I've found that the most underrated problem solving tool is simply typing out my thought process. I used to be the type who asked a lot of questions until I realized that formulating the question was often more important than getting the answer.
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Tools for Better Thinking
81–90 of 140 posts
Re: Tools for Better Thinking
#82Do any of these tool actually help people in everyday life?
Self-help is good but sometimes I wonder if people who yap about all these tools all the time even get anything substantial out of it.
Re: Tools for Better Thinking
#83does anyone know a simple app that allows hyperlinking within notes? I want to create a roam-style knowledge base, but most tools are too heavy for my purposes. I prefer to keep things cross-compatible and future proof with .txt or .rtf, but to my knowledge, neither allow hyperlinking to documents
jDownloader vielleicht ....
Re: Tools for Better Thinking
#84Do any of these tool actually help people in everyday life? Self-help is good but sometimes I wonder if people who yap about all these tools all the time even get anything substantial out of it.
Like the pareto principle,
there's a small amount of mental models that you'll find really useful in a recurring basis.
some of them might be helpful in rare situations
Re: Tools for Better Thinking
#85I've found that the most underrated problem solving tool is simply typing out my thought process. I used to be the type who asked a lot of questions until I realized that formulating the question was often more important than getting the answer.
When asking for help solving a problem, I start writing a question to ask someone, and then as I start explaining what I've tried (to try to be respectful of their time and them not have to repeat anything I've done) more and more things to try occur to me. By the time I've tried all the things that occur to me while describing the problem, I've solved the problem. That's the way it works out more often than not.
There's a name for that: rubber-duck debugging :)
Re: Tools for Better Thinking
#86This is great. I find I often do these things at work (such as second order thinking) but have never attempted to encapsulate it or differentiate from other ways of looking at things. Thank you for sharing.
Re: Tools for Better Thinking
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
When asking for help solving a problem, I start writing a question to ask someone, and then as I start explaining what I've tried (to try to be respectful of their time and them not have to repeat anything I've done) more and more things to try occur to me. By the time I've tried all the things that occur to me while describing the problem, I've solved the problem. That's the way it works out more often than not.
Exactly this. What is really weird, though, is that I have occasionally tried to promote this approach to people that ask my help, simply by asking them to write the request to me instead of calling. Also, getting the help request in written helps me to think the case and open issues in my own pace uninterrupted by discussion. The weird part? I have a strong feeling that more and more often (luckily not too often yet…
That sounds like a tricky message to deliver:
1. It could easily come across as "my time is more important than yours". 2. Depending on what they are asking for and how urgently they are treating it, they might not want a lesson in solving their own problems. They just want help fixing the problem. 3. A lot of people are self-centred. Of course their problem should be your top priority and you should drop what you're doing! /s
...So yeah, I'd be surprised if it didn't get a bad reaction sometimes. Perhaps seek to promote this approach when their problem is resolved. I would imagine they would be more receptive then.
Re: Tools for Better Thinking
#88Do any of these tool actually help people in everyday life? Self-help is good but sometimes I wonder if people who yap about all these tools all the time even get anything substantial out of it.
The tools on the linked website are very basic which are used on a daily basis:
"Issue trees": Write your problem down "First principles": 5-whys, which you do e.g. in a post mortem "Second-order thinking": think of mid- and long-term consequences "Connection circles": side-effects
You maybe think about mental models of which there are a lot (https://fs.blog/mental-models/) and there are some cargo cults and fancy words around them.
They have their right to exist though, e.g. I really like to end a meeting early because of the law of diminishing returns. :)
Re: Tools for Better Thinking
#89Sometimes it's been useful for me to use the tool used to state the problem as a guidance framework during the thought process.
So you could try to state the problem in a very structured way (say, a spreadsheet) and at the same time in a visual way (say, a presentation slide deck). Of course some people are better using one type than the other but that's where the trick relies: forcing yourself to think in a way that is not your "natural" way of thinking.
Re: Tools for Better Thinking
#90Do any of these tool actually help people in everyday life? Self-help is good but sometimes I wonder if people who yap about all these tools all the time even get anything substantial out of it.
The Inversion Methode:
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi was a German mathematician famous for his maxim "Invert, always invert". He believed that the solution of many hard problems can be clarified by re-expressing them in inverse form. Inversion forces new ways of thinking and helps uncover hidden solutions.
https://twitter.com/fermatslibrary/status/114459774698642227...