Perhaps the most powerful question I have ever learned to ask is: “Are we solving the right problem?”

We’ve all come across situations where we get caught up in the complexities of situations, lose sight of the true goal, or get so excited about a potential solution that we skip the due diligence required to vet it out. Phrases like missing the forest for the trees, or if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail come to mind in this regard.

The question are we solving the right problem is an important heuristic that helps us to both break down a complex issue into a solvable problem, and then validate that solution.

Although seemingly simplistic, it is a powerful tool that helps us framework our thinking and approach. It’s a way to tangibly think in an innovative and practical way when much of our problem solving can be muddied by a barrage of information (in varying degrees of relevancy) and even complicated personal dynamics.

Formally, some refer to this as first principles thinking, and it was popularized somewhat as a major innovative strength of Elon Musk (Twitter debacle notwithstanding).

Applying this approach in a broad sense consists of 3 steps:

1. Identify your current assumptions

2. Break down the problem into its fundamental principles

3. Create new solutions from scratch.

Recently, I visited a masjid that had a bathroom setup that prompted me to ask that very question - what problem are we solving?

The setup they had is not one that was unfamiliar or strange by any stretch of the imagination. Under normal circumstances nothing about it would have stood out as breaking any kind of norm. Seeing this setup after going through Covid (and becoming exponentially more sensitive to the spreading of germs), however, is not normal circumstances.

In this masjid, you take off your shoes and enter the larger wudu area. From there, you can go through a door to the restroom area. The restroom area has the dreaded pile of wet, soggy, mismatched, and too small or too big slippers.

Here, you are expected to put on these slippers, use the restroom, exit, make wudu and go pray. If you do not follow this procedure, you run the risk of getting yelled at by someone who accuses you of spreading impurity in the masjid.

Let’s get to our first principles thinking.

1. Identify your current assumptions

This set up exists because someone said this is how we preserve purity in our places of worship, and prevent traces of any impurity from spreading. Everyone wears slippers. Those slippers are the thing that makes contact with the dirty bathroom floor. And those slippers remain in the restroom area only.

Based upon this assumption, architectural blueprints are drawn up to implement this system. A shoe rack is placed in the restroom area with dozens of cheap foam slippers from the dollar store and pairs of accidentally stolen Crocs. Whether Crocs are better suited as a hip fashion statement for teenagers or something to be worn only in the restroom is a debate for another time.

From this assumption a culture is also created. Although it is certainly not a rule that you cannot wear your shoes into the restroom, the weird looks and occassionaly caustic comments create enough social pressure to make people conform.

2. Break down the problem into its fundamental principles.

The problem we actually need to solve is ensuring that we have a way of enabling people to use the restroom and make wudu in a way that upholds Islamic standards of cleanliness.

Does the set up described above solve for that?

At a medium sized masjid, between Friday prayer and Sunday School, imagine that a certain number of children use this restroom (with the slippers being comically large for them). We can expect a certain amount of … incidental splatter. That is going to end up on both the top and bottom of the slippers.

When the next person comes in, they are putting on those very same slippers. Now we have a transfer problem - either to socks or to bare feet. We don’t need to belabor the point to understand how both are problematic.

Even if one were to argue that we can overlook this point because the person will go directly to the wudu area and wash it off, we still have major problems. This assumes that everyone who uses the restroom is going to make wudu, that people aren’t wiping over their socks, and that people are actually washing their feet properly.

Regardless, you not only have the spread you were trying to avoid, this set up is disgustingly unhygienic when you really stop and think about it. In no world is the unnecessarily forced sharing of splattered slippers upholding our principles of taharah (purity).

3. Create new solutions from scratch.

Given this, we need to find a new approach.

How might we design a masjid bathroom area that provides the best level of cleanliness? Perhaps the solution is to let people wear their shoes into the restroom area, putting a mat outside, further separating it away from the wudu area, or something else altogether.

Whatever the solution is, we need to make sure it is solving the right problem.

Where else have you seen situations where a first principles thinking approach is needed?