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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1608 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 12, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Has anyone managed to switch from "problem solving" mode to "problem setting?"

I've gotten pretty good at solving problems in my line of work, but I find that I end up hyper focused on particular parts of the whole and frequently lose perspective on the overall situation. I work with a lot of people much smarter than me, but it seems that their advantage over me doesn't come from being better at solving a problem that's in front of them but rather from coming up with new projects that significantly improve the overall situation. They seem to have a kind of big picture view that allows them to say "we're missing X" or "we should do X instead of Y" in a way that reframes the problem or picks up on something people were ignoring.

My default suspicion is that these people just have the stuff that I'm missing, but I'm curious if someone here has managed to reframe their thinking along these lines.

At least in my career, the difference between problem solving and problem setting seems to come down to recognizing that multiple problems are actually one problem, and that the problem in question is usually a political one rather than a technical one.

I mostly recognized that by staying at one place for long enough to catch on. There might be shortcuts.

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