CORRECT DECISIONS & PROBLEM SOLVING

• Introduction:      

Life is not a journey along a road that runs through plains alone but one that runs across bumpy and rocky regions as well.” Life is not a bed of roses alone but of roses interspersed with thorn”. Life has it’s up and down. There is good time and bad time, and its joy and pain. Everybody have problems in their life. Problems, be they big or small, have to be faced and overcome failing which life would come to standstill, goals remain unachieved, and the person concerned be filled with anxiety and worry. As a matter of fact, problems could immobilize us into happiness. If we are not in a position to understand them as they arise and to tackle them at the proper time, instead of making them our slaves, problems would themselves enslave us. Hence, there is an immense need to know what problems are, why problems need to be tackled and how this can be done. Decision making and Problem solving skills have been dealt with under one heading here, as decision making is itself seen as one of the steps to solving problems. So, first of all we should know that what is problem solving and what is decision making. 

• What is problem?

Problems are situations that are difficult to deal with. Be it in the domain of technology, home or society, we keep on confronting problems. A problem as Fisher (1990) notes, is a task with a given a given number of conditions and information. If one has a problem, one is blocked in some way from reaching a solution. We tend to use the word, “problem” rather loosely to cover a multitude of difficulties. It may refer to minor irritant or to a life threatening situation.

The problems we face in our day to day life are different from those we face in the technical or professional domain. Real life problems generally are ill-defined and multifaceted. As these problems are open-ended, they have no single or final solution as such. Life problems differ from the “problems” children are given in the classroom, such problems generally being closed-ended and focusing on one right answer. They are specifically created for the purpose of finding out what students know, what they remember and what they can do with what they know. They are artificial and created keeping in mind certain objectives. Coming as they do in all shapes and sizes, they are often too much, far too big or too confusing to know, where to begin in solving them. 

So, as Albrecht (1992) notes, problems are things that offer an invitation to thought and action, a state of affairs you must change in some way in order to get what you want. Galotti (1999) observes that problem solving is the use of the cognitive process in transforming and stating information into a goal state using specified means or solutions.