How to find the #rightproblem in life?

My life is quite fucked up. I have a truck of problems in my life. In terms of work, I have no idea what I really want to do even though I pretend that I have an idea. In terms of love, I have no idea how to resolve the conflicts and confusion in my past relationship. In the city, I have no idea if I am in the right city with the right people. As for money, San Francisco is way too expensive for an unemployed person like me now.

I’ve observed that when I’ve wrestled with a problem extensively, putting in a million efforts without resolution, it’s often due to asking the wrong questions. In my quest to identify the #rightproblem, I’ve devised a personal heuristic that I called the 10-year heuristic.

“Will Esther find this question important 10 years from now?”

If the answer is no, it’s the wrong question. I will then aim for questions that Esther will find important to learn in 10 years. I often seek solutions for things that cause immediate anxiety at the moment. However, I’ve come to realize that the real challenge over the next decade isn’t those specific events; it’s figuring out how to handle the anxiety and fear that will inevitably occur countless times in my life.

Why do I need my #rightproblem heuristic?

When it is on the wrong problem, my mind will viral through many unproductive thoughts, worries, and scenarios. Most people will call it “overthinking.”

Most people like to say “overthinking” is a bad trait. Little did they know, it was just your mind trying to scan through problem space but ended up pondering on the wrong ones. Rather than forcing myself not to think (which never really works for me), #rightproblem is a practice where I intentionally channel my energies into noticing things that matter in the long run.

Solving my truck of problems in life

Let me show you the three main problems in my life. I compare problems that I have and worry about so much today and reframe them into problems that 35-year-old Esther will care about.

City Problem

Even though I decided to live in San Francisco after graduation, I hate how unsafe I feel here. Engineering people bore me. Also, I started to get annoyed by run run run to build a startup mindset when everyone is so stressed that no one has the energy to take care of each other. However, will I still be worrying about whether I want to live in San Francisco in 10 years? I don’t think so. But will I care about how to navigate in a new messy and chaotic situation? Absolutely yes. Some ideas therefore pop up from this new question:

How to figure things out in a new chaotic situation?

With this question in mind, it encourages me to brainstorm more new ideas such as:

• I want to give myself time to figure things out. I want to feel relaxed and grounded. How to create a space in this city?
• I want to see if I can find the people I need to have a fulfilling social life. Where to find them and how to create a space where I feel safe?

Relationship problem

My brain is constantly on an infinite loop I care and love my ex so much but things didn’t work out before and probably don’t work out now. Every day, I keep worrying about how to handle this relationship when in reality, the problem is how to handle my feelings. The truth is, will I worry about this relationship in 10 years? Unlikely. But do I need to learn how to handle my emotions? For sure.

My new question therefore becomes:

How to manage my emotions and thoughts when they are conflicting and confusing?

First I start from trying to understand what emotions are inside me. I make it super specific by linking the relationships among different emotions to gain an in-depth understanding of myself.

Then I gradually learned that

1. It’s pretty stupid to try killing my feelings. How to find a way to make all those contradictions co-exist comfortably?
2. Trust and believe in myself. I have the inner strength to go through any relationship hardship. How to keep this feeling in me?

Career problem

I don’t have a job now, and lots of my classmates are rushing toward finding a job or a new job. Some of them already asked me to start job search accountability with them. But what’s the point of quickly strategizing in order to land the next job? I only vaguely know what I want, and I’m already burnt out from all the crazy job searches and startup work from the past few months.

“How to distribute my time to get the best job?” is an important question for me now, but in the grand scheme of life, I’m pretty sure Esther 10 years after will care much more about this big question:

How to sufficiently explore while guiding myself toward a lifelong career that I love?

However, I don’t have money to explore at this moment, nor do I know how to get closer to the lifelong career I want to do from all the information that I have. I feel stuck, but I decided to give myself some time and will share with you my thought in the next post.

Money problem

Though I was happy not to have a job, I was super stressed about my financial situation living in San Francisco. My average cost of living is 4500 when 2000 is my rent and 2500 is my daily spending. I kept thinking about whether I should just take whatever next job I could get or be in debt so I could buy myself some time. Yet, I reframed my question from my false dichotomy:

How to have the freedom to explore, but also cultivate financial intelligence?

Hence, I started with some calculations of how to manage it.

Now my problem is neither fully in debt nor getting whatever job I can. I gained nuances on what other option is possible. Framing as cultivating financial intelligence rather than solving my bankruptcy gives me a big room to think and learn. I will share with you a crazy amount of learning on money in my future post.

Characteristics of #rightproblems

I’ve been practicing this mindset for more than a year now (Well…but everyone has tried to solve problems in their entire life), and these are some characteristics that I learned about #rightproblems.

• Typically grounded within myself rather than relying on external situations.
• Often abstract and transferable across different scenarios.
• Highly specific and not easily identified at first sight. For instance, in relationships, advice like, “Don’t worry, the next one will be better!” is irrelevant, as my concern is not about the next person. The true challenge lies in managing a complex mix of desires, and love, understanding why things don’t work, and handling conflicts that were once important but now hold no value in my mind.
• These questions are usually “how” questions and unproductive questions often involve choosing between A or B options.

If you’ve read Factfulness, you probably recognize the “urgency instinct” as a bias in our minds. We tend to take immediate actions in response to perceived danger or threats, thereby amplifying our other instincts/biases (Gap instinct, Size instinct, Single perspective instinct, etc.). We instinctively feel that imminent doom is upon us, but life is rarely a choice between now or never, and it’s seldom either/or.

While writing this post, I was in the process of improving my thinking. Ultimately, life is filled with frightening situations. However, instead of frantically battling whatever is before us or passively surrendering to fear, I am learning to become a better thinker.