I was talking to my brother on FaceTime the other day about one of our favourite topics: Consumer Technology.
My brother is technically my half brother, he's 11 years younger than I am, and much smarter. I prefer to ignore all those technicalities.
When it comes to buying new tech, I often turn to him for advice.
This time, our conversation was about headphones.
I own three different sets of headphones. Two of them were falling apart. Specifically, the ear pads on each were somewhat torn up and getting close to the point of making each pair of headphones unwearable.
The story I'd told myself is that I would need to get two new sets of headphones.
So this is what I brought up with my brother, "I need some new headphones, what should I be considering?"
He then asked what was wrong with my current ones and I went on to explain that they were falling apart.
After probing a bit further, when he realized that it was specifically the ear pads that were coming undone, he sort of stopped me in my tracks.
"Oh you can just buy replacement ear pads for like $15 on Amazon."
That technicality that we ignored earlier, the one about him being smarter than I am, unfortunately I couldn't ignore that in this particular moment.
Naturally, he was right.
In my ultra privileged world of same-day delivery, by the end of the same day I spoke to him I had two sets of new ear pads and essentially two new well-functioning headphones.
I thought my problem was that I needed new headphones.
Sometimes, it's worth pausing to ask, "What's the real problem?"
The real problem was that the ear pads on two of my sets of headphones were falling apart.
The real problem was that I needed to replace the ear pads.
That's a much cheaper and far easier problem to solve.
