Friends
How to help friends solve problems with the meta-problem
There are two very different situations where we may want to help our friends be better problem solvers. Sometimes we are trying to make a decision as a group, and the conflict comes from different points of view. Other times, we want to help an individual friend make their life easier, and we think we see something they don't about the choices in front of them.
When you need to work together with your friends on a decision, the stakes can vary wildly. Consider these very different scenarios:
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You might be trying to pick where to eat or what to do for an outing. When the effort to make the choice is too high, you’re better off picking something that's "good enough" instead of worrying about perfection.
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Choosing where to move with your partner or live with a roommate could have a huge impact on your quality of life (or budget!)
Working together to make a choice
The challenge when you need to make a joint decision is mostly if there is disagreement on the value or costs of the different choices. Since I might have different preferences than you, we expect to need to compromise on an acceptable decision. Using a meta-problem (choosing the best problem to solve) we can talk directly about our competing priorities.
Suppose you are trying to decide where to live, and both of you care most about the length of our commute. By analyzing your options in terms of your goals, you can define "acceptable" in a way that allows creative solutions. Since different people value different things, maybe one person is willing to drive a little further in exchange for fewer household responsibilities. Or maybe one person expects to quit their job soon and so the commute doesn't matter in the analysis.
While joint decision making is most often about balancing different preferences, helping your friends solve their own problems better looks a little different, because you often only see a small sliver of what they are trying to accomplish. When you decide if you should take a new job, move to a new town, or which car to buy, you will make that decision in the context of your other goals in life. With friends you are often missing a lot of that context.
Sometimes you need to look at things differently
To help friends use a meta-problem to solve their problems better then, it's often more about helping them with the process. Bad suggestions can be as much help as good ones, as the subsequent discussion helps folks clarify what they really care about.
The first step in defining a meta-problem is laying out what your goals are, closely followed by what decisions you can make to improve those goals. I find people often fall into one of the following traps, and so I ask questions to try to help them see things differently:
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They don't like their top choice, but can't put their finger on why. If they compare that choice to some other tangible option, it can help them identify what it is they care about most, which might inspire them to see new options.
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They say one goal is most important to them, but their choices don't seem to be helping them achieve that goal. If they have other goals they haven't articulated, it can be hard to really think about how important those competing priorities are.
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Every option is bad, because making a decision means not choosing the alternatives. This mistake is solved by making sure you always compare actual options to specific alternatives, not to some vague "something else."
As always, the value of the meta-problem process lies in the clarity it brings about what people really want to achieve at each step in the decision, how much they are willing to stretch their goals, and how they weigh the effort against the result.
If you have questions about how you can use the meta-problem with your friends, or if you want to engage me to help, click on "Contact" and send me a note!