Your most annoying problems can be a great source of inspiration.  

Usually, problems are something from which we want to run away. Who wants to sit and dwell on everything that’s wrong with life and the world? No one. If you’re looking for the next brilliant startup idea, though, you’re going to have to come to terms with problems. Believe it or not, they’re actually the best place to find inspiration. 

Finding great ideas means becoming a problem seeker, analyzing frustrations as you go about your day, including the things that trip you up at home, on your commute to work, or online.

For example, one British businesswoman was getting dressed one morning when she accidentally ripped her favorite pair of jeans. She was mortified – replacing them would mean hours of tedious shopping. She couldn’t easily buy online because retailers’ varying sizing models made it impossible to know what would fit her. Looking for a solution to her problem – one shared by millions of women – led her to start an innovative website dedicated to helping women find clothes that actually fit them. 

It’s not just current problems that can provide inspiration, though – you can also look to the past. That’s how Anurag Acharya found the inspiration for Google Scholar. Remembering how hard it was to access academic articles when he was a student in India, he created a search engine that specifically looks for academic publications, benefitting scholars all over the world. 

Of course, not all problems are created equal. You can create an inventory of annoyances, from burning your toast to finding Excel spreadsheets hard to navigate. But how can you know which you should focus on?

Well, choosing the perfect problem is both systematic and intuitive. It helps to take a step back and evaluate each problem against objective criteria, like whether you have the expertise necessary to tackle it, whether there’s a big market for the solution, and so on. But ultimately, you should trust your intuition. If the problem really excites you, go for it! 

Once you’ve chosen a problem, write a problem statement – something that sums up the problem and who’s affected by it in as specific a way as possible. The more detailed you are, the more clues you’ll have about how to solve it, giving you a valuable road map for the work ahead.