Have you ever run across a problem so big that every solution you use simply won’t work? If so, you’re not alone.
Each day we’re surrounded by new challenges. Politics cause the operations of a nation to change. The economy changes the nature of what we do at work and our own job security. Our family and friends run into impasses and ask us for advice. The scary part is these only account for today’s issues. Let’s not even talk about how to solve tomorrow’s problems.
It all comes down to making good decisions. Good decisions solve problems, conquer challenges, and improve processes. Good decisions come from good information…and our ability to retrieve it.
If you have trouble making good decisions, maybe it’s because you don’t have enough retrievable information at your disposal. Fortunately, this is fixable!
I recently read a great book by Art Markman entitled Smart Thinking: Three Essential Keys to Solve Problems, Innovate, and Get Things Done. While he offers a host of solutions, the best idea I got was from an analogy he used.
Since our ability to retrieve information is the foundation of problem solving, it’s best to look at our current pool of internal information as if it were a group of five-year-olds at a party. We ask the group”
“Who wants a prize?”
The kids start jumping up and down shouting “me me me” and we give it to the one who jumps highest and shouts the loudest. The others lay down on the floor sniffling because the didn’t get picked.
This is what happens in our brains when we run across a problem. We’ll try to solve it using only our available information (our own group of five-year-olds) and pick the solution that shouts the loudest – which for us often is the one we’ve always had the most success with. Unfortunately, if we deal with limited information and fail to work at increasing it, the problems will grow and morph and yet our available resources stay the same…and sometimes shrink as we fail to use all of them.
What’s the solution?
Increase the size of your information pool of course.
How?
Start feeding your brain more information!
Markman has a number of recommendations but here are the ones I use:
- Read more (current events). Spend an hour a day reading. Start with current events (a wide array of online news sites will do including CNN, USA Today, and MSN).
- Read more (articles). Subscribe to trade journals that represent your industry. Get up to speed on new trends and future challenges.
- Read more (variety). Reader’s Digest is a great resource to bump up your knowledge of trends in general. I’ve read this since I was 12 and it’s increased the amount of useful (and useless) trivia I can recall.
Watch more (documentaries). Spend at least one night a week watching something other than reruns of Two and a Half Men or Big Bang Theory and turn on Discovery, The History Channel, or NatGeo. Watch a show about something you know nothing about and have no interest in. You might be amazed at how it interests you.
Your brain is an organ, but I like to think of it as a muscle. The harder you train it, the stronger it becomes.
The amount of hard decisions we’ll need to make will only increase. Your best decisions come from the best retrievable information. Take some time this week to build in some new knowledge. Replace the group of five-year-olds in your head with a new class!