For a long time, I thought changing the world meant having bold ideas. Now I think it may have more to do with devotion — with finding a problem you care enough about to stay with over time.
Like many people, when I graduated college I wanted to change the world.
How exactly?
Well, I wasn’t so sure of that — I just knew things needed to change.
What exactly needed changing?
If you really pressed me, I would likely have cited issues like wealth inequality, revolving-door politics, corporate greed, and the need for education reform — all still pretty relevant topics today, if you ask me.
But I couldn’t name any solutions.
So I did what many aimless, ambitious college graduates did back in 2014 — I joined a tech company.
At the time, the tech industry was bursting with innovation — often bending or even rewriting the rules in order to impose its visionary ideas onto the world. It was exciting, intoxicating even (and I’m not just referring to the drinking culture that existed around it all).
Billion-dollar companies were appearing out of nowhere. Social media platforms were reshaping how people connected. Regime changes were being influenced by a new microblogging tool whose office featured the playful silhouette of a blue bird. Meanwhile, just a few floors below it, a far less playful company was figuring out ways to redefine the cab industry into something now known as “ride sharing.”
They were truly incredible times.
Fast-forward a little over a decade and, while enormous change still flows from Silicon Valley, the impacts of an industry charting its own course without regard for what lies in its path are beginning to show their cracks.
Social media has been linked to loneliness. Information floods us at every moment. A general feeling of dissatisfaction and skepticism now hangs over what was once a highly revered technology sector.
You can see it in the rise of products designed to help us restrict our phone use. You can see it in younger generations experimenting with opting out of smartphones altogether.
For me, this shift has sharpened my ability to recognize what real innovation looks like — the difference between a genuine solution and what is merely a clever “solution in search of a problem.”
There is good reason to call out the tech industry for imposing its ideas onto other fields — industries that technology companies often spend very little time truly understanding.
Food Systems Are One Example
Food systems are one such example.
In her book The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food, Julie Guthman explores this tendency for technology companies to insert themselves into apparently broken systems with digital solutions that rarely address the root causes of the problems they claim to solve — and sometimes even exacerbate them, all while extracting capital in the process.
Indeed, this overzealousness — this impulsive desire to fix things — characterizes many tech founders. They too, as I experienced firsthand, are often ambitious and well-meaning people who simply want to change the world.
Which makes me wonder what advice I would give my younger self if I had the chance.
"Go fall in love with a problem," I would say.
Just one.
Remain curious about the world, of course. But find one problem that genuinely matters to you.
“You won’t discover it immediately,” I would tell him.
“It may take a decade or more to find the problem space that truly calls to you.”
So go experience life in the meantime.
Pick up skills that fascinate you.
Meet people who expose you to new perspectives.
Do the grunt work.
Grow.
Overextend yourself.
Take on responsibilities that challenge you more than you think you’re capable of handling.
Fail. Try again. Repeat.
Eventually, I believe this path leads people to the problem that is uniquely theirs to pursue.
“And once you find it,” I would add, “you will have immersed yourself deeply enough that genuinely new and useful ideas will begin to reveal themselves.”
This may take years. It may involve a great deal of unglamorous work. Hell, it will likely never attract the attention of Forbes or TechCrunch.
But you will feel a sense of wholeness that remains inaccessible to someone trying to shortcut the process.
Keep Searching
“Lastly — and most importantly,” I would stress, “this ‘problem’ doesn’t have to be the cure for cancer. It may not even be fixing the food system.”
“Simply being a present parent or an engaged member of your city is an honorable pursuit.”
Every day, there are people quietly giving themselves to problems they genuinely believe in. It’s what keeps the world functioning.
And finding the small contribution you can make is what matters most.
It gives direction and shape to one’s ambitions. It is also a humbling endeavor, because it forces us to interrogate our intentions in the pursuit of a solution.
It asks whether we are truly willing to give ourselves to the process.
And if the answer is no, then perhaps it’s a sign to keep searching.
✌️