3 Actionable Parts Of Problem Solving
3 Actionable Parts Of Problem Solving
Einstein, campfires, and context.
I spent my Saturday camping in the backcountry of Colorado. Yes, it was cold. To make the experience better, I made myself a little campfire. If you’ve ever made a campfire, you know that you don’t just stack a bunch of logs together and light it with a Bic lighter.
You have to build the tinder, small shards of wood that catch fire easily. Then you have to stack up some thin planks of wood that are small enough to light from the heat of the tinder. Then, finally, once you have enough heat, you can stack your logs.
To make these different sizes of wood, campers use hatchets or axes to split large logs into small planks and carve out tinder. Of course, to do this, it helps to have a sharp axe.
And, of course, that’s not what I had with me. 🙄
My dull hatchet made every cut take 5 times longer. My dull hatchet also made every cut a little less safe, since sharp blades always go where you point them and dull blades are more unpredictable.
You can probably see where I’m going with this.
Sometimes, you just need to stop executing so much.
I don’t usually like using the word “balance.” It implies that there are two things of equal importance that, if left unchecked, would compete with each other until one’s demise—but in this case, I think it’s appropriate.
There must be some balance between executing, resting, and planning. The ratios seem to be impacted by the complexity, difficulty, and timeframe of the task, so it’s impossible to prescribe anything static.
All I can tell you is that you probably know the answer already.
If you’re facing a simple task, you probably don’t need to do as much planning. If you’re facing a difficult task, you probably need to increase your recovery time. If you’re facing a complex task, you probably need to pull back from executing so much and increase your planning time.
In the case of this example, we might see “sharpening the axe” in the category of planning or preparing for the task. I wrote another post about sharpening the axe a few weeks ago. Here it is.
Said another way:
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes resolving it.“
This quote is often attributed to Albert Einstein, but I can’t find any substantive evidence to verify it. Either way, whoever said it first, I love the sentiment.
I think the main takeaway here is to constantly be monitoring and adjusting the 3 actionable components to problem-solving:
Executing
Recovering
Planning
Just to recap, you’ll find that mileage may vary on these three components, based on the 3 contextual factors that make them up:
Complexity
Difficulty
Timeframe
I hope this helps you be more mindful of your problem-solving approach and gives you some concepts to define and measure.