Quotes About Problem-solving

Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble.

When you can't draw chameleons and you can't draw blenders, it's a bad idea to write strips where chameleons become blenders.

dexterity and problem solving but also a rigorous psychological examination, which included a Rorschach test. Many aviators would later say that passing the exam was the toughest thing they'd ever faced in the Air Corps.

Sometimes thinking outside of the box can be the difference between life and death.

Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth.

Education does not solve any problem but it gives you the ability to solve the problem.

There was nothing a man couldn't do with three thousand dollars and a suitcase full of canned tuna fish and pregnancy brassieres. The car was called an El Camino for a reason. (Telegraph Avenue, p399)

All human behavior has a reason. All behavior is solving a problem.

To apply general tools to specific problems is to fail.

Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done. And if they are smart, they'll make sure their work subtly flatters the patron. Not overtly. Subtly. This is not a good system for research into those areas of science that affect policy. Even worse, the system works against problem solving. Because if you solve a problem, your funding ends. All that's got to change.

The Japanese have a saying: fix the problem, not the blame. In American organizations it's all about who fucked up. Whose head will roll. In Japanese organizations it's about what's fucked up, and how to fix it. Nobody gets blamed. Their way is better.

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

Someone once said that education was knowing what to do when you don't know," said

Someone once said that education was knowing what to do when you don't know

The specific thing that blew my mind was using multiple semi-effective strategies together. There was no silver bullet. Right then I say, 'This is important. This has legs. It's not my job. I don't give a shit. I'm working on this.

The way I solve a hard problem is not to start with the conventional wisdom, but to start over.

Instead of presenting a catalog of all known creative techniques and abandoning you to puzzle out which ones actually work, I started with the ideas (fish) and worked backwards to each creator (fisherman). Then I identified the technique that caught the idea.

A popular children's puzzle shows six fishermen whose lines are tangled together to form a sort of maze. One of the lines has caught a fish; the problem is to find which fisherman it belongs to. You are supposed to do this by following each line through the maze, which may take up to six tries, depending on your luck. It is obviously easier to start at the other end and trace the line from the fish to the fisherman, as you have only one possible starting place, not six.

For me, cooking is practical. That's the core of an engineer. Engineers are very practical designers and creative people. Every single thing I create has to have a purpose.

I had my guitar and some talent so that I could make friends with intelligent people and could talk my way out of difficult situations.

Our four defensemen all had flaws: one couldn't skate backwards, one couldn't turn to his left, one couldn't turn to his right, and the fourth couldn't pass the puck accurately to our blue line. Somebody had to clear the loose pucks, so I started doing it myself.

You can be a great skater, you can have really good puck skills, but the ability to problem-solve is, to me, key.

Coming up with a way to fix mistakes challenges your creativity and your critical thinking skills and your resourcefulness. Often you end up with something better than what you planned on in the first place.

Fluid intelligence doesn't look much like the capacity to memorise and recite facts, the skills that people have traditionally associated with brainpower.