Case Study
As a consultant, Mark's scheduling was a nightmare.

He had his phone calendar, his Outlook calendar, a physical planner on his desk, and a Google calendar he shared with his assistant.
So every day, Mark would need to figure out what was actually on schedule.
Client call at 2 pm? He'd check his phone. Nothing. Check Outlook. It's there. But his physical planner says he's supposed to be doing strategy work. So which one is right?

His assistant would send calendar invites, and Mark would confirm in one place and forget about the others. He'd show up to meetings he'd already cancelled. Or miss meetings entirely because they were only on his phone, and he was looking at his planner.

One time, he was forty-five minutes late to a client call. The client was already frustrated before Mark even got on. The whole meeting felt like damage control.

At dinner with his wife, he'd be mentally running through his schedule instead of being present. Not because he enjoyed doing that, but because, without even realizing it, there was a low-grade stress of not being sure what was supposed to happen.
"You seem stressed all the time. What's going on?" his wife asked often.

"I don't know. Everything just feels chaotic."

It's a Thinking Skill
The problem was that Mark had a weak thinking skill of defining the problem.

You see, you're constantly using your 28 thinking skills to do everything you do. Most of the time, you don't even notice you're using these skills. But when one of these thinking skills is weak, your brain has to work around it to compensate for the weak thinking skill.

In Mark’s case, he constantly felt overwhelmed because he couldn’t see what the problem was. With so much going on, he's brain was trying to just solve the problem. Another app, another tool, anything that will give a sense of relief.


He didn't realize the actual problem was that he had too many calendars! He didn't need another one.

It literally took Mark one session of working on defining the problem, and he was able to see what was happening.

Defining the Problem
Defining the problem is about looking at a situation and figuring out what the actual problem is - not just defaulting to the symptom.
Mark thought his problem was that he needed better systems. So he kept adding more tools and trying harder.

But his actual problem was: he had four different calendars. For what?

Once Mark defined the real problem, the solution became obvious. Just "pick ONE calendar and use that as a system everywhere."

That's what defining the problem does. It cuts through all the noise and shows you what you're actually dealing with.


I did the following 3 exercises with Mark to help him improve his thinking skill of defining the problem:

1: Understanding it’s mostly symptoms
Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper.
On the left side, write down what's bothering you - what you can see, what's frustrating you, what feels broken.
Then on the right side, for each line, you’re gonna ask: what's actually causing each of these?

Some of the symptoms are caused by other symptoms (for example, you’re constantly tired because you can’t sleep at night)

The goal is tho, to figure out what else my brain does not see that is causing these issues?

By going line by line, your brain gets to think more clearly, so it has a higher chance of finding the actual problem.

2: What's causing the root problem?

This exercise goes really well after doing exercise number 1, or it can be a standalone exercise.
When you think you’ve come to the root problem, ask yourself AGAIN what’s causing the root problem? Can you go any deeper?

For example, if you thought the root problem was fear, the question becomes: What is causing the fear?

And once you have the answer to the question, ask AGAIN what is causing the root problem?

Continue this process till you literally can’t go any further.

Hint: It’s usually an emotional or cognitive issue that’s the root cause.


3: Say the problem out loud in one sentence.

If you can't say what the problem is in one clear sentence, your brain doesn't actually know what the problem is yet. Practice doing this every time something goes sideways.
"The problem is I have four calendars and no system to follow." Simple. Clear. Once it's in one sentence, your brain can start working on it. Until then, it's just noise.


There's a whole industry built around selling you better systems. Better apps, better planners, better workflows. And maybe you've bought into some of them. Mark did too. But a better system handed to a brain that can't define the problem will just become another thing that doesn't work.


Cheers to Peak Brain Performance!