Studio Non Troppo

We humans tend to use categories a lot, at least as adults. Having a category allows us to save space in our brain; it’s like a compression system. By “compression system,” I just mean that it takes less brainpower to remember “a number whose six digits are eights” than to remember “eight hundred eighty eight thousand, eight hundred eighty eight” (it’s also easier to type).

So when someone asks me, “what do you do?”, it’s easy for me to reply that I am a professor. Or that I am a conductor. Or that I am a blogger.

Of course, I’m not principally a blogger. And, frankly, I feel uncomfortable with the statements “I am a professor” and “I am a conductor,” too. They’re convenient replies; they take considerably less time and brainpower to speak than it would to figure out and communicate my existential nature.

It can be good to take the easy way out and lean on a category. After all, I don’t want to bore absolutely everyone with endless self-analysis. But categories should be tools we can use to think; we shouldn’t let ourselves be the tools of categories.

So the next time you are trying to solve a problem, consider whether the categories you’re using to describe the problem are helping you solve it…or boxing you in.

Photo: davco9200

Your “power band” is where you’re most effective.

Maybe you can alphabetize the files, but with that Ph.D. in Information Architecture, maybe that’s not the best use of your talents.

Or maybe you could teach college students, but you shine with middle schoolers.

Or maybe you know you can help people solve their problems using negotiation and facilitation techniques, but you find that when people are forced to listen to you, you only manage moderate, treading-water style solutions, whereas when people come seek you out to get unstuck, you effect game changing innovation.

Working outside of your power band might not make things worse, but it doesn’t efficiently make things better.

If you have the choice to work in your power band, that’s great.  Many times, of course, you’re told to work outside of it.  Keep on the lookout for ways back in.  You owe it to yourself and to the people you can help.

Photo: atomicjeep

Little problems sometimes merit treatment with big-time tools. The problem solving methodology I teach, TRIZ, is most commonly used to solve mind-bending (and sometimes multi-million-dollar) engineering design problems, but it can also be a good companion when addressing non-technical problems.

Here’s an example:

In order to make progress when working on a project, it’s important to focus on details, to not get distracted by philosophical or high-level questions. But if I were unaware of the relevant contexts, the higher-level questions (including “why?”), the strategic issues, and the ethical/moral issues, it would be too easy to be digging a hole in the wrong place, digging the wrong depth of hole, or even digging a hole when I should be doing something else entirely.

TRIZ suggests I formulate this conundrum as what’s called a physical contradiction: “I should be narrowly focused” and “I should not be narrowly focused.”

Then TRIZ suggests applying what are called separation principles. Two separation principles that work in this case are separation in space and separation in time.

Separation in space might lead me to focus on the details of the problem whenever I’m seated in my task chair, at my desk, working on my computer…while avoiding detail focus whenever I’m not physically in that context.

Separation in time would hint that I might try setting a timer: 40 minutes of focus, then 10 minutes of break and 10 minutes of higher level thinking and reflecting.

Clearly, these are only two possible solutions. And the tools available through TRIZ are massive, towering over such a simple, little problem. But anything that can burst me out of an “either/or” mindset into the open landscape of “both/and” possibilities is worth drawing on.