Iterative Thinking

Are you someone who likes to sit on a problem for hours until they find a solution? Or do you like to work in short, deep bursts?

Whilst there is no right way to problem solve, shorter bursts of thinking can provide you with multiple fresh perspectives on a problem. And for the right person, it can be like letting the leash off your brain and letting it rip.

This is called iterative Thinking, and using it is like a rubix cube. Every session is like a turn of the cube, each one revealing another perspective and more info

Problem solving is about changing perspectives. And working in short deep bursts - otherwise knowing as iterative thinking - gives a chance for those new, original perspectives to emerge.

You might briefly think on an idea at home, encouraging it to emerge from the abstract, then head off to the coffee shop. A conversation with the barista or a friend might give you a new state to approach the problem with. Suddenly, when you engage with it again, it’s as if the problem changed. But the problem was always the same - you just generated a new inspired way into it.

Whilst sitting at a desk for hours uninterrupted can give you a sense of achieving more, often it can make you, and the problem, stale. This can be a compromising position to put yourself in - the last thing you want to do is make the problem you’re trying to solve stale and stuck, because then the material you have to work with becomes like mud or treacle - a kind of entity which slows everything down around it.

Iterative thinking is not slow. It’s slow and fast. It;s about working with the way you think to pick up a problem, go deep on it, genuinely immerse yourself in it, then leave it to focus on something else. In the time you’re away from it, your surroundings and experiences, even small things, alter your state so when you return to a problem, you’re different. In a lot of ways iterative thinking gives us a framework to take ownership of our own problem solving ability. It becomes less about the problem, and more about our changed state every time we engage with it, which is what the gold is in this approach.

We also aren’t trading off on thinking deeply. There is no law that says thinking deeply is only possible in long, uninterrupted sessions. Depth is about depth, not the length of time you spend thinking (depending on how your brain works, of course, all methods are valid and true and not wrong). The benefit of iterative thinking is you get both deep and quick thinking, the braiding of these two ways of thinking which give the basis for something to feel both insightful and alive.

Everytime you pick up the problem again you’re giving yourself multiple chances to find a breakthrough.

Problems are only problems if you perceive them at that. If you see them as rubble to find a gem in, then the whole endeavour is flipped into a positive growth journey to something better than where you are. And to find a gem in rubble you have to move pieces, sieve it, sift it, shake the foundations to discover it.

Interative thinking gives us a chance to return to ideas and problems in different moods, whether we had a new experience between sessions, or maybe were provided a different perspective from an environment.

Thank you for reading Operating Self.

I release articles once a day at the moment as I am doing the 100 articles in 100 days challenge.

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Thank you and I hope this piece, and what’s on this site, helps/inspires/creates something for you.