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Human-Generated Solutions

We live in an extremely unique time because every global crisis on this planet is a human-generated problem.

Ice caps are melting, certain animals are growing closer to extinction, countries are becoming the world’s dumping grounds for trash, discrimination is depriving over 66 million girls from attending school while that same cause is depriving marginalized communities from obtaining equal pay and living opportunities. 

We live in a world of big human-generated problems and we need to create human-generated solutions. 

Don't Start with Problem-Solving

Life is all about problem-solving.

Whether it’s as big as solving pressing global existential problems to more trivial problems you face in your typical day. Maybe you forgot your keys, or your phone’s battery is dead, you only have one month left to get that grade up—AHH!

Our everyday lives are filled with problems big and small that demand solutions.

Perhaps it’s….. [insert good solutions] But oftentimes, problem-finding is quite easy to overlook.

Oftentimes, we get so excited about cool solutions and want to dive head-first into creating them. But here’s the catch! It’s easy to end up solving the problem, but not the root cause of the problem.

For instance, let’s say you woke up later than you were hoping today because you stayed up really late last night to watch your favorite Netflix series. We’ve all definitely been there!

It’s easy to think that the real problem is you oversleeping or taking too much time to relax last night when in reality, the root problem may be how you prioritize your time.

Problems have their own causes and effects. It’s your job to locate the root of these issues.

It would suck to work really hard and make a lot of progress in something only to realize you were solving the wrong problem!

Deciding which problems you focus on will be one of the most important decisions you make as an aspiring social entrepreneur. 

Problem-solving ultimately begins with problem-finding. 

SIDE NOTE: Much like Simon Sinek’s What’s Your Why, Sinek talks about our What, How, And Why. People don’t care about what you do or how you do it, but they care about why you do it.

Creating good, implementable solutions depends on knowing how to pick apart problems in a logical way.

In this chapter, you’ll discover that the problem you initially set out to solve will often not actually be the real, root problem.

At surface level, it’s easy to define certain problems. The purpose of this section is to dive much deeper to truly understand the causes and effects of the problem you’re trying to solve.