Writing a problem down helps to solve it.  I don’t know how, I don’t know why and I haven’t been doing it often enough.  

I’ve had a small personal challenge floating around in my mind for weeks.  It wasn’t a major a problem but I kept thinking about it, almost solving it and then telling myself that it would go away.  It didn’t.

Today, I started writing some notes to myself about the problem.  Ten minutes later I had a page of my book filled, the answer was clearer and I was feeling much better about it.

I took a pretty simple approach:

  • A single sentence to describe the problem; and
  • 3-5 dot points for each of:

- Background

- Current Situation

- Possible ways I could sort it out

Writing  the problem in an old-fashioned notebook helped me understand the problem much better.  The solution was clearer and I’d saved myself weeks of revisiting the same bloody problem.  Huurah!! 

* NB - I did have a chat about the problem with a friend once the writing was done which also helped, but that’s for another post…