20180102

90 books in 90 days - the problem statement

Welcome back to my 90 books in 90 days challenge!
If you are joining this challenge for the first time you can find the previous posts here:

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Annika are you never satisfied?
Rapid Planning Method
You need to dare more Annika

Charles Kettering once said:
"A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved"  
This is something I have found to be true, so I want to state my 90 books in 90 days problem well. To do that, I will use the Problem Statement tool. You can find a description of this aproach in  The power of a simple problem statement.

Photo by Jens Johnsson, Pexels

Phrase the problem as a question

It is easy to phrase my challenge as a question: 
How can I sell 90 books in 90 days?

Phrase the question so it guides action.

There are undoubtedly many ways to sell books. I have used a few different approaches over the years, as have my publishers. Some successful, some not. Some were fun, some were not.

I firmly believe that no-one can be really successful at something they do not like doing. Or - as a colleague once said - you can make me run, but you can´t make me run fast unless I want to. 
So to guide my actions I will add the importance of having fun into the problem statement:

How can I sell 90 books in 90 days in an enjoyable way?

The third guideline for a good problem statement is to

Use the right granularity

In this case the granularity is already there, since I decided to specify my challenge as 90 books in 90 days already from the beginning.

So here it is, a problem statement that has hopefully half-solved my challenge already.

How can I sell 90 books in 90 days in an enjoyable way?

I hope the problem statement approach can help you formulate whatever challenge, problem or goal you may have and I hope you will join my journey!






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