Do I need the latest gadget?
We have endless potential purchases available to us that promise an easier, happier, life. However, each dollar you spend represents a little slice of your working life that otherwise could have let you retire sooner. To balance your effort against the results, you can think more broadly about what it is you’re really trying to accomplish.
Complex problems are often vague and have many possible solutions. The Meta-Problem Method may lead you far away from the dilemma that started your quest. That’s because the method forces you to clarify what you really want and what you are willing to give up. It enables you to compare objectively the possible pathways and their trade offs. It prevents you locking into solutions mode too early and then doubling down on solving a low-yield problem that does not serve your goals as well as the alternatives. At the end of this process, you will have a better understanding of your priorities and how to achieve them.
Steps in the Meta-Problem Method
Dilemma
The high-level issue you are trying to address
Deciding what to buy.
Goal
The changes you want to make to address the dilemma. There are usually many options.
Supporting Goals
- Maximizing convenience and happiness in your life.
- Maximizing the value of the things you purchase.
Other goals could include minimizing (or maximizing!) time spent shopping, minimizing the environmental and human cost of your purchases, minimizing costs, and minimizing regret.
Problem Space
The set of problems you could chose to solve to advance your goals, plus the constraints that hold you back.
Example problems
- What things that I could buy would increase my happiness and make my life more comfortable? Maybe the problem to solve is “Are there ways to make my high-hassle tasks less annoying?”
- Which things that I could buy would be most valuable? Maybe the problem to solve is “Which things will bring me the greatest satisfaction for the lowest price?”
There are many other potential problems to solve related to what you buy. Each goal has many possible problems we could link to it. Are there other problems linked to these first two goals? Which options come to mind for the other goals?
High-Yield Problems
Sometimes solving one problem helps make progress towards several goals. In this step, we identify these “two-for-the-price-of-one” problems.
Which options will advance more than one goal?
- Buying a robot vacuum to clean your home maximizes convenience and many people value free time highest of all. However, an automatic vacuum can be relatively expensive and may not create the same kind of happiness and satisfaction as buying the latest gadget.
- Buying high quality options for the things you use most can maximize their value to you, reduce the environmental and human costs, and may increase convenience and happiness in your life. However, choose poorly and you can end up with significant regret as you realize you made an expensive mistake.
There are many potential solutions that will have varying effects on the set of goals. Which alternatives improve the most important goals? How might the unknown change the right path forward? What other possible solutions are there to address the dilemma?
Problem Selection
Which of the many possible options in the high-yield problem step is the best set to address the dilemma?
- Which solutions make the most sense to you?
- Which solutions will best address the dilemma?
- Which solutions will deliver the best outcome for the least amount of time, effort and money?
Implement, Learn and Adapt
Check continuously that you are still solving the best problem, as new information emerges.
Observe and learn as you go. As new information reveals itself, check continuously that you’re still solving the best problem.