I think the biggest thing I learned when I was a student here that served me my whole life, both professionally and personally, is the problem-solving process.
We had that in Physics, I remember, 101, and I tell people what's so key about that, it's the first step of the problem-solving process that most people do not accomplish, and the first step is to define the problem.
I don't know how many times - I mean I spent another twenty-three years in the Army after I came back and graduated - how many times we would be working on something and you would spend sometimes days, weeks, solving something that was not the problem.
So I always tell people, when-. I mean we would be in meetings and, as I got a little more rank and could enforce these things,
typically what happens, the senior person says what they're going to say, what they want you to do, and people rush out to go, and I say, "Okay, everybody stop. Take a deep breath. What did he say?
Let's define the problem," because it's so easy to just see what you think was the problem
and that may not be actually what the problem is, but once you define the problem then you can start working on the other elements to solve the problem.
You can solve a problem that was not the problem, that that person didn't bring forward, so that's why I say in a lot of cases just take your time.
It works in your personal life or it can work professionally: what is the problem? Sometimes people oversimplify or they miss what is really the problem and try to go straight to solving something else.