Mental models are a fascinating topic for me. A latticework of mental models, as Charlie Munger called it in a 1990 speech, are a way to see the world through different lenses and understand reality quickly with a more complete scope.
Today I want to propose a little mental model of my own creation born out of shallow time thinking. Literally one that has been coming into mental processing while working out and walking the dogs which are some of my personal philosophy moments, and some personal experimentation.
A jigsaw puzzle mindset to face complexity
Complex topics could be complex by many reasons. I want to stand out two of them, the relation between it’s components and each of those component’s own complexity. Consider a well-know and understood theory with extensive documentation, tutorials and explanations. For example, quantum mechanics.
Every physics student will enroll into their quantum mechanics class with a strong physical and mathematical background, disposing of lots of books, Youtube videos, teacher’s classes, other students explanations, etc. However, the struggle is real. Approving a quantum mechanics class and learning it is hard without a question.
Now picture a world in which such documentation doesn’t exist. You need to discover all of the individual components of quantum mechanics and it’s relations by yourself.
As a mental exercise consider a complex topic in your field of expertise and picture yourself building it’s theory and explanations from the ground but with one condition. Try to tackle everything at once, jumping from here from there as you see the content.
This is like trying to see all of the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle at the same time and try to understand the hidden picture.
If this worked somehow it would be an inefficient way to solve. A complete-mess approach that no one would want to use unless there’s a ridiculously small puzzle.
The funny thing here is that, without being aware of it, we may be doing this more often than we think. The complexity and abstraction of some topics in our day-to-day take so much of our focus in such specific pieces of the spectrum that we don’t realize about the complete-mess approach we are using.
By having a mammoth complex task human beings may over-focus on one of the actual least priorities. The size of the problem. And so, we share our focus resource between that and the current work at hand, forgetting about thinking first about the strategy. Planning and preparing will make an important difference.
Getting back to the jigsaw puzzle analogy, it would make more sense to get a sufficiently big and comfortable table, sort pieces by color, taking the edges first, looking at the picture in the box, starting with what is easy, focusing on making small chunks that would later be assembled in bigger chunks and finally the whole puzzle.
Now what’s interesting about all of these strategies in a jigsaw puzzle is that they most of the time hit a wall, so another approach comes in, for example, you assembled most of the green pieces, but haven’t placed a piece in 10 minutes, so you go to a totally different part of the puzzle or blindly take a random piece to see if you find something there. The flow of a single approach is not linear, there is an interleaving of techniques that keep the puzzle going on.
Way too often we face problems that don’t have a previous guide just yet. The knowledge and relations must be discovered as we work on then.
The jigsaw puzzle mental model is all about picturing the complexity of your task at hand like a big puzzle so that the smartest decision is to take your time to prepare and try to gather a likely set of approaches that as a whole are the toolbox to maintain momentum.
Which are my edges in this project? What are the colors to group? How much time should I focus on a single piece? When should I go blind and ignore some pieces I had gathered? What’s the easiest I can focus right now?
This is a bit more than divide and conquer. Divide and conquer is a mental model contained withing jigsaw puzzle model.
Now why would this model have such importance?
First of all, because of the complete-mess approach. If the problem is complex that isn’t a smart decision. However if it’s very simple, it could probably be an overly complex strategy.
Second, when we are solving a puzzle, we may invest too much time in forcing an approach that hits a wall, but we are so focused in this approach that don’t realize that in order to regain momentum it could be better to switch strategy to keep the puzzle moving forward. here is value in seeing the world through other angles but no one can’t do that by refusing to switch spots.
Third when you have a set of approaches in your toolbox is easier to form chunks of information. Every chunk can have it’s own nature that fits better to one strategy than another. They latter may be assembled later when the connections begin to make sense.
How do I apply this mental model?
Normally I like to do the simplest implementation as possible.
Starting from a small piece of paper (post-it size) I write down those edges or easiest parts and what seems like the most reasonable approaches to begin with.
Then I start working and as new knowledge appears I update my little note or make a new one adding the single piece to obsess with or the piece to ignore for a while depending on if it makes sense.
This should be really simple to do in practice. The note is just a little remainder that I’m working on a puzzle so that I don’t try to tackle the complexity in a foolish way.
Final thoughts
Mental models are a great tool to overcome our limited view of the world. They are the lenses that allows us to find out what is it that we don’t know we don’t know in order to come with better solutions or more complete visions of the world.
The jigsaw puzzle mental model is one of many possible to help prevent a harder, more tired, approach when having to tackle a problem with many things to discover along the path.
What really matters about this post is the chance to having one more tool to your mental toolbox that may eventually come in handy.
