Failing to Solve the Problem in Front of Me

What do mean girls, martians and babies have in common? The all solve their problems one at a time.

Cady Heron understood this:

Babies do it all day long as they slowly map out their newly acquired brains:

And in The Martian, Andy Weir taught us that “you solve one problem, then you solve another problem, and if you solve enough of them, you get to live” (or cure your disease, or earn a degree, or put together an Ikea dresser).

But this type of problem solving makes me feel like a martian (and not the cool astronaut kind but the strange, almond-eyed, long-fingered, extraterrestrial kind). It feels very alien to me to only worry about one thing at a time because my brain just doesn’t work that way.

Here, let me show you. Let’s take a peak inside my noggin.

To navigate these: I need to first figure out how to do this. Which requires me to activate this nerve, by first forming new neural pathways up here. So basically, I need to figure out how to do this, instead of worrying about ending up like this: .