I Got 99 Problems, But Is That A Bad Thing?
Elon Musk - I don’t agree with a lot of what this man says or does, or who he associates with, but I do think that he has some good and desirable traits. There is one thing in particular which I think we can learn from Musk.
When he was a young, impressionable man, his grandfather shared this with him: “The definition of business is problems … success lies not in the elimination of problems but in the art of creative, profitable problem solving.”
This mindset is something which would define Musk’s approach to business, engineering and entrepreneurship.
Problems at SpaceX
In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, with the mission of reducing the cost of space travel and enabling human life on other planets. In 2002! Before MySpace was even invented and when David Seaman was still England’s goalkeeper,
Musk was thinking about how to get bloody human beings into space to live on other planets. Almost laughable, right? But to Musk? The fact that space travel was so expensive and humans don’t currently live on other planets, are simply problems that can and need to be solved.
Now, Musk and his team at SpaceX wanted to get a spaceship into orbit. They planned to launch from the U.S. West Coast military facility, 1 hour from the SpaceX office. The whole launch was planned on this assumption: the preparations, designs, sourcing of materials, logistics - everything. Then, just a few weeks prior to the planned Falcon 1 Launch, Musk was told that they couldn’t proceed with the launch from this site.
Instead, they had to now shift gears and carry out the launch from Omelek Island. Yup, I’d never heard of it either. Where is it? In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, over 7,200 km from SpaceX’s Southern California HQ. But to Musk, this was simply another problem to solve.
Musk and his team now had to ship rocket launching materials and team members by boat across the Pacific to the new site. They had to build the launch infrastructure (again!) at this new location from scratch, on a remote island, in the middle of the pacific. Just imagine the logistics that would go into this. You’d have to feel for Musk’s procurement team.
This first attempt failed. So too did the next two. Then, in September 2008 and a hell of a lot of problems solved later, they successfully launched a rocket into orbit.
Now, the reason I am sharing this story with you is because just as business is the process of solving problems, so too is life.
Problems in life
We can make the mistake of thinking that we will be happy once we have solved all of our problems. “When I get my own place, have that promotion, lose 10 pounds and find myself a girlfriend - then I will be happy.”
But you're not, why?
Because once you solve those problems, another set of problems appear. “There’s damp in my flat, my new boss is a nightmare, I am always hungry and my girlfriend won’t stop bossing me around.”
As Sam Harris wisely points out: “Life is not and never will be, the state of basking in the absence of all problems.” He continues by warning us that “there is one mistake above all else, which we cannot afford to make: we cannot wait until we’ve solved our problems to be happy.”
We shouldn’t then wish and wait for a life in which we are problem free, because such a thing doesn’t exist.
The existence of problems in life is not a bug to be fixed, but a feature to be accepted. The problem in question here? How you think about your problems.
The problem is that you have a problem with the existence of problems in your life.
Upgrade your problems
There are two ways to improve your life:
Change the way you see it (your mindset)
Change what you are doing (your actions)
In the context of problems, to improve our life, firstly we must adopt the mindset of accepting that there will always be problems. Stop complaining about them or wishing them away.
Secondly, you need to take action to upgrade your problems.
So, how do we upgrade our problems? By taking inspired action and doing the work to create a better life for ourselves and those around us.
When I was an accountant in the corporate world, I had the problem of the pressure and stress of managers chasing me for work.
Owning my own business, I no longer have that problem. But I do have the problem of the pressure and stress of winning work to keep the lights on.
Still a problem, but, I would argue, a better problem. Because of the joy which comes from waking up each day to what I love and creating a business I am incredibly passionate about.
My problems didn’t disappear when I began doing what I love full time, they were just exchanged for different and better problems.
Because, in case no one has told you, you will die one day. It is absurd then, as Oliver Berkman says, for us “finite humans for whom life is so precious” to try “to get the present out of the way en route to a problem free future” which will never arrive.
I see life, then, as just one big, never ending game of Whack-A-Mole (if you don’t know it, Google it, or better still, Youtube it). The moles will always be poking their heads up from their holes, you can’t stop that. But put down the hammer and you will have a garden full of moles, your lawn will be a mess. Acceptance here isn’t passive surrendering.
Acceptance, instead, is active. It is continuing to whack those moles back down their holes, but with the realisation that as one goes down, another will pop up and that that is totally fine.
It is to have that hammer in hand, to do the work, to plonk those moles on the head as and when they appear. But instead of doing so with a face full of anger while shouting expletives, it is to do so with a smile. That right there, is happiness.
Deepen Your Curiosity
Want to hear more about Elon Musk’s life and the incredible stories of the early SpaceX days? You’d love this one hour Founders podcast episode
Curious to learn more from a modern day philosopher on how to navigate our problem filled lives? I take a lot of inspiration from Oliver Burkeman and this recent episode when he appeared on the Rich Roll Podcast.
