
Employees are faster and more creative when solving other people's problems - mkagenius
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/8527500/Daniel-H-Pink-employees-are-faster-and-more-creative-when-solving-other-peoples-problems.html
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rauljara
I've witnessed this phenomenon at work when asking other people for help with
problems. My coworkers come up with more creative solutions than I did, much
faster. The only problem is that when I'm asking for help with stuff, it tends
to be tricky stuff with lots of edge cases. My coworkers' solutions tend to
not actually work...

Which is not to say that there isn't value in asking them. Sometimes their
solutions that don't work can be modified into something that does; or their
crazy non-solutions can spark some inspiration on my end.

My theory as to what's going on here is that when you are responsible for the
solution, you spend a lot of time thinking about what could go wrong, so your
thinking gets constrained. When you are solving a problem for someone else,
you're thinking is much freer, because frankly you don't give a damn. You are
much more likely to come up with a unique, novel solution. You are also much
more likely to deliver a solution that is actually disastrous.

My point being: I think there's room for both associated and disassociated
thinking. This article seems to think because there was one series of studies
showing some benefits of disassociated thinking that disassociated thinking is
just straight up better.

~~~
phkahler
I've seen this as well. Other peoples problems offer an escape from my own.
There isn't any pressure to solve them so there is definitely a different feel
to them. There is also choice, if I hear about 5 other peoples problems, I may
have insight into one or two but not the others and I can devote my spare
cycles to the promising ones.

One approach for getting your own work done may be to think of your future
self. That's who you're doing it for. This also gives less immediacy to the
problem in addition to distance. "Older me is going to really appreciate this
3 months from now."

~~~
MereInterest
It also gives you the advantage of putting yourself in a different mindset.
For that, I usually use "3 AM me" as the comparison. Any API that is usable by
fully-conscious daytime me, but is prone to errors by "3 AM me" is one that
needs to be improved. If an API can be used by "3 AM me", along with all the
stress and pressure that led to late-night coding, then it is sufficient.

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nichochar
I discovered this as a trick when I was a teenager. I realized that when the
guy ahead of me in Math class asked me to explain something, even if I wasn't
sure my ego kicked in and my brain automatically went in overdrive to try and
help him solve the problem, or perform an explanation.

I actually now use this trick: when I am blocked on a hard problem, or I find
myself losing motivation, I imagine someone I would want to impress asking me
the exact question, and spend 10s visualizing the scenario. It works!

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adamio
Most of the article is copied from this [http://www.danpink.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/07/FLIP-Manif...](http://www.danpink.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/07/FLIP-Manifesto.pdf)

~~~
Zaephyr
Well, he is the author of both.

Your link is a more in depth version of his position. Thx!

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js8
I love to solve other people's problems! You can only gain:

\- If you succeed, they will be thankful.

\- If you fail, well, it's not your problem.

Also, you can let them do the obvious/boring stuff, like bureaucracy.

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pessimizer
This seems like one of those marginal results that the experimenter planned to
find before starting the experiment that won't replicate. Also, cutting a rope
in half probably won't work, and one man's creative drawings and innovative
gifts are another man's silly drawings and stupid gifts.

Did we discover that people are more likely to try to sell solutions that
probably won't work if they know that they won't be responsible for actually
carrying them out?

~~~
Retra
I had the same conclusion reading about the alien story part. If I have to
write a story about an alien, I'm going to be thinking about what it's
motivations and experiences are -- distinctly human things -- but if I have to
describe an alien for someone else to write about, I'll have no trouble
spewing out a stream of self-contradictory, unrelatable junk. So I'm left
wondering why anyone would think the second is more "creative" than the first,
given that the first was designed to solve problems and the second to create
them. I wouldn't think that's the kind of creativity you'd want to measure and
optimize for.

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libeclipse
I noticed a similar phenomenon in my days at school.

When solving problems on my own I was reasonably successful, but in class when
I found out - or someone mentioned - that a particular problem was extremely
difficult and/or no one had managed to do, I do exceptionally well in it.

As for an explanation to this, I have no idea. It maybe has something to do
with the fact that if I fail at the difficult problem then a lot of people
have seen me fail at it, but that's just guesswork.

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cool-RR
Hmm, I don't think that the rope would hold up to being cut lengthwise.

~~~
regularfry
He doesn't say "cut", he says "split". A twisted rope can be split into two
parts without damaging either.

~~~
Terretta
Er, no. You're both substituting in the word from your mental model.

"Yet he _divides_ the rope in half, ties the two parts together..."

~~~
regularfry
Er, no. From the article:

> Which leads to one final question: how exactly did the prisoner with the
> insufficiently long rope manage to escape? The answer: he split the rope
> lengthwise, tied the two halves together and shimmied to freedom.

~~~
Terretta
That's not the proposition, that's the reveal.

~~~
regularfry
So what?

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ryanmarsh
My job is to help my clients get better at making software. I've done this
with great success, but I couldn't ship something on my own if my life
depended on it.

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pavlov
Isn't this essentially why consulting firms exist?

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Can_Not
This is reality interesting and reminds me of a real life anecdote. Imagine a
customer who has a small trivial request where the correct response was "no,
we won't do that and you will not need it" but without a manager's permission,
the sales guy and an engineer stopped working on their mission critical
projects to snipe in this tiny request in a non reusable way. It was already
extremely low benefit to high cost (labor + opportunity cost). Management
finds out half a lost day's work later and is really pissed off.

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CoryG89
I don't know if I am more creative when helping my co-workers with their
problems, but strangely I do feel more motivated to find a solution when it is
for someone else's work. Weird.

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BjoernKW
I absolutely agree with the premise that solving somebody else's problem or
getting an outside opinion is highly beneficial because it allows you to
approach a problem with a beginner's mind.

That rope example though clearly shows a caveat with that approach. In an
ideal, abstract world that solution would work. However, in the real world
this solution obviously doesn't work because you can't cut a rope lengthwise
without the rope coming undone.

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mattkrause
Here's a link to the original paper:
[http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/AcademicAre...](http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/AcademicAreas/Marketing/-/media/Files/Programs-
and-Areas/Marketing/papers/PolmanEmichPSPB.pdf)

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atemerev
Observed it myself. While at work, I designed sophisticated ops / workflow
automation systems, with continuous integration, Docker, test reporting and
whatsnot.

For my own development? Nah, too much work, I'll do it manually (and I happily
wasted huge amounts of accumulated time).

Irrational, but true.

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heisenbit
A rationale approach to problem solving is usually the best. Others have less
baggage and fewer emotions invested so they certainly can help.

Before organizing a whole enterprise around this however it is worth
considering how much of our work actually fits into the solvable problem
category.

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known
No intrinsic motivation.
[http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/inmotiv.htm](http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/inmotiv.htm)

~~~
scribu
That's an interesting article you linked to, but how is motivation (intrinsic
or otherwise) relevant to the topic of problem solving?

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petra
They say that solving someone else's problem helps you think abstractly . But
why do you have to use tricks to think abstractly ? why not just do so on
purpose ? intentionally ?

~~~
grzm
The mind isn't as rational or straightforward as we would perhaps prefer. You
can look at phenomena like split-brain studies to see just how bizarre it can
be.[0] I'm not saying the split-brain stuff is comparable or useful in this
particular situation. It's just the first concrete example of surprising, non-
intuitive mind behavior I thought of.

Figuring out what tricks work can help us leverage these behaviors in ways
that are useful. And maybe we'll learn how to get the benefits in a more
direct manner, intentionally.

[0]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-
brain](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain)

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agumonkey
It's a source my procrastination, I'm much more motivated to reflect on
other's issue rather than my own. I even consider this a psychological issue.

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hprotagonist
This is deeply unsurprising. If you can put aside your ego head game, I find
that I can get a LOT more done.

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diegoperini
We use our UX designers as rubber ducks just for that, it usually helps more
than anticipated.

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itsobvious
i know many IT guys who turn this on its head

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bitL
Remote work is dead :(

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Terr_
I think it's partly about risk/anxiety/blame.

If it's not my problem, I'm not preoccupied with the emotional component.

