What Is A Problem?

28 Nov, 2024

Ibraheem and I had this question while watching Lex Fridman's podcast featuring Pieter Levels.

None of us could come up with a satisfactory answer, so I asked Aravind and he replied

Problem is discomfort, even if the discomfort is just for you.

I love this answer and I'll tell you why.

Earlier, I thought problem that is faced by many people is worth solving and discarded a lot of ideas.

But thanks to Aravind, I realized you can solve a problem just for yourself and that's worth it too!

It's true that solving your own problem may not bring in money but the joy it brings can be immense.

I felt that joy when I created this cloud-independent blog.

I wasn't trying to solve a problem for anyone else; I just didn’t like the idea of my blog being on the cloud. It made me uncomfortable, so I built my own blog and self-hosted it with Raspberry Pi. When it finally went live, I was on cloud nine!

And sometimes solving problems that come from your own discomfort can also lead to solutions that might help others.

For example, Linus Torvalds created Git just because he was frustrated with the limitations of existing version control systems at the time. Later, it evolved into one of the most widely used developer tools.

So keep solving problems—both for others and yourself. Every problem you tackle can bring you joy and might even lead to something great!