What’s for dinner?
Deciding between two people what to eat for dinner can seem like a trivial task. And yet, discussions often lead to frustration over different priorities and perspectives. When you’re headed for an argument, it makes sense to take a step back and re-assess.
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
Picking the best meal for everyone.
Goal
The changes you want to make to address the dilemma. There are usually many options.
Supporting goals
- Maximize tastiness.
- Minimize cost.
Other goals could include maximizing healthiness, minimizing time to prepare the food, and minimizing food waste.
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 is the tastiest thing we could eat? Maybe the problem to solve is “What options count as tasty when you have multiple people with conflicting opinions?”
- What is the cheapest food we could eat? Maybe the problem to solve is “What’s the lowest cost dinner we’d actually agree to eat at all?”
There are many other potential problems to solve related to choosing dinner. 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?
- Learning to cook gives you the option to make things as tasty as your skills permit, and to balance cheap and healthy. However, it takes more time and energy to cook, and food prepared at home often has higher levels of food waste.
- Eating simply and relying on a lot of grains and veggies is a cheap way to eat, tends to be healthier than processed foods, and can be quite tasty depending on your preferences. However, it will still be less delicious than when cooking with a larger variety of ingredients, will take more time and planning (for example, to soak beans), and will have a mild effect on food waste since fewer resources are used to grow it.
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 as a friend?
- 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 right problem.