Three Powerful Problem Solving Lessons You Can Learn From My Stupidity

Do you ever have a problem that you find particularly vexing? Of course you do, we all do. The next time you come across one of those challenges, try applying the three lessons I learned from a recent battle I almost lost with stupidity…

This past weekend I had an out of town speaking engagement. I’ll admit, I’m not the most meticulous packer. Tim Gunn would probably shoot me on sight as a mercy killing to the world of fashion. When I travel, I usually fold up my suit and dress shirts and shove them into my small carry-on sized suitcase. I owned a garment bag years ago. I hated it. When the zipper broke, I took that as a sign to God to let it go, and have only used suitcases ever since.

I understand that the suit and shirt will get wrinkled by the time I get to my hotel, but that’s not a problem. I usually just steam the suit and iron the shirt right after I check in. Pretty much all hotels have irons and ironing boards in them.

I get to the Hampton Inn I was staying at and check in. I have about an hour before I have to get to dinner, so I turn the shower onto the hottest setting and close the door (side note to this: Have you ever filled the bathroom with steam and only then realized that you have to go to the bathroom? “Using the facilities” in a steam filled water closet is no fun, let me tell you. But I digress…).

As the steam collects in the bathroom, I open my suitcase and pull out the suit and shirt and then head for the closet to grab a hanger for the suit and the iron for my shirt.

There was just one problem: There was no closet!

What.

The.

Heck?!?

No closet meant:

1. No hangers
2. No iron or ironing board
3. No way for me to implement my “clothing de-wrinklification” plan

This seemed odd to me. I mean, I could kind of buy that a hotel room may not have an iron in it, but no closet or hangers at all? That seemed impossible.

So I looked. Everywhere. In the foyer. In the room. Even in the bathroom. (Let’s face it, there’s not all that many places you can hide a closet in a hotel room). No closet.

There was no closet, but there was a giant mirror on the wall. By giant, I mean it stood floor to ceiling in height and was wider than two of me side by side. It was huge. I wondered for a moment if it was just a mirror or if it happened to be a magical passageway to the land of Narnia. Why would anyone need a mirror quite that large? Maybe Andre the Giant was a frequenter of the Hampton Inn and needed to check out his full body suit before going out on the town.

Then a thought occurred to me: perhaps the mirror was a door and the closet was behind it. Oh, Avish, you are quite a clever genius.

I had never seen a full sized mirror/door before, so I wasn’t sure. I walk up to the mirror, grab the edge, and pull. It doesn’t seem to want to move. So I tug just a little bit harder. Still nothing.

At this point, I feel I am pulling relatively hard. Certainly harder than an average human being should be expected to pull to open a closet door. I then have a vision of pulling the mirror so hard that it rips off the wall, falls right on top of me, and shatters into a millions pieces. Not only did I not need those seven years of bad luck, but I figured my host, who was paying for the room, would not like to receive that bill from the hotel.

“Excuse me, Mr. Parashar, it says here you shattered a mirror in your hotel room…could you explain that please…?”

Yeah, I would rather not deal with that. So I stopped trying and resigned myself to the fact that maybe this hotel room didn’t have a closet. Or an ironing board. Or an iron. Or hangers.

I take my suit and go into the now steamed bathroom. Without a hanger, I couldn’t hang up the suit per se, but the bathroom did have multiple wall hooks.

“Of course,” I think to myself. “They have extra wall hooks since they don’t have hangers. That makes some kind of warped logical sense. Sort of…”

My suit is now steaming, but my shirt is still very wrinkled. Without an iron, I am not sure what to do.

“Hey,” I think, “why don’t I steam my shirt to?”

I take the shirt into the bathroom, but now both hooks are used by my suit (one for the jacket, one for the pants). I do the only thing I can: I lay out the shirt on the bathroom counter and decide to hope that the wrinkles will steam out of the shirt…

I return to the room and flip on the TV to relax a bit before heading out to dinner. As I watched a re-run of yet another episode of Law and Order I had seen 172 times, I thought about how weird it was that there was no closet. Does the Hampton Inn happen to cater to a non-closet using demographic? If so, who exactly is in that demographic? Who wouldn’t like a closet? Maybe nomadic tribesmen who only sleep in tents? But how many of them would find need to stay at Hampton Inn in Kansas City?

It was a puzzlement.

I figure I’ll ask about it on my way back to my room after dinner. I am hesitant though, because I am afraid that one of two things will happen:

1. They will look at me and say, “no of course we don’t have closets,” and I’ll feel stupid
2. They will look at me and say, “um, what are you talking about, all out rooms have closets,” and I’ll feel stupid.

Basically, I am afraid of looking stupid.

As dinner time approaches, I decide to leaf through the folder hotels put in their rooms to tell you all about the property. The guide lists the hotel amenities in alphabetical order.

I get to the “i’s”, and sure enough, there is an entry for “iron and ironing board.” The book says, “all guest rooms come with irons and ironing boards.”

Uh oh. Either I was really missing something, or I got put in the one room in the entire hotel that did not come with the iron and closet. Maybe the front desk people took a look at me and thought, “clearly this is a man who would have no use for a closet or iron. Let’s give him the “dorm room suite.”

That seemed highly unlikely. There had to be a closet complete with iron, ironing board, and hangers in this room. But where could it be?

There was only one place: the mirror.

I return to the mirror, trying to avoid how ridiculous my reflection looked analyzing it to see if it was a door.

I again grab the edge and pull. Again, nothing.

Then I have a moment of clarity. Perhaps I should try pulling the other edge.

I grab that edge and pull.

Click!

Sure enough, the mirror swings open, revealing a standard hotel closet inside. After my quest to find it, I half-expected to see a secret passage leading down into the darkness there. But no, it was just a closet with an iron, ironing board, and hangers inside.

Let me tell you this: I felt mighty stupid at that moment. Now I know how Dorothy must have felt at the end of the Wizard of Oz when the Good Witch told her she had the power to go home whenever she wanted. “Wait, I went through all that, and the answer was right here in front of me the whole time? What the heck?!?” Yup, I understood completely.

I had assumed there was no closet and the spent an hour trying to figure out how to straighten my shirt without an iron, when everything I needed was right there.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Ah well, at least I spared myself the ignominy of walking up the person at the front desk and saying, “why does my room not have a closet?”

So yes, later that night I ironed my shirt (which was good, because the steam was doing nothing for it) and then did my presentation the next morning with nary a hitch.

But still, I couldn’t stop thinking about my own ridiculous stupidity when it came to that mirror and closet scenario. As I thought about it, I realized that there are three important lessons here about problem solving:

Don’t Pick a Theory and Then Find Facts to Justify It

Upon my initial cursory exploration of the room, I concluded that for whatever reason, this hotel room did not have a closet. As soon as I did that, my mind starting finding justifications for that belief:

1. “Maybe Hampton Inn caters to non-business travellers who don’t need that stuff.”
2. “That must be why they have multiple hooks in the bathroom”
3. “Oh look there’s another hook in the main room. That must be because they don’t have a closet.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

We all do this in many areas of our own lives, and it can be damn damaging.

For example, say you make an assumption about another person (“they’re selfish”). You will then be tempted to look at everything they do as being selfish and as a result, completely miss their true intentions.

Assumptive thinking is dangerous thinking. Don’t make a theory and then find facts to support it. In fact, the best theories are formed when you are willing to look at and consider facts that disprove your theory. If your theory survives that scrutiny, it may very well be true.

Question: Are you able to stay objective for as long as possible, or do you quickly make judgments and then find facts to support your opinion?

Attack Problems from Multiple Angles

Let’s take this point literally: I tried to open the mirror from one angle. That failed, so I gave up. It was only when I attacked the problem from the other angle (grabbing the mirror from the other side) that I solved my problem.

In the same way, I encourage you to not give up after attempting only one solution. Try a different angle: approach the problem from the other side, use a different perspective, question all your assumptions, ask for input from people with a completely different opinion, etc.

Question: Do you give up after one attempt, or do you persist and attack your problems from multiple angles?

Abandon Foolish Pride

If I had called the operator for help or asked in person at the front desk, would I have felt foolish? Yes. Does that matter? No.

What would look more foolish: asking a stupid question or conducting a three hour workshop with a wrinkled shirt? Which was more important professionally? Which would have impacted my presentation more?

Look, we all know this intellectually, we just need to apply it in practice: No one can make you feel foolish. You either feel foolish or you don’t.

Yeah, when I do stupid things I feel stupid. But I could just as easily let those feelings go and ask my stupid questions and then just laugh about it.

You won’t get very far in life if you waste time worrying about what others think.

Question: Are you letting your foolish pride get in the way of your success?

There you have it. Three simple but powerful lessons about problem solving you can learn from my stupidity. I hope that helps!

Just be warned: If you ever find yourself in a hotel room with a giant mirror and you do accidentally pull it off and shatter it upon yourself, don’t blame me – you’re on your own!

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Learn the 16 simple but powerful principles that will lead to personal and professional success! In this 200 page book, Avish explains how the ideas from improv comedy can make your life easier and more successful. Check it out Improvise to Success! now!