All Problems are Timely
Experiencing pregnancy up close is so much different than experiencing it second hand. What it also made me realize is that being pregnant is a problem (sort of) that has a very specific time frame.
And just like that, I realized that actually all human problems are timely.
death
Most of humankind’s problems are man-made–without humans, there would be no problems. Now, imagine we take a “typical” human who lives from birth to the age of 100. All the problems they experience exist exclusively within this specific tiem span. Let’s put it on a timeline like so:
taxes
Now. There are two things certain in life: death and taxes. For illustrative purposes I’ll remove the death and focus on the taxes. Imagine a human starts paying taxes at 18 and stops paying taxes when he dies at age 100, that would look something like this:
Just like paying taxes, all problems have a very specific timeframe. All problems are isolated into a very specific time window in our life! And it sounds trivial, and it is, but it is a key insight that we should tailor our solutions to very specific niches, also in time!
being pregnant
The most obvious and extreme example is being pregnant! You become pregnant for 9 months and then you have an extremely specific set of problems. Then hopefully you give birth to a healthy baby and poof just like snow before sun your pregnancy problems disappear (sort-of).
finding a coworking spot in vienna
A while ago I was visiting Vienna and had my first online meeting at 9:00. At 8:30 I was walking from my hotel to the city center, but I had a pressing and somewhat urgent problem: finding a good café to do some remote work in. For those 30 minutes, and I did find a nice café in some online directory, I had this specific and timely problem. I find that this example highlights the timeliness of our problems.
end
All problems are timely, so design solutions with this specific time frame in mind. It’s OK if users outgrow your solution because that means your solution is well-tailored to a specific user niche. Bonus points if you incorporate the Lindy Effect.
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