Recently, a friend posted 1 + 1 = 1 on Facebook, which caused a flurry of replies to her “silly” post. I replied with a number of different answers to 1+1, as I have always considered the Philosophy of One to be a litmus test of how someone looks at the world. It was fun…

Struggles and difficulties are part of life. You cannot avoid these problems; it will always arise no matter how much you try to take control or organize the things in your life. Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them. ~ Henry Ford Problems are not the reason…

I told my friend Graham that I often cycle the two miles from my house to the town centre but unfortunately there is a big hill on the route. He replied, ‘You mean fortunately.’ He explained that I should be glad of the extra exercise that the hill provided. My attitude to the hill…

I’ll be returning to the “We Ask, You Answer” series sometime in the near future; my schedule just got too complex to keep up with them, and rather than do a shoddy job for the sake of just doing it, I decided to suspend the series until I could give it more of my…

Two prisoners dug a tunnel from their cell 80 feet to escape from prison. Where did they hide the dirt? This is one of the examples used by Roni Horowitz of the consultancy group SIT to show the advantages of a method called Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT). The answer is that…

Let’s say you are wrestling with a tough issue – maybe at work, at home, with your children or in your social life. You have been stuck for a while and you can’t seem to make a breakthrough. You want to come up with some really creative ideas. What can you do? Here are ten…

A few months ago, I wrote about Solutions for 7 Annoying Modern Day Problems. With modern life comes convenience, but also new problems. Here are 10 more solutions for 10 more annoying problems. 1. Need a Reliable Contractor? Head on over to…

As I look back at this week’s postings on Slow Leadership, I notice that most of them were concerned with helping people stop wasting their time and energy on fruitless endeavors. Take the first post, entitled: To Succeed, First Forget About Leadership Technique. In it, I argued that belief that success—in just about any…

An elegant illustration of demostrasting a complex program solving process: Go to the link below, rollovers with your mouse on different areas of the diagram to see different explanation of the process – Measure, Model, Understand, Predict/Decide/Plan, Communication, and Act. The Art of Complex Problem Solving

Achieve IT! suggests a way to motivate and gain traction on a stalled project. Identify what is the reason on stalling. Next drop down some very simple todo onto the list. The excitement will come when you complete those very trivial todo items and cross them off: … Underneath the reasons, begin a simple list. Jot…

A fascinating conversation is happening over at Functioning Form, a design journal written by Luke Wroblewski. He is using the skillsets common to designers to unlock the other have of problem solving. Think about it: designers are often considered to be holding the solution to a problem. Instead, Luke says in his conversation with…

Lying your way out of trouble often causes far greater harm. Integrity is worth more than you may think.

At Thinking Faster, Jeffrey Phillips introduced his mental framework on solving problems. He uses an analogy of a wedding cake, which has different layers, and they are distinct yet inter-related to help him decide how to categorize and solve problems: At the top – Strategy Next down – Process / Culture Next down – software applications / tools At…

Chuck Frey over at Creativity For Life has some tips to increase your effectiveness on personal problem-solving skills. Think about there is a time you are solving a problem, and the challenge is too big that you want to give up. How should you tackle it? Chuck suggested two steps: State your problem clearly, and…

iSixSigma introduced a good method on finding the root cause of a problem by using 5 why. By repeatedly asking the question “Why” on an issue, you can dig into the root of the cause of a problem. Another good benefit of using this method is that you can determine the relationship between different root…