Three Approaches to Getting Out of a Quandary When You’re Out of Ideas
The first step (always the hardest, right?) In solving a problem is to admit you have it. We are all familiar with the feeling of fighting a scratch on our head for longer than we would like. It can take a while to relate the time we lost staring at the screen to the fact that we are stuck on something, and it’s time to try a new approach.
This post originally appearedon the Help Scout blog .
Obsession does not always manifest itself immediately, and we come to this realization in different ways. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I know that I avoid making serious decisions when I find myself playing too many solitaire games. Some of us procrastinate more productively, like Chris Brookins, head of engineering at Help Scout, who admits that he sometimes takes on “a bunch of easier tasks to avoid bigger ones.” Meanwhile, the tasks that occupy the first place on our lists remain unfulfilled.
Once you identify your personal problem avoidance tactics, it will be easier for you to recognize the “I’m stuck” moment. And it’s powerful because that’s when you can start doing something about it.
Here are some tactics to use the next time you find yourself deeply stuck.
1. Apply time-tested frameworks for problem solving
Bad news? “There is no problem-solving formula,” says Michael Kallett, author of Think Smarter . “If that were the case, we would include the world’s problems in the formula, and we would not have problems.” The good news is that there is no shortage of “ways to look at problems that generate ideas for solving them.”
My teammate Gregory Chotty loves mental models – the always available ways of framing and presenting perspective to the abstract – for problem solving. “ Inverse thinking is very practical and is useful for eliminating negativity,” says Greg. “Instead of“ What can I do to be brilliant? “You can start by asking,” What can I do to avoid being stupid? ” In this way, inversion thinking can eliminate troublesome problems.
Help Scout engineer Craig Davis, a retired healthcare professional, recognizes OPQRST, a mnemonic device that healthcare professionals use to diagnose patient problems. With a little practice, Craig says, it can be used to quickly diagnose just about any problem.
“If you can describe these questions to your doctor or mechanic, or ask these questions yourself when you are working on diagnosing a problem,” Craig says, “you will be surprised that the diagnosis almost spontaneously appears!”
2. Give it a rest: incubation period
Once you: a) realize that you are engaging in your favorite avoidance behavior and therefore b) realize that you are stuck, what then? You are on fire, so you will feel the urge to dig in and focus on the problem. Stop right there. This may not be natural at first, but once you grasp the pattern, you will find that patience pays off.
Step back and let your subconscious mind take over for a while.
Scientists call this the “incubation period” because our brains continue to work on problems after we consciously abandon them and do something else. Einstein called this “combinatorial playing” and reportedly achieved great success during his violin practice.
Activities that give you relative privacy, relieve distractions, and let your mind wander – long walks, meditation or prayer, a good night’s sleep, exercise, even boring commutes – allow your subconscious mind to work wonders. Have you ever wondered why in your soul you bring your best ideas to life? That’s why.
“It’s easy for me to make bad decisions at the moment, so the more time I take to understand, the better,” says Nick Francis, CEO of Help Scout. “I constantly think about relationships with my teammates and how I can better support and guide them. This awareness always comes when I am alone, for example, on a walk, in training, in the shower or while working on weekends. “
3. Look for an outside perspective
Talking to an outsider — a mentor, spouse, therapist, trusted friend, or colleague — will open up a new perspective on how to solve your problem. Describe what the problem is, what you did, and where you got stuck. Unlike you, they live outside the problem, so they will see it from a different angle and, hopefully, ask questions that you have not wondered for yourself. Sometimes it is enough to simply voice the problem to solve it; the very fact of saying it out loud can make the “right thing to do” painfully obvious.
“I break down problems into smaller pieces that I can take apart and then ask for help on the pieces that puzzle me,” says Chris, who communicates ideas from peer groups outside of work. He belongs to a group of eight other VPs of Development who meet quarterly, chat on Slack, and even follow the engagement guidelines. They discuss and help each other with political issues, personnel problems and difficult technical problems. “We tell each other everything,” Chris says. “We have no fear in this group.”
Nobody is insured
Accordingly, I am stuck writing this article. I couldn’t decide where to start or what to focus on, and I found myself staring mindlessly at the screen several times. I’ve worked on other projects. I may or may not play multiple rounds of solitaire. “Do I need to proofread a draft of your message?” I asked Greg on Slack. “Can you tell me what I’m saving for later?” I sent him a line from this post about cleaning our homes while “the most important tasks on our lists went unfulfilled,” and we virtually chuckled.
This shows how difficult it is to recognize a stuck – I cannot write an article on this very topic without becoming a victim of it. But in the end I realized what I was doing. I got up, closed my computer and took a walk around the city. I interviewed my teammates. I have read several books. I slept a little. And here it is, proof in the proverbial pudding: if it didn’t work, you would be reading something else.
3 approaches to failure | Scout help