How Effective Are Quick Fixes?

Every Monday, new problems pop up.

It's just the nature of the modern world that we're constantly putting out fires regardless of whether we directly started them or not.

Most of them are imaginary by the way.

However, every now and then, we encounter real problems that needs fixing but it seems we treat them the same way like imaginary problems.

Not fully accustomed to the nature of the problem, we solve it with a quick fix and hope it disappears into the lawful mists never to pop up again.

Based on experiences, we know how that usually goes, the hope is short-lived.

It's really not that easy.

Solving real problems is not that simple and quick fixes hardly gets the job done.

But why a quick fix?

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Treating Long Term Problems With Short Term Solution

I like to probe into the nature of things to understand their root causes and effects. What I've noticed is that it's fundamentally a naturally flawed thinking.

Life is full of paradoxes, just because something is natural doesn't make it perfect. The flawed thinking is our current inability to see the whole from its parts.

Although we seem to be moving through life linearly, life in itself is not linear.

So the mismatch is seeing things isolately and tackling problems from one or two angles. The short term fix is only effective as long as the problem is operating from one or two variables.

A case in point is the current banking crisis.

Although the problem might be more complex than it seems, one angle of looking at it is that there are more variables to the problem and banks can't fundamentally solve them all with their traditional quick fixes.

Customers usually deposit their money for the short to mid term and banks usually invest mid to long term with their money.

On a stable environment, this could work fine but in a volatile environment with the interest rate hikes, their investments have become a puree.

And big institutions bailing them out is just another quick fix.

We tend to solve a problem from the level of the problem. How about jumping a level above the problem to understand it better and solve it effectively?

A Dogmatic View Towards Wealth

I started life with a limited view of wealth, a linear and one sided view of what it is and what it takes to achieve it.

If only I worked this hard and have that wealth, I used to tell myself, then all my problems will disappear with a sneeze.

Can you blame me for seeing it as the antidote to most if not all my problems?

As I grew older with more experiences and observations, I begin to realise the inadequacy of my thinking process in regards to wealth.

I was simply seeing a part of the whole.

Apart from the infamous more money, more problems concept, I was discovering whole new aspects about wealth.

I realised that material abundance works as a short term fix on many domains of life. Wealth is more than just material possessions or being financially rich.

Nowadays, it is popularised with the aspects of wealth such as health, time, relationships etc.

Don't get me wrong. Money is important but in a general context, it is not the most important. Wealth is abundance, be it money, time, health or whatever.

In Closing

The biggest drawback with quick fixes is that it ends up becoming a constant fix.

The problem keeps coming back in a different shape or form based on the most active variable(s).

We're merely treating symptoms.

But what could it take to stop looking at the symptoms and see the cause?

It's simple, going above the level of the problem, that's where we usually find the cause.

This can be achieved through fundamental or principle thinking, which is basically thinking according to the law of things.

That's how we see the whole.

Thanks for reading!! Share your thoughts below on the comments.