Get rid of the unknowns in your life - like a nerd

“If you're stuck on a problem, don't sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don't know what you're doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.” - Mark Manson

This quote makes the process of problem-solving seem almost stupidly easy. You take a given problem, struggle with it, and it will at one point be solved. Sounds easy enough, like a math equation with just one variable.

That is the reality when there is just a single problem at hand.

Life, however, loves to throw problems at us a few at a time. This means that often we have to juggle with our social insecurities, career problems, and more, all at the same time, while also trying to move forward in life. What usually happens is we try to single out a problem, which leads us to neglect the others, possibly until they grow out of control.

Variables

A variable, in the context of life situations, is any factor outside of your immediate control. Those variables can include the weather outside, the way people will behave, etc.

However, the more important examples of “variables” are the things currently outside of our comfort zone, which we realize are obstructing our way to greatness. They can include skills that are still unexplored by us, life philosophies, fields of study that we have yet to master.

The reason we would categorize a given area of life as a variable is the number of unknowns it contains. The less we know about a given thing, the more unsure and uncertain we grow, and the less inclined we are to actually engage in whatever the thing is, even if it is presumable beneficial to us. It’s the reason why many people never even approach investing, because it is such a black box to them and sounds so complex from the outside that they find it hard to even passively absorb information about it. Many people tend to stick to toxic and unhelpful routines simply because it’s all they know, and changing that up would be a major blow to their sense of control over their own lives.

“People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.” ― Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek.

Does this mean though that we are bound to always fall back into known patterns and never achieve personal growth? Of course not.

We, as humans, may be naturally inclined to stay in our comfort zones, but life throws us into so many different situations that want it or not, you’ll be subjected to discomfort one way or another. So, why not get prepared, instead of considering every slight discomfort an attack on our day-to-day life?

The helpful fix

The way I have taught myself to think of the variables and unknowns in life is to consider literally everything figureoutable. With the power of the Internet, other people, past experience, and a good hunch, there are barely any skills (other than the innate ones, I guess) that are unobtainable by a normal person with Internet access.

Think about it, none of the things you currently know how to handle were you able to do from birth. You managed to learn everything you currently know, and you for sure will learn a lot of stuff in the future as well. This type of positive mindset unlocks the world for you, by allowing yourself to be a beginner at anything.

All in all, any skill can be considered a sum of variables, but not all of those variables are unknowns. Some of them stem from your past experience, and thus become, well, knowns. You start piecing together the puzzle one by one, and you figure out that what started as a system of 100 unknown variables has just a few completely unknown pieces. The rest of the things are either completely known, recognizable, known by a person you know, found on the Internet, etc. It’s all about the will to figure the rest out now.