THE LEAFLET
November 20 2025
the false promise of “the real world”, defining and illustrating “problem preference”, three things to do with a problem preference
THE FALSE PROMISE OF “THE REAL WORLD”
When I was a kid, adults including my dad often talked in dark tones about “the real world.” The idea was that kids live in a cushioned fantasy. They should enjoy that fantasy and fear the arrival of reality. That fear should spark their respect and gratitude for those living in the real world (adults) and prompt their diligent preparation for their own enrollment in it. It feels a little patronizing to spell this attitude out because of how commonplace it was at the time and may still be now.
I this this is a busted paradigm with unfortunate staying power. It is rooted in anxiety and those roots, like tree roots, thicken and grasp with greater strength over time. It can be seductive, still, to think that your entry level employees, your first-time managers, you and your co-founders aren’t yet operating in the real world. You’re just novices toddling inside a sandbox someone else built.
An alternative: the world kids and novices live in is altogether real. It is possibly the realest world they’ll ever experience. Their job isn’t to sit in tremulous gratitude, waiting for pretend to end. It’s to learn as much as they can. The job of their parents and managers isn’t to protect the eggshell surface of the idyll. It’s to challenge them, safely, so the next season of reality is a change of weather in a familiar landscape instead of a dangerous shock.
-eric
Read the rest here.
DEFINING AND ILLUSTRATING “PROBLEM PREFERENCE”
A “problem preference” is the kind of thing that you like working on. Often, you like it so much, or so much more than other things, that you’ll divert attention to this sort of problem from other more important, urgent, or useful problems to solve.
Examples of problem preferences for K-12 teachers abound, because K-12 teaching is a large basket of problems, each of which draw on different skills. Some teachers’ problem preference is building relationships with kids; others can lose themselves, happily, in the planning of special events; others are data monsters who love designing tailored interventions. None of these are bad things to do; all are problems in the basket.
Great teachers allocate their attention to these problems efficiently — they concentrate their attention on the most important things their students need from them, knowing those needs can vary by kid, class period, and school year. The teacher’s preference matters but it doesn’t dominate.
-eric
Read the rest here.
THREE THINGS TO DO WITH A PROBLEM PREFERENCE
Here are three ways you can use a problem preference:
Name the preference and shape a role around it. Often a problem preference is a thing that sits at the intersection of a) stuff you’re good at and b) stuff that your client / customer / community needs. That intersection is a fun place to operate and it can be a really effective one, too. It’s possible your team will get more and better stuff from you if you can devote more of your attention here.
Building a proactive calendar for its inverse / opposite. You may be in a situation like a K-12 teacher, where there’s not a ton of flexibility to re-define your responsibilities in a given year. These kids are in your class and you’re responsible for them til June. You manage this account and that’s that, at least until Q2 next year. The problem preference can shed light on your problem dis-preferences. I find it helpful to block in ahead of time the deadlines and the dedicated work time on my problem dispreferences. That way I’m not (as much) at the mercy of my own preferences late in a day / week / project. When I’m tired and the problem preference and the problem dispreference both sit in front of me, I’m even more inclined than usual to pick the problem preference, potentially at the expense of the overall project.
Expand the preference set through learning. If we accept the premise that you prefer to work on things you’re good at, one useful route can be getting good at more things. You’re less likely to avoid something you’re confident you can do well. Practice, observe all-stars, get and implement feedback. Avoid telling yourself that you’re “not a ____ person.”
-eric
Read the rest here.
COMPELLING QUOTES
Poet Clint Smith on history and story:
So much of the story we tell about history is really the story that we tell about ourselves, about our mothers and our fathers and their mothers and their fathers, as far back as our lineages will take us. Throughout our lives we are told certain stories and they are stories that we choose to believe—stories that become embedded in our identities in ways we are not always fully cognizant of.
10-time national champion basketball coach John Wooden on character:
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
Songwriter and metal enthusiast John Darnielle on limits:
Few things, at any rate, are more powerful than expectations. Blunt force, maybe. Firepower, certainly. Sword and steel. But even those have their limits.
Keep going, keep growing,
Ben & Eric