Belly Button Lint

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Tag: problem solving

  • Theme:

    More technology to solve technology problems

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    1–2 minutes

    Being a distracted driver by using your cell phone is more dangerous than driving drunk.

    How did we reduce drunk driving? By increasing pre-driving pressure, social ostracization, and outrageous fines. The social component targeted people before they got in the car, crowd-sourcing concern as a form of communal policing.

    However, social pressure cannot alter our phone behavior once we are alone in our car: we feel autonomous and bored inside our sheet metal and glass bubbles hurtling down the highway, though we are amongst others.

    A reversion to heads-up awareness and concern for the safety of others (and yourself) seems unlikely.

    The only solution (it seems) is auto-driving vehicles (expensive) or cell phone blocking (unlikely), which will only put more money in the pockets of the companies that created the problem in the first place.

    From Matthew Crawford

  • Theme:

    Blame Game

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    1–2 minutes

    “Victims blame the person. Perpetrators blame the situation.”

    Problems can be solved, but recognizing the blame game means people are arguing for ego rather than solutions.

    quote from Rob Henderson

  • Theme:

    life as chess

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    1–2 minutes

    Given a well-constructed set of rules, only a few solutions exist, yet moves must be made to progress.

    Each action/step/move can be made with anger or poise. Either way, it must be made.

    You do not have to play the game gracefully, but you must keep in mind the outcome you wish. Playing with rage can achieve your outcome, but in the iterative game of life, it alienates potential allies who see the move, not the game.

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  • Theme:

    Humor and Efficiency (Right & Left Brain / Open & Closed mind)

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    1–2 minutes

    To be creative you must be open, which means to be humorous (seeing the odd angle) requires an open disposition. Once you have made a decision you must be efficient: practical, linear path making.

    To do both at once is to accomplish nothing: procrastination or chaos is self-defeat.

    Knowing when to release from the left brain impulse of rationality and invoke the holistic story-telling flow of the right brain -closed vs open- is how even the mediocre can transcend.

    To be the best, you become a conductor of groups of people, opening them and then focusing on them, letting them dream, and then motivating them to produce.

  • Theme:

    Changing yourself

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    1–2 minutes

    Give up on changing yourself: that’s impossible. Instead, get incrementally better at spotting your own patterns and tightening the solution loop. (stimulus, internal response, external reaction.)

    Over time it looks like you change, but you have just developed better coping strategies, faster reaction times, and reduced the errors of fumbling about in the wrong direction.

  • Theme:

    Don’t solve the Excuses

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    1–2 minutes

    We create our failures: they are our excuses not to succeed because some part of us is scared.

    "I can’t do that, it would compromise who I am."

    We protect our "self" relentlessly, setting up fail-safe double binds to protect our scared ego: "I am not liked because I am not likable" or "To be true, I must isolate."

    The symptoms of our distress, perhaps a psychosomatic ailment, are resolved once we work past our self-righteous barriers. And yet, if we keep solving the excuses (I am not likable, I am authentic), our protectionist psychology creates new excuses to prevent change, which means we continue to hurt.

    {Adlerian psychology}

  • Theme:

    provoking the reaction

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    1–2 minutes

    Knowing people are trainable, you can break expectations for your own gains, but it will incur resentment that will lead to confrontation.

    Be sure you have a legitimate (logical not emotional) precedence and a grievance they can remediate.

    When confronted you can provide them with a choice: accept my behavior or compensate me for compliance.

  • Theme:

    Tactics vs Strategy

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    1–2 minutes

    Tackling one task after another feels productive, but the tasks will not end, and if you are effective, you will add more functions upon completion.
    This can fill your entire life, but tactics are not a strategy.
    This is to say; you can convert yourself into a drone and never win.

  • Theme:

    Don’t look directly at Medusa

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    1–2 minutes

    There are parts of our life upon which we cannot gaze. To do so would destroy our life.
    In such cases, you can feel the malevolence but only glimpse the grotesque through the mirror.

    The most common solution? Don’t look in the mirror.

  • Theme:

    squaring the spinning wheel

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    1–2 minutes

    When a problem is too complicated, meaning it has more than facets but dynamics as well, it becomes a spinning circle.

    To simplify this impossible conundrum and grant yourself agency in this dizzying world you can “square the circle": choose a point, ignore the motion, simplify the sides, and commit.

    It in no way reflects reality, but it may help you feel better.