Tools for Thought

Before we can manage our options, we need to have options. By default, the brain organizes learned experience into stable perceptual frameworks and common response patterns. It needs to do this. We wouldn’t want to consider every possible way of crossing the street; we just look both ways and walk if we see no coming vehicles. When encountering new situations, we usually draw on experience for efficiency’s sake. We do what works: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But sometimes we need to approach a problem or a project in a new way, even at the expense of efficiency. Instead of pursuing the first idea that occurs to us, we need to open up our menu of options.

To brainstorm on a problem, capture the obvious solutions first, then allocate a period of time to think of as many alternative solutions as possible without judging them. Then reexamine all solutions.

A good time period to start with is three minutes. Within the three minutes, continue to generate alternatives, even if — especially if — you come up with a good solution well before the time period ends. Use all of the time you’ve allocated. You can pick shorter periods or longer periods. But shorter periods tend not to be long enough to think of many new approaches. Longer periods, like 30 minutes, will tend to yield mostly minor variations on few fundamentally different approaches.

An Example

Someone want to cancel his cell phone account due to poor coverage and poor customer service, but he’s still under contract and would have to pay an early termination fee. The obvious options would be:

• Cancel and pay the fee
• Wait for the contract to expire

Then he lists some alternatives, without worrying about whether or not they’re usable. They may not be usable in the form they’re first expressed, but might be with some modification. In any case, he forges ahead:

• Demand unlimited roaming, threatening to cancel if not honored
• Downgrade to the carrier’s cheapest plan, porting his main number to a new carrier
• See if the charges can be expensed by his company for the remainder of the contract, using a new phone and carrier for personal calls
• Call CS and answer “no” when asked if he’s satisfied with his service

None of these are particularly sound alternatives, but they may lead to a creative accommodation. Let’s look at the second example: downgrading. He might currently be paying $60 a month on his current plan. He finds that he can get a bare bones plan (100 minutes per month, no text messing, etc.) for $20. Doing some research, he discovers that another carrier is offering a plan for $40 a month that’s nearly identical to the $60 plan he signed up for 10 months ago. So he adds the second carrier, using their line for his primary phone (with or without number portability), then dumps the unwanted carrier when the contract expires. He might even be able to combine that alternative with the third one — getting one of the lines expensed by his company.

In the fourth example, he can either make a call to customer service on some routine pretext, or use the first option, demanding unlimited roaming. At the end of the call, when he’s asked if he’s satisfied with his service, he tells the representive that he’s not. In many cases, negative feedback gets escalated, and someone in management calls back the customer to see if there’s some way to improve the situation.

He may end up opting for the obvious approaches, but by brainstorming he now has three times as many options as before, none of which are exclusive. Any of these approaches can be further examined for improvement opportunities: What would it take to make this solution work?

Brainstorming for Problems

Sometimes the difficulty in solving a problem lies in how we’ve defined “the” problem. Framing a problem a certain way frames the array of potential solutions. Someone wants to reduce her fast food consumption. Alternative problem definitions might be:

• Finding more time to cook at home
• Finding meals that are quick to prepare
• Becoming more proficient at cooking
• Ordering fast food in smaller sizes and quantities
• Transitioning to a diet low in sodium, fat, carbohydrates, etc.
• Minimizing or avoiding exposure to fast food venues

She expands way she defines the problem first, creating alternative problems, then takes each or any one or these and brainstorms alternative solutions.

Just because we think of a problem or solution in a certain way first doesn’t make it the best way. By generating alternatives, we create a broader context for deciding the best course of action. If the first, obvious approach turns out to be the best one, we’ve lost nothing by thinking beyond it.

Free Association

In addition to generating alternatives, we may need to simply capture aspects of a problem to make sure that our attention has covered a sufficiently broad scope. Several diagramming options like mind maps are applicable, but in many cases all that’s required is a simple checklist. Applying checklists to the fast food example:

• saving money
• eating less
• cooking
• health
• meal times
• exercise
• menu options
• convenience
• appetite
• habit

And so on. Any of these considerations can be expanded into its own checklist. An outliner, like OmniOutliner or Microsoft Word’s Outline View, provides a good structure for nested checklists: lists can be expanded, collapsed and reordered. As with brainstorming, define a time interval to generate considerations, and keep free associating until you reach the end of that period.