I think “easy” is the wrong word. “Simple” is probably better. It’s not really about things being easier (sometimes it is), but often the simple things are difficult.
I asked this question of myself a few times in the last week. Once in relation to a work problem that took me (in less than an hour) around and past what I had banged my head on the whole day before. Once in relation to some life choices, and many times in relation to problems friends came to me with.
Life choices is probably the hardest place to apply this, so let’s discuss that.
The question “if this were easy, what would it look like?” is purposely intended to blow away all pre-conceived biases. It’s a purposeful restart of the thinking process, intended to look at only the most basic information.
For example:
Sam is a tech worker in Silicon Valley making $120k a year and has a mortgage on a house worth $1M (because you can’t find cheaper things in the area) of about $5k/month. He’s interested in reducing the impact of his debt. Despite many complicating factors, you know enough to go through the basics of the exercise.
Sam spends $60k each year (50% of his salary) only on the mortgage, with another $10k on property taxes. Sam also is taxed at 25% (for fed+CA taxes), so based on taxes and mortgage-related things alone, $100k of $120k is gone, and he has $20k left to live on for the year.
If this were easy, it would look like it’s time for Sam to change locations. In tech (and thanks in part to COVID19), he could change his location without changing companies, keep his salary and drastically reduce his cost of living. Areas of other states have housing markets 1/5th the cost of Silicon valley, and he could get a bigger (if he wanted) house.
Complicating factors: family attachments, friends, work network, lack of familiarity with new area.
But there is a simple solution (and easy isn’t the right word anyway). If Sam’s goal is to reduce his monetary debtload (and maybe save some money), he can’t live in Silicon Valley. The difficult part is dealing with the complicating factors.
This is clearly only one example. And you’re likely to bring up lots of other complicating factors (or reasons easy isn’t possible).
The reality is asking the question helps you identify what is appropriate to complicate your life with, and what is not. Maybe family is a deciding factor for Sam. Now it’s time to figure out how to increase his top line, rather than decrease his bottom.
(There are tons of arguments about this, but you get more bang for your buck (better outcome based on effort) when you reduce the denominator (expenses) than when you increase the numerator (income). However, you can only decrease expenses so far: there is generally no ceiling on the numerator.)
Anyway, something to consider.
What would this look like if it were easy?