Let’s take a trip to back to the 1700s.

To the limoncello & spaghetti-lined streets of Milan and the home of Maria Agnesi, a mathematician with various unrivalled claims to fame.

Agnesi was the first woman to write a maths handbook…

The first woman to be appointed as a university maths professor…

And the first woman to get a mention for her contribution to maths in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

She even has her own mathematical curve named after her (the so-called “Witch of Agnesi” curve).

Put this all together and it’s clear that Agnesi was a bona fide arithmetic trailblazer.

But Agnesi has a more curious claim to fame all to do with how she solved her maths problems.

See, Maria had the habit of scribbling her equations on her blackboard. 

She’d often leave these unsolved when she went to bed, and weirdly wake up the next morning to find someone had written the solutions to these problems on the same blackboard.

Not only that…

But the solutions had been written in Agnesi’s own handwriting!

Intriguing right?

So what was the cause of these curious incidents?

Well, turns out Agnesi was a sleep-walker.

Some nights, she’d walk straight to her chalkboard, light a candle, grab some chalk, solve the equation and return to bed.

All while she was asleep.

When it comes to low-maintenance problem solving, this is a method which well and truly takes the biscuit.

And it points to a useful idea.

What if the way to solve a problem wasn’t by thinking & analysing, then thinking & analysing harder when the initial brain-racking hasn’t worked?

Instead, what if the way to solve a problem was to think about that problem less?  And to turn the problem over to another part of us which has nothing to do with our brains?

Sure, the Agnesi story is an unusual example.

But to my mind it demonstrates a fundamental truth:

The way to solve a problem is by allowing the answer to come through us, rather than trying to force the answer to come from us.

You could even say the way to solve problems is to try less hard, not more hard.

This is why “I’ll sleep on it” is one of my go-to problem-solving methods nowadays. 

I’m switching off my brain whether I like it or not.

And sure – I’m not literally taking Agnesi’s approach.  I’m not stumbling around my flat in my sleep trying to fix my broken dishwasher (unless you tell me otherwise Lauren?).

But it’s remarkable how often I’ll wake up after a good night’s sleep and a problem doesn’t look like a problem any more, or the solution to that problem has presented itself from nowhere.

Moral of the story?

Thinking less, not more, isn't just a low stress way to solve problems.

It also happens to work.

If you'd like to find solutions to any niggly or not so niggly problems of your own, more info here:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

That's all for today.

 - Tom