Problem Solving
There are 9 posts filed in Problem Solving (this is page 1 of 1).
Ray Dalio’s 5 Steps to Getting What You Want Out Of Life
Have clear goals.
Identify and don’t tolerate problems that stand in the way of your achieving your goals.
Accurately diagnose the problems to get at their root causes.
Design plans that will get you around them.
Do what’s necessary to push these designs through to results.
What do you think? No-brainer?
What does having clear goals mean? I have a goal to get six-pack abs, but is that a clear goal? No. It’s a goal without a time box. If it were “I have a goal to get six-pack abs by Dec 31, 2020 6PM”, that would be a clear goal. Having a goal is not enough, what if you have the clear goal in mind but you don’t stop eating cupcakes and drinking soda every day. What if you don’t start doing the right workouts, take the right nutrition. Having clear goals is not going to automatically get you the six-pack abs, so then what else needs to happen?
Identify the problems. Solving problems is not limited to math class. Once you have set a clear goal, identify the problem(s) that stand in the way of achieving the goal. It’s the diet and the workout routines. that are not aligned with the six-pack goal.
Once the problems are identified, understand what exactly is causing these problems. Are you clear on which foods to eat and which to avoid? Are you clear on how much quantity to eat? Are you clear on what nutrition to take? Are you clear on which exercises to do to strengthen the core? Are you clear on how long or how many reps to do? Are you aware of which workouts are not recommended? Diagnose and get to the nitty gritty of the identified problems.
Once the problems are well understood, design a plan to get around them. May be it is the late night craving for an ice cream or skipping the hard workout routine. Design a plan to work around late night snacking. Keep healthy snacks at hand in case the craving kicks in. Avoid buying cakes, ice creams and other sugary snacks. Cut it at the source, once it is in the pantry it is harder to resist. Keep it away from sight, out of sight out mind can help. Skipped a training day, get back on track immediately. Don’t expect six-packs abs by walking 5 miles every day. If you want six-pack abs, you need to follow the recommended routines very strictly.
If you are not seeing the results, go back to Step 1 and rinse and repeat until you get the results. Don’t give up, don’t get distracted, don’t imagine progress, don’t be tempted, keep the focus or give up and go home, it’s better than pretending.
#9 Arun Saigal
On creating a new future where anyone can develop apps, no code necessary!
Arun Saigal is the Co-Founder and CEO of Thunkable, the low-code/no code platform that enables anyone to build their own apps without coding. Recently named to Forbes 30 Under 30 for Consumer Technology, Arun has held a variety of leading roles and positions at technology companies, including Quizlet, Khan Academy, Aspiring Minds, and Google.
“Smile, we don’t do that often enough.”Enjoy my conversation with Arun
If You Want To Do Something, Don’t Think About It, Go And Do It
I have come to this point many times. Sometimes, many times in a single day. I have a good idea and then think and think and think about it, imagine all the things that could go wrong and all the things that could go right. Weigh the pros and the cons in a rational way and of course the idea is to come to a reasonable decision. The problem here is that the original idea doesn’t actually get done, lot of thinking usually makes the idea not that interesting anymore and I lose the excitement I had in the beginning.
This line “If you want to do something, don’t think about it, go and do it” from Dyson vacuum founder in a podcast with Guy Raz made me think about this a bit. He has a point, why should you spend time thinking about the idea, what’s the fun in that, all the fun is in doing the idea and not thinking more about it.
#5 Sreekanth Vemula
On following ones curiosity, being comfortable with not fitting in and taking care of his next patient
Dr. Sreekanth is a leading Neurologist at Apollo Hospitals Hyderabad. He received his MD from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and DM in Neurology from Institute of Medical Sciences at Chandigarh. Teaching medical students is one of his passions, he has been actively teaching and advising students over 10 years.
“Thinking clearly, unselfishly, solves most problems in this world” and “Don’t worry, you will be automatically happy” –SreekanthEnjoy my conversation with Sreekanth
#3 Sumona Karjee Mishra
On a mission to eliminate pregnancy related disorders in India and around the world, starting with early diagnosis of Preeclampsia.
Sumona Karjee Mishra is a scientist turned entrepreneur. She co-founded Prantae Solutions along with her husband to disrupt treatment of pregnancy related disorders, with an initial focus on Preeclampsia which affects 5-8% of all pregnancies worldwide. She received her PhD from the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi.
“You can’t let the pregnant women die” and “Love yourself”#1 Ishwarya Ananthabotla
On rethinking how audio is captured, represented and retrieved in this new world of AI
Ishwarya Ananthabotla completed her BS and MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. She is pursuing a PhD in the MIT Media Lab’s Responsive Environments group, exploring ways to capitalize on our knowledge of human perception, cognition, memory, and attention, to re-think traditional paradigms for audio capture, representation, and retrieval.
“Being family is a gift from God, staying family is a choice”Inspiration (PE) To Action (KE)
“Inspiration = Potential Energy (PE) = m. g. h
Action = Kinetic Energy (KE) = 1/2 . m . v(squared)“
It’s easy to get inspired. Open Youtube and you can watch a million inspirational videos, average video is about 15 minutes. If you watch all million videos it would take about 28.5 years of your life. Funny thing is you will still be where you are, no progress. In fact, you will be worse off now because sitting on your ass for that long only could mean bad health, depression and death.
A different approach could be, go get the inspiration from wherever, youtube, a book, gym, running, music or a friend. Get pumped and don’t stop there, it’s pointless if you do, you might have as well sat on your ass eating Cheetos. Go turn that potential energy into kinetic energy, that’s the only reason to ever get inspired. Period. Remember energy can neither be created nor destroyed but can only be transformed. I had to say that, the only thing I remember from that physics class in grade school 🙂
How do you take action, move (velocity), keep going. Do your thing, this is the best time. If you don’t know what your thing is, I doubt it but let’s say you don’t, then do something. Like writing a blog, calling that friend you haven’t called in ages or whatever, don’t let the potential energy dissipate away in frivolous activities.
KE is all about velocity and mass (f/a). Velocity, as I see it, is speed with a sense of direction, keep going with a sense purpose and reach your destination.
The Art of Breaking Things Down To Bite-Sized Chunks
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”
Listen to the audio of this blog.
Let’s say you want to be a Designer, if you are just starting out on that path, that goal is very daunting, it seems out of reach, how can we make it tangible, bite-sized and easily chewable?
It is a regular experience, we have a big pizza in front of us, we want to eat it but we don’t take the whole pizza and shove it into the mouth. We cut it down into 6 or 8 slices, not only it becomes easier to hold and bite into a slice but also lets others take a slice of their own. Furthermore, we don’t try and shove the entire slice of pizza into our mouth, we take smaller bites and enjoy it. Similarly, we can and should break down a hard problem into smaller slices and further into bite-sized chunks to understand and solve better and have fun doing it.
Second part of the quote above “but not simpler” is important. One can go down the path of chunking problems into smaller pieces but after a certain point there are diminishing returns. We should know when to stop, just as we adjust how much of a slice of pizza we need to bite off so that it can fit in the mouth and it’s easy to chew. We could slice the pizza into 100 slices instead of 6 or 8, is that necessary? In most cases, not only it’s unnecessary, it’s counterproductive.
In my experience, breaking down the hard problem into 6 chunks or 6 questions and repeating that to 4 – 6 levels deep is usually enough to get to that bite-sized chunks that can be tackled easily. Not only small problems are easier to solve, they also give us ammo, motivation from completing a task is the best motivation there is. That power propels us to finish even more smaller problems and before we know it, we have eaten the whole pizza and now it’s time to burn those calories, put on your shoes, let’s go for a 6 mile run!
I understand the pizza analogy only goes so far, I already know to eat a pizza, all pizza slices are more or less the same. What if I don’t know what to eat? What if I don’t know that I need to eat? What if I chose the second slice and not the fifth slice, things could be completely different in a real life situation!