“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Albert Einstein famously said this.

Quite often we have a (great!) idea and then we want to find a problem to which this idea is a solution. Or we see a problem, and immediately jump to solving that specific problem.

It is very worthwile however to spend more time seeing if you can dig a little deeper.

Take a look for example at this Dilbert comic (it’s the first one, but actually a lot of the other ones are funny too :-))

A great way of digging a little deeper is to ask “Why?” a couple of times. There are many examples to find if you google for five times why, but probably my favourite example is in a Youtube video about the Jefferson Memorial.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEQvq99PZwo&w=560&h=315]

The problem they have is that the stone exterior was deteriorating. The first solution they thought of was using expensive paint and coating, but this was too expensive. Think for a bit why the stones could be deteriorating, and ask a couple of more why’s. The ultimate solution is very easy, and saves a lot of costs!

Practicing this a lot in your own work and life can help you become a better factbeast!