Strategies for Solving Unfamiliar Problems

It feels reasonable to assume that solving unfamiliar problems gets harder with age. Why should we have to ask an old man to learn new tricks? He clearly doesn't have to... but what if he does?

When I first got into college, I really thought I knew a lot more of the computer landscape than I did. I thought my experiences with writing computer video games could apply to most other computer problems. I was dead wrong. The lesson was made abruptly noticable in my data structures class where I first felt some self doubt in my abilities. The class was full of what appeared to be rather obvious conclusions around how structuring data could make software programs run more efficiently and consume less space, but the level of difficulty involved with demonstrating, explaining, and repeating results was not so obvious. It was similar to the experience I saw in writing music. To hear an amazing song is easy. To write the song and produce the record is MUCH harder.

Even though I previously my applications I wrote were a spectacle for ones eyes in highschool, did not mean that the underlying technology behind the code was well within my professional pocket. I was a novice at best in the bigger picture of things.

Having the ability and experience to do something does not make you an expert. It makes you capable of leveraging that ability to become an expert or build projects/products. I sort of wanted a short cut where I both learned for the first time and became capable of practicing at the same exact time. But what can be done after a course, isn't ever the quality people want to pay for. [Making money was a key criteria to what it meant to me to be a professional of anything]

Back to the point, Bing Bong! I suspect because students tend to we match the structure our lives to a level of stress we can handle in order to achieve our goals and the fact that the world tends to get more complicated both with technology and population growth, it becomes a uncomfortable experience to open back up our learning capacity. To better explain: If we can't control our environment as it grows in complexity, we can instead limit our exposure to stress and change.... until we can't.

Although it may be a consequence of going too hard on ourselves at times when we needed to grow, that uncomfortable growing stage allows us to handle new problems as they come, regardless our our intentions. I believe that the unintentional problems we run into offer the best benefit when we overcome them. So in this post I want to provide you what I consider to be some concrete ways to solve new problems, without burning out or wasting too much time.

1. Ask your friends for their thoughts.

   Find a few friends/colleagues with totally different backgrounds. Ask your plumber, your family members friends, the doorman, anyone in different shoes than your own. It may be beneficial to avoid people you know too well, as their input may come with expectations and relationship specific biases. [Example of relationship bias would be that your mother may not be able to think of you doing anything other than what she already sees in you, and perhaps even has emotional attachment to your existing dilemma.. lots of variation here]

   Reason: With different backgrounds come different mindsets. Hearing what that next person says, may not be brilliant, but it may inspire the solution you need. Additionally, it can give you an appreciation for how complex and common the problem is. Just make sure to frame the question in a dialect that fits the person you are asking. [Don't ask in a way that requires a lot of hard-to-cover context unless you don't mind sharing the details.]
   
   "I've got a problem to resolve. Would you have a moment to let me know how you would approach or solve it?"
   
   or even as simple as
   "Have you ever come across a problem that is like this... ___problem____"
   
   Final action: Collect the thoughts on one page of paper.

2. What did you do last time?
   

   Consider the approach you used for the last unfamiliar problem you had to solve. Perhaps it was a social issue, or some other area that is far removed from the context of the original problem. Then ask yourself what from that experience can be useful for this situation.

3. Make some phony solution up and then tear it to bits

   Clearly we all are born with a natural ability to mislead others with our ideas, words, opinions... Consider your made up solution being something someone else suggested and then break it apart to pieces. This helps you avoid feeling like your idea is not good enough and will allow you better context into a solution. It's sort of like inviting a 3 year old there to suggest a solution. You already know they won't have your solution, but they may have the silly answer that sets your mind free from previous thinking patterns.

   The trick to this one is to consider the problem solution you made up no longer as your own. It's a tough mental exercise, but you must label that idea as someone elses to help remove your own tendency to procrastinate the problem or just use your own solution.