Tuesday, October 10, 2017

How to find brilliant solutions to problems that confound you

When a person gets stuck with a blem that they cannot solve, they usually keep working on the problem until they find the solution.

This approach can be frustrating and demoralising. It can be bad for the worker and for the colleagues.

There are two better approaches:

a) Describe the problem and ask someone for help.
b) Bypass the problem and work on something else.

Quite often, there is someone out there who has encountered the problem and found the solution. With Google and email, it should be possible to search for that person and to get the solution for free.

Another approach is to bypass the problem for the time being. Often, there are other things that you can do. Most tasks are not sequential, but are parallel. It means that you can work on another task as it does not depend on your completion of the current "stuck" task.

When you come back to the stuck task a few days later, you may be able to approach it with a fresh perspective. You will not continue with the thinking that got you stuck in the first place.

I adopt the above two approaches for a long time. They help me to be effective. They help me to get brilliant solutions to many problems that confound many people.

Perhaps Lee HL and his ministers should consider my approaches. They would not be stuck with so many issues that had confounded them for many years.

But my message is for young people who are struggling to make a mark in their careers. By learning the correct approach, they also can brilliant solutions to the problems that frustrated them.

Tan Kin Lian

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