Are your lights on?

I just read the book Are your lights on?, by Donald C. Gaus and Gerald M. Weinberg. In it there are some interesting sayings about problem solving.

• A problem is a difference between things as desired and things as perceived.
• You can never be sure that you have a correct definition, but don’t ever stop trying to get one.
• Don’t solve other people’s problems if they are perfectly capable of doing it themselves.
• If it’s their problem, make it their problem.
• If a person is in a position to do something about a problem, but doesn’t have the problem, then do something so he does.
• There are two kinds of people in the world, those who do work and those who take credit. Keep in the first group, there is much less competition there.
• Do we really want to solve the problem?

There are som many options available when solving a problem.

The first quote, for example,

A problem is a difference between things as desired and things as perceived.

gives us the options of solving the problem by changing the desire or the perception of the problem instead of actually changing the reality to what is desired.