What is Today

Problems

The pressure of having to solve a problem may be overwhelming. Because we must search for a solution to a problem we have solved before. This search is far from random; it proceeds with constant reference to two anchors: the current situation on the one hand, and the goal on the other hand. Consider a taxi driver who is trying to choose the best route to the airport. His thoughts are guided both by his current location and by thoughts about his destination. Perhaps the taxi is close to the freeway, but this isn’t enough to direct the driver toward the highway’s on ramp. Instead, he is likely to ask ‘’ will this path bring me where I want to go? If the highway heads in the wrong direction, or if the driver remembers some road construction along that route, he is likely to seek an alternative path. This process of checking current options against one’s goal is a central part of problem solving. In fact, some researchers argue that a crucial strategy for problem solving is a means-end analysis in which one ask over and over as the problem solving proceeds, ‘’how can I use the means now available to me to get closer to my goals?

Hierarchical Organization

Problem solving is not merely goal directed, it is also hierarchical: the effort to solve one problem often creates sub problems, so that one needs to reach certain subgoals on the way towards achieving the main goal, and here too, means-end analysis is helpful:

For example: I want to get to the store. What is the difference between my current state and my goal? One of distance. What changes distance? My auto, my auto won’t work. What is needed to make it work? A new battery…….. In this case, the initial problem (getting to the store) is replaced by a series of sub problems (e.g. getting the car to work). By solving these, one at a time, the large problem gets dealt with.

Working Backward

One useful method for solving problem is to work backward, starting with the goal or final state and seeking a path toward the starting pint.

Finding An Appropriate Analogy

Another suggestion for solving difficult problems is to work by analogy, since many problems are similar to each other. For example: a school counselor is likely to find that the problem he hears about today reminds him of one he heard a few months back, and his experience with the first can help with the second.

Creative thinking

The restructuring of a problem also plays an important role in those special discoveries we consider creative. In general, scholars call the solution to a problem creative if that solution is both new and valuable or useful. Creative is of course evidence in the scientific of Marie Curie, the artistic innovation of Martha Graham, or the literary achievements of Toni Morrison. What leads to those creative achievements? Many factors contribute, but one pattern figure prominently in reports by the creators themselves when they describe how their insight or discoveries arose. In case after case, these accounts indicate that critical insights arrive rather abruptly, typically at unexpected times and place. Often, the thinker has been working steadily on the problem for some tie but making relatively little progress. She then set the problem aside in order to rest or to engage in some other activity. It is during this other activity that the insight emerges. This pattern has often been attributed to a process of incubation. The idea here is that the thinker believes she has set the problem aside but is actually continuing to think about it unconsciously. Some authors have suggested that this unconscious incubation is usually more creative and less constrained than conscious thought, and this is why solution to vexing problems so often appears during the periods when, on the surface, the thinker is paying attention to some altogether different matter.

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