Dear Reader,

Recently I paused to think about a habit of mine, and from it, I got a little insight that I’d like to share with you. Let me describe my practice first.

The situation is like this: there is a list of items (names, tasks, photographs… it does not matter. Even a screen or a page of generic text), and we need to find a specific one. Beware of the “we” part; it will get important later.

I usually have a good eye for spotting things on the fly: I’m an intensely visual person. Nevertheless, I like to gain an edge over my peers to speed up the tedious process, so I employ a simple trick. Instead of scanning the list from the top, I scan it from the bottom.

To understand why this allows me to be the first to spot the sought-after item, let’s think about the search in statistical terms – first, some assumptions: the item as qual probabilities of being at every position in the list. Every searcher has more or less the same “scanning speed”. And last but most importantly, probably 99.99% of the people scan the list top-to-bottom. This means that 50% of the time, I will be the first spotter, no matter how many people are searching. The reasoning is that the item has a 50-50 chance of being either in the lower or the upper half of the list, and the others and I will be scanning two distinct halves simultaneously. A bit more than 50% perhaps, given that I am generally quick, but anyway, much more often than if I had started searching from the same place as the others. The more searchers, the more the trick becomes effective, and over time your friends might start calling you Eagle Eye.

There are two exciting benefits to following this approach:

  1. You will look quicker and more competent (a pleasing but quite useless matter)
  2. The whole process becomes quicker: for how I see it, you are doing a favour to your fellows by effectively halving the time spent on a tedious non-creative task.

In a broader sense, I think that with this trick, you are bringing something that is always useful: a different point of view on the problem. You are performing a two-pronged pincer attack, with the bulk of the forces going along one line of attack and you encircling. The enemy (i.e. the problem) will be crushed in less time without additional effort. In what follows, think about more general problems, not just the item-in-a-list.

We have not reached the maximum possible efficiency yet. Now that I put this in writing, I realise that it could be helpful to coordinate the attack beforehand so that everyone can follow their unique attack manoeuvre, maximising the effectiveness.

In an “I am just thinking out loud” fashion, let me sketch what you could do whenever you face a problem with other people on your side.

  1. Assess if the problem has more than one facet/direction by which it could be tackled. Benefit: this alone can give you more insight on the matter and maybe even jumpstart a solution
  2. Divide the different facets and assign them to various members of the team. Better if everyone gets involved according to her best skills. Benefits: minimum waste and maximal engagement
  3. Attack! Maybe you will reach more than one possible solution, and then you have the luxury of choosing either one or a combination.

I have a closing remark. Will this methodology be of any use when you solve a problem by yourself? Probably not; there is no “multi-pronged” approach, no parallelisation. On the other hand, getting used to considering multiple facets and different methods can, in the end, help you in reaching increasingly original solutions at an accelerating faster rate.

Until next time, let’s look at someone who incorporated downside-up thinking into his art.