Sequential Problem Solving is a labor of love for all students who seek success and for the parents and teachers who guide them. Sequential Problem Solving also provides the lifelong-learner with the satisfaction of being able to measure his performance.
The goal of Sequential Problem Solving is to provide learners with a road map for successfully making decisions. Students can began their adult lives with a framework that will help them pick noble goals, know themselves, and be prepared for dealing with life's villains. They can thus achieve peace and joy, and can be prepared for making life's hard decisions as well.
Young people often dream of a loving spouse and joyful children. Older people dream of success in business. Still others dream of securing a suitable retirement. Whatever the age or the dream, the problems, of making dreams come true, share some similarities.
People solving problems share certain common steps in resolving those problems and face certain common difficulties. How do we develop solutions? Where do we get information to work with? Who should we trust for advise? At what point should we make a decision? What are the alternatives?
Study leads to success, and organization builds bridges to the future. Organized systematic thinking requires effort, and the effort is justified by predictable success. This is contrasted to happenstance decision making based on impulsiveness and wishful thinking. Sequential Problem Solving is about organized thinking, and justifying decisions based on solid facts, rather than on impulsiveness or emotional indulgence. Growing to maturity is about planning rather than acting on impulses or instant gratification. Instant gratification often has costly consequences that forethought might have averted. Sequential Problem Solving is about making dreams come true while minimizing the hidden costs.
I remember well the magic of that first romantic glance across a crowded ballroom, the guileless smile and downcast eyes that instantaneously made my heart skip a beat. I remember the soul stirring melody of Band of Gold and the lingering smell of peaches and the gentle winds against my ears on a pleasant summer night. Sequential Problem Solving is about memories and dreams, making them come true, and keeping them alive.
Sequential Problem Solving is about becoming both a success and a lifelong-learner. Problem solving has two aspects: physical problems in a scientific environment and personal problems in a spiritual inner world. This book uses well known classical literary selections as models for personal decision making and character development. These works were chosen primarily due to their ready availability.
Part of the fun of sequential problem solving is mentally rewriting stories to have more favorable outcomes. We imagine favorable outcomes naturally, but successful people do so in a more systematic fashion, that makes logical outcomes more certain. Using realistic logic rather than wishful emotion requires that we know ourselves, know our values and where they came from, and know clearly what our basic goals are in life. Sequential Problem Solving systematically outlines those aspects of our spiritual inner selves that play a part in our decision making and, largely, determine our success.
Sequential Problem Solving explores the nature of personal internal conflict and how literary characters change in the course of stories to overcome personal weaknesses. Successful learners learn to recognize their own internal conflicts and learn that courage is a skill anyone can learn to re-direct their own destiny.
The first step in the adventure of becoming courageous is to write down a philosophy of life: what we want to achieve and how we plan to treat other people. A few words will do: I want to be happy, healthy, wealthy, have a loving companion, help others, etc.