Is writing a tool for problem-solving?
There is no doubt that any form of art or creativity can help you solve the problems of your life. Sometimes, we are in a problem that appears so complex that we are unable to find its best solution. Either we have tried many and failed every time or we have not been able to make up our mind on what we should do to solve our problems.
The Process
Writing is also an art form and a creative process that can become your tool for solving problems that are deep and are often related to your heart. But how can a simple process of writing help solve big problems of life? Here is what writing can do for you –
1. When you are writing with your heart, it can become a meditative exercise that will help you find peace with yourself
2. Writing is not just creative but also a logical process because your thoughts take the shape of complete sentences only when they are at least partially organized. So, indirectly writing is helping you organize your thoughts
3. Writing can help you bring out all the thoughts and perspectives you have on something which means, you would not miss any detail that could be useful for you to come up with a solution
4. While writing, if you follow a specific flow or process that is designed for problem-solving, you will be able to arrive at a logical solution. This is what happens in research. Students write literature reviews to critically analyze the available information and in the process, they end up making new discoveries
5. Another benefit of writing is that you will have recorded the problem on paper which is going to make it easier to not just solve the current problem but also use it as a reference for the future to solve more problems on the same lines
If I keep writing the reasons why writing can be used as a problem-solving tool, I think the reasons themselves will consume the whole page so let me stop here and tell you how you can actually use writing in practice for problem-solving. I will give you a straightforward and simple step-by-step process and along the way, I will also explain how and why these steps are important.
The kind of writing you do for problem-solving has attracted many creative minds and a number of different terminologies and structures have emerged such as journaling, expressive writing, exploratory writing, introspective writing, meditative writing, and so on. Let us not delve into these as you might get confused.
However, I would love to present the thoughts of Scott Young, the author of the bestselling book Ultralearning about the use of writing for problem-solving. He calls writing for problem-solving a process of rigid brainstorming that you are doing with yourself. He further submits that what comes out in writing in the process is like a mental map of our problem which makes it easy for us to see the solutions. Scott suggests that when we are trying to solve a problem through writing, we should not think about what we should write about but write what we are already thinking about. And that is absolutely the key to starting the process of Solution Discovery through Writing. See I already used the process and discovered what I would call this process — SOLUTION DISCOVERY THROUGH WRITING!
So, as you might now have already guessed, the first step of my process is
STEP 1: Write what you are thinking about
Mental health practitioners actually suggest journaling which is a process of writing your random thoughts that coming to your head. It is a process that is believed to have helped many people come out of depression, cope with stress, and manage anxiety. But how is that possible? To explain that I would first like to tell you how our brain works.
Inside your Brain
On 13th Sept 2021, I attended a 4-hour Masterclass from Dr. Meghna Dikhshit who talked about how the brain sees problems in our lives. With the use of a simple metaphor of a family, she explained that our brain is like a family that has an old father, a relatively younger mother, and a young child. Our brain also has three systems, one is the old 500 million years old reptilian brain, a relatively new but 200 million-year-old mammalian brain, and a young 10,000-year-old child brain that we call Reticular Activating System (RAS). RAS focuses on what is happening now and on the logic of things. It is the most modern part of our brain that focuses not on experiences of our problems but only on what you attending to currently.
Your older brains, your father, and your mother would keep talking about the pain that your problems are causing, this RAS would begin to focus on the process of writing. So, when you are writing, instead of feeling the pain of your problem, you will end up focusing on the facts around it. While RAS focuses on your current activity, it is also a system that sits as a filter between the world and the other parts of your brain which allows you to filter out all thought negative intakes and just focus on the current activity. And when you are not trying to work on your pain but only on the process, the logical parts of your brain begin to take the lead and that is when you can see the problem from a more holistic perspective without remaining inside it. And this is exactly, where your brain becomes open to evaluating the facts and finding a solution.
Let your thoughts come out!
So, this is what you have to do when starting to write for problem-solving. Let all your current thoughts about the problem float and while you do this, write down all the feelings that your parental brains are dwelling over. Once, all these emotional thoughts are out on the paper, your RAS will take control and would begin to focus on what is on paper. And when this happens, your mind would be open to going to the next step.
To make it easier for you, let me give you an example. Right now, I am thinking about how I can not get affected by the people who criticize me every now. Here is what I wrote.
“They criticize me not once in a while but 24 hours of the day and I feel rejected, rejected, angry, and more. All the extreme negative thoughts burn my head and I am feeling like I should either blast them on the world or just run away to some secluded place. I want peace. Why can’t they understand this simple thing? I want to calm down.”
STEP 2: Give your mind a direction
Now, that your mind is ready with a clean slate, as you have poured out whatever was generated, you can tell your brain to go into a zone of construction where you will build a solution for yourself. Now, tell your brain to do what you will never do in a normal circumstance — Evaluate the thoughts objectively and write how true are they. And then, naturally, flow with the conversation to justify why you believe or not believe in the truth and if it is the right thing to think. If it is not then, what could be the alternative? When you end this section of your writing, let it end at a new question that you might not have asked earlier but it is much closer to your solution logically.
Here is what these exercises brought out for me –
“24 hours is not possible because for 8 hours we all are sleeping. This is an extreme thought. I do not need to think so extreme and dramatize my problem to such an extent. Negative feelings are natural to occur when someone is criticizing because it feels like a threat to me. But the two solutions that I am offering include blasting and running, are not the right solutions because I have tried them earlier and the problem was never solved. I need to think of another way.
I want peace just like everyone else, even the people who I think are taking away mine. But why is it important for them to understand that I want peace? Even if they understand, will it guarantee that they would want the same for me? What if they actually understand that I want peace and perhaps that is what they are unwilling to give me because they also think just like me that I am not giving them peace? I want to calm down then should it not be the thing I actually do?”
At this point, just as shown in the example above, you will come to a level, where you will have acknowledged your feelings as well as discovered how some of them are not logical, not complete, or not appropriate. You could be ending the paragraph with a thread that would have a question. This question would be different from the original question and would be more closely connected with the cause of the problem.
For example, my initial question was “Why they could not understand that I want peace?” but the new one asked, “What should I do to calm down?”. If you haven’t arrived at this question, do not worry because it takes time and practice. Since I have been doing this exercise for more than 6 years, I can arrive at the question fast. But you keep writing till you are able to come up with a final question for the next step.
STEP 3: Answer the question
When answering the question, make a list of activities that you would do and while doing this also, think about how these activities will affect you and others who are a part of your problem circle. Besides that, also mention how this impact can be emotional and what could be the consequences for you and for others.
For my problem, I could think of how my suggested activity would affect me, my family, and what emotional play would it create for the family. So, here is what I wrote next –
“To calm down, I can
1. Listen to music…Make me feel happier and would not affect them at all if I am using the headphones
2. Exercise…I will be able to release my negative energies, feel fitter but it would trigger them and they might start scolding me again unless they can’t see me exercise because I would have closed the door. However, if I close the door, they will assume that I am doing something that might be a chance to scold me and would anyways scold me
3. Sleep…sleep will give me peace and even if it does not make them happy, whatever they say would not be able to affect me. However, my work would suffer in the case
4. Go out…I can go out to the office and work from there instead of the home which will give me peace and also because they would not be present, I would not have to worry about what they think or say. However, this will mean I would have to leave my kid at home and he would continue to watch TV that I do not want.
Now, think of the alternatives and evaluate them on the basis of which is most beneficial. If you see every solution has certain benefits but also the cost attached, consider the one with the least cost. It is not always possible for you to come up with a solution that would have no cost because that is rare as a blue moon. So, select the ones that would have the least damage and while choosing, do give yourself justification, so you do not feel guilty of choosing it. Here is what I chose –
I choose the 4th one which has the most benefits. I can make up for the time with my kid and try to come back a little early from the office. And to minimize the cost, I can also go to the office on alternative days instead of daily. I can also talk to my kid and explain to him that he must not watch TV for long. I can give him an activity to do while I am at the office and offer him a gift like chocolate if he listened to me. Yes, this could be the least damaging to everyone.
And this was what I did exactly and found myself a coworking space where I go daily for 4 hours. In these 4 hours, I am able to work at 300% of my speed at home. This means I am able to do more in less time with the least compromises made. If I had not taken this decision logically, I would never have chosen the last option because that was most emotional. Leaving my kid at home and going to work is never a simple decision for a mother especially when you are not sure if the other members of the family would tend to his need to make sure that he doesn’t do anything that affects him negatively such as watching TV for long. Of course, things are not so bad for once in a while my mother will stop my kid from watching TV or using a laptop, if not every day.
The idea of going to a coworking space was introduced to me several years back by a friend and yet, I was unwilling to take it because I was emotional about leaving my kid home. However, making my brain go into the logical space and evaluate it as an alternative compared to others that were worse, and still, I was choosing them, actually helped me make the right decision.
At the start, this exercise will take you longer but you would not feel stress because once you start writing, you will soon get into the meditative zone with yourself and no matter how long you are writing, you will not feel like stopping anywhere. This is one deep process that despite working on your most pressing problems will not be painful in itself. On the contrary, this experience itself will make you feel enlightened and better.
3 SIMPLE STEPS can change your life by solving your most pressing problems. And this method always works because solutions to every problem that we have in life are inside our brains. Only, we are unable to see because it is cluttered. Writing this way will remove this clutter and clear your head so you can think straight and start solving your life problems.
I hope my process helps you. It has helped me every time I did.
If you have any questions or views, please feel free to drop them in the comments.