The unseen downside of the best solution.

Meeting your objective sometimes doesn’t make you good.

I’ve mentioned in many other articles that practice isn’t helping you get better, and how solutions that can’t be executed properly aren’t solutions. This time I’m talking about when a solution causes a new problem and seldom do people think about their perfect execution of a solution is actually creating more harm than good, but on the backend of things.

I saw someone power washing a house, and the guy was trying his best to clean everything possible, but the more successful he was at cleaning (his objective), the worse he was destroying the side of the house by making water infiltrate the house by spraying in certain areas that should never be exposed to water.

Most success in one thing, creates failure in another. – Truth Cake

If you don’t know where the failure is, or could potentially be, you’re not seeing the full picture. Whether it be power washing a house, or making a pile of cash (at the detriment of your health due to working excessively, etc), there’s usually a downside somewhere even when the goal has been met.

It’s not about trying to find solutions that have no downside, but simply being aware of them so that you can either a) avoid them and get even better, or b) be aware of them and accept them.

What thing have you succeeded at but didn’t realize the negative consequence of until it was too late? If you were made aware of the downside, could the downside have been easily prevented?