You have been trying to solve a problem for quite some time; the solution appears to be elusive. As you grapple more with the problem, a seed of a solution germinates which sprouts into an answer. In hindsight, the resolution appears obvious. You kick yourself telling why did I not think of this sooner?
How many times has the above happened to you?
I believe almost everyone goes through these in life.
One simple hack to get better and faster at problem solving is to backtrace through your thinking. Once you successfully arrive at a solution, replay your unsuccessful attempts and figure out what you could have tweaked in your thinking process to arrive at the answer faster.
High performance teams do post-mortem analysis after a critical issue. Members create RCA(root cause analysis) document which contains what went wrong, what could have been done to prevent the untoward incident from occurring and what are the steps to be taken to avoid a relapse. We should be applying the same steps to our thought process when we do not arrive at solutions on time; think of this as an RCA of your thinking process.
This simple trick I believe helps us in getting better and faster at problem-solving.
Image credit: Diego PH
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