How to solve difficult problems?

When a problem becomes too difficult, we tend to lose interest. So, how do we solve difficult problems? It seems as if the level of ‘difficulty of a problem’ is inversely proportional to the ‘level of interest’. The more significant a problem seems to be, the lower is our interest to resolve it.

How to solve difficult problems? and how do we do it?

Difficult problems tend to drive us into confusion, and of course, you know what they do to our levels of enthusiasm. In reality, it is a world view challenge.  In a conversation, we tend to aggregate several perspectives and come up with a set of statements or a question. Aggregation of perspectives gives us an ‘idea’ to solve a problem, and the flow of ideas keeps making our ‘world view’ complex.

All of us have perspectives that result in our very own world view.

A problem is an interconnected and interdependent network of statements. Within this set of statements, we usually know a few things about some statements and have no clue about others. Internally, within our mind, it appears like a battle between the ‘known’ and the ‘unknown’. More the number of ‘known’, the easier the problem is. Too many ‘unknowns’ increase the level of difficulty of the problem, and we lose interest.

And thus, it begins a complex conflict – a Crisis!

Governments, Researchers, and Academicians, within their discipline and domain, try to solve problems by setting up a narrow frame of a world view. The frame would be at the scale of a city, an area, a town, a community, a particular identified group with an issue, or a crisis. However, such a world view can only resolve a few unknowns at a time. Thus, problems cannot be understood within such a fragmented approach.

Where are we with solving problems?

As an experiment, I compared the frequency of use of the word ‘Problem’ and other closely related words used in books during the 20th century (1900-2000). The associated words were – Complexity, Complication, Challenge, Issue, Difficulty, Hurdle, Obstacle, Worry, Trouble, and Crisis. Some of these words, I have already used in the above paragraphs, so you how closely they are related. The experiment was run using Google Books Ngram Search Engine, and the choice of language was restricted to English.

How did we solve problems in the last decade?

It turns out, we love to talk about problems and crises in our books. We love to state issues and frame challenges. But we seldom talk about worries, obstacles, hurdles, and complications. These words are rarely mentioned in books during the 20^th century. The interesting finding is, we are somewhat shy to talk about our troubles and difficulties. Both words describe situations and have been mentioned steadily almost throughout the century. However, their frequency remains low compared to other related words with similar meanings.

The critical lesson from the graph is while prominent words like problem, crisis, and issue, seem to near the peak of a bell-curve, the use of the words like Complexity and Difficulty is on the rise. Within the last three decades, the use of – Difficulty and Complexity has almost equaled, and the slope of the word Challenge has changed drastically. During the same period, the use of words like Problem, Crisis, and Issue is flattening. The overall trend has changed, perhaps due to the technological development in publishing. Does this mean good? Let’s just say- Globally, the Difficulty of Complexity is probably being taken up as a Challenge. Remember the complex conflict that creates a crisis? The medium for explaining the crisis mentioned earlier is called Complexity.

Conclusions?

Problems are complex, and Complexity is a difficult challenge to resolve. To resolve a complex problem, we first need to list individual issues involved. Each of these issues acts as a node in our complexity network. And each node (issue) is usually related to another. Resolving Complexity requires a collaborative approach, where each node of the complex interconnected network resolved individually at first. Then, each node in the network must be understood for its interdependencies. Once we challenge ourselves to draw the structure of our problem in terms of Complexity, the problem is nothing but a set of statements.

So how to solve difficult problems? Next time you have a big problem, try to break it into small statements and challenge yourself.

Further readings:

• Capra, Fritjof (1982). The Turning Point Science, Society, and the Rising Culture /Fritjof Capra. –. —. Simon and Schuster, C1982.
• Capra, Fritjof (2015). The Systems View of Life A Unifying Conception of Mind, Matter, and Life. Cosmos and History 11 (2):242-249.