Solving Other People’s Problems
A funny thing about problems is that they come with invisible tags showing who owns them. You do not notice these tags until you try to fix a problem that is not yours. Then, when the dust settles, you discover the tag still attached and it has someone else’s name on it.
At first this feels unfair. You did the work, you sweated over the details, you even stayed up late. Yet the credit drifts back to the original owner. Why does that happen, and should it bother you?
It helps to look at what ownership really means. People do not own solutions the way they own bicycles. A bicycle is physical. If I give you mine I no longer have it. But ideas replicate. When you solve a problem for someone else the solution lives in two minds: yours and theirs. Society quietly rules that the part that matters belongs to the person who cared about the problem first. The logic is pragmatic. They are the one who will keep using it, updating it, defending it from critics. You may move on tomorrow.
Imagine you help a friend rebuild a stone wall on his farm. After the last rock clicks into place you feel proud. But you do not expect to list the wall in your real estate portfolio. Your friend is the one who will paint it, repair it, tell visitors how hard it was. The moment you drove the final wedge you became a story in his narrative rather than the owner of a wall.
In intellectual work the effect is stronger because the wall is abstract. Suppose a colleague wrestles with a tricky proof. You notice a hidden symmetry and the proof falls out easily. Inside the math department people nod at your clever step, but over time their attention returns to the larger theorem, which everyone associates with your colleague. They will still cite your insight, but footnotes do not feel like deeds.
Is that bad? Only if your motivation was ownership. If your aim was to help, you already succeeded. The satisfaction hides in the instant when the solution clicks. After that the reward decays quickly. Trying to cling to ownership is like trying to catch the tail of a comet. Better to enjoy the flash and accept that it streaks on without you.
Of course you can push back. You can negotiate joint credit, insist on patents, draft contracts. Sometimes you should, especially when the boundary between helper and owner is fuzzy or when large sums ride on the outcome. But formality comes at a price. The more you argue over credit the less spontaneous collaboration feels. Goodwill evaporates faster than anyone predicts.
Some people exploit that goodwill deliberately. They collect other people’s solutions the way magpies collect shiny objects, and they polish the surfaces until their own reflection appears. They accept applause with practiced modesty, omit names in every account, and move on to the next target. They thrive because most do not fight for a footnote. The best defense is awareness. If you notice the pattern early you can decide whether to help, or insist on terms up front, or decline entirely.
A better strategy is to decide case by case. Before diving into someone else’s mess, ask yourself two questions. Will I learn something I want to know? Will I enjoy the process even if no one remembers I was here? If the answer to both is yes, plunge in. If either is no, think twice or set clear terms first.
The world runs on uncounted gifts of this kind. A teacher who stays after class, a programmer who patches an open source bug, a neighbor who fixes your leaky faucet. These acts rarely come with plaques. Yet they build the shared infrastructure of knowledge and trust that lets bigger things happen. Refusing to help because you cannot keep the result is like refusing to breathe because you cannot own the air.
Paradoxically, generosity can turn into reputation anyway. People remember who helped them when it mattered. They may invite you into new projects that you do own. That is not guaranteed, but it happens often enough to be a pattern. The karmic bookkeeping of intellectual life is messy but real.
So if you find yourself tempted to complain that someone else now owns the solution you crafted, step back. You got the best part already: the thrill of seeing order emerge from chaos. The rest belongs where it always did, with the person who will live with the outcome every day. Take the lesson, take the practice, and walk on. There will be plenty more problems, and some of them will be yours from the start.