Quotes About Problem-solving

In the United States, a consistent finding from the National Assessment of Educational Progress is that students at all levels of testing (ages nine, thirteen, and seventeen) are generally able to show mastery of the procedures taught, but struggle to apply their knowledge to problem-solving situations that are not clear-cut matters of applying a rule (Carpenter, Corbitt, Kepner, Lindquist, & Reys, 1980).

The most common leadership failure stems from trying to apply technical solutions to adaptive challenges.

Stay diagnostic even as you take action.

intelligence nowadays is all about application: it is the ability 'to take in a complex system and learn its rules on the fly'. For young people, this ability is second nature. Any fool knows that, if you need a new and unfamiliar VCR programmed in a hurry, you commandeer any small passing child to do it.

no problem can be solved until an individual assumes the responsibility for solving it.

Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.

The group made the salesman aware in no uncertain terms that his tendency to avoid problem-solving by ignoring a problem in the hope that it would go away was in itself his major problem.

And I know that I and anyone else who is not mentally defective can solve any problem if we are willing to take the time.

The third tool of discipline or technique of dealing with the pain of problem-solving, which must continually be employed if our lives are to be healthy and our spirits are to grow, is dedication to the truth.

Discipline has been defined as a system of techniques of dealing constructively with the pain of problem-solving—instead of avoiding that pain—in such a way that all of life's problems can be solved. Four basic techniques have been distinguished and elaborated: delaying gratification, assumption of responsibility, dedication to the truth or reality, and balancing.

When I am stuck in writing a book, when I am stuck in a problem in life, if I go to the piano and play Bach for an hour, the problem is usually either resolved or accepted.

You've got to let people work out the situation and work out what's happening. The danger in calling is that they'll tell you anything to get you off their backs, and if you act on that and take it at face value, you could make a mistake. Plus you are diverting them. Now they are looking upward instead of downward. You're preventing them from resolving the situation.

Write down as many different uses that you can think of for the following objects: a brick a blanket This is an example of what's called a "divergence test

they have to overcome a hurdle, they'll overcome it better when you force them to think a little harder.

Ask an English-speaking seven-year-old to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37 + 22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: It's five-tens-nine.

The capacity to solve Life's problems is based on our abilities to learn to think above and not below the problems.

If you have time to whine then you have time to find solution.

Worry has never solved a problem.

If we ask enough questions about a difficult assignment, we can get the teacher to make it easier and less demanding.

it is up to you to provide solutions, not excuses.

Don't blame someone or something else, or make up an excuse. Don't blame all the problems on a vendor, a programming language, management, or your coworkers.

Don't Think Outside the Box—Find the Box

Kristy and the Dirty Diapers

At Wal-Mart, if you have some important business problem on your mind, you should be bringing it out in the open at a Friday morning session called the merchandising meeting or at the Saturday morning meeting, so we can all try to solve it together. But while we're doing all this work, we like to have a good time. It's sort of a "whistle while you work" philosophy