Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

What should be worked on is fairly easy to figure out using the inversion technique. Think about what will happen if we do NOT work on something and assign highest priorities to tasks that will cause catastrophic results if we do NOT work on them.

If you do that, you'll quickly find that healthcare largely doesn't matter right now: you might score a victory fighting malaria, but Earth will be a scorched desert because of global warming caused by our carbon emissions.

So, I'd say that the most important thing that we could possibly work on right now is removing carbon from the air, because if we do not, our grandchildren will have serious problems, and their children might not have a planet to live on.

But that's not what you really asked, right? You wanted to know whether to work on Big Problems. And from your description it seems like you have the same problem all perfectionists do: how do I even get started if the problem is so Big and Complex that it's likely I'll never even make a dent?

Well, if you ever figure that one out, be sure to let me know.

I'm a writer and a designer, so there's not a particular problem I'm solving along my primary path. It's more of a taking the rock higher up the hill, closer to the stars. It's satisfying, but there will be no end to storytelling or design in the foreseeable future.

That said, there are goals. I derive all of them from struggling in the same fields, so that others struggle less.

I'm currently researching for something I dubbed Common Formatting, where any text-editing would allow one to introduce styles natively, as opposed to using extraneous layers of formatting (Rich Text editors in Windows, for example). The reason? I want to be able to emphasize stuff in my notes without having to use something as heavy as MS Word.

So far, Unicode-native codepoints for "different type of weight/slant/figure", combining like emoji do currently, seems to be the best option. Basically, it implies system-native variable font support.

I'm also in the very early stages of writing about a more resilient and to-the-point system design, dubbed Natural Systems. People often struggle with implementing changes on all levels, from personal to national. I'd like to research that and figure out a better way to do this. It's more of a Buckminster Fuller type of work, and I don't expect to solve anything, but I do come up with an incremental upgrade, so is the better.

"Natural" in the name comes from the simple fact that one should use the traits already present within the system, as opposed to forcing one onto it. For example, following a diet is a problem for a lot of people. My guess is – it's because people don't want to follow a diet: they just want to get slimmer. Trying to adhere to a set of principles foreign to you is akin to hitting your head against the wall: after some time, you'll go "This is nonsense, it hurts, to hell with it, I'm going back to not doing that".

Building a natural system means building something that works because its parts align in motivation and resources. It's one thing to promise yourself not to eat any more cupcakes. It's another thing to cut out most of the carbohydrates from the diet because of this research and that study, while still finding sufficient satisfaction in different kinds of food.

The idea behind a natural system is to allow for achieving the goal with as little friction as possible. If I can figure out and describe the basic principles in an approachable form, maybe I can help a few people make better decisions. (INB4 someone else has already done it, and it didn't go down that well.)

I kind of rolled into every job I had (didn't want to work after bachelors, did a master (old Dutch system), was asked to do PhD, finished it, was unemployed for 10 months got a nice job (but would have taken anything). But I wanted out of the lab (I am/was a molecular biologist), my heart is with computers. So I was not really content, but I got paid ok and had fun mostly. But then I had a career coach (company provided) who told me: Be very, very precise about what you like about your current job. And be very active in maximizing the amount of time you spend on the fun parts, the parts that give you energy. And so I got more and more into data analysis, slowly, I took 7 years! Now after about 9 years I'm about ready to call myself a bioinformatician and I love it.

Sure Oncology is nice but I really only like the genomics/bioinformatics part and to be honest I could probably do this type of work in another field (what I love is Linux clusters, open source software, not worrying about details but using other people's algorithms and glue them together to do cool things, that other people (colleagues) appreciate).

I would not pick something to work towards, I would try to find out what problems you like to solve and the methods you like to use, and try to do it/them as much as possible. Then, organically you will end up in the right place. How exactly? By pulling fun stuff towards you (project manager is ill? You lead the meeting, give yourself some fun work!)

I am 36 now, I feel I just got into a field I truly love, it combines my (irrational) love for Linux and computers with my training in Biology and it is that being in a unique position (with a unique background) that I can do thing my colleagues appreciate. I think that is also a big part of what fuels me (colleagues that say: wow that is really nice and you did that so fast!). It took a lot of time and it also takes some conscious attention but you'll get there.

My advice: Don't work on what you feel you should work on, think hard on the kind of stuff that makes you forget time, that gives you energy. Don't have any? Try other stuff until you find something.

"...the love of finding the solution is gonna take you through it."

This. Don't think to big. In the end you will spend your time wrestling problems, you'd better love those problems and the tools there are to go at them. That's priority one, I'd say.

But don't you feel like there are things out there, things you truly enjoy so much that you will do them more than others and you will naturally start to excel at them and someone might even pay you for it? Maybe not now or tomorrow or next year, but there must be parts of your job that are not only tolerable but actually nice... would it hurt you to try to get more if the nice and less of the tolerable, year over year?