Chances are, that at some point in your life you have been faced with a problem that you needed to solve. Some of those problems are pretty simple to solve, like the problem of ‘what to wear?’ which, even though you took a few minutes trying on a few items of clothing, you were able to solve relatively easily. Other problems are quite complicated, the kind that requires a procedure manual and guidance from an expert to solve correctly. Then of course you get the problems that aren’t simple but they also aren’t super complex, but somewhere in-between; the kind of problem where you have an idea of what needs to be done to resolve it, but the solution is tedious or difficult or a bit too technical for your liking. That is the kind of problem that I’m talking about.

You know what the problem is. You know what the solution is. You even know what to do to fix the problem. It’s just very technical, and quite frankly you would prefer if somebody would help you out a bit. These are the kinds of problems that we all eventually have to deal with. They might not affect your career or your family life, but it could leave you with something like an unfinished craft project or a half-finished filing system. There is almost certainly a part of you procrastinating on solving the problem, because you almost certainly do know what to do, and you just would rather not have to deal with it. There is also possibly a tinge of self-doubt about your ability to solve it, because you don’t feel fully confident in your ability to do the tasks required. You are likely frustrated with the problem and possibly frustrated with yourself.

Sometimes a problem that needs to be solved leads to those feelings of self-doubt that gave you an excuse for procrastination because in your ‘figuring out’ how to solve the problem, you over-looked another way to do it. In the process of ‘figuring it out’ you managed to over-complicate the procedure. Yes, it can happen, and it happens with simple problems and complex problems too. We ‘know’ what we need to do to solve it, but we over-complicate the process required to get the problem resolved.

Here’s an example. You are standing in front of your closet saying to yourself, “I don’t know what to wear!” There are many solutions, some of them get it fixed quickly, and others, well, they aren’t productive. You could decide to just stay in your pyjamas, but that’s only okay if you plan to be in bed. Maybe you decide that you need to reorganise your closet so that you can find everything, great plan, but you should probably be dressed before you get stuck into that task. You might even decide that you need to go shopping, and if that’s in a real-life shop, then you definitely need to get dressed before you leave the house. The solution to the problem right now, is to select a few items and try them on. Maybe you end up in your standard go-to items, like a jeans and a t-shirt, and you’re done! It’s not very creative, but you can de-clutter and reorganise your closet while you have clothes on, and you can head out to the shop to get some clothing if you want to.

How about an example of one of those problems where you’ve over-thought the solution. You know that you need to download files from your phone into a system so that you can use them in an application, and... Firstly, you don’t feel like plugging in your phone with a cable to your laptop. Secondly, you don’t want to spend the energy or your time first downloading multiple files only to then go through them to find a tiny selection from amongst them. Thirdly, after doing all of that, you don’t relish the idea of having to download those selected files from your system onto your laptop hard drive so that you can use them in the application. Urgh! You’d simply, well... rather not!

Instead of sitting there doing nothing, except getting more frustrated, maybe you need to take a breather. Go drink a cup of tea or head out for a gym work-out. Clear your head for a while, it can be a few minutes or hours. During this breather you can voice your frustration with a friend about the procedure you figured out that you would need to follow to solve the problem. It might be interesting to hear what alternatives they would suggest.

You might be surprised that when you switch your thoughts from the frustration to something else, you can get clarity. In that moment when you think more clearly, you might realise for yourself, or have a friend to point it out to you, that you had an over-complicated solution. More importantly, by taking that break, you have thought of a much simpler, and far less frustrating solution, and it works!