How to Become A Seasoned Problem Solver?

The meta-skills that will help you excel in problem-solving

I want to start by settling one thing right off the bat. Problem-solving is a learned skill, anyone can get good at it. We as a civilization have mastered many different techniques to hone in on our problem-solving skills. One simple drill is to practice solving problems. “Practice maketh a man perfect” right? Not so fast ! Practice drills work only when we are aiming to excel in solving problems pertaining to specific domains like say, Math. Also, practicing only burns your neural paths so rather than focussing on the process you just get good at something purely by virtue of repeating it. But Life, on the other hand, poses a wide range of never-seen-before problems on a daily basis. So the best way to master problem-solving is to go one level up and focus on the meta-skills that tweaks your problem-solving ability. Here are the top two not-so-self-evident meta-skills that will help you excel in problem-solving: mindful reading and writing. I can hear the bubble bursting in your head when I said reading and writing. You may even wonder “what is so fantastic about reading and writing? people have been doing it since the dawn of time”. That's exactly why I used the adjective “not-so-self-evident”. So, please take the first step on faith and continue reading, I promise, I will make it abundantly evident.

While no refuting that, we know very little about how reading and writing impacts us. 10 minutes from now, you will know exactly how reading and writing shape your reasoning and thereby sharpens your problem-solving skills. I submit to you that, you become a seasoned problem solver by embedding mindful reading and writing into your routine.

To understand how reading and writing shape our reasoning, we must first understand how human reasoning works at a fundamental level. We have two styles of reasoning which we employ in different circumstances. Reasoning by Analogy and Reasoning from the 1st principles. While they are two different styles, they can work in isolation or in tandem, depending on the situation. We will get to that in a moment.

Apes peel it from behind because It is easier to peel the banana from behind than from the top. We as humans with a sixth sense should know better, but unfortunately, we peel from the top. In the case of reasoning by analogy, our brain is actually taking the least path of resistance. It is merely sending a probe to your existing knowledge space. In some sense reasoning by analogy is a search and recall operation, it sifts through many different frames of references in search of a pattern. Hence the cognitive demand is much less when compared to reasoning about a situation or problem we haven’t faced before. Also if you notice, the quality of our reasoning here is directly proportional to the number of relevant frames of references we have in our knowledge space. So, reading deep, substantial books is one of the easiest ways to widen our knowledge space and in turn reason better by analogy. We all have known that one person who seem to have answers for almost all the questions and they are instantaneous, recognize that person? Its no magic, you too can be that person by gathering and indexing multiple frames of references by reading (or learning in other settings) and reflecting substantial materials.

So in essence in the knowledge triangle, our goal is to shrink the size of the unknown unknowns by increasing the Known knowns. Reading helps you increase the Known knowns and in turn, help you reason better by analogy.

So what happens when reasoning by analogy is not useful anymore? Our frames of references aren’t good enough to handle this brand new problem we are trying to solve. The second and the harder variant of reasoning comes for rescue, which is Reasoning from the 1st principles. Before getting into how reading can help you with reasoning from the 1st principles, let see how it works. Even though we don’t have have any recipe or template to fall back to think about this new situation or problem we have, Fortunately, we have one thing to latch on to. It’s a paradigm called the Hierarchy of concepts. Illustrated below is a general mental model of the hierarchy of concepts. Any high order concept can be broken down into its simpler baser concept to facilitate deeper understanding.

A trivial example would be modeling the concept of a place or location as we know of it in modern society using a hierarchy of concepts.

A more complex example would be to model the entire life on earth using a hierarchy of concepts.

Any complex phenomenon in the world can be modeled and broken down using the hierarchy of concepts. In the life on earth case, If you are not familiar with the concepts of Biome or Biosphere working your way down the pyramid to a basic concept say ecosystem or population or something else you can relate to can help you.

More concretely, dealing with a hierarchy of concepts teaches you to break things down to baser concepts - analyze and put it back together - synthesize. So reasoning from the 1st principles makes you a seasoned analyzer and a seasoned synthesizer. Analysis + Synthesis = the core of 1st principles. As an engineer and problem solver, I got these traits for free, because to engineer is to analyze and synthesize. So reasoning from the first principles is one of the best ways to reverse-engineer complicated problems.

Now, how does reading help you with reasoning from the 1st principles? If reading cannot help you with all the concepts in a hierarchy it can most certainly help you with some of the basic concepts which you can use to arrive at the understanding of specific concepts using analysis and synthesis or Even better you can start from the scratch, read and learn about a brand new basic concept and build on top of it.

So we have now established different reasoning styles and how reading sharpens them. You will be forgiven, If you are one of those who thought “Reading gives you all the tools to solve problems, what else do we need ?”. Because having the 2 reasoning skills up your sleeves sounds almost complete. Almost! But having these reasoning styles working in isolation is not enough. Because it can only help you to respond to problems coming your way. Seasoned problem solvers not just solve problems coming their way, they can identify problems that are unsolved, i.e. they can connect the invisible dots. Unsolved problems are a great source of untapped opportunities. So, the ability to see unsolved problems and the upside of the solving them is, in fact, the core of innovation.

This transition from problem-solving to problem finding is the key to becoming a seasoned problem solver. So, while deliberate reading helps you hone in on your reasoning to solve problems, writing takes it a notch up. Writing helps you make that transition because writing is formalized thinking.

Broadly speaking there are 3 different settings in which non-fiction writers sit down to write, To share new ideas/point of view, To convey their thoughts, To pass on what they have learned. In all the above settings writing our understanding is powerful than you might think. It validates your understanding and dismisses or approves your understanding based on logic and evidence. Think about it, When is the last time you wrote something substantial without having to rephrase or remove something?. Writing cements your current understanding of the concept and gives a ton of leeway to conjure up something new if need be. So, what happens under the hood when we write? Reasoning by analogy and reasoning from the 1st principles are working in tandem. Writing puts both reasoning styles in steroids. You move between the reasoning styles in real-time at warp speed.

So, writing makes you a skillful thought experimenter and an ideator, thereby allowing you to pry into unsolved problems and untapped opportunities, hence making the transition into problem-finding easier.

If Problem-solving is going from point A to point B, then Reading is fuelling and Writing is revving up the engine. So however time intensive it is, investing in mindful reading and writing is the best way to become a seasoned problem solver.

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