
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) representation of a Mars base. To help sustain expeditionary crews on Mars, experiments are underway to use Martian soil and subsurface ice to make breathable oxygen. Image courtesy U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Some problems have no evident solutions. We set them aside for now and move on to something else where we believe we can make progress, saying, "We can come back to that later, or maybe there's another way altogether." I collected a number of suggestions for difficult problems years ago, but there's one method I use that somehow escaped that catalog. I call it "Right-To-Left Thinking."
Because lines of text in my native language, English, are written left-to-right, and because the lines are usually arranged top-down, I tend to make diagrams with a left-to-right/top-down general direction of flow. For me, then, right-to-left is a reverse of my normal pattern. That might be why it helps me find novel solutions, because it compels me to look at things differently. If your primary written language flows in some other direction, you'll want to make appropriate adjustments to this method to get the same effect.
To show how it works for me, I'll apply it to a really difficult problem: establishing a Mars colony. I have no expertise in that area, so it's unlikely that any conclusions I develop here will be useful for the Mars colony problem. What follows is just an illustration of Right-To-Left Thinking.
- Begin with the objective
- Begin by imagining that we've reached the objective already, and write down a representation of the objective on the "right-hand" edge of a big sheet of paper (or whatever surface you're using), in words or sketches. Try to capture some of the properties of the objective — even if we don't yet know how to reach it — focusing on some of the most difficult parts of the problem.
- For the Mars Colony, three of the more difficult problems are oxygen supply, water supply, and protection from radiation. They're difficult because they probably involve large masses of material, and transporting those masses from Earth is impractical.
- Develop some pre-objectives
- With the objective in mind,Begin by imagining that we've
reached the objective already, and
ask, "How would we have solved it?" ask, "If we could reach the objective, what would we have accomplished or obtained to get there?" It might include material things, or concepts or knowledge we now lack. These items are our pre-objectives. Write them all down just to the "left" of where we wrote the properties of the objective. (That's why I call this method "Right-To-Left Thinking") - For the Mars Colony, if we can't send water and oxygen from Earth, we'll have to find them or produce them on Mars. We do know that subsurface ice is present. We can break down that water to harvest oxygen. Martian soil can provide radiation shielding, either as a layer on top of colonial structures, or by excavating to build structures under the surface. Caves or lava tubes are also possibilities.
Next time, we'll continue developing pre-objectives, and turn our attention to the other edge of the paper where we begin working on the starting point of the problem solution. Next in this series Top
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Related articles
More articles on Problem Solving and Creativity:
Project Improvisation as Group Process
- When project plans contact reality, things tend to get, um, a bit confused. We can sometimes see the
trouble coming in time to replan thoughtfully — if we're nearly clairvoyant. Usually, we have
to improvise. How a group improvises tells us much about the group.
Wishful Significance: II
- When we're beset by seemingly unresolvable problems, we sometimes conclude that "wishful thinking"
was the cause. Wishful thinking can result from errors in assessing the significance of our observations.
Here's a second group of causes of erroneous assessment of significance.
On Assigning Responsibility for Creating Trouble
- When we assign responsibility for troubles that bedevil us, we often make mistakes. We can be misled
by language, stereotypes, and the assumptions we make about others.
Cost Concerns: Comparisons
- When we assess the costs of different options for solving a problem, we must take care not to commit
a variety of errors in approach. These errors can lead to flawed decisions. One activity at risk for
error is comparing the costs of two options.
Cost Concerns: Scale
- When we consider the costs of problem solutions too early in the problem-solving process, the results
of comparing alternatives might be unreliable. Deferring cost concerns until we fully understand the
problem can yield more options and better decisions.
See also Problem Solving and Creativity and Critical Thinking at Work for more related articles.
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And on June 14: Pseudo-Collaborations
- Most workplace collaborations produce results of value. But some collaborations — pseudo-collaborations — are inherently incapable of producing value, due to performance management systems, or lack of authority, or lack of access to information. Available here and by RSS on June 14.
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