It's not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.

Ashleigh Brilliant (b. 1933) is best known for his wry, aphoristic one-liners—often printed on postcards and collected in books under the “Pot-Shots” label—circulating widely in late-20th-century popular humor. This quip fits his characteristic style: a compact, conversational sentence that turns a familiar self-help maxim (“take your problems one at a time”) into a comic complaint about real life’s messiness. Rather than arising from a single speech or essay, the line is typical of Brilliant’s standalone epigrams, designed for broad, everyday recognition and repeated quotation.

The joke hinges on personification and the mismatch between advice and experience. “Taking problems one at a time” implies orderly sequencing and manageable steps, but the speaker’s problems “refuse to get in line,” as if they were unruly people. The humor captures a common psychological reality: stresses often arrive simultaneously, overlap, and amplify one another, making rational prioritization difficult. Beneath the wit is a critique of simplistic coping slogans—useful in theory, but inadequate when life feels chaotic. The line’s appeal lies in its self-deprecating honesty and its vivid image of disorder resisting control.