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Problem solving is an essential skill in all aspects of life, from achieving success in your career to raising children to buying your weekly groceries! Some people excel at problem solving, while others struggle. No matter what level you are, these tips will help to improve your lateral thinking and find a productive way out of tricky situations. Let’s improve our problem solving and make daily life significantly easier.

Finding Your Personality Type

The best way to begin your journey towards exceptional problem solving is to determine what your choices say about you. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has been helping people to understand their personalities for a century. When you take the test, you’ll be asked a series of questions with a spectrum of answers from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’.

The test will evaluate your strengths and weaknesses in all aspects of life by pinpointing the way you think, whether you’re led by your heart or your head, and how rational your decision making is.

The Myers-Briggs test will display your results using a series of personality types. Each of these types are represented by four letters. ISTP is the personality type known as the ‘logical pragmatist’. ISTP’s are cool, level-headed and calm under pressure. Find out more about the ISTP meaning and take the test yourself! See what the results say about you, and judge which steps you can take to reach an ISTP lifestyle.

Breaking It Down

Most people who struggle with problem solving find themselves overwhelmed when an issue arises. Problem solving becomes far more stressful and often far less successful if the problem itself is too large and daunting. That’s why every problem is easier to solve when you break it down and find easy, piece by piece solutions.

Psychologically, your brain will manage smaller challenges far more efficiently than larger ones, so work on seeing the individual components of every challenge. Consider using specialized task management software to divide your problems into manageable parts. You can create sub headings to divide the task even further and then you’ll find overcoming the obstacle far easier as you are able to fully focus on one aspect at a time.

Brain Training

The root of all problem solving is in quick thinking and ingenuity. To find an easy solution, you need to develop the ability to think as logically and confidently as possible. Thankfully, there are easy ways to train your brain. Devote some time every day to solutions based games like puzzles, crosswords, and sudokus. These may seem like trivial activities, but over time you’ll notice yourself getting better and better at figuring out the answers, and you may start to notice those skills transferring into the rest of your life.

If this approach works for you, then you should try brain training games created by real neuroscientists. These games and activities are designed specifically to enhance your focus, concentration, and cognition. The best services will even design a personalised training regime so you can be sure you’re achieving your best.

Give Yourself Time

Sometimes we just need time to consider a problem before reaching a solution. Giving yourself a chance to process all the facts and understand what you are thinking and feeling can make a huge difference to the quality of your solutions, and your confidence in your answers.

Meditation is a powerful tool that gives you a chance to step away from your worries and cut down on your stress. You can use professionally designed guided meditations to give yourself time to think and evaluate. You don’t have to wait for a problem to arise before you start meditating! If you start meditating today your new found mindfulness will help you out next time you’re facing a challenge.

Look After Yourself

Problems can often become far more overwhelming when you are not in a fit state to tackle them. If you are looking to determine the best solutions to your problems then you should be facing them at your best. This can be as simple as ensuring you’ve had enough sleep, you’re on a healthy diet, and you’re drinking enough water!

Your body is an ecosystem, so your sleep cycle, diet, and hydration all have an immediate knock-on effect with your thought processes. Make sure your brain is fuelled, rested, and ready to go and you’ll find yourself becoming less stressed and far more capable of overcoming your challenges. If you look after yourself now, you’ll thank yourself for it in the future.