We have all experienced it - the annoying sense of “Oh, no, here we go again!” You thought you had dealt with it. You assumed it was solved. You believed you had put it behind you. Yet, here it is, rearing its ugly head once again. Maybe it has to do with the appliance that always goes awry just when you need it. Maybe it’s that annoying writer’s block that shows up when you have a deadline. Or maybe it’s the co-worker who drives you crazy in exactly the same way every few days.
A persistent problem is one you have tried to resolve many times, in many ways, with little to show for your efforts. You have run out of ideas and yet you still feel irritated or frustrated when it happens. You may have thought that you would just have to live with it. You feel stuck. Before you give in to that unpleasant state of affairs, here are a few things you might try:
Stop doing what you’ve tried in the past. Make a list of everything you’ve tried up to the present and then choose to stop doing any and all of them, even if you believe they are the right things to do. If they had worked, the problem would no longer exist. Your solutions have now become part of the problem system. If you do something different from what you have done in the past, the other person (or object) will eventually need to give you a different response – which may lead to a new set of possible solutions.
Identify your limiting assumptions and reverse or move past them. Examine your previous solutions carefully for evidence of the assumptions behind them. Ask yourself, “What would I do if I didn’t believe X to be true?” Try reversing some of your most common assumptions and then generating ideas for solutions. See if you can identify the boundaries of the area where you’re searching for solutions (categories, groups of people, etc.) and move beyond those limits.
Look for and disrupt ongoing patterns. Don’t ask, “How did the problem start? Instead, ask, “How does the problem continue?” Focus on preventing the continuation of the problem. The system that supports the persistence of the problem is different from the one that existed when the problem began.
Reframe the problem. Find a way to reframe the problem as an opportunity for creative thinking. Use the sentence-starter, “How can we…” rather than “Why can’t we…” There are usually many ways to frame a problem. Try generating a list of 10 – 15 different ways to look at it, then choose one that’s different from the current frame, has no solution embedded in it, is an unusual way to look at it – and generate solutions based on that frame. Then try another. Our solution set is limited by the way we have framed the problem, so expand your framing and you’ll have more solutions to choose from and develop.
Use a metaphor as a bridge to solution. Transform the problem into a metaphor and develop solutions in another context, then apply them back to the reframed problem. Don’t worry if they seem odd or silly at first – ask yourself, “How might that solution work in this context?” Sometime going far away from a problem enables you to return with a very different perspective.