John McGehee

When faced with a problem, you naturally start thinking of a solution. By immediately jumping to the solution space, you forgo a deeper understanding of the real problem. One of the most famous ( actually, mythical ) examples is the Space Pen: legend has it that NASA commissioned a special  pen  that can write in zero gravity. Meanwhile the Soviets recognized that Cosmonauts would need  something  that can write in zero gravity: a pencil. Extending this example a bit, the Cosmonauts' pencils have a smaller problem space: What if the ink leaks? What if they lose the cap? Those questions do not even exist. Back here on Earth, you sometimes have the opportunity to create a rule that slices off a big chunk of your problem space; a simple thing you can do to eliminate a whole class of problems. It does not matter how infrequent such problems are now. The point is to make a set of problems impossible forever . You'll always have problems, but in a smaller problem space, you