A locked door and a hundred keys

I need to stay interested in solving the problem and be willing to change the solution. I have spent years on solutions and become attached to them. Over time, the solution became linked to my identity. Accepting that it had failed became fucking difficult.

The IKEA effect helps explain one part of that attachment. People can place extra value on things they have made themselves. In the original experiments, involving boxes, origami and Lego, the increase depended on successfully completing the creation.

The years already invested create another difficulty. I can feel that I have to keep going because I have already put so much into it. The next decision needs to depend on what I can learn about the solution now.

I picture a locked door and 100 keys. I don’t know whether any of them will work, but I can try each one and see what happens. Getting attached to one key makes the whole process harder. If it fails to open the door, I need to put it down and try another.

AI makes it possible to explore options quickly. I can test several approaches and see which ones deserve more attention. The useful question is what each test tells me about the problem and the proposed solution. I still need evidence from the people experiencing the problem.

Before building technology, I need to check that the problem is real. Who has it, and how are they dealing with it today? Can I test a solution manually, using a nontechnical approach? Doing that gives me a chance to see whether the solution helps before I commit to building it.

I want to be more like scientists. Start with a question, form a hypothesis and test it. Decide what result would make me change my mind, then pay attention when that result appears.