Problem Solving

A few days ago a question was asked on Hackernews on how slow thinkers compensate for their lack of quick-wittedness . Some people have responded that preparation is key: Sometimes what people think is quickness is actually extensive prep. I had a 30 minute meeting the other day to ask a team to do something I didn’t think they would want to do. It ended up going really smoothly and they just took my word for it, but had they not, I spend several hours preparing for that meeting, gathering data, preparing charts to illustrate the data, thinking of the possible objections and responses to said objections. ...

This post from Dan is one of the best reads in the past few months for me. He openly talks about instances that he might look like a stupid person, and how it’s benefiting him. I highly recommend reading the full blog post . … I frequently ask questions when there’s something I don’t understand or know, from basic stuff, “what does [some word] mean?” to more subtle stuff. On the flip side, one of the most common failure modes I see with junior engineers is when someone will be too afraid to look stupid to ask questions and then learn very slowly as a result; in some cases, this is so severe it results in them being put on a PIP and then getting fired. ...