That raises the question of the common case where you do have a set of operations [A,B,C] that will result in attainment of the goal but where there is a potentially better solution out there potentially worth trying to find.

Thus the person in question has a choice. She can treat this as a task, or she can treat this as a problem. Thus wouldn't we define a "task" as where you have some goal D and selected a potential set of actions that will (may?) result in attainment of this goal. However a problem remains a problem even if such a task exists until such time as that task is selected to be used; merely having a task available does not mean you no longer have a problem.