Your website is down. You can’t access your email. Text messages aren’t coming in to your phone. What’s going on? Something’s broken. It’s overwhelming and the anxiety starts to build. You don’t have time for this!
We’ve all encountered these situations. I fix these types of problems almost daily when a client’s website goes down, their Instagram feed stops displaying, or they’re not receiving emails from their website, and so on. Having seen these issues many times before, I’ve built up the experience to know how to deal with them. But there’s always a new challenge that I haven’t encountered before. For example, the day my computer didn’t turn on was particularly stressful.
Define the Problem
I use a process that sounds decidedly low-tech but works very well. I pull out my trusty notebook where I’ve made notes about other complex technical issues. If I’ve encountered something similar in the past, I refer to my notes about that. But if I haven’t seen this problem before, then I start by describing the problem. Saying that something is “broken” doesn’t describe the issue and doesn’t get me closer to a solution. I try to be as specific as possible about both symptoms of and precursors to the problem.
How you describe a problem directly affects how you solve it. For example, if I define the problem as “there’s a puddle on the floor” then I might start looking for cleaning products. But if I define the problem as “there’s a hole in my glass and it’s leaking”, then I might look for ways to repair or replace the glass. That’s why I try describing the problem in different ways to suggest varied solutions.
Brainstorm Solutions
Next, I brainstorm to come up with as many solutions as possible. I write those down. Physically writing them down generates even more ideas. I write those down too. This whole process also tames stress because I’m actively doing something to solve the problem.
Test Methodically
Now that I’ve defined the problem and outlined solutions, I start testing my different ideas one at a time. Borrowing from my background in the sciences (a story for another time), I change one variable at a time so that I know what worked and what didn’t.
Document Everything
Here again, I keep notes about the steps I’m taking and about what works and what doesn’t. This is particularly important because if I’m making configuration changes I may need to revert them. Without documentation, it will be much harder to undo any unneeded changes. I don’t want to exacerbate the problem.
Sometimes I go through all this and I don’t arrive at a solution. But my notes are still useful because I can pass them along to colleagues or other technical support. They can take that information and use it to explore solutions. Just last week, I was troubleshooting a site that was throwing a “Service Unavailable” error. Passing my notes to the support team at System Lifeline helped them to more quickly resolve the issue.
This all sounds like a lot of work and I sometimes resist this process. But every time I work through a problem this way, I get closer to the solution and also find peace of mind. Going analogue also breaks us away from the computer screen and changes how we think. My stress level goes down because now I have a plan and a process. Try it next time you encounter a challenging issue. And of course, this doesn’t apply only to tech issues. It’s an approach that can be applied in any domain to solve any kind of problem.
Stuck on a problem with your website? Send me your notes and I’ll help solve it.
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