There are three ways to react to frustration and there’s a strict hierarchy of these responses. As you move from Level 1 to Level 3, you have to put in more effort but you get more re__turn. The exact tradeoff between effort and return depends a lot on the exact situation, but overall Level 3 is always harder and more rewarding than Level 2, and so on. You’ve probably had each of these responses at different times, and I think some people are more prone to one than the next.

Level 1 : It’s the system’s fault that this is frustrating, I’m not going to do it.

_This website is so poorly designed, I’m not going to sign up.
_

It’s so hard to have my voice heard in the political process, I’m not going to vote.

My company’s infrastructure makes project management really hard, I don’t know what to do.

I would say this categorizes about 90% of global frustration. Something is hard or thought-intensive? Don’t do it. And there’s a deeper level to your thinking: “Everyone else must have also gotten discouraged, but they’d fix it if that was a problem. So this can’t actually be that important, right?”

Level 2: I’m frustrated, and it’s the system’s fault, but I can solve the problem if I work harder.

This is probably the attitude of most externally-successful people. Yes, the system makes it difficult to do this. But difficult isn’t impossible, and in fact difficult is usually easier than it looks. So I’m just going to do it.

Level 3: I’m frustrated, it’s the system’s fault and I can solve the problem if I work harder. But, if I work even harder than that, I can fix the system and make everyone else’s life easier.

The most obvious example is a political revolutionary. But this is also what great coders do — solve the general problem they’re facing and publish the solution as a program. Or the best people in your organization, who create infrastructure to solve their problems, instead of pushing through for themselves.

The problem is I think that Level 3 is much harder than Level 2, or at least takes more time. And of course there are many different levels of “Level 3 Solutions”. Imagine that you think people are at your office don’t feel adequately appreciated by their coworkers. You could do nothing — Level 1. You could go out of your way to verbally appreciate people — Level 2. You could start an email thread for people to recognize their colleague’s hard work — Level 3. You could institute a weekly meeting for verbal recognition of successes — Level 3+. You could start a company that attempts to solve this problem in workplaces everywhere — Level 3+++. Different levels of “general solution” may be appropriate depending on what the problem is, your own skill, and your free time.

If you run an organization you want to empower people to do Level 3 as often as possible, and make it easy for them to do so. As an individual, this framework can be helpful so you can decide for yourself which level is appropriate every time you’re frustrated.

What are some examples you’ve seen of each of these levels?

(Thanks to Matt Darling for a helpful comment and the relevant XKCD.)