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Fail Proof Problem Solving Process
Have you ever been faced with a dilemma that you just couldn’t resolve? Sometimes the most stressful part of making a tough call is the agony you can inflict on yourself just engaging in the supposedly simple process of considering options and deciding on a course of action. Fear not! If you follow this step by step guide for Fail Proof Problem Solving, you’ll be guaranteed to come up with the most correct answer to your problems with a minimum of stress and worry.
Step 1: Know Your Problem Backwards and Forwards
In this step you are firming up your understanding of your problem so that you can feel confident in the later steps of the process. Begin by writing your problem down on a regular sheet of lined paper. Avoid simplifying your problem when you write it down. Simplification tricks your brain into thinking that your problem is trivial and not worthy of valuable brain real estate. Neurology tells us that engaging more brain resources improves focus on an issue and produces more refined ideas. Be as verbose as you can, using long complicated words tricks your brain into allocating more brainpower to the issue.
An example of a poorly worded problem is:
“How can I watch what I want to watch on TV?”
The same problem can be better written as:
“How can I establish my right to express my free will in my domicile while satisfying the needs of my spouse for reconciliation so as not to be excommunicated from my place of residence for engaging in my particular telecommunicated indulgences?”
Next, rewrite the syntax of the problem backwards:
“Secnegludni detacinummocelet ralucitrap ym ni gnigagne rof ecnediser fo ecalp ym morf detacinummocxe eb ot ton sa os noitailicnocer rof esuops ym fo sdeen eht gniyfsitas elihw elicimod ym ni lliw eerf ym ssetpxe ot thgir ym hsibatse I nac woh?”
To conclude this step say the backwards problem out loud and repeat the phrase until you memorize the problem backwards. For more complex problems it may take days or weeks of recitation to completely memorize the phrase. Now you are giving your brain a major workout! An MRI of your brain would be lit up like Chinese New Year! If you are doing this correctly your brain should start neglecting other tasks in order to devote energy to solving your problem. Don’t be troubled if you start forgetting about other less important things (going to work, eating, personal hygiene) while you are using this method.
Step 2: Those Pesky Emotions
Once you have properly focused on your problem you can start to pay attention to any underlying emotions that are plaguing your problem. Every problem has emotions attached; it is a natural and necessary process. Stress in problem solving often arises when trying to deal with the anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, shame, boredom, disturbing voices, hunger, sloth, or slap-happiness that comes along with the problem.
The biggest mistake people make in dealing with problem-solving emotion is in trying to resolve or de-escalate these emotions. This is an unhelpful distraction from the core of the issue and has the potential to cause lasting emotional scars. While a person may feel “better” after taking a ½ hour yoga class to release their anxiety, they are in fact devaluing their problem and they are dooming themselves to an eternity of inner turmoil from unresolved issues.
You can easily avoid this mistake and allow yourself the serenity of knowing you are active in the problem solving process by simply overreacting to everything. First label the emotion attached to the problem. If we use our original example with TV watching, a healthy emotion might be “annoyed”. Once you have labelled your emotion, fire it up a few degrees by overreacting. Being annoyed is mildly uncomfortable but tolerable; being angry is energetic and actionable.
Check this list to see how your wishy-washy emotions can be made more effective when you overreact:
Sadness becomes Depression
Depression becomes Despair
Annoyance becomes Anger
Anger becomes Fury
Nervousness becomes Anxiety
Anxiety becomes Panic
Bored becomes Trapped
Envy becomes Hatred
Disgust becomes Revulsion
Discomfort becomes Fear
Fear becomes Terror
Grief becomes Agony
See how each overreaction changes the situation? Your brain is more likely to take you seriously if you are furious, revolted, or terrified. There’s even a mechanism called the Sympathetic Nervous System (in layman’s terms the fight or flight reaction) which will change your body physically in response to a critical emotion in order to facilitate a solution. Why not put it to good use? The other benefit of overreacting is that it will engage the people around you to take you seriously as well. People aren’t likely to pitch in much effort to help someone who is bored, but if that same person is feeling trapped and fearful there is a greater likelihood that people will make an effort to help. If the emotion is strong enough you may even be able to recruit total strangers to help you solve your problem with a minimum of effort.
Step 3: Sorting Out Solutions
Now that you have a firm grasp on your problem and you have confirmed its importance it’s time to start working towards resolution. By this time you should be getting a clear idea of some possible plans of action and you may already be forecasting outcomes.
Start by listing on a sheet of paper all the feasible solutions that come to mind. Start with the obvious workable plans and anything you are already considering trying.
For the TV watching example you may have the following:
- Communicate respectfully your TV watching preferences to your spouse
- Compromise with your spouse to allow each of you to select a program
- Buy a second TV
- Use PVR to record shows you want to watch
- Hog the TV remote
- Watch TV at a friend’s house
- Do favours for your spouse so that she/he is more receptive to your TV watching preferences
- Etc….
This is only a preliminary list and your list of feasible possibilities may have 15-30 solid options listed by the time you run out of ideas. Only finish the list when you run out of comfortable possibilities.
Next, get a red pen and strike out every answer you have written so far. If this was an easy problem you wouldn’t be taking the time and energy to solve it, it would have solved itself long ago. Things in nature take the path of least resistance, and the only reason you are running through these steps is because you aren’t happy with the path of least resistance. You want to change your reality, and change it drastically!
Now that you have eliminated all the rational plans, make a new list of irrational and outlandish plans to achieve your goal.
In the TV watching example you may come up with the following:
- Learn to control your spouse’s TV watching tastes through voodoo
- Hack the mainframe of your cable company and force all channels to broadcast whatever it is you want to watch
- Start taking hostages
- Kidnap the actors from your favourite show, drive them to a remote location with a makeshift set, and force them to act out the full season of your favourite show
- Dabble with the space-time continuum, go back in time and sign your spouse up for a pottery class that runs at the same time as your favourite show
- Start a cult loosely based on your favourite show, recruit thousands of followers and force them to give up their worldly possessions and speak only in quotes from the show. Then you can claim that not watching the show violates the will of the wise and all powerful Tharavald - God of Earthquakes and all must watch the show or risk evoking his wrath!
- Etc….
Now this is problem solving at it’s best! Not only are you thinking outside the box, but you have invested the time and the emotional trauma to overcome any inhibitions you may have about putting any of these premium ideas into fast and decisive action!
Step 4: Plan Your Assault
Once you have a list of proper solutions it falls to you to choose the one solution that will consume your reality and change your life forever. Traditionally this means that you would select 3-4 possibilities and weigh the pros and cons of each one. If this sounds like a useless relic from an outdated system which has no feasibility in a modern world, think again smartass! What were you thinking? Are you even serious about this process at all?
In order to weigh pros and cons you will need to do some planning.
You will need:
- A hall or community centre, any venue with a large open space will do.
- A PowerPoint capable laptop
- A projector
- An aggressive advertising campaign
- Coffee
- Doughnuts
- 100 people you’ve never met
The first task is to lure your 100 people into the hall; this is where the aggressive ad campaign comes in. Don’t be afraid to blatantly lie when you are advertising this gathering, you can call it a free workshop, a focus group, a community barbeque, or anything that you think will draw in the suckers (make sure you call them participants instead of suckers).
Next feed them the coffee and doughnuts. Make sure you don’t have enough to go around and make sure half of the doughnuts are undesirable ones (old fashioned plain works well). Spend time at the beginning of the presentation explaining that more coffee and doughnuts are on the way, but you are going to go ahead and start the event. This will keep people from walking out, and get them irritated enough that they will hang on your every word waiting for the doughnut news.
Now you present your best ideas about how to solve your problem to the crowd. Use bulleted lists on PowerPoint with animated graphics and spend no more or less than 15 bullets on each idea. Speak loudly, use grand hand gestures, and throw things at the presentation screen so that the crowd can tell that this information is important.
After each idea have a minion walk out with a half-full urn of coffee and way too many Styrofoam cups. Count the number of people who get out of their seats and line up for coffee; it should be a substantial line. The coffee will quickly run out, allowing you to move on to the next idea.
After all the presentations are done and the counts are in, make a hasty retreat.
Now tally your results. The people who stood up for coffee after each idea represent cons. These people were motivated to negative action, which means that your idea somehow rubbed them the wrong way. The pros are the people who did not overcome their laziness and disinterest with measurable action, their silence is a symphony of apathetic assent.
Now take the idea that had the largest number of CONS and set it in motion. Why use the least popular choice? You have to consider WHO it was that hated your idea. These people were duped by a con artist into coming to a random hall, and then they allowed themselves to be manipulated with something as simple as coffee and doughnuts. These are not people, they are sheep! Any idea that these people find palatable is pure poison. A good idea should whip these people up into a riot! There should be tears! There should be vomit! There should be blood! At the very least they should be frightened and confused.
Now you have a direction.
Step 5: What Are You Waiting For?
At last you are ready to take action to solve your problem. The solution you have chosen is the epitome of brilliance and as long as it is executed perfectly it cannot possibly fail. It’s not hard to see why your idea is perfect.
· You have an unrivalled understanding of the details, dilemmas, and philosophical conundrums of your problem because you know it backwards and forwards by heart.
· You have conquered uncomfortable emotions and through sheer force of will you have escalated these emotions to their utmost potential and turned a possible liability into a volcanic engine of raw power.
· You have mastered an inferno of creativity by culling the sick and weak logical and/or collaborative solutions freeing yourself to consider the awesome potential of irrationality.
· You have undeniable proof of the indefatigable credibility of your chosen solution by evoking the desired response in a group of human sheep.
The waiting is over. You are ready. Make your dreams come true.
