Some problems keep comin’ back. We might describe those problems in different words or forget they exist. But like perennial flowers or ships of Theseus, they persist. How do you boost team morale? Stay organized? How do you end and avoid wars, navigate economic downturns, choose a partner, grieve a friend? These are all perennials. Even with libraries brimming with eons of wisdom, we each face a lifetime of familiar, incurable headaches.
I’ve sighed “Oh great, another self help book,” more than a few times. A shop or library’s self help section is built on a perennial understory. Many people that I’ve spoken with agree that these books’ contents are consistent, but inconsistently phrased. That’s a good thing. It’s not wasted effort, ink, or paper. Motivation often requires you to forget how difficult a problem is. As annoying as self help books can be, they can provide just the right dose of delusion.
This kind of ignorance is the origin point of a more mature feedback loop. Most perennials can’t – or shouldn’t – be solved. But you need to forget that in order to get started. Otherwise, you’ll land in a quagmire of nihilism and give up.
After you’ve tried to solve a perennial, you realize that this family of problems doesn’t go away. It’s then natural to adopt a philosophy of problem management rather than problem solving. My ninety-two year old grandpa still works out every day – not because he likes it, but because it slows (not stops) physical decline.
Naïve, repeated attempts at problem solving are de facto problem management approaches. You may not know that you’re engaged in one, but a perennial will eventually let you know – there is no final solution. A commute to work always has a degree of risk and inconvenience. You can try a thousand things to get those factors to zero, but the only guaranteed way to do that is to stop commuting altogether. Maybe you succeeded, in the sense that you secured a fully remote job. However, you haven’t really solved the perennial. You’ve merely chosen a different, hopefully easier, one to deal with.
A perennial is an argument between you and reality. Some kind of mismatch. We don’t live in the matrix. There’s no escaping to the secret gold Lamborghini level. You can only “bend the world to your will” so much. Perennials require you to bend as much, or more, as the world around you. A true solution would require two things, which is why they’re unsolvable:
That you bend – but you’ll become a reflection of the problems in your life.
That you become rigid – but you’ll be unequipped to face problems that require you to bend in new ways.
Dealing with perennials is more about skill, and the skillful application of tools, rather than tools themselves. Illness and wars, for example, are both impossible to get rid of. Protocols of handwashing and diplomacy are burdensome, composing an ongoing struggle, but necessary. A lot of work is maintenance and about mitigating decline, coordinating repairs, and reducing the frequency and magnitude of negative events.
Every once in a while, there are big shifts. Septic systems obliterated the burden of disease. Economic integration between countries made the calculus of war less attractive. How we use these tools is important, because the underlying problems continue to crop up. People still get sick, nations still war. But if we walked away or gave up on our unsolved perennials, they’d grow like weeds.
Circling back to the controversial self help genre. Whether or not you like its books, that the genre exists is a positive sign. It signals there’s not a monopoly on how to live. And it shows that there’s a robust, ongoing search to find better ways to live. The whole genre is ironically lacking in self awareness, pitching life-changing solutions… but it’s net positive in the experimentation and tinkering .
The existence of perennials is what makes careers in engineering and technology so interesting. Perennials are the cash crop of innovation. Firms and governments can afford to lose so much money on R&D and startups because recurring problems are so expensive to manage. History’s rare, unpredictable technological leaps have dramatically brought down the cost of these problems. Like vaccines, waste treatment, agriculture, and electricity.
For the most part, a perennialist career looks like a Sisyphean task. It’s a bit bleak. To stabilize and improve things is to constantly try and fail. Momentum is scarce. Occasionally, we glitch towards greater agency – new tools, tech, and protocols comprise step changes in our ability to manage timeless problems. New kinds of order emerge from an increasingly chaotic technological substrate.
Why write about this in Blundercheck? Efforts to “solve” a perennial are usually misguided. They’re costly, emotionally exhausting and have nasty second order effects. The classic examples I give are wolf and bear attacks. If you eliminate the root of the issue by just killing off the species (and people have tried that) you risk trophic cascades that can cause an ecosystem to collapse, destroying other life affirming resources.
What about a sports metaphor, for my fellow jocks? Players will always struggle with the ups and downs of competition. You could try to eliminate the losing streak blues through counseling and therapy… but why waste that fuel? Or you could recruit strictly coolheaded players – but would they have the drive your team needs?
Or take the case of an intern struggling to secure a full-time offer who’s just read The 48 Laws of Power. If they took that book to heart, they’d become a wicked Machiavellian brat. There’s a good chance they’d get a job – but does the calculus of that decision work out in the long run? How permanently did they bend themselves in pursuit of that narrow goal?
Blundercheck #17: Don’t try to solve perennial problems.
Blundercheck #32: Respect the role of compromise.