Gravity problems vs. anchor problems: How to know what kind of problem you have

Most of us have found ourselves staring at a life issue that makes us feel absolutely trapped. You ponder and look for solutions, but the whole thing is enmeshed in a sense of compulsion. Just the thought of the problem can cause a tight feeling in your chest, as if you’re being squeezed by giant rubber bands, or a feeling of numbness or stomach discomfort.

In this case, you may be dealing with an “anchor problem” or a “gravity problem”. This terminology comes from Dave Evans and Bill Burnett, co-authors of the book design of your life and co-founders of the Stanford Life Design Lab, providing a useful framework to break out of this hell loop.

Anchor problems often arise when we’ve turned an accepted answer into a question. Evans offered me this example: Now in his late 60’s, he has found love again after his wife died a few years ago, and he may be wondering if he should write a book about what he put it, “two old people, falling in love wants to write.” This type of question limits Evans’ options because she assumes he needs to adapt his experience into a book. Instead, he could loosen this “anchor” – it must be a book – and open yourself up to other solutions. “I could ask a question like, This experience was so life-giving. What do you want to do with this story? A book is a result,” says Evans.

Gravity issues are defined by immovable circumstances, either because they are beyond your control or because you are unwilling to change them. In doing so, Evans generously retired from his own life: he lives in Santa Cruz, and his sweetheart is about 75 minutes up the coast in San Francisco, depending on the day. “I really want to stick with this partnership, but I don’t want to have to change my lifestyle,” he said. “It’s a gravity problem.” These types of problems require you to accept the situation and find a way to compromise or work around it — like splitting time between Santa Cruz and San Francisco.

Not all problems fall into the categories of gravity and anchoring problems. Those are just two types of problems that have a special ability to make you feel stuck. Fortunately, the key to dealing with anchor and gravity problems is acceptance, followed by reformulating the problem to make it more actionable, and prototyping solutions to find what really works for you. “Then there’s a feeling of distension, like your chest is inflating,” Burnett told me. “There’s a rush of endorphins because you see possibilities.”

Acceptance can also be a problem of its own.

Before you can start brainstorming solutions to your problem, you must accept that you want to change something in your life. “‘Accepting’ is probably the hardest part,” says Burnett. Especially when it comes to gravity issues, many of us find solace in the belief that we simply aren’t able to achieve what we want, because that allows us to keep our dream in pristine condition – unaffected by compromise or the threat of reality – life failure.

Acceptance is also difficult to sustain. As you begin prototyping solutions to your problem, you may find that the journey is a lot more challenging than you expected and you may wish your circumstances were different. (Why can’t I have a relationship with someone who lives in my city?) “If you fall out of ‘acceptance,’ you’re stuck again,” says Burnett.

To make acceptance a little easier, Burnett suggests looking at it as a short-term deal: you don’t have to accept your circumstances for the rest of your life, you just have to accept them while you run the three-week experiment.

It’s also worth remembering that acceptance is not endorsement. For a young person fresh out of school with a desire to change the world and a mountain of student loans, it’s okay to accept that your priority is to find a job that will help you Pay off your debt faster instead of focusing on activism or creativity. “That doesn’t mean you accept everything that’s wrong in the world, it just means it’s not the time to make it the sole focus of your career and life,” says Burnett.

Burnett and Evans share a background in engineering and product design, and in their books and Stanford courses they apply the principles of formal design thinking to guide your way through your life and career. As they like to put it, design happens in reality. “Acceptance is the door to reality,” says Evans.

Redesign, then buckle up for prototyping.

If you’re having an anchoring problem, chances are you buried an answer in your question, severely limiting the options available to you. To get further, rearrange the question in such a way that no answer is hidden in it. “Do I want to go back to school to be a therapist?” could become “How can I channel my desire to serve others?”

When you have a gravity problem, reshaping can be as simple as accepting your limitations and moving on with your life, or it can be figuring out how to work around them. Suppose you want to make a living as a poet. “They don’t pay poets that well right now,” says Evans. “What are the most commercially viable forms of creative writing in the post-internet world? That’s a real question. As opposed to: How do I make $200,000 a year as a poet?”

Once you’ve reframed your dilemma, brainstorm solutions and come up with at least three options to test. Prototyping is an important part of Evans and Burnett’s approach to design because it allows you to fail and learn. With each experiment, pay attention to how it works and how it feels.

According to Burnett and Evans, there are two classic types of prototypes. One is a model where you actually perform the activity or simulate it as realistically as possible. (If you’re considering joining your long-distance sweetheart in the city where they live, you could spend your next visit just doing the mundane activities that would make up your daily routine there.)

The second form of prototyping is talking to people who already have the kind of lived experience you’re looking for. “When you hear her story, you get what’s called narrative resonance. You know when you have two tuning forks and you hit one and the other starts vibrating? If something about her story feels true to you, you will feel it,” says Burnett.

Remember that prototyping is an iterative process. “You move to the next location, get some data about that location, figure out what your next options are, and move on to the next location until you finally solve it,” says Burnett. But while achieving this solution can take a significant amount of work, Burnett and Evans note that the prototyping process tends to give people a boost of energy and inspire feelings of curiosity and engagement. It’s the exact opposite of feeling stuck.

Eliza Brooke is a freelance journalist for design, culture and entertainment.

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