- Quick context: I’m experimenting with a “co-thinking” offering. I’ve mostly been thinking about this in my private scrapbook rather than here, so for quick context:
- I want to write about how it’s going! So’s here goes:
- Also, a note that this feels like an exciting continuation of the whole Open Research Institute thing (ORI) of making your own models. Previous me would have felt the need to read about what coaches say the point of coaching is, etc, whereas I’m really liking documenting my own empirical knowledge (“B”s). What Geoffrey Hinton says here, basically Beware what Geoffrey Hinton says in that clip
1. On meta-problems
- Also going to port this to Meta-problem-solving
- I did a co-thinking session with someone a few days ago and it got me excited about the idea of doing coaching as a way to figure out the set of high level meta-problems that people have (and how to solve them)
- That is:
- “How many meta-problems are there?”
- “How do you solve each meta-problem?”
- This is because the person had a problem that I at first didn't think sounded very consequential or profound, and then after talking about it for a little longer I had the realisation that whilst this isn’t a super high stakes-looking version (on the surface, at least), it’s still one instantiation of a broader class of problem, which is “I want to change my behaviour, I think”
- Which really is an example of inner conflict. “Part of me really wants to stop doing x, but on the other hand, I really do like x and get a lot of value from it, and I don’t know how to resolve this, and I don’t like having this as an open loop”, etc
- So now I feel really excited to work with this person more to see if we can in fact resolve this - I think we totally can 👀
- There’s something like: “presenting problem” → “what’s going on psychologically (the meta-problem)”
- So, I’m excited to:
- Discover the set of n meta-problems (“it seems like most people have one of these 10 meta-problems, because I haven’t seen a new one in months”)
- Have case studies for solving each of the meta-problems
- Learn how to solve new meta-problems that I’ve never solved before (0-to-1) - very empowering!1
The meta problems (so far)
1. Stuckness downstream of ~confusion/mental tangles
- Ediya = stuck on what to do with her channel → get unstuck via personal values excavation & finding the conflicting parts/beliefs → unstuck
- New client = stuck on whether to stop doing x or not → [have only had one session yet but] figure out stuckness and conflicting parts/beliefs and make behaviour change much easier via clarity/identity change
- Both of these feel like “personal philosophy” problems to me, feeling confused and blocked by mental knots. I wonder (said the Duning Kruger guy who currently has n of 2 clients2) if this is the meta-problem: being confused, basically. Buddhist ignorance, also Wittgensteinian “the point of philosophy is to show the fly the way out of the flybottle”
2. Don’t have enough resources: time/money
- Actually, there’s another thing I’ve come across: “I’m not confused, I just don’t have enough capacity”. Entrepreneurs, founders who know where they’re going, what they’re building and why, and are resource constrained (time and/or money)
- So, there’s a kind of funnel emerging here (from my very simple and lossy model that includes 2 meta-problems): (1) I am confused (2) I am no longer confused but am resource constrained
3. Don’t have enough resources: emotional capacity
- After writing up the bullet points for (2), I wrote:
“And this is where I probably can’t help C-suite people who run companies, because they are neither confused nor resource-constrained”. Or, if they are confused or resource-constrained, it’s in a more technical way, like, “I need someone with deep expertise to help with x”, “I need someone with deep expertise on business strategy”, etc)”
- But then I thought, what about Joe Hudson of the Art of Accomplishment? He works with high level business executives and is very emotions-focused
- And what he helps them with is their emotions, as they’re dealing with emotional problems. Procrastinating on high-stakes decisions, feeling blocked again, etc
4. “Things are not ok until I solve this problem”
- This is a really key one, and actually links to the key consensusism thing of “the key problem is that we (~insecurely-attached-to-life people) feel that “this thing that I’m currently experiencing is not ok to experience and I must stop it""
- See e.g. here
From emotions to resources and back again
- This (simple, ad-hoc) model is interesting in that it feels kinda cyclical
- Remembering that the 5 factors of business (?)3 are land, capital, labour, entrepreneurship, knowledge. We could say that the first 3 are external resources, and the final 2 are internal resources
- Stage 1: “I’m not living the life I want because I don’t have the emotional capacity to face my problems solo”
- That is, I am bottlenecked by internal resources
- A solution: work with a second person (e.g. a coach) who can lend you their nervous system and scaffold you through thinking about your problems
- Stage 2: I’m no longer blocked and am just lacking time/money/manpower
- That is, I am bottlenecked by external resources
- A solution: find someone who will volunteer for you in exchange for mentorship, experience, eventual payment (e.g. this is what I did initially with Brent at Refract (Brent’s reference))
- Stage 3: I have external resources but am blocked on how to use them well because of emotional blockers (internal resources)
- Solution: work with a second person, as with stage 1
Hypothesis: stage 3 people have “harder” problems than stage 1
- An implicit assumption I have is that I couldn’t help stage 3 people, e.g. the types of clients Joe Hudson would have, because they’ll need help with idk, business strategy, etc
- But actually I don’t think this is the case, or at least, I want to investigate! Because I think what Joe would do with them actually is help them with their emotional blocks
- I think it’s true that they’re more likely to have hired to solve their problems, e.g. much more likely to have a coach. But perhaps they go from 1% likely to 20% likely and then it’s only when they’re really earning loads that they’re at like 80% likely
The experiment: do coaching with stage 3 people
- Pitch it for free: opens doors, just trying to get data here, going from 0 to 1
- It’s scary, imagining pitching stage 3 people!
- How do I find stage 3 people?
The experiment is: “Can I help executives”
- AKA being an executive coach
Appendix: is “meta-problems” the right use of the word “meta”?
- Note, expanding on this in Meta-problem-solving
- I asked this to Claude yesterday whilst walking around Turin (travel vlog from the day here, lol)
If I were to say, yesterday I had the thought that if I’m doing coaching with people, they’ll come with different specific problems like, one person wants to stop doing x thing. And then I was like, oh, I wonder if there were actually something like five to twenty as a guess meta problems that people have. And x is one specific example, but the kind of underlying thing is, like, wanting to implement behavior change or not knowing how to implement behavior change, and that’s, like, the meta problem. But then I thought, is meta the correct term there? Maybe not because meta is like… that would be, like, the problem about problems. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it is correct because you have a surface level problem like I would like to do x less, and then you have the the matter problem, which is like, I seem to have conflicting desires, and I don’t know how to resolve them. And I’m kinda stuck as a result. And it’s dissatisfying. So maybe it is a meta problem after all, but I was wondering if maybe I was using the term incorrectly. Because, like, meta learning is learning how to learn, self referential in that way. So… but… so I guess, like, meta problems are kind of, like, problems you have about having problems. Like, you’re having problems because you don’t understand how to face your problems. So maybe meta problem solving is a thing, actually.
Claude
You’re using “meta” correctly, and I think you actually worked it out yourself mid-thought.
The distinction you’re drawing is real: “I do x too much” is the surface problem. “I have conflicting desires and don’t know how to resolve them” is structurally a different kind of problem — it’s about the pattern underlying many specific problems. That’s meta in the same sense as meta-learning. Not “a problem about problems” in the abstract philosophical sense, but “the general shape that recurs across specific instances.”
For coaching, this is a useful frame. The 5–20 meta-problems you’re sensing might be things like: conflicting desires, unclear values, low self-trust from broken commitments, identity mismatch with the desired behavior, missing skills for emotional regulation, environmental design failures. X, scrolling, procrastination, overeating — all surface expressions of a smaller set of underlying patterns.
One nuance: in philosophy of mind, “the meta-problem” has a specific Chalmers-y meaning (why we think there’s a hard problem of consciousness). So if you’re writing about this publicly, you might get cleaner traction with “root problem,” “underlying pattern,” or “problem archetype” — but for your own thinking, meta-problem works fine.
Honestly, not satisfied
- I actually don’t feel satisfied by what Claude said here. But I really like the framing I landed on (and Claude didn’t touch at all, weirdly) of “having a problem about how your handle your problems”. This is the meta problem, or perhaps, meta-problem-solving. “I don’t know how to handle my problems” feels like very much a real thing. “I don’t touch my problems because I don’t know how to touch my problems”. Seems very meta to me. And this is where coaching can be so useful, because it gives you capacity to actually work on your problems. It collapses the meta problem, lets you get out of the loop and just tackle the things
Footnotes
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Something exciting here too about becoming skilled at solving these problems in others, and then having an easier time solving them personally. It’s an interesting irony (?) that it seems way easier to solve other people’s problems than your own. Emotional distance, ability to remain regulated etc. ↩
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Although ofc I’ve done coaching in the past and also similar stuff in previous jobs ↩
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I’m currently learning business, see Initial planning for “Doing a Business Studies A Level” youtube video ↩