Five Strategies for Problem Solving and Decision Making: Have you ever wondered what causes problems in our lives? What if I told you that humans themselves are the root of all the problems that happen to them? I tell you this because I know that what I did yesterday will have consequences for me today or in the near future; So before we start our conversation, let us quote that saying from the world of health and say “prevention is better than cure.” I mean, do not put yourself – of your own free will – into problems, do you know how?
Five Strategies for Problem Solving and Decision Making
By stopping procrastinating, hanging out with bad companions, focusing on your life, and not being preoccupied with others and their lives, even quitting smoking will protect you in the future from health problems. The whole point is to change yourself and your false beliefs if you want to save yourself from problems of all kinds. Now let’s learn about problem-solving and decision-making strategies.
1- Defining the problem
When facing any problem, you must first know the true roots of the problem; Because you may think that your problem is related to the material, while your main problem may be related to the element of time only. The real problem is not money but time. This is Because the money will eventually be available, but the date of the 2022 book fair gives me a red reminder that the book must be sent to the printing press before the new fair. That is why you must identify the cause of the problem well in order to deal with it intelligently.
2- Finding positive solutions
One of the most beautiful stories I read in Dr. Ihab Fikry’s book is the story of a factory that was facing problems. Because the machines were filling the empty boxes into soap cartons, and the wholesalers were upset about that, and after they presented the problem to the factory workers and managers, the production manager came to the idea of putting a worker next to each machine to check the soapboxes before placing them in the cartons, but one of the workers told them to save the salary of these workers, and to install a big fan and put it on the machines. So the empty cans will fly after being exposed to the fan’s air, and this is exactly what I’m talking about, which is that all solutions may solve the problem, but only positive and smart solutions will be more effective, and the more radical the solution, the better the measure You will experience the same problem in the future.
3- Find alternative solutions
Alternative solutions are exactly like backup plans that should not be dispensed with; For two reasons: the first is to save time because you will find alternative solutions at the same time you find the first one, and the second reason is that the brainstorming sessions you do to find a backup plan immediately after the basic plan will help you find better solutions and alternative plans may be better than the original plan.
4- Evaluate and choose solutions
Let us return to the example of the factory and think what if the factory owner was satisfied with the opinion of the production manager and did not listen to the idea of the worker who recommended installing the fan? Certainly, at that time, the wages of the new workers in front of each soap machine, their incentives, and all their expenses would have been deducted from the profits of the factory. For this reason, we should not rejoice in reaching quick solutions before making sure of the validity of those solutions, and their applicability on the ground, and this is exactly what we will talk about in the next strategy.
5- Application stage
I know that most of you now remember the sentence that we talked about in the article “How to Manage and Design Your Life,” which said, “There is no point in making a good decision badly.” Suppose a person suffering from obesity decided to lose weight, and among the solutions that he suggested to solve his problem was Exercising, but he got addicted to exercising without consulting a doctor, which negatively affected his health. Of course, there is no doubt that the decision to exercise was a sound and very good decision, but it was poorly implemented on the ground, and instead of solving the main problem – losing weight – this decision caused A bigger problem that may be more harmful than obesity.
Conclusion:
Don’t forget that problem solving and decision-making depend largely on information gathering and analysis, in addition to knowledge of some additional skills, including reasoning skills, emotional intelligence, negotiation, persuasion, etc., and if you can look at the problem from the outside and treat it as if it were someone else’s problem, then you would be able to see The whole picture and you will save yourselves from the trap of bias and duplication, and you will become more objective in solving the problem, and the last skill that you must use is the skill of learning from the past and from past experiences.
And remember that the phrase “history repeats itself” not only helps us understand the future, but it also gives us an opportunity to compare and rule out wrong possibilities, and do not forget that human problems, no matter how different, are almost the same in the end; So be assured that you will find a solution to your problem and make the right decisions simply because you have gone the same paths and gone through the same obstacles that others have gone through before you and succeeded in facing them.
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