Someone has probably said something to you that has made you look or feel foolish. At the time, you may have stood there befuddled unable to think of a witty retort quickly enough and remained silent or maybe attempted something that didn't really work as well as you had hoped.
Have you ever found a better comeback for their statement - only, it was hours too late? Why is this? Why didn't it come at the time and even if you managed a half decent response in the moment, how come the better one didn't surface when needed?
What do you do when you face a problem? Solve it probably. And then what?
Generally, after we put out a problem fire, we pat ourselves on the back for a job well done and get on with the day feeling a sense of achievement. The problem I see here is the same one with the witty comeback above except, missing the follow up.
The reason we do the follow up thinking when teased is that we are trying to soothe an emotional hurt. We work to prove to ourselves that if conditions had been more favourable, we could have bested our antagonist. We look to go about closing mental loops and protecting our feelings, mitigate our inadequacies.
The problem when it comes to problem solving, is that we solve the problem. We succeeded in besting it which means there is no reason to follow up on the solution we implemented. We just move on without ever knowing if we could have found a more suitable resolution if those conditions had been better, if we had been given more time.
My approach is to this is to be a psychological pyromaniac. This means that even if I find a suitable solution, I take it off the table and work to find another, and then remove that one and find another again. I continue lighting mental fires and keep increasing the complexity to further challenge myself and find more possible outcomes.
Of course, if there are several problems at hand that are time sensitive and require an immediate, satisfactory solution, I solve and move on to the next in line. I then try and return and light my mental fires again later when time allows. I have started doing this exercise with some clients too to see if will help their solution depth. So far it is looking promising.
There are many benefits to investing energy into this. It gives feedback of course and perhaps a better solution if the problem arrives again, it stretches mental processes and allows more lateral thinking across issues and it builds a potential playbook of solutions to deal with a wide range of situations.
One more benefit is that it combats the development of problem solving by habit. This is applying the same solution to similar problems. It is rare that two things are identical and therefore applying the same solution from one to the other will get inconsistent results but if there is a broader and deeper view of problems and a range of audible solutions to choose from, speed of recognition and definition is faster and solutions better suited.
This can be applied to many areas and can be practised anywhere and with practise, the processing to run through simulations of variants gets faster. From the outside looking in, the people that are able to quickly solve problems effectively are often those sought after as they are seen as adaptable and useful in volatile conditions and seem to see challenges before they arise.
I am not sure if this process will work for everyone but it has been beneficial to me over the years so thought it worth sharing. This may be useful for many people as they face the day to day challenges of life, whether be it at work or home. Steemit is also a quickly growing platform and problems will come thick and fast as pressure gets applied from various sources. The better we think and solve, the more successful we become.
There are many variations to try in this and with a little practice I think that most will be able to adjust and adapt it for their own purposes. If willing, try it on for a while and let me know how you go with it.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
Yesterday, I wrote a piece about pain and suffering and this in one of the pieces that came to mind that I wrote what feels like an eternity ago. When I found it, I decided to clean it up for flow and feel. It is a bit more instructive than I normally write but I think it has value.
We live in a world where people are increasingly avoiding thinking about the things that make them feel uncomfortable, a world where people feel more and more under the stresses of change and life itself. From my perspective, a lot of our suffering is because of our unwillingness to prepare for negatives. What I call 'Psychological Pyromania' is just one tool I use to try to prepare for and lessen the blows. I have a few more, some I have written about before I will share, others still to come. Hopefully there is some use in this for someone other than myself.