Find a pattern to help you solve your repetitive problems

Yesterday I talked about why it's important to ask the right questions when trying to solve your problems and how that could provide you with the quickest and simplest solutions that, if applied, even if you don't like them, will solve your problem.

But sometimes the quickest and simplest solutions are not enough, and whenever you have a problem that repeats itself, you'll always try to find more or less unique ways to solve it, which often leads to only wasted time.

In order to avoid that kind of situation, one thing you can do is to come up with a pattern, with a "default solution" or "process" that will help you solve the repetitive problem you have.

For example, let's say you publish a lot of articles and lately you had quite a lot of trouble finding ideas to write about. Whenever that happens, you either check Medium for inspiration, or Pinterest, or sometimes even Twitter or Instagram.

What needs to be noted here is that whenever you're in need of a new idea you always search for inspiration on several websites, hoping that something may give you the idea you need. However, that can easily lead to wasted time, because while your main goal is to find inspiration, it's really easy to just lose yourself in all that content and new information you get from visiting all those pages.

So, what you can do, is to track down how much ideas you get from each website, and to only visit the one that gave you the most ideas when you're in need of a new one. For example, if Pinterest gave you the highest amount of ideas, then when you're in need of one at some point in the future, instead of visiting Medium, Twitter, Instagram all at the same time, just go on Pinterest and see if you can find your idea there.

This way you'll maximize your chances of solving your problem by choosing a "default" solution or process that worked many times in the past. And this can apply to a lot of other things, like learning new skills, working on big projects, repairing computers, etc.

There are times when you cannot solve your problem easily, or when you cannot automate your process. However, you can choose what process to focus on first in order to solve your problem, and that can help you achieve more without wasting a lot of time.