Albert Einstein was once famously asked how he would approach a challenging problem if given one hour to solve it.

His response:

“I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes solving it.”

It’s an interesting answer. Most of us assume that problem-solving is about…well…solving.

But Einstein’s response highlights an important reality:

Effective problem-solving is often enabled by problem-defining. By creating clarity around the problem, we make solving it much easier.

As it turns out, many of history’s most influential thinkers agreed:

• Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks were filled with questions about the world that he was wrestling with, from “Why is the sky blue?” to “Why does water form waves?”
• Thomas Edison had thousands of notebooks with pages of scratch notes, sketches, and thought experiments as he attempted to deconstruct the big problems he was facing.

This is at the heart of an idea called Kidlin’s Law (origin unknown):

“If you can write down a problem clearly, you’ve already solved half of it.”

Writing is a powerful tool for problem-solving, because writing is thinking. You cannot write clearly if you aren’t thinking clearly.

In a professional context, writing forces you to simplify. Break a complex challenge into its component parts. You begin to see where the real bottlenecks have formed, where the leverage points lie, and how an elegant solution might emerge.

In a personal context, writing cuts through life’s noise. When you feel fear, stress, or anxiety swirling in your mind, write it down. What’s the actual problem? What are you afraid of? Why does it bother you? The moment the problem hits the page, it loses some of its power. The writing itself is part of the solution.

In my own life, I’ve found that writing changes everything. And interestingly, it’s less about what you create on the page and more about what the page creates in you.

Kidlin’s Law offers this reminder:

The clarity you seek is found on the blank page you avoid.

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