Simple ways to solve impossible problems
Quotations in quotation marks belong to Albert Einstein unless indicated.
Albert Einstein was successful because he had a very different way of thinking.
By learning new ways to solve problems you can increase the profitability of your business, improve educational opportunities for your children, make artistic and creative progress and enrich the quality of your life.
The question of how to learn to think like a genius: you have to break the rules. Einstein was an innate violator of all the rules of the world.
Einstein was a great problem solver because he was a superb transgressor of the rules. It is a common trait of genius and a skill that can be learned and cultivated.
“Few people are able to express with equanimity opinions that differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most are even unable to form such opinions. ”
If you can not solve a problem it is probably because you are stuck in the routine of a rule.
Rules are not always a bad thing. They are like railroad tracks. If you want to go where the road goes, they are perfect. But like destinations far from a railway, some solutions are not within the reach of our rules.
You must break the rules to solve impossible problems.
“Sometimes I wonder how it happened that it was me who developed the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about the problems of space and time. Those are things you already thought of as a child. But my intellectual development was slow, which is why I started worrying about space and time only when I was older. ”
Einstein loved hypothetical experiments.
I knew more about physics and mathematics. He had uninterrupted time for his work and had the collaboration of the best heads in the world. It would be expected that Einstein’s ability to solve problems correlated with his intelligence and knowledge. Instead, his ability to solve problems declined as his knowledge increased. Innovation was greater when knowledge was lower. It does not seem logical.
People who are willing to break the rules solve impossible problems. They are usually newcomers in their field, without the baggage of years of experience.
Hundreds of brilliant people approached a solution, but all failed because of a rule that had the character of law.
Hundreds of years before, Isaac Newton had decreed that time was absolute. Scientists could not even imagine breaking the rule that “time is absolute”, so they could not solve the problem.
Einstein did not have the slightest problem to break Newton’s rule of “time is absolute.” He simply imagined that time could run faster for one object than for another. Einstein solved the most difficult problem of science by breaking a rule.
You can play “tic-tac-toe” over and over again, using different strategies, without any success. But if you dare to break the rules you can win three in a row and solve other problems.
The thought of Einstein: breaking the rules
“Man tries to make a simplified and intelligent image of the world in the way that best suits him; then he tries to substitute his own cosmos for the world of experience and thus surpasses it. ”
You may have to violate a very precious rule to solve your most difficult problem.
Perhaps the rule you need to infringe against is common sense.
“There is no sign of clearer madness than repeating the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”
It is possible to come to think in the same imaginative way that Einstein thought, breaking precedents.
Breaking the rules is our birthright.
The children at the beginning are superb innovators. They create fantastic solutions without stopping at any obstacle.
“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” (Marcel Arellano: “Westernized”)
Our talent to break the rules atrophies because they train us to obey them. Education, socialization and standardization come together to make a habit of fulfilling the routine of our rules.
“To punish my disdain for authority, fate made me an authority.”
Novices are the best rule breakers
“All science is nothing but the refinement of everyday thought.”
Those with less experience repeatedly triumph where their more experienced contemporaries fail. That’s the way it should be, because they have a great advantage, their mental routines are not rooted.
Einstein’s thinking is not a complex process. It’s like writing with the opposite hand. It is a collection of techniques that mimic Einstein’s approach to problem solving.
“Sometimes you pay the most for things you received for free.”
One must have a problem that offers possibilities, a problem that allows imaginative solutions different from their original expectations.
Break the pattern
Einstein was more successful when he was willing to consider anything, even ridiculous ones. (Marcel Arellano: Alternative)
“There is nothing more difficult to understand in the world than the income tax.”
To deal with the rules that hinder it, one can: Violate the rule, Avoid the rule, Apply the Contrary Rule, or recognize it as a Special Case.
Einstein, quoting Aristotle: “When the solution is simple, it is God who answers.”
“The significant problems we face can not be resolved at the same level of thinking we were in when we created them.”
When Einstein began working on relativity and the solution that eventually became E = mc2, he had a big advantage: he had a good problem. Many of Einstein’s contemporaries had been working on the same phenomena, but they were trying to solve a very different problem.
Pose a problem that allows you to search and recognize a solution.
Louis Pasteur: “In the field of observation, chance favors only the mind that is ready.”
Alvin Toffler: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who can not read and write, but those who can not learn, unlearn and relearn.”
“The perfection of means and the confusion of ends seem to characterize our epoch.”
Einstein had the peculiar habit of facing a problem by going to the basics. He dispensed with most of the known facts and himself derived the key concepts from the beginning.
All problems exist in the middle of a hierarchy of needs.
You selected your problem object of work because you believe it is the way to meet some higher level needs. The problem selected may be the answer. But there may also be other better ways to meet your needs.
Converting the higher need into your objective problem can open the field to many new possible solutions.
Establish the hierarchy of problems:
Higher level need
Is this the real problem?
Personal problems
Before trying to solve any problem, explore the needs that require a solution. Identify those needs.
I put my objective problem in the center of the page. The needs that generate it, over. Record problems and alternative solutions in an appropriate way in the table. (Marcel Arellano: Lotus Flower)
Vincent Van Gogh: “Do not exhaust your inspiration and your imagination; do not become a slave to your model. ”
The next step to enunciating the problem that offers possibilities is to identify its limitations and ignore them.
Ignore the limitations. The limitations of money, limitations and bureaucratic paperwork. The people are selfish. The “you have what” are cynical.
Write down everything you think will limit you to create a great solution to your problem.
Solutions that have been tried for years should be temporarily set aside when stating your problem. You should ignore the old answers so that they do not disorient you.
Ramon Marcel Arellano Baez 