It’s very important to fully understand and define a problem before trying to solve it. I overheard a story that illustrates this quite nicely.

A mother heard her three-year old son screaming hysterically in the bathroom, and ran over to see what was wrong. He was holding his hand up in the hair, looking at it and screaming. In typical parent fashion, she looked at it, couldn’t see any blood or bruises, assumed it was an owee (pronounced ow-ee), and kissed it all over. The boy stops crying, and she asked him what was wrong. He answered “I peed on my hand”.

No, this didn’t happen to me, but it easily could. Define that problem first!