Are Your Lights On?

by Donald C. Gause

For the would-be problem solver, whose problem is to solve the problems of others, the best way to begin is mentally to shift gears from singular to plural—from Problem Solver to Problems Solver, or, if you find that hard to pronounce, to Solver of Problems.

A PROBLEM IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THINGS AS DESIRED AND THINGS AS PERCEIVED.

But it was an even deeper lesson that made Billy realize he was all right, even though he had been fooled several times concerning the "true" problem definition. The important question, he had known for some time, was simply WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? Where Billy and others had gone wrong was in thinking that if the question was important, then the answer had to be important, too. "Nope," Billy said to himself as he absent-mindedly emptied his mailbox, "that's not it at all. The really important thing in dealing with problems is to know that the question is never answered, but that it doesn't matter, as long as you keep asking. It's only when you fool yourself into thinking you have the final problem definition—the final, true answer—that you can be fooled into thinking you have the final solution. And if you think that, you're always wrong, because there is no such thing as a 'final solution.'"