David Badre shares some ideas about working on complex and challenging projects
David Badre is a professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and author of On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done.
I have edited some of the authors’ critical points about practising problem-solving habits and added some keyword labels in bold.
In general, we can get better at structuring hard problems with experience. This is one reason that practice makes us more efficient and successful at hard tasks and that experts outperform novices. Finding work habits that encourage this process helps us to stay focused.
- Stay with it. Finding the right structure often takes time. [Persist, Stamina, Effort]
- Be open to reconceptualising problem structure. [Disposition, Curiosity, Perspective]
- Take breaks. It’s not helpful to insist on trying to get everything done at once if it just isn’t working. [Pace, Time, Incubate]
- Interact with others. Just like taking a break, interacting with others can help us conceptualise a problem in new ways. [Collaborate, Share, Connect]
I find the idea of being open to reconceptualise problem structures one that resonates with my current facilitation.
I am paying attention to moments when I shift perspective. This is often during group design and development sessions.
For example, during a recent curriculum design workshop, I asked a group of teachers:
If some of your students were here with us, what might they share about the ideas we have developed so far?
This is a deliberate facilitation move to change the perspective.
The problem structure [learning + curriculum design] was shifted [from curriculum] and seen from a different vantage point [student].
This propelled us in a different direction and led to some new ideas.