becoming a better problem-solver
it's pretty well known that you get paid in proportion to the size of problems that you are able to solve. but what isn't talked about as much is - how do you become a better problem solver?
I think it boils down to 2 things:
- exposing yourself to and solving lots of problems
- increasing the difficulty of problems that you solve over time
as you begin in any field, the first step is just to collect keywords, and solve lots of little problems. think, those double sided question sheets you would get in middle school for learning division and multiplication. they were relatively easy problems, but required tons of repetition to build fundamentals.
but you don't see those 'answer 40 questions in 10 minutes' problem sets in university and onward - it's much more research and assignment focused. the problems take much more effort to complete, and are not repetition at the fundamental level. they require some level of creativity & calling upon previous learnings to complete.
it's similar to what seems like the career path of a junior software engineer to a staff software engineer.
the junior is typically blowing through lots of little tickets as they onboard and familiarize themselves with systems & processes. their work timelines are on the order of hours to maybe a few weeks.
the staff engineer is expected to ship highly creative, high impact, and high risk projects that may take anywhere from months to years. these large projects require thinking through an entire system end to end. they must be able to view it at a high enough business level as well as zoom in to focus on minute details.
solve lots of easy problems -> solve a small number of hard problems seems like a decent formula. rinse & repeat for different subject areas.