problem solving

one of my favorite rory sutherland anecdotes is about how people complained that an elevator took too long to arrive. it would cost ~ a million dollars to make the elevators 5% faster. they solved the problem for ~$100 by adding mirrors so people groomed themselves while waiting

The Midwit Meme turns out to have a useful purpose, to remind us in a concise, memorable way that we cannot accept complicated solutions or explanations only because they feel smarter than a simple solution.

We assume that a complex solution is likely to be the product of more sophisticated and nuanced reasoning than a simple solution, and thus more likely to be correct. This is far from true.

failure to recognize the pervasiveness of the Pareto principle is a common factor in incorrectly rejecting simple solutions to complicated problems.

If you have an intractable, long-running problem in your life, and you’ve tried everything you can think of as far as running at it headfirst—try switching tracks, leaving that problem aside for awhile, and getting really , really into whatever pops into your intuition. Have you been meaning to learn everything there is to know about Indian cuisine... See more

The solutions to a problem are very very often not located in the same spot as the problem itself. A whole lot of issues only get solved by fixing up seemingly-unrelated stuff.

The most important food to constantly feed your brain is the problems you want it to be solving. These problems do not need to be grand like “solving world hunger.” Maybe one of your problems right now is what to get people for Christmas. You have to define clearly what those problems are and then constantly remind your brain to think about them.