of unwittingly pouring energy into making the problem bigger, would be to keep repeating the question to yourself “why am I so bad at speaking?” (with a whole boatload of other thoughts hanging on like “why do I keep making these mistakes… why can I never understand other people… I’m so stupid, I never learn… maybe I’m not cut out for language learning…”)

An example of pouring that energy into the solution, would be making a list of questions like “why is speaking harder than writing for language learners”; “how can I raise my speaking confidence”; “how can I find low-pressure speaking opportunities”; “how to scaffold speaking” and then based on what you find, you might start looking up other things that aren’t questions like “tasks to make speaking easier”. If you would like to learn more about how to ask better questions in your language learning, I have two podcast episodes on this already: S3E17 and S4E36.

It might be asking for advice from a person you know, from the internet, but making sure that the questions you ask are solutions focused rather than focusing on how anxious and stressed it’s making you. And I’ve seen so much evidence of this not happening in my own journaling where I go in, trying to find the answer to something, but I so quickly get distracted by how it’s making me feel, what the implications might be… and then I get drawn away from solutions and into first of all catastrophising and then self-soothing.

And it might look like listening to or reading stories about how other people have dealt with similar things, but being really deliberate about keeping tunnel vision for what their tips or tricks or solutions were. Not getting distracted by how they as people are different from us, you know, they live somewhere really cool or they just seem really intelligent or whatever, hand it’s not about switching off our critical thinking and trying to kid ourselves that we all start from the same place in life or we all have the same opportunities and resources, nothing like that. But what it is doing is making sure that we aren’t then feeding the problem with all the energy of “how this expert/polyglot/YouTuber is better and prettier and cleverer than me”, because it’s just so easy to do.

But before I go, I just want to remind you that so much of language learning is about obstacles, is about coming up against these little hurdles, and it’s normal, and you’re normal, and you will find ways around them. Whenever you come up against a difficulty in language learning, you are joining a club with literally hundrfeds of thousands of people in it, and you never have to do this alone.

And if you’d like to support my work and meet some amazing people in the process, take a look at my Patreon Community of creative, multi-passionate and mission driven language learners. We meet up online once a month to chat about all things language, productivity and the world, and depending on the tier you choose, I also offer weekly co-working in the Creative Space to get tons of motivation and accountability, and a personalised monthly Q&A session. There’s even the option to get a personalised coaching call and brain huddle from me. So if you’re curious, and I would love if you could join us, the link is in the show notes.

The Ed Mylett video in question (first three minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Ur98fpACk&list=WL&index=2&t=87s&ab_channel=EdMylett 

I also referenced two episodes of The Language Confidence Project to help us ask better questions to troubleshoot issues in our language learning: