Tag: problem solving

21 Attempts Later: How ChatGPT and I Found the Answer Together


We talk about AI as if it’s magic.
Ask a question. Get an answer. Move on.

What we don’t talk about enough is what really happens when the answer doesn’t come easily.

This week, I learned that the hard way.

What looked simple on paper turned into 21 failed attempts, each one slightly different, each one confidently wrong. ChatGPT responded every time — clearly, logically, persuasively. And every time, something didn’t work.

That’s when I realised the first uncomfortable truth:

AI can sound right long before it is right.

The early illusion

The first few attempts were deceptive.

The responses were structured.
The explanations were neat.
Some even ended with words like “success”.

And yet… nothing actually happened.

Acknowledgement masqueraded as execution.
That illusion alone can waste hours if you’re not careful.

When confidence became the problem

By attempt seven or eight, both of us — ChatGPT and I — were confident.

The logic seemed airtight.
The fixes were small.
We were “almost there.”

That phrase — almost there — is dangerous.

Because it convinces you not to question your assumptions deeply enough.

The conversation changed

Somewhere around attempt eleven, I stopped asking ChatGPT what to do.

Instead, I started telling it what was wrong.

“This assumption doesn’t hold.”
“This part works; this doesn’t.”
“Let’s isolate just this behaviour.”

ChatGPT changed with me.

The answers slowed down.
The certainty softened.
The reasoning became cautious — collaborative.

That’s when it stopped feeling like a tool and started behaving like a thinking partner.

The humility phase

There was a stretch where neither of us rushed.

No clever shortcuts.
No sweeping rewrites.
Just deliberate, line-by-line progress.

I stopped expecting brilliance.
ChatGPT stopped pretending certainty.

Ironically, that’s when progress accelerated.

Attempt twenty-one

The final attempt didn’t announce itself.

No drama.
No celebration.

It simply worked.

And in that quiet moment, something became clear:

Success is often silent.
Failure is loud.

What this taught me about AI

ChatGPT didn’t replace thinking.
It demanded better thinking.

Weak prompts produced confident mistakes.
Better prompts invited reasoning.
Persistent correction reshaped responses in real time.

The miracle wasn’t AI.

The miracle was staying in the conversation.

The real takeaway

This wasn’t man versus machine.
And it wasn’t man commanding machine.

It was a convergence — through frustration, feedback, and patience.

Human intuition corrected AI assumptions.
AI pattern recognition sharpened human thinking.

Twenty-one failures later, the result wasn’t just success.

It was earned clarity.

Final thought:
The future won’t belong to people who use AI.
It will belong to those who can persist with it, long enough for understanding to emerge.

Because intelligence — human or artificial — means nothing without perseverance.

Excited with Challenges


It is a Challenge everywhere & it is so much fun having a Challenge. Last couple of week it has been issues of;

  • Delivery Delays
  • Shrinking Profits
  • Server Issues
  • Productivity Leaks
  • Escalating Costs

And can add more to the list. After reviewing the situation the findings are wonderful and after cracking the problem and working on the solution is always the best thing to do. Now I’ve a aggressive plans & programs to improve our performance on all aspects and move up the value chain quickly and effectively.

Difference between Focusing on Problems and Focusing on Solutions


Case 1

When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn’t work at zero gravity (ink won’t flow down to the writing surface).

To solve this problem, it took them one decade and $12 million. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C.

And what did the Russians do…?? They used a pencil.

Case 2

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soapbox, which happened in one ofJapan ‘s biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soapbox that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soapbox went through the assembly line empty.
Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soapboxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent a whoopee amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc., but instead came out with another solution.
He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soapbox passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Moral :

Always look for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problems.

The Difference between Focusing on Problems and Focusing on Solutions


One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan’s biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem.

Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent a whoopee amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc., but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Always look for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problems.