PROBLEM-SOLVING 101
Thursday, February 16, 2023
I have everything I need to solve for X.
Some days it feels great to tell this page and yell out to the world – how wonderful life is, which is what I like to do whenever I can, whenever I have good news in abundance suitable for telling.
The world is not simple; our societal problems offer unimaginable complexity, and often our work/life/ tangled mess seems more complex than that.
The lucky thing is, we are here to solve all that, like an algebra problem – math and logic.
You for you, me for me, us for us …
I’m writing today about some issues (mine alone), and I would hate for any reader, colleague, friend or family member to assume I’m talking about them or making judgements about anyone’s situation but my own – because I am not.
That said, some of this might be experienced by others (welcome the club) or have been solved by others (help is welcome, thanks) because when some bleakness invades, which it sometimes does – there is no easy solution, no simplistic Pollyanna story for sharing no matter how many words I write.
Bleakness arrived, like a looming storm, because bleakness is never absolute or all-encompassing; it starts with a dark, dangerous cloud. Then, for a day or two, there is blankness, not of thought or feelings, but without a solution, roadmap, or magical gut-untwisting solution, there is a realization that solutions rarely fall out of the sky.
And the sky isn’t falling; it just seems that way sometimes.
The answers we like to grasp quickly – as if we could find the solution with a Google search, or maybe Bing + A.I. could do better, there are too many options to work out before hastily plotting a solution.
There is time, but none worth wasting by pointing fingers beyond the one that points at me, to accept what I cannot change and to decide to change what I can – which is plenty, but it all comes down to two choices:
Option 1: give up
Option 2: never give up
Anyone who knows me well realizes that my attitude in life, and pursuit of my goals, as with problems to solve and obstacles to overcome, is to relentlessly and unapologetically: never give up, give in, or give defeat any chance to overwhelm me.
Sleep, work, and laughter are my only tools, but I’ve never had or needed anything else. Each of those I control is not limited by the marketplace, any foe, or roadblock I encounter.
Every problem can be traced to something we’ve done or failed to do – something I’ve often failed to recognize when things go well and resist admitting when things go badly.
But, and there is always a but to any reordering of thoughts to gird for a battle, the most important thing I need to not lose sight of – something all of us need to keep clear about, is that however complex our problems might be from one day to another, there are many out there whose problems loom larger and far more complicated than our own.
Every day we need to remind ourselves the most significant challenges are never solved in a flash – they are chipped away with hammer and chisel, persistence and inventiveness while realizing the toilet paper roll spins faster toward the end …
When I add them all up, my problems aren’t a block of granite that must be chipped away one bit at a time to reveal a statue inside the way Michelangelo revealed a naked David, but some days the chipping seems much harder than that. But it’s a great metaphor – inside the mess of all of us is an image of purity, elegance, and strength. There is one of those inside every one of us, but a lot of chipping is required …
Our wise philosophers offer countless ways to see life, problems and struggles. Of all I’ve ever read, the one that always impressed me as most significant is Dr. Einstein, not for his people and parenting skills, or his relationship techniques – they are reputedly proof he was no more skilled or lucky than any of us who are statistical evidence of failing, he had a lot of wisdom distilled into this:
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”
All my life, until last July, my ratio was the opposite of that ratio – quick reaction without thinking about it very long, and then deliberation about solutions.
I’ve also found a lot of comfort in the wisdom of Tom Peters, who advocates, “Ready, fire – aim!”
Somewhere between the Albert-Tom continuum is where I’m at right now – giving a problem, road-fork, and re-think many things of importance to me personally and professionally. A profile of what comes next and how the problem-du-jour gets solved is brewing. I’ve added to the mix some Warren Buffett wisdom about sorting out the most important of many wishes, plans, and priorities. It’s widely published so I won't repeat it, but it’s a simple but effective technique to take 100 things down to 25 and then down to 3.
These famous men and countless others have navigated complex problems, as have millions of nameless non-famous folks.
The trick, I believe, is rooted in the complexities of the snowflake – science teaches us that no two are alike, yet know they all look the same.
My snowflake might look like everyone else’s problem in some ways. Still, it isn’t – because I’m in the middle of it, and my bag of troubles, people, options and viewpoints are different from those of Albert, Tom and Warren – because I’ve never had their problems, and they’ve never had mine.