
Tools for Better Thinking - mmoez
https://untools.co
======
shahbaby
I've found that the most underrated problem solving tool is simply typing out
my thought process.

I used to be the type who asked a lot of questions until I realized that
formulating the question was often more important than getting the answer.

~~~
typicalbender
It's amazing how much a technique like rubber ducking[1] helps to work through
issues. The number of times I've felt like I have no idea how to solve a
problem until the moment after I ask someone else is incredible. I think the
act of thinking how to explain the problem to someone else really helps
trigger the problem solving side of the brain. That and the number of times
taking a 10 minute walk has been more productive than hours of debugging time
is frankly mind boggling.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging)

~~~
daemoncoder
I've heard this concept called the cardboard colleague - you explain the
problem to a cardboard cutout representing a colleague instead of an actual
person. Of course it remains a concept, I don't think anyone would go so far
as make one :-)

~~~
kwhitefoot
You can use an actual colleague.

Many years ago when I was designing and programming embedded controllers
(early '80s) I worked alongside, but not with, another engineer who was
building devices using the same fundamental components (6520, PIA, etc.) In
our tea breaks we would explain our problems to each other. Neither of us
suggested any solutions to the other or responded with anything other than
simple platitudes and sympathy for each other's troubles. It was remarkable
how many problems had simply vanished by the end of the tea break.

------
localhost
This is a really nice presentation of these ideas.

However, I think that the Decision Matrix idea is too complicated:
specifically the part where he advocates adding a weighting to each factor
being considered to arrive at a numerical score.

At Microsoft, some of us use a system that I like to call the "Abolade
decision making framework." It's the same idea, but instead of assigning
weights to factors, we simply rank them. Additionally, the factors are
expressed as positive attributes and an option either has that factor or it
doesn't. A factor could be "Has vibrant colors" or it could be "Less than $10"
for example. The type of a factor is Boolean :)

The goal is to generate a table with the options presented as columns and the
factors presented as rows. You spend a lot of time as a group figuring out
what the factors are, and then you spend a lot of time ranking them. Once you
have agreement, you start working on the options. The winning option is one
where you have the longest continuous line of check marks for each factor
starting from the top.

Smart people, of course will try to game this system to choose their preferred
outcome ... you need to be vigilant about this :)

~~~
khimaros
Is there somewhere I could read further about the Abolade framework? I can't
seem to find any good resources from a quick web search.

~~~
localhost
I don’t think there’s anything public about this. Not that there is anything
particularly secret about this at all. It’s very straightforward and I’ve
described its salient points above.

------
inetsee
There is a book titled "Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking
Techniques". The last edition was published in 2006, so it's fairly dated by
now. I found it very interesting back then, but it wouldn't have much about
more recent tools or ideas.

There is a summary of the book here [https://www.ethos3.com/books/thinkertoys-
a-handbook-of-creat...](https://www.ethos3.com/books/thinkertoys-a-handbook-
of-creative-thinking-techniques-book-summary/)

~~~
chadcmulligan
This is a good one to - "The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for
Problem Solving" by Morgan D. Jones, ( techniques as used by the CIA no less!
:-) ).

[https://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Toolkit-Powerful-
Techniques-...](https://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Toolkit-Powerful-Techniques-
Problem-dp-0812928083/dp/0812928083)

------
playing_colours
TRIZ
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ))
“theory of the resolution of invention-related tasks”. It was invented in
Soviet Union. TRIZ is basically a toolset to analyse and solve engineering
problems; it can help with “inventing“ tasks.

The system is well developed and quite sophisticated with a variety of
techniques and approaches. I found this book to be a good introduction:
[https://www.wiley.com/en-
us/TRIZ+for+Engineers%3A+Enabling+I...](https://www.wiley.com/en-
us/TRIZ+for+Engineers%3A+Enabling+Inventive+Problem+Solving-p-9780470741887)

~~~
petra
Have you found it useful to non-mechanical problems?

------
diggan
Lovely idea and presentation! Will come very handy at times.

Something I feel like is missing: Statecharts. Very powerful to be able to
reason about state changes without having to deal with the explosion of states
that state machines often ends up with. Sometimes also called hierarchical
state machines.

~~~
tonyarkles
I just started digging deep into this for a project this week and I am already
in love.

Highly recommend this book: [https://www.state-
machine.com/doc/PSiCC2_Excerpts.pdf](https://www.state-
machine.com/doc/PSiCC2_Excerpts.pdf)

~~~
diggan
Neat! Thanks for sharing that!

I made another comment about statecharts a while ago, listing some more
resources and other comment threads on HN containing bunch of useful
experience, resources and general information, starts here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22747409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22747409)

------
OctopusSandwich
Do any of these tool actually help people in everyday life?

Self-help is good but sometimes I wonder if people who yap about all these
tools all the time even get anything substantial out of it.

~~~
doomjunky
The Inversion Methode:

 _Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi was a German mathematician famous for his maxim
"Invert, always invert". He believed that the solution of many hard problems
can be clarified by re-expressing them in inverse form. Inversion forces new
ways of thinking and helps uncover hidden solutions._

[https://twitter.com/fermatslibrary/status/114459774698642227...](https://twitter.com/fermatslibrary/status/1144597746986422272)

[https://fs.blog/2013/10/inversion/](https://fs.blog/2013/10/inversion/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_Jacob_Jacobi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_Jacob_Jacobi)

------
Rochus
Outliners are definitely missing, such as [https://github.com/rochus-
keller/crossline/](https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline/). You can
structure your thoughts while you type, even while you're talking to other
people. And you can make cross-references and make appear thoughts (or action
items and such) in other places using translucent active links. Or copy/paste
structured text from the web or aggregate links with notes, etc.

------
mrtrombone
Fantastic toolset. I found the posts by Leyla Acaroglu [1] an excellent
introduction to systems thinking and many of these concepts

[1]: [https://medium.com/disruptive-
design/search?q=tools%20for%20...](https://medium.com/disruptive-
design/search?q=tools%20for%20systems%20thinkers)

------
satoshikenzo
"An important aspect of learning about strategies is the conditional knowledge
of when and why to use them appropriately" (Krathwohl et al.)

I wanted to compile a similar list of strategies myself, however I couldn't
quite understand when to apply them. After some research, my view is that to
understand when to apply these general thinking/problem-solving strategies,
one needs to know the goal of the task and the cognitive processes involved
i.e. it requires conditional knowledge which is part of metacognition.

Wonderful list though!

------
koolhead17
Reading autobiography of Benjamin Franklin makes me feel we don't need tools
but willingness within. He had a notebook and pen with him.

~~~
adrianN
Just because some people can multiply large numbers in their head, that
doesn't mean that other people won't benefit from a pocket calculator.

------
ggregoire
No direct relation but reminds me of
[https://datavizcatalogue.com/search.html](https://datavizcatalogue.com/search.html)
(which is great btw!)

~~~
wintermutestwin
That link is incredibly helpful! Only slightly non-sequitur...

------
arcticfox
Ohh...I _love_ this. I have a handful of these internal tools that I picked up
over these years, but I never knew where to find more (or really, consciously
thought to look for more). Now I have a bit of a roadmap.

The ones I do have are so valuable that even if I get one more effective one
off this list, it will be one of the best things I do this year.

~~~
w4tson
You might enjoy this then

[https://fs.blog/mental-models/](https://fs.blog/mental-models/)

------
alexashka
One important aspect of human thinking is the need to form narratives to make
sense of the world.

We don't live or think in abstract algebra or abstract heuristics. We live and
think in a world-view in which problems arise and for each problem, we have a
set of potential solutions, often unconscious.

This website has good information - it just doesn't do a good job of
organizing them into a coherent narrative.

It's not enough to _know_ what probability is, if you never think to use it to
ask the question _what are the chances one religion out of thousands that all
claim they are the only true religion, is actually the true religion?_

One of the big issues of modern society is people being taught/given
disconnected bits of information, without a guide on how to fit them into a
coherent narrative. This isn't done by accident and a lot of people have given
it a great deal of thought - some call it post-modernism.

------
cercatrova
I like the concept, I see many sites like these. However, who actually uses
these in a day to day situation? It feels like these thinking models need to
be internalized in more than just a superficial way to get any real use out of
them, and I wonder if a book or course wouldn't integrate better with one's
mind.

------
x32n23nr
Side note: Also, nice minimal site. Refreshing to see well-designed, clean
sites this days.

~~~
raspyberr
You should get into the habit of actually checking the network requests. The
site looks minimal but it's 1.1MB w/o Google analytics. It's what Maciej
Cegłowski([https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm](https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm))
would call Chickenshit Minimalism.

~~~
x32n23nr
You're right - spoiled by the internet connection. I guess I was referring
more to the UI.

~~~
Enginerrrd
I'm just happy that the homepage mostly zooms the way it should.

Nothing in the modern web pisses me off more than a developer trying to decide
how my zoom behavior should work for me. Zoom is a very basic concept, I want
to make the whole page larger or smaller. For some reason people insist on
messing with that to make some menu, banner, or image popup appear the way
they think I (or they) want it to when I try and zoom in or out, rather than
just let me zoom as I please.

This site still manages to fuck it up when I click on one of the images
though.

------
M5x7wI3CmbEem10
does anyone know a simple app that allows hyperlinking within notes? I want to
create a roam-style knowledge base, but most tools are too heavy for my
purposes. I prefer to keep things cross-compatible and future proof with .txt
or .rtf, but to my knowledge, neither allow hyperlinking to documents

~~~
cmehdy
Yesterday there was a Show HN about Obsidian[0] which you might be interested
in.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598)

~~~
M5x7wI3CmbEem10
you need an account for it though, right? meaning they have access to your
stuff. and because they use unique formatting such as `![[filename]]`, it may
not be easily cross-compatible

~~~
nighthawk454
I believe in yesterdays thread there was mention of the app storing all files
locally in a portable Markdown format

~~~
M5x7wI3CmbEem10
Have you heard anything about Joplin? I believe it behaves similarly.

------
ddelt
I love reading about and visualizing about mental models. This site is great
for quickly and concisely internalizing them! Thank you for making it!

Another great resource for folks who like reading about these:
[https://fs.blog/mental-models/](https://fs.blog/mental-models/)

I've actually read the mental models series of books put out by the above
author, and I also highly recommend those for a deeper dive.

------
rememberlenny
The tree-like mind maps from these are made in MindNode [1].

[1]: [https://mindnode.com/](https://mindnode.com/)

~~~
Jestar342
Oh wow. Mac/iOS only. When was this a thing?

~~~
AdamGibbins
For as long as Mac's have existed? Some developers prefer to focus on one
ecosystem, Omni Group for example.

------
pantulis
Sometimes it's been useful for me to use the tool used to state the problem as
a guidance framework during the thought process.

So you could try to state the problem in a very structured way (say, a
spreadsheet) and at the same time in a visual way (say, a presentation slide
deck). Of course some people are better using one type than the other but
that's where the trick relies: forcing yourself to think in a way that is not
your "natural" way of thinking.

------
_theory_
If this sort of thing appeals to you, you might enjoy Poor Charlie's Almanack,
which can be found on archive.org right now for the low, low price of free:

[https://archive.org/search.php?query=poor%20%20charlie%27s%2...](https://archive.org/search.php?query=poor%20%20charlie%27s%20almanack)

------
drewcoo
So an "iceberg model" is about trends and patterns over time? That's adding a
dimension to the iceberg's ocean and I think the analogy breaks. Usually
icebergs are to describe partial occlusion.

Also alarming is that in the example for that model QA is something that
happens post-release. If so, I expect quality to be a looming iceberg.

------
nickjj
Very cool idea but I was disappointed that Socratic Questioning wasn't
included.

Here's an example of how that can be applied to tech decisions:
[https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-docker-
tod...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-docker-today)

~~~
juliend2
It is mentioned in "First principles": [https://untools.co/first-
principles](https://untools.co/first-principles)

------
blackrock
I use markdown.

VSCode has a nice plugin for it. And so does a few other editors.

It’s simple, and easy to use. Pure text, and allows you to do some formatting.
Especially, the code preview.

This allows me to brainstorm, and just type out random things at will. And I
can reorganize it later.

And when I want to read it, then I switch on the viewer, and all my text is
nicely presented.

~~~
mosselman
Did you even look at the link?

------
imvetri
Just meditate, please do not load more pain to head. The article shares some
good techniques, use the same techniques using pen and paper and it is
healthier.

P.S. Its a personal preference, I'm not trying to put down the tool, its great
and can be used as a training material for better thinking.

------
Hoasi
Here is a trove of similar thinking tools to generate ideas, for those
interested:
[http://creatingminds.org/tools/tools_ideation.htm](http://creatingminds.org/tools/tools_ideation.htm)

------
amjd
Similar website that was posted a few months ago, for those interested:
[https://www.mentalmodelsbox.com/](https://www.mentalmodelsbox.com/)

I don't reckon it gets updated much, though.

------
awill88
This is great. I find I often do these things at work (such as second order
thinking) but have never attempted to encapsulate it or differentiate from
other ways of looking at things. Thank you for sharing.

------
paulorlando
Good list. You might also like this one focused on thinking about systems:
[https://unintendedconsequenc.es/](https://unintendedconsequenc.es/)

------
timhigins
Whenever I see something like this or other "mental model" tools, I just
think: soon this will be obsolete, as the human who used to make decisions in
a given job is replaced by AI.

------
uk_king
Looks fantastic! I like the Iceberg model.

------
modzu
the scientific method

