problem-solving

Our ability to solve problem is limited by our conception of what is feasible.

Don't try to think outside the box- get outside the box, then think!

Relax your expectations, in fact, purposely lower them so low that you feel excitedly naughty about showing up to perform your work with reckless abandon. If that__ hard, open to doing it that way just 5%. Deliberately perform below your skill-level to get started and to see what ideas fall out of a relaxed approach. And in that choice you will create an world of joy within yourself, you__l truly be an artist of being alive.

Creativity needs a problem, and the creative person needs a purpose.

Don__ throw good ideas away until you__e considered all of your options.

...innovation is highly context-dependent. It is a response to a particular problem at a particular time and place. Take away the context, and you remove both the spur to innovation, and its raw material.

If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be pat

It is the attention we give to bad situations that stops us from getting out of them.

The pain of problems is a call to find solutions rather than a reason for unhappiness and inaction, so it's silly, pointless, and harmful to be upset at the problems and choices that come at you (though it__ understandable).

I do not fix problems. I fix my thinking. Then problems fix themselves.

You cannot fix a problem that you refuse to acknowledge.

I had uncovered a widely held but overlooked attachment: our attachment to the view that every problem must have a solution. We delude ourselves that we can think our way out of a problem or we see it as a matter of finding the right person to advise us. We become beggars for our problems, asking numerous people for an opinion. So often, we refuse to relax until a problem is fixed, only to discover our inability to relax was most of the problem.

That's enough crying about the problems, let's begin killing the problems.

Creativity is admired only if it solves the problem.

You have given intelligence to find one solution, and imagination to find ten.

May you find grace to survive life difficulties.

At the different stages of recognition, reflection, and redress, practicing compassion provides potentially world-saving opportunities which otherwise likely would not exist.

The satisfaction? The joy? That comes from solving problems and making things.