Matt Taylor’s Problem Solving Axioms

Matt Taylor is a legend in big-time problem solving.  I love this list of axioms . . .

axiom: a self-evident or universally recognized truth; maxim. An undemonstrated proposition concerning an undefined set of elements, properties, functions, and relationships; postulate (from the Greek, “that which is thought fitting or worthy”) –The American Heritage Dictionary

1. The future is rational only in hindsight.

2. You can’t get THERE from HERE but you can get HERE from THERE.

3. Discovering you don’t know something is the first step to knowing it.

4. Everything someone tells you is true: they are reporting their experience of reality.

5. To argue with someone else’s experience is a waste of time.

6. To add someone else’s experience to your experience–to create a new experience–is possibly valuable.

7. You understand the instructions only after you have assembled the red wagon.

8. Everyone in this room has the answer. The purpose of this intense experience is to stimulate one, several, or all of us to extract and remember what we already know.

9. Creativity is the elimination of options.

10. If you can’t have fun with the problem, you will never solve it.

11. The only valid test of an idea, concept or theory is what it enables you to do.

12. In every adverse condition there are hundreds of possible solutions.

13. You fail until you succeed.

14. Nothing fails like success.

Tags: MattTaylor, MG Taylor, ValueWeb, Axioms