#ThinkfullyHabit: Think in multiples
When tackling a problem, you may find yourself struggling to find the solution. This may be the case particularly when you are facing a wicked, fuzzy or ambiguous problem where you don’t have enough information or data about it, or it’s an unknown future. In these instances, looking for the single solution may be the wrong focus. Instead, these might be the times that it will help to think of multiple solutions.
“Creating multiple solutions empowers the one you ultimately decide on.”
WHY?
In 2010, design innovators Bill Burnett and Dave Evans launched a course at Stanford called “Designing Your Life”, driven by an interest in tackling the significant problems of what to do with your life; a problem that often generates a lot of head scratching and one which people can struggle to resolve. Evans suggests, “there is not one solution but likely to be several solutions.” This is the reason they decided that a critical feature of the course was to get rid of the final exam and instead, insist that students present three radically different five-year plans. They called them the three ‘odyssey plans’. No one could present a singular version.
If you can apply this thinking to designing your life, you can certainly apply it to more specific challenges you encounter within your life. Generating multiple plans moves people beyond the notion that there is one sole solution that needs finding.
So instead of making a single plan, create plan A which may be the more predictable plan. Then, create plan B which is what you will do if plan A isn’t an option. Then, create plan C, which allows you to be a bit more surprising. It may even be that you don’t necessarily select between the plans but combine elements into a new plan D! The critical thing is that it helps you avoid getting trapped in tunnel vision, encourages you to explore alternatives not immediately in view, and reveals new options not previously considered.
It all begins by breaking away from a belief that there is only one solution that just needs finding. The way forward? Think in multiples.
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