Solve the problem or leave the problem, do not live with it
I don’t know why, but lately i feel like a lot of things that i do in my work completely resonates with my personal life. I was having a hard time figuring out a solution to a personal problem. I tried different ways and thought of all the solutions and the respective consequences that it could possibly cause, but eventually nothing seemed to be working and it would lead me to depression. Every time a solution pops out, i feel like applying it would make the current situation better but instead it would actually worsen it in the best way possible.
There’s an incident that keeps etching my heart and brain for years and as the days passed the complexity and the intensity kept increasing. As a result, I was feeling certain patterns of emotions multiple times over the years and i would have frequent mental breakdowns. When i wanted to get that incident out of my mind, i find myself completely immersed in it and i couldn’t help but to feel all that triggering and unpleasant feelings again and again. I was even holding an angst against myself for not being able to come out of these emotions and in turn it would depress me.
So, this never ending loop went on for several days.
There’s a term called “Data structures and algorithms”(DSA in short) in software development. In layman terms, DSA is essentially the science of figuring out the best way to store information and the most efficient instructions for the computer to solve problems.
In DSA there is a concept called Dynamic Programming(A fundamental concept in computer science that plays a crucial role in designing efficient and effective computer programs) which i hated the most during my initial days of my career, since i would not understand a bit about it and also that particular topic seemed to be very difficult for me to understand. So, I never cared to know about it.
Recently i read an article and came across “Dynamic Programming”(DP in short) technique by accident. In simple words, it states that a bigger problem is solved by breaking it down into smaller overlapping sub-problems, solving each subproblem only once and storing the solutions for reuse and finally we arrive at an optimal solution. One property of dynamic programming is that it can be applied to a problem that has the same subproblems appear multiple times in the computation. There’s a lot more to Dynamic programming but this post is not a tutorial for DP. So, I choose to not get more technical about it.
Generally, I’m a person who is blessed with a sound sleep. I find sleep as a rescue for most of my problems. But on the other hand, I don’t know if it is a boon or a bane, In my profession, when i do not complete a certain work which I target to complete in a particular day. I do not get good sleep. Rather, I always get dreams about that particular work. I keep obsessing about my work and i try to find solutions in my dream until its done. And to my wonder, 80% of the times i find the solutions when i wake up. And sometimes I find myself waking up at the middle of the night and try to note down the solution in a paper or even try to get my hands on my laptop and start coding. This has been the case from the initial days of my career. So, dreaming about my work or something I read is usual and I got used to it over the years.
And when I get dreams about my work it is only related to my profession, nothing kicks in from my personal life or strange incidents or movie scenes. So my dreams have their own ethics, when they are professional, they are strictly very professional, distraction-free and on point.
Today, I had a dream about the incident that keeps bothering me for years and still I’m unable to find a solution. I know what you are all thinking, So what’s so different about today, you keep getting these dreams very often.
Right! But today there’s a difference, I got solution to my problem which i have been searching over the years. I don’t know if I should shout Eureka! Yes, it actually seems to be an achievement. Because I have gone through the same kind of emotional trauma and trigger 1000’s of times with 1000’s of different solutions each time, yet no use. I had also come to a point thinking that there’s no solution to this and I would keep experiencing all these emotional patterns through out my life. But, I read a quote that said
Solve the problem or leave the problem, do not live with it.
Tons of thanks to Dynamic Programming and Richard Bellman, the man who found Dynamic Programming. I had a dream where my personal problem was broken down into smaller sub-problems that had different aspects to it. And further, I had Recursive Decomposition (Sub-problems divided into even smaller sub-problems) which gave me a clearer picture of what needs to be done.
The catch here is to see one step at a time instead of seeing the whole staircase. It gave me a crystal clear idea of what has to be prioritized first, when i visualized of achieving the first step, i was able to craft the solution for the second step and when i visualized of achieving the second step, i was able to move to the solution for the next step and on and on.
Amazing to know how simple it is. But it took me years to understand this.
One of my dearest friend once told me,
When you face a problem, just try to look at it it at from a very distant point rather than looking at it very closely. Because when you look at it from very far away it appears to be very small. So, that you would not obsess over it because you have a lot more things to look at and take care of. But when you try to look at the problem very closely, it hides every opportunity in front of you.
I totally understand the above statement, but there are certain things that might take years for you to get over whether you choose to look at it from a very far distance or very close. So instead of trying to find a single one stop solution, try to find the root cause, break it down and find multiple relevant solutions. Apply these solutions one by one which will eventually solve the entire problem because there are problems that requires multiple series of solutions to be applied.
Henry Ford once said,
There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.
Problems are inevitable in one’s life. But when we learn to apply certain things, it would make a huge difference. Like how i learned to apply Dynamic Programming :)
