My thoughts on how to approach a novel or "hard" problem.

After being struck by a semi truck when I was 8 years old I was left with a mangled leg for the rest of my life. This is my "hard" problem. After seeing all of the experts, undergoing all of the procedures, completing all of the physical therapy and utilizing all of the available medical equipment, I was left completely unsatisfied with my condition. My skinny, crooked, deformed leg that was barely functional. I lived with this dissatisfaction for decades. Starting a few years ago, despite the seeming insurmountable difficulty of finding a solution I decided to dedicate myself to finding a solution. Within six months of me doing this full time, I made more progress than I had in the previous two decades. 

This video contains the lessons I learned along the way that I wish I had been told immediately after the accident when I was eight-years-old. They are as follows:

1) Know Your Problem
You need to know your problem backwards and forwards if you expect anyone, especially professionals, to take you seriously. 

2) Give 100% Effort
Your level of effort will set the level of effort of others from which you need help. The knowledge and tools to solve your problem exists in the heads of a certain number of strangers . If you expect anyone to expend any extra energy on your problem you need to lead by example. If you don't care enough to give 100%. then know one else will.

3) Share Everything, With Everyone, All of the Time
You'll need all the help you can get and finding people to help you is difficult. Take every opportunity to broadcast what you are doing. You can't be shy about any of it. You never know when the person that you need could enter your life. They could be sitting next to you on a plane, standing behind you in line for coffee, they could be the brother-in-law's mother to your friend at the gym.

4) Live Your Goals
It's not good enough to have aspirations. You need to be attempting your goals on a daily basis. If you are trying to build a device, you need to be on the workbench everyday struggling with it. If you are trying to increase the function of your body, you need to be in the gym working through it everyday. This is how your story is created.

​I originally created the Good Leg Project to help myself solve my life long problem. When I was eight-years-old I was struck by a semi-truck while riding my bicycle. The accident left me with a forever mangled right leg. A unique and complicated condition to which there were no satisfactory solutions. I lived with this state of affairs for most of my life: A grotesque barely functional limb which requires a full leg brace to walk.

After decades of dissatisfaction, I came to a point where I decided that I would try and solve this problem myself. Where no solutions existed I would attempt to create them. The results came quickly. After walking this path for only six months, I made more life progress than I had in the previous 20+ years. I was participating in activities I never thought I would, I knew more about my condition than I ever had, and I was building a team of experts to help with the heavy lifting. Creating this site was a part of that journey. A place to share my proposed solutions with the rest of the world with the goal of inspiring others to participate in the solution.

Throughout this time something unexpected happened. I begin to receive messages from individuals from around the world stating that seeing me tackle my problem gave them guidance to tackle their own unique and difficult problems. 
 
This created a second purpose of this site: To share my lessons learned throughout this process to help other individuals solve their own hard problems. So please have a look around, I hope my journey will help you start your own.