December 28, 2024. Are We Too Focused on Solutions, and Not Enough on Problems?.

It's 11 PM, and I'm staring at my code editor again. But tonight's different. Instead of debugging or building new features, I'm questioning everything about what I'm creating. Not because anything's wrong with the code – it's working exactly as intended. But that's exactly what's bothering me: Are we solving the right problems, or are we just getting really good at implementing solutions to problems we think we understand?

Let me take you back to what triggered this late-night existential crisis. Earlier today, I was reading about global food security. The statistics are staggering: roughly 735 million people facing hunger, in a world that produces enough food to feed 10 billion. The typical response? Build better distribution systems, develop higher-yield crops, implement more efficient farming techniques. All valuable solutions, but something wasn't sitting right.

Then it hit me – we're approaching this like engineers debugging code. We see a problem, we implement a fix. But what if we're fixing the symptoms while the real problem runs much deeper? What if our solutions are actually preventing us from seeing the true nature of these challenges?

Think about poverty. We often approach it as a resource distribution problem: some people have too little, so let's find ways to get them more. Makes sense, right? But when you start pulling at the threads, you realize poverty isn't just about money. It's about systems, power structures, education, opportunity, and countless other interconnected factors that we often overlook in our rush to implement solutions.

This is where first principles thinking becomes crucial. Instead of starting with our existing solutions and trying to improve them, what if we stripped everything back to the fundamental questions? Not "How do we distribute food more efficiently?" but "Why does hunger exist in a world of abundance?" Not "How do we lift people out of poverty?" but "What creates and perpetuates poverty in the first place?"

As I contemplate my life journey, I've realized something unsettling: our obsession with solutions might be part of the problem. We're so eager to fix things that we sometimes forget to understand them first. It's like trying to debug code without understanding the system architecture – you might fix the immediate error, but you're probably missing the underlying issues.

Take education, something I've written about before. We keep implementing solutions: new teaching methods, better technology, improved curricula. But what if we're not asking the right questions? Instead of "How do we make education more effective?" what if we asked "Why do we educate the way we do?" or even more fundamentally, "What is education actually for?"

This isn't just philosophical navel-gazing. It's about understanding that our solutions often carry hidden assumptions that might be part of the problem. When we build systems to solve hunger, are we accidentally reinforcing the very power structures that create food insecurity? When we implement anti-poverty programs, are we unknowingly perpetuating the systemic issues that create poverty?

Remember my post about quantum possibilities? How reality at its most fundamental level is about probabilities rather than certainties? Maybe we need to apply that thinking to how we approach problems. Instead of rushing to collapse the wave function into a single solution, what if we spent more time exploring the full spectrum of possibilities?

This brings me back to those late nights coding our prototype. Yes, we're building something that works. But the question keeping me up isn't "Does it work?" but "Are we solving the right problem?" It's easy to create solutions that look good on paper, that satisfy our immediate need to feel like we're making progress. But are we making progress in the right direction?

I'm not suggesting we stop implementing solutions – far from it. What I am suggesting is that we need to get comfortable with sitting in the problem space longer. We need to resist the urge to jump to solutions before we truly understand what we're trying to solve.

This is why at Abdi & Brothers Company, we're starting to approach things differently. Before we write a single line of code, before we design any system, we're forcing ourselves to ask deeper questions. We're learning to be comfortable with uncertainty, with not having immediate answers. Because maybe the most innovative solutions come not from being the quickest to implement, but from being patient enough to understand.

So here's my challenge to you: Next time you encounter a problem, resist the immediate urge to solve it. Instead, ask:

What assumptions am I making about this problem?

What would it mean if those assumptions were wrong?

Who defined this as a problem, and why?

What would this look like from a completely different perspective?

Maybe the key to solving our biggest challenges isn't finding better solutions, but learning to ask better questions. Maybe innovation isn't just about building new things, but about understanding why we build them in the first place.

After all, 

in a world rushing to provide answers, sometimes the most revolutionary act is to pause and ask deeper questions.