Know this one: Be like grass instead of an oak to better weather the storm? Yeah, but grass never sailed the oceans as a mast. To each its own task.
RALP-H is the acronym for Recursive Algorithm for soLving Problems - with a certain amount of Heuristics..
Do you have a problem that you cannot solve? Using RALP-H you will track backwards down the decision pathways and unveil those points at which decisions that have a direct bearing on your problem were either incorrectly taken or executed. Experience has shown that this is always the result of either lacking or incorrect information. Once you supply the lacking or correct information your tree of decision pathways will correct itself and your problem will lose its label of being one.
Another way of saying it is: Check for iterational integrity. Then complications will disappear and complexity will return. This simply means that even though here I describe its use in a personal environment it can be applied in any and every system!
And as much as it can effectively be employed as a planning tool here I focus on its engagement as a problem solver.
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RALP-H is an integral building block of OP_n^x - the Ordering-Principle and Ordering-Potential employed in denkern.
Premises of RALP-H:
My experience and sensitivty have shown me that achieving a goal is not fulfilling. Achieving a goal has become a god on a pedestal, it is a hype that completely obscures what the task of a goal is:A goal is a guide that I set in place to aid me in accomplishing a task I set myself. It is there to guide my steps.So - as easily as I can set a goal I can reset it to bring its guidance into alignment with the accomplishment of my task.
It is accomplishing a task which brings fulfillment. That is what at the end of the day lets me sit down, breathe deeply and be at peace.
Steps are executables - it is what I can actively, repeatedly do.
Any system, and that includes you, and me where we stand today, has a developmental pathway of decisions. Decisions are made based on information available. Any decision made (= growth) with lacking or incorrect information will bring forth a compromised branch of decision pathways that will have a knock-on effect: Iterational integrity is compromised.This compromising of the decision pathways complicates the system, destroying its complexity, its iterational integrity, up to a point where the system cannot fulfill the task for which it was built. And you have an unsolvable problem.
Where you are able to drill down to the decision-point where the information was lacking or incorrect and can supply to that decision the lacking or correct information, the decision pathway from there on will right itself automatically through all pathways and decision points because iterational integrity is restored. The complication is eradicated, complexity is restored and the effect will knock on up to todays visible level. As a result the seemingly unsolvable problem collapses into itself and becomes non-existent.
Definitions:
A task: is something that I want to accomplish, something that I want to get done. It may be undefined, not really clear, it may not even have a name yet. Of the problems that float around my head like a flock of clouds it is that one that I pull out of that flock onto my table.It is what I set myself to get done. I want a cake. I want to study. I want to save the world. I want a home. Of all the problems I face this is the one I want to solve. It is the step that has not yet become a step.
Steps: are executables. It is something I have mastered and can repeatedly do reliably. In the context of RALP-H it is a (sub-)task that I have accomplished and whose execution I can guarantee without second thought. I have built 10 businesses . This to me is a step, not a task anymore. I can tie my shoes. I can bake a cake. I can drive a car. It is a task I have accomplished and can accomplish again and again and again, repeatedly, at the drop of a hat. It takes no special effort anymore.
A goal: is like a flagpole that I set to guide my steps in the accomplishment of the task I have set myself.For a goal to do that and to spur me into action, to do, it must be firmly anchored. Anchored in time. Anchored in space: The cake is in front of grandma, on the table in her home at 16:00 on Tuesday afternoon next week.
Employing RALP-H - The Recursive Algorithm for soLving Problems, with a certain amount of Heuristic
Two important points to adhere to:
As you run through this procedure and reiterate it two things will emerge:
Again: Take no action until you have completed the process.Once you have completed it you will have a list of what you can and need to do. As you you do these your problem will collapse into itself and disappear.You will accomplish your task and once again peace will settle in your life.
RALP-H is a tool. Any tool can be handled with great skill. Skill comes with practice. Practice is best gained at entry level. suggest: Practice first with a small problem, something you consider surmountable but have not done yet. Because...This builds skill level and trust in the process outlined above.The meticulousness and practice you put into applying this RALP-H determines the depth to which you can take this.
I clearly differentiate between complicated (compromised iterational integrity in the growth of a complex system) and complex (iterational integrity in the growth of a system).
We are complex systems within a complex environment (a collection of complicated and complex systems).
The pure application of the above procedure will readily throw up a unmanageable number of sub(-sub-sub...)-tasks and this is where heuristics - life experience - can aid in choosing which sub-task or which steps comprise a sub-task and thus speed up this process.
Heuristics can only aid. Where they replace personal choice they will complicate the result, iterational integrity will be compromised.
RALP-H is a formalisation of something we do automatically everyday, anyway. Sometimes and in some areas with more acumen, sometimes with less.It is this formalisation that makes RALP-H applicable to every! system, big, small, complicated, simple, complex. Human, business, computer program, city development, shipping routes - any! conceivable system.
It can help eliminate complications in current systems.It can aid in maintaining complexity in the development of a system.It can drill down, even if the kernel of the system is not known to you.
I have made it into a widely applicable protocol.And its simplicity and robustness make it easy to corroborate its results, even in highly complex systems.
Pictorially this is what the process would look like: