What problem does your writing solve?
Or at least pretend to
“What problem are you trying to solve with your writing?” is a question I get often, especially when talking to people who have internet businesses.
Which makes sense. If you look at some of the most successful writers online, you’ll immediately notice how they focus on solving specific problems.
It’s enough to read a couple of their headlines to figure this out:
The productivity system you need to achieve X
Everything you need to know about X
3 mistakes keeping you stuck at X
I quit X for 30 days — here’s why you should too
The secret behind X
They don’t waste any of your time. From the very first contact with their content, you know exactly what you’re getting. And as you keep reading, the message becomes even clearer: they seem to understand precisely what’s causing your problem, and they have the perfect prescription.
And that’s exactly what most of us want, isn’t it?
Think about any serious unresolved problem you faced recently. It doesn’t feel good to be in the middle of it, does it? The anxiety that lingers, the lack of certainty on what action to take, the uncomfortable tradeoffs you might have to make.
That’s psychologically expensive.
Especially in modern life, where we find ourselves overloaded with decisions, where a new crisis seems to erupt out of nowhere every few hours, and where, amid all of it, we constantly feel the pressure to optimize every part of ourselves.
I mean, if in this scenario, you give me content that promises relief from that mental state, why would I not take it?
Why would I stick with a problem when there’s a clear, simple solution, just one article away?
The self-help industry is a perfect example. If you want to be more productive, more mindful, more confident, or finally overcome your phone addiction, there’s always a solution waiting for you.
And the demand for those promises is enormous.
The global self-help market is projected to reach $90.5 billion by 2033, nearly double its estimated size in 2024. Which makes me wonder: if self-help truly helps, shouldn’t the market be shrinking instead of expanding?
Hmm... Interesting.
You know that feeling when you read an actionable piece of content and the advice feels so satisfying that, for a moment, it seems like you’ve regained control of your life — only to continue your day without actually changing anything?
It is true that the tension disappears. You might even feel the urge to share what you learned with a friend.
But since no real transformation happens, a few days later it comes back. Usually stronger than before. And once again, you find yourself searching for the next piece of advice.
There’s nothing to be shamed of. I’ve been there. You’ve been there. Everybody has been there. The emotional relief is real. But relief is not the same thing as integration.
Tell me if you already know any of this:
you should sleep more
spend less time online
exercise more often
have difficult conversations
stop comparing yourself to others
be more consistent with your writing
Have I revealed anything extraordinary to you with these bullets? Still, how often do you go back to consume content that promises to solve these problems?
Consuming solutions can itself become a substitute for action. As if finding the right insight automatically leads to behavioral change. The search for better frameworks becomes emotionally rewarding enough that actual implementation keeps getting postponed.
But deep down, we all know that the moment you truly try to change something, reality will push back. Hard.
Points of friction that none of the articles told you about show up out of nowhere. It takes longer than you imagined to deal with the problem. Emotional resistance surfaces, motivation fluctuates without you understanding why, and you’re forced to make difficult decisions that require leaving parts of your old life behind.
And now the clean solution no longer feels clean. All the friction that emerges threatens the fantasy you had of the perfect framework. Sometimes you even find out that a problem has no definitive solution—you just have to learn how to live with it, because, well, it will never really go away.
Most people, however, return to consuming more advice instead. Because advice restores the feeling of possibility without forcing us to confront the real problem.
Writing that resists solutions
“…love, the force and mystery that so many have extolled and so many have cursed, but which no one has ever understood or ever really been able to control.” — James Baldwin
Take a minute to consider the following questions:
What makes a meaningful life?
What does technology do to consciousness?
What is love?
What happens to identity under the complex system we live in?
What is writing actually for?
Now tell me: how do you even get started answering those questions?
Some of the deepest human experiences aren’t cleanly solvable. They shift with where we grow up, who we grow up around, age, genetics, evolution, technology, and countless other forces we barely notice shaping us.
Identity, for instance, was one thing to me when I was sixteen and lived in Brazil. It’s a completely different thing now that I’m 40 living in the Netherlands. In both moments of my life, though, there has always been something elusive about identity — a kind of mystery that resists clean explanation.
Still, I find these some of the most meaningful questions to think and write about.
Not because I’m looking for a solution, or to have a clever answer when people ask me about them. But to understand how my memories, emotions, intuitions, and perceptions change when I stay with those questions longer than I feel comfortable with.
The exploration per se is worth it.
It takes me out of the automated state required to function in modern society, and forces me to notice all the unseen things we usually take for granted. It exposes the questions hidden beneath the answers we rarely stop to examine. It makes me see the invisible tensions that shape how we behave, and the numerous paradoxes we are capable of living with.
And as I write about them, instead of giving the reader a lecture, pretending that I know all the answers, I invite them to go deeper into the problem with me. To look at it from different angles.
Or at least I try.
Because I still catch myself falling into the problem-solving pattern more often than I’d like to admit.
It’s tempting to define a takeaway from the start and build your piece around it.
It makes the writing more logical. You can move from paragraph to paragraph linearly, confidently, and knowing exactly what the endpoint is.
You don’t need to go back to a memory you don’t quite comprehend, replaying the conversation where you said the wrong thing. Or revisit that old fear you buried years ago and have no desire to bring back to the surface.
What if, as you’re exploring the problem, you realize that a version of yourself you thought you had outgrown is still there, lurking in the background? What if when you get in contact with your memories and emotions, you find out that you’re telling yourself a story that isn’t true anymore?
When you’re solving a problem for your reader, it’s easy to put yourself above it. To theorize the best possible scenario, and pretend that life is simpler than it is.
But when you go deeper and stop pretending, you might discover you participate in the very systems you critique in your writing. Your beliefs may conflict. Some of your certainty may be performative. And perhaps your understanding of the problem exists mostly in the intellectual realm.
There’s always risk in that.
Because once you stop writing from firm conclusions, you can no longer fully control how the piece will be interpreted.
Some readers may feel you lack the courage to take a clear position. Others may want answers you can’t honestly provide. Some might misunderstand your intentions entirely.
And let’s be real: in trying to fit into the world around us, we learn to look away from parts of ourselves and from realities we’d rather not confront. We become acceptable versions of ourselves in order to function in society, but in the process, parts of who we are get suppressed. Those parts don’t disappear. They remain beneath the surface, and facing them can be deeply uncomfortable.
Once a writer exposes the contradictions or limits within their own narrative, readers often recognize parts of themselves in it. And that recognition can feel threatening because it destabilizes their sense of identity. Resistance is often the result.
Yet, the people we tend to respect and admire most are the ones who confront this tension honestly.
Writers like James Baldwin, in Notes of a Native Son, express both rage toward a society that refuses to see him fully as human and a deep love for humanity itself. Or George Orwell, in Shooting an Elephant, who wants to do the right thing, yet still longs to be accepted by the crowd around him.
It’s often through confronting these tensions honestly that we begin to accept the dualities of life.
That love can give us moments of immense joy, yet also bring a kind of suffering that makes everything else feel meaningless for months on end.
That writing can be a blessing and a curse, sharpening your ability to see through the world around you, while making it impossible to fully look away from what you find.
That uncertainty is part of what makes life both difficult and beautiful.
That you can dream endlessly, yet not every dream will come true.
And that when we become obsessed with solutions, we may eventually lose the ability to notice what the real problems are.
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