Life, I often feel, can be thought of as a string of problems, each sent to test us, each waiting to be solved. My thoughts here do not to allude to mathematical problems or crossword puzzles or the 'find checkmate in four moves' style of chess problem. Rather, I am thinking of the types of problems that occupy us personally at an individual level, and socially with regard to the relationships in our lives. Thus, we wake up each morning and immediately begin to solve problems about what to wear, about how to get the children out of bed in time for school, and about what to do when the car will not start and the trains are late. We go to work and solve problems about cash flow, about personality clashes in the office, and about systems and policies. We stay at home and solve problems about finding a plumber, about the leftover feelings from yesterday's cross words, about where to go for a day out, and about whose turn it is to take the dog for a walk. We tackle problems on our own, in pairs, in groups and in meetings. Some problems, perhaps most, are relatively small scale and are soon forgotten; others are larger and cause periods of concern, even anxiety; very occasionally how we decide to solve a problem can, literally, change lives.
The point is, of course, that problems large and small are a part of our everyday existence. Most of the time, individually or collectively, we are able to solve problems without a great deal of conscious effort: we have well-tried problem-solving strategies that we draw on to help life move along without too much turbulence. It is perhaps because our problem-solving strategies are so well rehearsed, so thoroughly ingrained, that we take them for granted. However, familiarity should not breed contempt: in solving problems, social problems, we employ some highly sophisticated cognitive abilities.
It is probably true that most people, most of the time, are able to solve life's problems, either by themselves or with a little help from their friends. Having said which, most of us will have had the experience of being faced with a problem, in either our personal or professional lives, that we find hard to solve. At such difficult times some of the processes of social problem solving become overtly conscious: we might discuss the parameters of the problem, generate (even write down) potential courses of action ('alternative think-