The Art of Grit

(8 Minutes)

A philosophical thought experiment on why we keep trying to fix what might not be broken

I have a confession: I once spent three hours researching the “optimal morning routine” and then got so overwhelmed by the options that I ended up eating cereal for dinner and going to bed at 2 AM. This is what happens when you try to solve life instead of just living it.

We’ve become a culture obsessed with optimization. We track our steps, monitor our productivity, and organize our spaces until they’re picture-perfect. But somewhere between all the self-improvement advice and planning systems, I started wondering: What if life isn’t actually a problem that needs solving?

The Great Equation Fallacy

Think about how we talk about life these days. We “figure things out.” We “work through problems.” We seek “solutions” and “life hacks.” It’s like we’ve convinced ourselves that existence is one giant math problem, and if we just find the right formula, everything will click into place.

But here’s the thing about math problems: they have right answers. Life, on the other hand, seems to specialize in questions that don’t have answers, or worse, questions that have too many answers, all of them somehow correct and wrong at the same time.

Ever notice how the people who seem most content aren’t necessarily the ones who’ve “figured it all out”? They’re often the ones who’ve gotten comfortable with not knowing what comes next. They’re not solving their lives—they’re living them.

The Algorithm of Anxiety

We live in an age where our phones know what we want to buy before we do, where algorithms predict our next binge-watch choice with unsettling accuracy. So naturally, we’ve started expecting the same predictability from our own existence. We want the algorithm for happiness, the flowchart for fulfillment, the step-by-step guide to meaning.

But life has a way of surprising us when we least expect it. Just when you think you’ve got it mapped out—career path chosen, relationship status updated, five-year plan in place—life presents you with something that wasn’t in any guidebook. Your dream job turns out to be more challenging than expected. The person you thought was perfect teaches you something important about yourself.

These aren’t glitches in the system. They’re features.

The Experience Economy of Being Human

What if, instead of trying to solve our lives, we started approaching them like we approach a good meal? You don’t eat to solve hunger as efficiently as possible (okay, maybe you do when you’re hangry, but stay with me). You eat because flavors are interesting, because sharing food with people you care about feels good, because that first sip of coffee in the morning is a small daily miracle.

No one finishes a perfect meal and thinks, “Great, I’ve solved dinner forever.” You just appreciate it for what it was, and maybe look forward to the next one.

The Paradox of the Permanent Fix

Here’s where it gets interesting: The more we try to solve life, the more unsolved it feels. It’s like trying to hold water in your hands—the tighter you grip, the more it slips through your fingers.

I have a friend who spent years perfecting her morning routine. She had it down to a science: meditation at 6:00, journaling at 6:15, workout at 6:30, green smoothie at 7:00. It was beautiful, really. Until she had a baby, and suddenly her perfectly optimized morning became a chaotic dance of diaper changes and trying to drink coffee before it got cold. She could have seen this as a problem to solve, a system to fix. Instead, she learned to find magic in the mess.

The Art of Strategic Surrendering

This isn’t about giving up or becoming a passive observer of your own existence. It’s about recognizing the difference between problems that need solving and experiences that need experiencing. Some things in life are indeed problems: Your car won’t start, your bank account is overdrawn, your houseplant is dying (again). These have solutions.

But your career satisfaction? Your relationships? Your sense of purpose? These aren’t problems to be solved—they’re ongoing conversations with yourself and the world. They evolve, they change, they sometimes contradict themselves. And that’s not a bug, it’s the whole point.

The Joy of Not Knowing

Children are masters of experiencing life without trying to solve it. A four-year-old doesn’t wake up wondering if they’re living their best life or optimizing their potential. They wake up curious about what’s for breakfast and whether today might be a good day to build a fort out of couch cushions.

Somewhere along the way, we traded that curiosity for certainty, wonder for worry, presence for planning. We started asking “How do I fix this?” instead of “What can I learn from this?”

The Plot Twist Philosophy

What if the point isn’t to solve your life but to be surprised by it? What if the goal isn’t to eliminate uncertainty but to get better at dancing with it?

Think about your favorite stories. The good ones aren’t good because the main character figures everything out in the first chapter. They’re good because of the plot twists, the unexpected friendships, the moments when everything seems lost and then—somehow—a new path appears.

Your life is not a problem to be solved. It’s a story being written, and the best stories are the ones where the author doesn’t know exactly how they’re going to end when they start writing.

The Maintenance Model

Maybe instead of thinking about life as something to solve, we could think about it as something to maintain. Like a garden. You don’t solve a garden—you tend it. You water it, weed it, plant new things, watch some things grow and others die. You work with the seasons instead of against them.

Some days your garden is gorgeous, and some days the rabbits eat all your lettuce. Neither of these outcomes means you’re gardening wrong. They just mean you’re gardening.

The Permission to Not Have Answers

Here’s what nobody tells you about adulthood: Most grown-ups are making it up as they go along too. That person with the perfect Instagram feed and the impressive job title? They’re probably lying awake at 3 AM wondering if they’re doing any of this right.

We’ve created this myth that successful people have life figured out, that there’s some secret knowledge that separates the people who “have it together” from the people who are “still figuring things out.” But what if “still figuring things out” is not a temporary state you graduate from? What if it’s the permanent condition of being alive, and the people who seem to have it figured out are just better at pretending?

The Experiment Mindset

Instead of trying to solve your life, what if you approached it like a scientist approaches research? With curiosity instead of anxiety, hypotheses instead of certainties, experiments instead of permanent decisions.

Scientists don’t get upset when an experiment doesn’t work out the way they expected. They say, “Interesting, that’s not what I predicted. What can I learn from this?” They adjust their hypothesis and try again. They understand that failure isn’t the opposite of success—it’s data.

The Art of Improvisation

Life is less like a scripted play and more like improv theater. In improv, the golden rule is “Yes, and…” Whatever your scene partner throws at you, you accept it and build on it. You don’t stop the scene to argue about whether this is the direction you wanted it to go.

Life keeps throwing you unexpected lines, unexpected scene partners, unexpected costume changes. You can spend your time arguing with the director (spoiler alert: there isn’t one), or you can say “Yes, and…” and see where the scene takes you.

The Paradox of Control

Here’s the beautiful paradox: The moment you stop trying to solve your life is often when the most meaningful solutions appear. Not because you’ve found the right formula, but because you’ve created space for something unexpected to emerge.

It’s like when you can’t remember a word and you stop trying to think of it, and then suddenly it pops into your head while you’re brushing your teeth. The answer was never hiding from you—you were just trying too hard to find it.

The Practice of Presence

Maybe the real skill isn’t learning how to solve life but learning how to be present for it. To show up fully for the messy, complicated, beautiful, frustrating, surprising experience of being human.

This doesn’t mean becoming passive or giving up on goals. It means holding your plans lightly, being curious about detours, finding meaning in the journey instead of just the destination.

The Long Game

Life is not a problem with a solution. It’s not a puzzle with a final picture. It’s more like a song that you’re both composing and performing at the same time. Sometimes it’s a symphony, sometimes it’s jazz, sometimes it’s that song your neighbor plays too loudly at 2 AM.

The point isn’t to play it perfectly. The point is to play it fully, with all the wrong notes and missed beats and unexpected harmonies that make it uniquely yours.

So maybe, just maybe, we could stop trying to solve our lives and start living them instead. Stop optimizing and start experiencing. Stop fixing and start feeling.

Your life is not broken. It doesn’t need to be hacked or optimized or figured out. It needs to be lived, one beautifully imperfect, gloriously uncertain, surprisingly wonderful day at a time.

And that, my friends, is not a problem to solve. It’s an adventure to experience.