Problem Solving Tools and Techniques
June 14th, 200720 Great Problem Solving Tools and Techniques
Have you been faced with a problem but haven’t had the right tools and techniques for solving it. I’ve dug up 20 great problem solving tools and techniques that will reduce the time it takes you to solve problems. It doesn’t matter whether you’re solving small mental problems or really serious and complex problems these problem solving tools and techniques will still apply.
These tips can aid you through everyday life and will teach you how to deal with sometimes the most abstract of situations. One great tip for solving problems is to never be one dimensional about the whole process, creativity in many different forms will guide you to the answers.
These tips come from the great Win Wenger. . . He’s a modern day thinker in creative problem solving.
20 Problem Solving Tools and Techniques
1. Really want to solve the problem.
2. Have wide-ranging interests, and feed them.
3. Be willing to entertain ideas and inspirations from outside the box—not only “think outside the box.” Learn from any and every source as per our new ancient saying:
“Anyone can learn from someone wise….it takes someone pretty wise to be able to learn even from fools.”
4. Be willing to keep coming back to the problem from different directions.
5. Be willing to let go of it between times, deal with other matters or to—
- tend the garden
- wash the dishes
- meditate
- experience or ‘do’ in the arts.
- take inordinate pleasure in little things—sometimes that’s all you’ll have, sometimes those become big worthy things
6. Keep/build your stamina and follow-through.
7. Keep your health.
8. “Keep your day job.”
9. Keep your sense of humor.
10. Be fully creative, then fully critical, then fully creative…..
11. Raise and keep up your level of ongoing tinkering—
- tinker with the problem
- tinker with the idea or with ideas
- tinker with other things
- be opportunistic
- fiddle in other creative activities, keep those further resources of yours in the picture
12. Work in creative bursts; don’t 9-to-5 it. Grinding a chapter a day just doesn’t do it. Fly on inspiration as fast as possible before the pattern dissipates. Fly fast on inspiration as long as possible, then climb right back on and go up again. You get more of what you reinforce. Moreover, the unique rewards of working inspired will keep you reinforced to be creative. Be willing to dog-plod some of the task, on some sort of scheduled regular basis of production, but do as much as possible inspired. Don’t wait for inspiration, find it.
13. Build high self-esteem—
Reinforce your confidence by being self-critical from time to time.
Search hard for everything that might be wrong with your idea-theory-discovery-invention, then: “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!”
14. Do your homework, keep on getting better informed in the context.
15. Pat yourself on the back on some of those many occasions when no one is going to do that for you. Find others also doing something worthwhile and pat them on the back.—A small but definite percentage will reciprocate. Find/create a support group. You don’t have to be alone. Support can be found in unexpected places.
16. Appreciate: “the closest distance between two points” in human affairs is usually a very zig-zag line!
17. Appreciate: the assets and abilities which have brought you this far already.
18. Appreciate: the many, many others who have been this part of the road and somehow made it through. Resolve to be with them and not with those who instead fell to the wayside. You deserve to make it through, you’re going to make it through, you have within you and above you what it takes to make it through! People need, human beings depend on, what you’re bringing through! And many with far less to do it with than you, have made it through!
19. Be sure of at least some of the worth of what you are seeking to bring through.
20. Get visibly on record everyone who says “no” to you and their grounds for saying “no.” Prepare for publication your running memoirs about your campaign and how these people, by name, title and position, said “no.” Some will find it safer to say “yes” rather than join the public ranks of the following, as reported once in Reader’s Digest under “History Lessons”—
There it is . . . BUT surely you have some great problem solving tools and techniques of your own that work really well. We want to here about your great tools and techniques you use to solve any kind of problems. Why not read more on Problem Solving Tools and Techniques with “6 Ways to Master Difficult Subject Matter”.
June 27th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
All so fascinating. I look forward to communicating further with you.
July 9th, 2007 at 12:24 am
my share is:
always carry with you a small notebook and write down every ideas you can think of, including solutions and problems. With technology, you can use a PDA to save all your notes.
sometimes, somehow you would be needing those notes one way or another to solve a problem, to answer a question or create a new invention. I use this technique in problems-solving.
July 25th, 2007 at 5:12 am
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August 15th, 2007 at 8:30 am
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August 16th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Here are a few more tips as extensions of the above tips:
The Law of Attraction helps draw those necessary solutions into your life. A situation may seem unique until you consider all of the self-replicating patterns in nature. A solution already exists to every situation; the solutions simply need revealing.
Extension from #4 tip: Try practicing multiple mentalism as used by Harry Kahne; he was able to write poetry backwards in one hand while reciting a different poem forwards and simultaneously doing math with the other hand. All of this activity is geared towards approaching one situation from different perspectives.
A problem is only a situation that needs fixing.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
The problem solving tools listed above are universal but in this case appear to be more geared to inventorship, but over generalized for that purpose. So this is a small dose of reality for the would be inventor coming from one that has been there, done that. First inventorship is not what its cracked up to be and the proverbial TV image of the madcap inventor gaining his ticket to glory most have in their heads is just that, TV image and not reality. Times have changed. In this day and time, the odds of a lone inventor selling his inventions to companies and getting wealthy of it are very slim. Those days are long past. Today, patents are more used by companies as business tools for gaining toe holds or some form of exclusivity in large markets and its done mainly by getting around someone else existing patents, no professional ethics to it. Devil always being in the details, an inventor has to know what to focus on and as always, its 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration and involves staying on the learning curve forever. Normally one does not invent something simply for invention sake or the satisfaction of knowing or saying they are an inventor of some item or utility, but principally to make money from said invention. Consequently, the money making ideas selection process boils down to first knowing markets and the niche market needs, missing products, price points, potential demand,timing that out of necessity directs the process of invention in this day and time. For every successful patented invention there are probably a 1000 patented inventions that failed no different from small undercapitalized buinesses. Most inventors feel strongly that they may have invented this or that usually based on the fact that they or those polled have not seen it before, but the simple truth its usually been patented many different times in the past and either never made it to commerce or did not make it in commerce. As a result, inventors patenting today must be fully informed on what has been patented or simply published on in the past, the “prior art” as well as versed in patent law and patent writing along with the various facets most importantly its pitfalls and snares. Never,ever trust a patent attorney to do your work for you or the way you wanted it done. Always remember, they are not gods, more like the typical ambulance chaser attorneys looking for a mark, so donlt let that mark be you. If you do, your no longer the inventor, he is and he will get you into more trouble and spend more of you or your backer’s money that its worth winding up with non-novel bluff-only patent awards that will not hold up in court. Yes an attorney can get your a patent on just about anything that has been patented before, but one usually finds in the long run that they did not need patents to produce their items to begin with and would have saved a bundle that could have been better spent elsewhere by producing and selling without patents any “public domain” items whose patents had expired. Filtering through prior art claims to figure out what has and what has not been patented or was known previously atempting to find a novel or useful “in” for ones invention that he can gain a patent claims award on and how to weasil word the nit-picky details so patent examiner will accept it is largely what the patent process has boiled down to these days being that its more market spin that counts in today’s world than scientific fact. Its a lot different today than it was in the early 1900s when little had been patented when patents were cheap and easy to get and the business climate was ripe for all manner of new things. I think many of these self-help, one man think-tank to market with successful patented product guides were probably written during and for that time period than for today’s situation. The real test of any product is what it does sales, whether it performs its purpose and holds up for its warrantied time period without failure and if it has wht it takes to maitain itself in a sustainable market.
November 27th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I think 9 is the most important. You really need to keep your sense of humor throughout life, other wise you’ll just end up bitter and alone.