How to solve a new problem, when the problem is only new to you

I often find that one place I am able to add the most value in life--whether personally, at work or otherwise is to solve a "new" problem.  When approaching something that you or your colleagues do not know how to do, you are facing a new problem.  The key first distinction is whether the problem is new to you, or truly new, as in no one has a really good solution.

The bevy of technology between Google and nearly all of the apps out there has made it far more trivial to determine if the problem is truly new, or just new to you.  If others have an answer but you cannot find it, you might as well consider it a new problem.  You may find collaborators later, but there will be a good deal up front.

The reason to distinguish between newness and new-to-youness is that there are drastically different solutions to the different problems.  New-to-you problems have answers, and your job is to find them as quickly and cheaply as possible.  Remember that anything built by humans (I am looking at yo…