“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." 

 Clay Shirky

It happens at least once a week: a patient who equates natural with beneficial. 

A wonderful thing, imagination, with the vast possibilities it allows. 

Nana Cindy, Bumpa Pooh and (Princess) Phoebe were enjoying a wonderful pretend picnic in her bedroom. Phoebe was describing in sometimes startling detail the preparations for the picnic when she started pantomiming, pouring a liquid on her hands, rubbing her palms together, and then applying it to her doll. We asked if she was using sunscreen, and she paused and looked thoughtful while she considered the question.

“No,” she said. “Moonscreen.”

We’ve all been there, facing a problem so large or complex it seems insoluble. Fortunately, insoluble problems are solved with great regularity. If that weren’t true, we’d still be living in caves and eating only what we could catch or pick.

What can we do to increase our chances of solving the big problems in our lives and workplaces? Here are three suggestions.

Simplification may be necessary when we try to cram complex or messy truths into comprehensible prose or usable tools, but the underlying dishonesty and inevitable distortions should be noted rather than denied, lest we begin to mistake the symbol for the thing.

I will never forget the quasi-humorous sign in the radiology reading room:

I’ll see it when I believe it.

Robert Burton, a former Chief of Neurology at Mount Zion Medical Center, explains it this way:

Gloria Steinem said: “The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.”

Based on my experience, telling the truth is more reliable at pissing others off than setting anyone free.

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."

John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006) 

You can never make the same mistake twice.

The second time you make it, it is a choice.

Becoming a good person seems like an obvious goal, a no-brainer. Despite that, not many of us really try. And fewer succeed. What's the problem?