30 ms·

Tools for Better Thinking

1092 points by mmoez 6y ago

arcticfox 6y ago
Ohh...I love this. I have a handful of these internal tools that I picked up over these years, but I never knew where to find more (or really, consciously thought to look for more). Now I have a bit of a roadmap. The ones I do have are so valuable that even if I get one more effective one off this list, it will be one of the best things I do this year.
- w4tson 6y ago
  You might enjoy this then https://fs.blog/mental-models/ https://fs.blog/mental-models/
- vajrabum 6y ago
  I always liked that stuff too. Here's a few more systems ones you might enjoy. https://www.systems-thinking.org/arch/arch.htm https://www.systems-thinking.org/arch/arch.htm
x32n23nr 6y ago
Side note: Also, nice minimal site. Refreshing to see well-designed, clean sites this days.
- raspyberr 6y ago
  You should get into the habit of actually checking the network requests. The site looks minimal but it's 1.1MB w/o Google analytics. It's what Maciej Cegłowski(https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm) would call Chickenshit Minimalism.
  - x32n23nr 6y ago
    You're right - spoiled by the internet connection. I guess I was referring more to the UI.
    - Enginerrrd 6y ago
      I'm just happy that the homepage mostly zooms the way it should. Nothing in the modern web pisses me off more than a developer trying to decide how my zoom behavior should work for me. Zoom is a very basic concept, I want to make the whole page larger or smaller. For some reason people insist on messing with that to make some menu, banner, or image popup appear the way they think I (or they) want it to when I try and zoom in or out, rather than just let me zoom as I please. This site still manages to fuck it up when I click on one of the images though.
  - putsjoe 6y ago
    Thanks for the link, a great talk
diggan 6y ago
Lovely idea and presentation! Will come very handy at times. Something I feel like is missing: Statecharts. Very powerful to be able to reason about state changes without having to deal with the explosion of states that state machines often ends up with. Sometimes also called hierarchical state machines.
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  I just started digging deep into this for a project this week and I am already in love. Highly recommend this book: https://www.state-machine.com/doc/PSiCC2_Excerpts.pdf https://www.state-machine.com/doc/PSiCC2_Excerpts.pdf
  - diggan 6y ago
    Neat! Thanks for sharing that! I made another comment about statecharts a while ago, listing some more resources and other comment threads on HN containing bunch of useful experience, resources and general information, starts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22747409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22747409
uk_king 6y ago
Looks fantastic! I like the Iceberg model.
M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
does 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
- cmehdy 6y ago
  Yesterday there was a Show HN about Obsidian[0] which you might be interested in. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598
  - M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
    you need an account for it though, right? meaning they have access to your stuff. and because they use unique formatting such as `![[filename]]`, it may not be easily cross-compatible
    - nighthawk454 6y ago
      I believe in yesterdays thread there was mention of the app storing all files locally in a portable Markdown format
      - M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
        Have you heard anything about Joplin? I believe it behaves similarly.
    - Hates_ 6y ago
      No account needed. It just works off local markdown files.
    - cgriswald 6y ago
      No account needed. They don't have access to your stuff—it works on local files—but appear to be working on a cloud option. They claim to support Commonmark and Github Flavored Markdown. [[filename]] is just a shortcut for [filename](filename), but in any case "Export to standard Markdown links" is on their short-term roadmap. You might also check out Zim.
inetsee 6y ago
There is a book titled "Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques". The last edition was published in 2006, so it's fairly dated by now. I found it very interesting back then, but it wouldn't have much about more recent tools or ideas. There is a summary of the book here https://www.ethos3.com/books/thinkertoys-a-handbook-of-creative-thinking-techniques-book-summary/ https://www.ethos3.com/books/thinkertoys-a-handbook-of-creat...
- seesaw 6y ago
  +1. I found one in my local library few months back. It breaks down the process to solve a problem and lists different approaches. It is a good read.
- chadcmulligan 6y ago
  This is a good one to - "The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving" by Morgan D. Jones, ( techniques as used by the CIA no less! :-) ). https://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Toolkit-Powerful-Techniques-Problem-dp-0812928083/dp/0812928083 https://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Toolkit-Powerful-Techniques-...
drewcoo 6y ago
So an "iceberg model" is about trends and patterns over time? That's adding a dimension to the iceberg's ocean and I think the analogy breaks. Usually icebergs are to describe partial occlusion. Also alarming is that in the example for that model QA is something that happens post-release. If so, I expect quality to be a looming iceberg.
Rochus 6y ago
Outliners are definitely missing, such as https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline/ https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline/. You can structure your thoughts while you type, even while you're talking to other people. And you can make cross-references and make appear thoughts (or action items and such) in other places using translucent active links. Or copy/paste structured text from the web or aggregate links with notes, etc.
paulorlando 6y ago
Good list. You might also like this one focused on thinking about systems: https://unintendedconsequenc.es/ https://unintendedconsequenc.es/
rememberlenny 6y ago
The tree-like mind maps from these are made in MindNode [1]. [1]: https://mindnode.com/ https://mindnode.com/
- Jestar342 6y ago
  Oh wow. Mac/iOS only. When was this a thing?
  - Reelin 6y ago
    FreeMind is FOSS and cross platform (Java) although I haven't used it in years and it doesn't appear to have had a new release in quite some time. (Wikipedia says the fork Freeplane is active?)
  - AdamGibbins 6y ago
    For as long as Mac's have existed? Some developers prefer to focus on one ecosystem, Omni Group for example.
ggregoire 6y ago
No direct relation but reminds me of https://datavizcatalogue.com/search.html https://datavizcatalogue.com/search.html (which is great btw!)
- wintermutestwin 6y ago
  That link is incredibly helpful! Only slightly non-sequitur...
Hoasi 6y ago
Here is a trove of similar thinking tools to generate ideas, for those interested: http://creatingminds.org/tools/tools_ideation.htm http://creatingminds.org/tools/tools_ideation.htm
nickjj 6y ago
Very cool idea but I was disappointed that Socratic Questioning wasn't included. Here's an example of how that can be applied to tech decisions: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-docker-today https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-docker-tod...
- juliend2 6y ago
  It is mentioned in "First principles": https://untools.co/first-principles https://untools.co/first-principles
ddelt 6y ago
I love reading about and visualizing about mental models. This site is great for quickly and concisely internalizing them! Thank you for making it! Another great resource for folks who like reading about these: https://fs.blog/mental-models/ https://fs.blog/mental-models/ I've actually read the mental models series of books put out by the above author, and I also highly recommend those for a deeper dive.
mrtrombone 6y ago
Fantastic toolset. I found the posts by Leyla Acaroglu [1] an excellent introduction to systems thinking and many of these concepts [1]: https://medium.com/disruptive-design/search?q=tools%20for%20systems%20thinkers https://medium.com/disruptive-design/search?q=tools%20for%20...
localhost 6y ago
This is a really nice presentation of these ideas. However, I think that the Decision Matrix idea is too complicated: specifically the part where he advocates adding a weighting to each factor being considered to arrive at a numerical score. At Microsoft, some of us use a system that I like to call the "Abolade decision making framework." It's the same idea, but instead of assigning weights to factors, we simply rank them. Additionally, the factors are expressed as positive attributes and an option either has that factor or it doesn't. A factor could be "Has vibrant colors" or it could be "Less than $10" for example. The type of a factor is Boolean :) The goal is to generate a table with the options presented as columns and the factors presented as rows. You spend a lot of time as a group figuring out what the factors are, and then you spend a lot of time ranking them. Once you have agreement, you start working on the options. The winning option is one where you have the longest continuous line of check marks for each factor starting from the top. Smart people, of course will try to game this system to choose their preferred outcome ... you need to be vigilant about this :)
- khimaros 6y ago
  Is there somewhere I could read further about the Abolade framework? I can't seem to find any good resources from a quick web search.
  - localhost 6y ago
    I don’t think there’s anything public about this. Not that there is anything particularly secret about this at all. It’s very straightforward and I’ve described its salient points above.
  - asdfgeoff 6y ago
    +1, I would love to read more about this, particularly around how it scales to multiple (possibly overlapping) options. > Additionally, the factors are expressed as positive attributes and an option either has that factor or it doesn't. This is very intuitive for binary decisions, where the "pros" of one option are the "cons" of the other. How do you scale it to multiple options though? (e.g. if I am deciding between internet providers, speed is clearly an important factor, but I may have 3 options with low/medium/high speed respectively)
alexashka 6y ago
One important aspect of human thinking is the need to form narratives to make sense of the world. We don't live or think in abstract algebra or abstract heuristics. We live and think in a world-view in which problems arise and for each problem, we have a set of potential solutions, often unconscious. This website has good information - it just doesn't do a good job of organizing them into a coherent narrative. It's not enough to know what probability is, if you never think to use it to ask the question what are the chances one religion out of thousands that all claim they are the only true religion, is actually the true religion? One of the big issues of modern society is people being taught/given disconnected bits of information, without a guide on how to fit them into a coherent narrative. This isn't done by accident and a lot of people have given it a great deal of thought - some call it post-modernism.
cercatrova 6y ago
I like the concept, I see many sites like these. However, who actually uses these in a day to day situation? It feels like these thinking models need to be internalized in more than just a superficial way to get any real use out of them, and I wonder if a book or course wouldn't integrate better with one's mind.
shahbaby 6y ago
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.
- cjsawyer 6y ago
  You can’t answer the question until it exits!
- typicalbender 6y ago
  It's amazing how much a technique like rubber ducking[1] helps to work through issues. The number of times I've felt like I have no idea how to solve a problem until the moment after I ask someone else is incredible. I think the act of thinking how to explain the problem to someone else really helps trigger the problem solving side of the brain. That and the number of times taking a 10 minute walk has been more productive than hours of debugging time is frankly mind boggling. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
  - tripu 6y ago
    Rubber duck debugging is extremely useful to unblock. I very rarely use an inanimate object, though — for me, the real help is the first or second (apparently very basic) question that the other person poses to me. That key question usually comes at what would seem the beginning of my explanation, but there lies the magic. Rubber ducks don't ask questions.
  - agustamir 6y ago
    I was stuck debugging a chip for a day until I finally decided to write to the FAE. I sit down, write my problem in the simplest possible language, list all the tricks I tried and asked for a solution. Then I'm reading my email to make sure everything is in order and voila - one last thing to try. and that step worked.
    - 6y ago
koolhead17 6y ago
Reading autobiography of Benjamin Franklin makes me feel we don't need tools but willingness within. He had a notebook and pen with him.
- enchiridion 6y ago
  I think this speaks to the idea of rubber ducking. I think a fair amount of problem solving ability is at the boundary of the internal and external. Of course this is imprecise scientifically, but hopefully the idea is clear.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Just because some people can multiply large numbers in their head, that doesn't mean that other people won't benefit from a pocket calculator.
- HourglassFR 6y ago
  To be fair, a notebook and a pen are fantastic thinking tools. You maybe could argue that the tools provided here are not that useful but thinking tools in general are a necessity, Daniel Dennet makes some compeling arguments for this. "You can't do much carpentry with your bare hands, and you can't do much thinking with your bare brain". — Bo Dahlbom
timhigins 6y ago
Whenever I see something like this or other "mental model" tools, I just think: soon this will be obsolete, as the human who used to make decisions in a given job is replaced by AI.
modzu 6y ago
the scientific method
OctopusSandwich 6y ago
Do 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.
- kevindeasis 6y ago
  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
- Jakob 6y ago
  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/ 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. :)
- doomjunky 6y ago
  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/1144597746986422272 https://twitter.com/fermatslibrary/status/114459774698642227... https://fs.blog/2013/10/inversion/ https://fs.blog/2013/10/inversion/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_Jacob_Jacobi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_Jacob_Jacobi
awill88 6y ago
This 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.
pantulis 6y ago
Sometimes 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.
imvetri 6y ago
Just meditate, please do not load more pain to head. The article shares some good techniques, use the same techniques using pen and paper and it is healthier. P.S. Its a personal preference, I'm not trying to put down the tool, its great and can be used as a training material for better thinking.
foobar_ 6y ago
Speed vs quality is a big one. You could even call it speed vs accuracy and add a third factor like cost. This is largest the difference between the biggest companies like Android vs Windows vs Apple and even programming languages like PHP vs Python. Most companies optimise for speed and a lower cost and wonder why their products are a pile of crap. Optimising for speed also means taking more ethical shortcuts and bad code in hope of rectifying them later and sacrificing everything for faster outcomes. Worse is better and let us just dump plastic everywhere while donating to social causes. On the flip side in deciding for quality you take longer time to release, more standards to full-fill and being overall more responsible for the product which might take more time to market. A better quality also implies more cost for the end product and might actually create a complex product. A bag which is environmentally safe might have complex incantations needed to clean it for the next use.
amjd 6y ago
Similar website that was posted a few months ago, for those interested: https://www.mentalmodelsbox.com/ https://www.mentalmodelsbox.com/ I don't reckon it gets updated much, though.
satoshikenzo 6y ago
"An important aspect of learning about strategies is the conditional knowledge of when and why to use them appropriately" (Krathwohl et al.) I wanted to compile a similar list of strategies myself, however I couldn't quite understand when to apply them. After some research, my view is that to understand when to apply these general thinking/problem-solving strategies, one needs to know the goal of the task and the cognitive processes involved i.e. it requires conditional knowledge which is part of metacognition. Wonderful list though!
playing_colours 6y ago
TRIZ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ) “theory of the resolution of invention-related tasks”. It was invented in Soviet Union. TRIZ is basically a toolset to analyse and solve engineering problems; it can help with “inventing“ tasks. The system is well developed and quite sophisticated with a variety of techniques and approaches. I found this book to be a good introduction: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/TRIZ+for+Engineers%3A+Enabling+Inventive+Problem+Solving-p-9780470741887 https://www.wiley.com/en-us/TRIZ+for+Engineers%3A+Enabling+I...
- petra 6y ago
  Have you found it useful to non-mechanical problems?
blackrock 6y ago
I use markdown. VSCode has a nice plugin for it. And so does a few other editors. It’s simple, and easy to use. Pure text, and allows you to do some formatting. Especially, the code preview. This allows me to brainstorm, and just type out random things at will. And I can reorganize it later. And when I want to read it, then I switch on the viewer, and all my text is nicely presented.
- mosselman 6y ago
  Did you even look at the link?
_theory_ 6y ago
If this sort of thing appeals to you, you might enjoy Poor Charlie's Almanack, which can be found on archive.org right now for the low, low price of free: https://archive.org/search.php?query=poor%20%20charlie%27s%20almanack https://archive.org/search.php?query=poor%20%20charlie%27s%2...
jiujitsunews 6y ago
great!

1092 points by mmoez 6y ago

Ohh...I love this. I have a handful of these internal tools that I picked up over these years, but I never knew where to find more (or really, consciously thought to look for more). Now I have a bit of a roadmap. The ones I do have are so valuable that even if I get one more effective one off this list, it will be one of the best things I do this year.

w4tson 6y ago
You might enjoy this then https://fs.blog/mental-models/ https://fs.blog/mental-models/
vajrabum 6y ago
I always liked that stuff too. Here's a few more systems ones you might enjoy. https://www.systems-thinking.org/arch/arch.htm https://www.systems-thinking.org/arch/arch.htm

x32n23nr 6y ago

Side note: Also, nice minimal site. Refreshing to see well-designed, clean sites this days.

raspyberr 6y ago
You should get into the habit of actually checking the network requests. The site looks minimal but it's 1.1MB w/o Google analytics. It's what Maciej Cegłowski(https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm) would call Chickenshit Minimalism.
- x32n23nr 6y ago
  You're right - spoiled by the internet connection. I guess I was referring more to the UI.
  - Enginerrrd 6y ago
    I'm just happy that the homepage mostly zooms the way it should. Nothing in the modern web pisses me off more than a developer trying to decide how my zoom behavior should work for me. Zoom is a very basic concept, I want to make the whole page larger or smaller. For some reason people insist on messing with that to make some menu, banner, or image popup appear the way they think I (or they) want it to when I try and zoom in or out, rather than just let me zoom as I please. This site still manages to fuck it up when I click on one of the images though.
- putsjoe 6y ago
  Thanks for the link, a great talk

diggan 6y ago

Lovely idea and presentation! Will come very handy at times. Something I feel like is missing: Statecharts. Very powerful to be able to reason about state changes without having to deal with the explosion of states that state machines often ends up with. Sometimes also called hierarchical state machines.

tonyarkles 6y ago
I just started digging deep into this for a project this week and I am already in love. Highly recommend this book: https://www.state-machine.com/doc/PSiCC2_Excerpts.pdf https://www.state-machine.com/doc/PSiCC2_Excerpts.pdf
- diggan 6y ago
  Neat! Thanks for sharing that! I made another comment about statecharts a while ago, listing some more resources and other comment threads on HN containing bunch of useful experience, resources and general information, starts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22747409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22747409

uk_king 6y ago

Looks fantastic! I like the Iceberg model.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago

does 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

cmehdy 6y ago
Yesterday there was a Show HN about Obsidian[0] which you might be interested in. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598
- M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
  you need an account for it though, right? meaning they have access to your stuff. and because they use unique formatting such as `![[filename]]`, it may not be easily cross-compatible
  - nighthawk454 6y ago
    I believe in yesterdays thread there was mention of the app storing all files locally in a portable Markdown format
    - M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
      Have you heard anything about Joplin? I believe it behaves similarly.
  - Hates_ 6y ago
    No account needed. It just works off local markdown files.
  - cgriswald 6y ago
    No account needed. They don't have access to your stuff—it works on local files—but appear to be working on a cloud option. They claim to support Commonmark and Github Flavored Markdown. [[filename]] is just a shortcut for [filename](filename), but in any case "Export to standard Markdown links" is on their short-term roadmap. You might also check out Zim.

inetsee 6y ago

There is a book titled "Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques". The last edition was published in 2006, so it's fairly dated by now. I found it very interesting back then, but it wouldn't have much about more recent tools or ideas. There is a summary of the book here https://www.ethos3.com/books/thinkertoys-a-handbook-of-creative-thinking-techniques-book-summary/ https://www.ethos3.com/books/thinkertoys-a-handbook-of-creat...

seesaw 6y ago
+1. I found one in my local library few months back. It breaks down the process to solve a problem and lists different approaches. It is a good read.
chadcmulligan 6y ago
This is a good one to - "The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving" by Morgan D. Jones, ( techniques as used by the CIA no less! :-) ). https://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Toolkit-Powerful-Techniques-Problem-dp-0812928083/dp/0812928083 https://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Toolkit-Powerful-Techniques-...

drewcoo 6y ago

So an "iceberg model" is about trends and patterns over time? That's adding a dimension to the iceberg's ocean and I think the analogy breaks. Usually icebergs are to describe partial occlusion. Also alarming is that in the example for that model QA is something that happens post-release. If so, I expect quality to be a looming iceberg.

Rochus 6y ago

Outliners are definitely missing, such as https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline/ https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline/. You can structure your thoughts while you type, even while you're talking to other people. And you can make cross-references and make appear thoughts (or action items and such) in other places using translucent active links. Or copy/paste structured text from the web or aggregate links with notes, etc.

paulorlando 6y ago

Good list. You might also like this one focused on thinking about systems: https://unintendedconsequenc.es/ https://unintendedconsequenc.es/

rememberlenny 6y ago

The tree-like mind maps from these are made in MindNode [1]. [1]: https://mindnode.com/ https://mindnode.com/

Jestar342 6y ago
Oh wow. Mac/iOS only. When was this a thing?
- Reelin 6y ago
  FreeMind is FOSS and cross platform (Java) although I haven't used it in years and it doesn't appear to have had a new release in quite some time. (Wikipedia says the fork Freeplane is active?)
- AdamGibbins 6y ago
  For as long as Mac's have existed? Some developers prefer to focus on one ecosystem, Omni Group for example.

ggregoire 6y ago

No direct relation but reminds me of https://datavizcatalogue.com/search.html https://datavizcatalogue.com/search.html (which is great btw!)

wintermutestwin 6y ago
That link is incredibly helpful! Only slightly non-sequitur...

Hoasi 6y ago

Here is a trove of similar thinking tools to generate ideas, for those interested: http://creatingminds.org/tools/tools_ideation.htm http://creatingminds.org/tools/tools_ideation.htm

nickjj 6y ago

Very cool idea but I was disappointed that Socratic Questioning wasn't included. Here's an example of how that can be applied to tech decisions: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-docker-today https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-docker-tod...

juliend2 6y ago
It is mentioned in "First principles": https://untools.co/first-principles https://untools.co/first-principles

ddelt 6y ago

I love reading about and visualizing about mental models. This site is great for quickly and concisely internalizing them! Thank you for making it! Another great resource for folks who like reading about these: https://fs.blog/mental-models/ https://fs.blog/mental-models/ I've actually read the mental models series of books put out by the above author, and I also highly recommend those for a deeper dive.

mrtrombone 6y ago

Fantastic toolset. I found the posts by Leyla Acaroglu [1] an excellent introduction to systems thinking and many of these concepts [1]: https://medium.com/disruptive-design/search?q=tools%20for%20systems%20thinkers https://medium.com/disruptive-design/search?q=tools%20for%20...

localhost 6y ago

This is a really nice presentation of these ideas. However, I think that the Decision Matrix idea is too complicated: specifically the part where he advocates adding a weighting to each factor being considered to arrive at a numerical score. At Microsoft, some of us use a system that I like to call the "Abolade decision making framework." It's the same idea, but instead of assigning weights to factors, we simply rank them. Additionally, the factors are expressed as positive attributes and an option either has that factor or it doesn't. A factor could be "Has vibrant colors" or it could be "Less than $10" for example. The type of a factor is Boolean :) The goal is to generate a table with the options presented as columns and the factors presented as rows. You spend a lot of time as a group figuring out what the factors are, and then you spend a lot of time ranking them. Once you have agreement, you start working on the options. The winning option is one where you have the longest continuous line of check marks for each factor starting from the top. Smart people, of course will try to game this system to choose their preferred outcome ... you need to be vigilant about this :)

khimaros 6y ago
Is there somewhere I could read further about the Abolade framework? I can't seem to find any good resources from a quick web search.
- localhost 6y ago
  I don’t think there’s anything public about this. Not that there is anything particularly secret about this at all. It’s very straightforward and I’ve described its salient points above.
- asdfgeoff 6y ago
  +1, I would love to read more about this, particularly around how it scales to multiple (possibly overlapping) options. > Additionally, the factors are expressed as positive attributes and an option either has that factor or it doesn't. This is very intuitive for binary decisions, where the "pros" of one option are the "cons" of the other. How do you scale it to multiple options though? (e.g. if I am deciding between internet providers, speed is clearly an important factor, but I may have 3 options with low/medium/high speed respectively)

alexashka 6y ago

One important aspect of human thinking is the need to form narratives to make sense of the world. We don't live or think in abstract algebra or abstract heuristics. We live and think in a world-view in which problems arise and for each problem, we have a set of potential solutions, often unconscious. This website has good information - it just doesn't do a good job of organizing them into a coherent narrative. It's not enough to know what probability is, if you never think to use it to ask the question what are the chances one religion out of thousands that all claim they are the only true religion, is actually the true religion? One of the big issues of modern society is people being taught/given disconnected bits of information, without a guide on how to fit them into a coherent narrative. This isn't done by accident and a lot of people have given it a great deal of thought - some call it post-modernism.

cercatrova 6y ago

I like the concept, I see many sites like these. However, who actually uses these in a day to day situation? It feels like these thinking models need to be internalized in more than just a superficial way to get any real use out of them, and I wonder if a book or course wouldn't integrate better with one's mind.

shahbaby 6y ago

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.

cjsawyer 6y ago
You can’t answer the question until it exits!
typicalbender 6y ago
It's amazing how much a technique like rubber ducking[1] helps to work through issues. The number of times I've felt like I have no idea how to solve a problem until the moment after I ask someone else is incredible. I think the act of thinking how to explain the problem to someone else really helps trigger the problem solving side of the brain. That and the number of times taking a 10 minute walk has been more productive than hours of debugging time is frankly mind boggling. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
- tripu 6y ago
  Rubber duck debugging is extremely useful to unblock. I very rarely use an inanimate object, though — for me, the real help is the first or second (apparently very basic) question that the other person poses to me. That key question usually comes at what would seem the beginning of my explanation, but there lies the magic. Rubber ducks don't ask questions.
- agustamir 6y ago
  I was stuck debugging a chip for a day until I finally decided to write to the FAE. I sit down, write my problem in the simplest possible language, list all the tricks I tried and asked for a solution. Then I'm reading my email to make sure everything is in order and voila - one last thing to try. and that step worked.
  - 6y ago

koolhead17 6y ago

Reading autobiography of Benjamin Franklin makes me feel we don't need tools but willingness within. He had a notebook and pen with him.

enchiridion 6y ago
I think this speaks to the idea of rubber ducking. I think a fair amount of problem solving ability is at the boundary of the internal and external. Of course this is imprecise scientifically, but hopefully the idea is clear.
adrianN 6y ago
Just because some people can multiply large numbers in their head, that doesn't mean that other people won't benefit from a pocket calculator.
HourglassFR 6y ago
To be fair, a notebook and a pen are fantastic thinking tools. You maybe could argue that the tools provided here are not that useful but thinking tools in general are a necessity, Daniel Dennet makes some compeling arguments for this. "You can't do much carpentry with your bare hands, and you can't do much thinking with your bare brain". — Bo Dahlbom

timhigins 6y ago

Whenever I see something like this or other "mental model" tools, I just think: soon this will be obsolete, as the human who used to make decisions in a given job is replaced by AI.

modzu 6y ago

the scientific method

OctopusSandwich 6y ago

Do 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.

kevindeasis 6y ago
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
Jakob 6y ago
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/ 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. :)
doomjunky 6y ago
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/1144597746986422272 https://twitter.com/fermatslibrary/status/114459774698642227... https://fs.blog/2013/10/inversion/ https://fs.blog/2013/10/inversion/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_Jacob_Jacobi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_Jacob_Jacobi

awill88 6y ago

This 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.

pantulis 6y ago

Sometimes 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.

imvetri 6y ago

Just meditate, please do not load more pain to head. The article shares some good techniques, use the same techniques using pen and paper and it is healthier. P.S. Its a personal preference, I'm not trying to put down the tool, its great and can be used as a training material for better thinking.

foobar_ 6y ago

Speed vs quality is a big one. You could even call it speed vs accuracy and add a third factor like cost. This is largest the difference between the biggest companies like Android vs Windows vs Apple and even programming languages like PHP vs Python. Most companies optimise for speed and a lower cost and wonder why their products are a pile of crap. Optimising for speed also means taking more ethical shortcuts and bad code in hope of rectifying them later and sacrificing everything for faster outcomes. Worse is better and let us just dump plastic everywhere while donating to social causes. On the flip side in deciding for quality you take longer time to release, more standards to full-fill and being overall more responsible for the product which might take more time to market. A better quality also implies more cost for the end product and might actually create a complex product. A bag which is environmentally safe might have complex incantations needed to clean it for the next use.

amjd 6y ago

Similar website that was posted a few months ago, for those interested: https://www.mentalmodelsbox.com/ https://www.mentalmodelsbox.com/ I don't reckon it gets updated much, though.

satoshikenzo 6y ago

"An important aspect of learning about strategies is the conditional knowledge of when and why to use them appropriately" (Krathwohl et al.) I wanted to compile a similar list of strategies myself, however I couldn't quite understand when to apply them. After some research, my view is that to understand when to apply these general thinking/problem-solving strategies, one needs to know the goal of the task and the cognitive processes involved i.e. it requires conditional knowledge which is part of metacognition. Wonderful list though!

playing_colours 6y ago

TRIZ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ) “theory of the resolution of invention-related tasks”. It was invented in Soviet Union. TRIZ is basically a toolset to analyse and solve engineering problems; it can help with “inventing“ tasks. The system is well developed and quite sophisticated with a variety of techniques and approaches. I found this book to be a good introduction: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/TRIZ+for+Engineers%3A+Enabling+Inventive+Problem+Solving-p-9780470741887 https://www.wiley.com/en-us/TRIZ+for+Engineers%3A+Enabling+I...

petra 6y ago
Have you found it useful to non-mechanical problems?

blackrock 6y ago

I use markdown. VSCode has a nice plugin for it. And so does a few other editors. It’s simple, and easy to use. Pure text, and allows you to do some formatting. Especially, the code preview. This allows me to brainstorm, and just type out random things at will. And I can reorganize it later. And when I want to read it, then I switch on the viewer, and all my text is nicely presented.

mosselman 6y ago
Did you even look at the link?

_theory_ 6y ago

If this sort of thing appeals to you, you might enjoy Poor Charlie's Almanack, which can be found on archive.org right now for the low, low price of free: https://archive.org/search.php?query=poor%20%20charlie%27s%20almanack https://archive.org/search.php?query=poor%20%20charlie%27s%2...

jiujitsunews 6y ago

great!