Tom Hirshfield’s Rules of Thumb for Problem Solving

A post on the Creative Think blog discusses the follow “rules of thumb” to be followed for problem solving, from Tom Hirshfield, a research physicist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

Tom Hirshfield’s Rules of Thumb

1. If you hit every time, the target’s too near — or too big.
2. Never learn details before deciding on a first approach.
3. Never state a problem to yourself in the same terms as it was brought to you.
4. The second assault on the same problem should come from a totally different direction.
5. If you don’t understand a problem, then explain it to an audience and listen to yourself.
6. Don’t mind approaches that transform one problem into another, that’s a new chance.
7. If it’s surprising, it’s useful.
8. Studying the inverse problem always helps.
9. Spend a proportion of your time analyzing your work methods.
10. If you don’t ask “Why this?” often enough, someone else will ask, “Why you?”

The need for innovative and creative approaches to problem solving is an important leadership practice, a practice that we all should be developing….

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