Solve it!
I went home a short while ago to visit family and reminisce with friends, during which I found myself rummaging through my stored book collection in hopes of gathering a few to bring back to the city with me.
One of the books I found amongst the shelves was Solve it! by James F. Fixx (also, oddly enough, the author of The Complete Book of Running), which is “a perplexing profusion of puzzles” according to the text on its bright yellow cover. I’m absolutely terrible at brain teasers and puzzles, but I figured the best way to improve was to practice, so I spent my bus ride back to the city limping through the most basic problems and getting my ass kicked as I progressed to the more difficult ones.
The interesting part, though, was that in the beginning he outlines a series of ten mental “rules” for solving the puzzles in the book that I feel apply for most of the everyday challenges I face that ultimately require creative solutions:
- Study the question carefully.
- Confidently start work.
- Appraise the context.
- Relax.
- Expect to wait.
- Don’t accept unnecessary limitations.
- Yesterday’s problems may help.
- Change the problem.
- Ask questions.
- Time brings all things.
He gives detailed context for the reasoning behind each rule in his book, so I can’t say that the list above does his writing justice, but I find myself referring back to these simple points often when I feel stuck or frustrated while learning, creating, fixing or solving in my day-to-day. I never expected inspiration of that nature to spawn from an aged puzzle book written in the seventies, but such a thing is rarely attained intentionally through a specific agenda. I’m happy to have lucked out in this case.
Now I just need to get better at solving puzzles.
