A hierarchy of hard problems as a human

Being an adult has a lot more upsides than being a kid. It’s kinda harder too, and in different dimensions than being a kid was hard. Like, it’s not like “do some math or something, but better” - it’s like the qualitative shift when you realize that being very good at math won’t help you with your relationships.

Unfortunately, it seems very hard to even understand what any class of problems is about, until you get there. For that reason, I feel pretty confident about the early ones and not at all confident about the later ones.

Class A1: Requires work or IQ. Example: grade school
Class A2: Requires work and IQ. Examples: college, some jobs
Class A3: Requires work, IQ, and some kind of skill at defining problems. Examples: grad school, some other jobs
Class B2: Requires work and emotional intelligence/EQ. Examples: normal human relationships (easy friendships, say), some other jobs, being a happy and sane human if all’s going well.
Class B3: Requires work, a lot of EQ and/or self-knowledge. Examples: more intense relationships, being a mental health professional, being a happy and sane human if all’s not going well.
Class C2: Requires work, EQ, and IQ. Example: managing people at a job.

And then there are some others farther down the list (C3? D3?):
- being fulfilled/flourishing
- being a parent?
- some kind of enlightenment/awakening

Anyway, who knows if this kind of framework is useful at all. I guess I’m just trying to justify why things are still seem difficult, even though I’ve had a decent amount of practice at a lot of things, and hopefully built up some skills by now!


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