psychology and philosophy researcher John Salvatier reality has a surprising amount of detail d

That’s how I came to spend a substantial part of my teenage years replacing fences, digging trenches, and building flooring and sheds. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this building, it’s that reality has a surprising amount of detail.

This turns out to explain why its so easy for people to end up intellectually stuck. Even when they’re literally the best in the world in their field.

Details matter

This is not unique to your specific field. It’s not a feature of carpentry, software programming or boiling a pot of water

You get stuck on a position when you think you’ve spotted something important

Before you’ve noticed important details they are, of course, basically invisible. It’s hard to put your attention on them because you don’t even know what you’re looking for. But after you see them they quickly become so integrated into your intuitive models of the world that they become essentially transparent. Do you remember the insights that were crucial in learning to ride a bike or drive? How about the details and insights you have that led you to be good at the things you’re good at?

In problem-solving this can manifest as jumping to a solution and emotionally defending a position. This is often unproductive.

This problem is not easy to fix, but it’s not impossible either. I’ve mostly fixed it for myself. The direction for improvement is clear: seek detail you would not normally notice about the world. When you go for a walk, notice the unexpected detail in a flower or what the seams in the road imply about how the road was built. When you talk to someone who is smart but just seems so wrong, figure out what details seem important to them and why. In your work, notice how that meeting actually wouldn’t have accomplished much if Sarah hadn’t pointed out that one thing. As you learn, notice which details actually change how you think.

Unconscious incompetence > conscious incompetence > conscious competence > unconscious competence

In psychology, the four stages of competence, or the “conscious competence” learning model, relates to the psychological states involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to competence in a skill.

Understand the mechanism

P-M Analysis

Background, what are all of the things we already know or think we already know, we take a step back

Breakdown

Basic Science

This approach becomes especially important when the problems we’re tackling are technical in nature. By this I mean that there is a specific combination of factors that must be combined in order to produce a good outcome. These are what we might call the “important details”.

You need these things in order to identify your threshold of knowledge, form a hypothesis, test it and learn what lies beyond the threshold

“What am I missing?”

What question should I be asking? The trick to being a good coach is to know the right question to ask next, and to do as little else as possible. Or to get the learner to ask the questions, practice inquiry and take note of detail they may have missed or ignored.

If you wish to not get stuck, seek to perceive what you have not yet perceived.

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