Think Simple

(Author Unkown)

One of Japan’s biggest cosmetics company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent whoopee amount to do so. But when a workman was posed with the same problem, did not get into complications of X-rays, etc but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Reflection

It is true that we all face problems of various sizes in our lives. For the most part, we are able to quickly solve them without much trouble at all, yet other cases can be far more difficult and when it comes to solving them, we tend to talk too much about the problem and allow less time solving it. There’s a famous quote that says “we are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet”. We get so entangled in our problems that we forget to stop, remove ourselves from the situation and look at it with an ‘outsiders’ perspective. The good news is that every complex problem has a simple solution. There’s no need to always have to ‘tackle’ them. A huge obstacle for people is the way they view their problems: if you think that problems are completely threatening, or that having them is a sign of weakness or failure, and you see yourself as a bad problem solver, you won’t solve the problem at all! If you can be optimistic and look for the benefits and opportunities inherent within the problem, you are more likely to solve it effectively and efficiently. I believe that if you can apply this positive mindset to the obstacles in your life, you and the people around you be will be able to focus on what is really important, rather than dwelling on something that is out of your control. Rather apply all your energy and attention on creating a solution with long-lasting effects, than beating yourself up about something that is just there to challenge you.

May you have an awesome week, where problems become simple steps to higher levels of achievment.

Darren Zwiers

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them” - Albert Einstein.