Things that change constantly are a distraction. Focus on the things that won’t change for the next decade. For example, human nature: we like convenience, paying less, and reliability. A business like Amazon realizes this, and invests heavily in delivering this to their customers.

You and I also enjoy feeling certain and safe. We like understanding things, and getting issues resolved properly, smoothly, and quickly. 

We like knowing somebody is accountable, we like talking to a person who cares about us, and we like them being competent and trustworthy. 

These are people-shaped problems. 

We don’t prefer people-shaped solutions when they are inconvenient, require us to pay more, or risk feeling uncertain or unsafe. For example, we might prefer self checkout because we are too tired to talk to someone, or because the line is longer. 

But imagine you find a hair in your burger, and you want to figure out how to resolve this situation. How can you get your money back? What will they do to take accountability and fix this? Will they apologize? You’d probably talk to someone, even for such a simple issue. That’s a people-shaped problem.

A burger is a simple problem; imagine a complicated problem, like a CEO trying to do founder marketing, a full-time employee who wants to pursue their artistic dream, or a person wanting to get in the best shape of their lives. Advice is a people-shaped problem. 

Even if you’re introspective and inquisitive, you can ask an AI coach to help, and you’ll probably still want to gut check your plan or progress with a person.

In an age when AI can change the world of software every weekend, and help more people solve software-shaped problems, it’s just as useful to broaden your perspective and focus on improving how you solve people-shaped problems. 

Combining both will help you solve people-shaped problems for more people.