Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

If we work hard enough and smart enough to the solution, we often find the solution collapses to something small and simple.

At the end of all the work, we find the solution. The solution is messy, but it is a solution.

Then we go home.

Then we come back to work on Monday and see the heart of the messy solution—the real solution.

The real solution is small, simple, and much better in many ways.

Why didn’t we see the real solution in the first place? Why did we spend so many resources to find a messy solution when the real, small, and simple solution was right in front of us? We aren’t smart enough to do that. No one is.

The real solution is far more simple, small, brief, clear, understandable, manageable, etc. The real solution only comes after we work hard all the way through everything.

There is a trick to this: work all the way through the problem without burning many resources so we find the real solution cheaply.

That, however, is a trick, and I for one don’t know how to do tricks.