Some problems are solved by thinking backwards
· design · reflection
One powerful and lasting idea from the book “How to Take Smart Notes” by Sönke Ahrens is of the following form:
Imagine you are facing a deadline to submit a paper or publication next week. You could ask yourself “what would be the thing that I would have wanted most in the world right now?”. One answer is probably “a rough draft on this exact subject in my own words”.
Now imagine having a draft in hand, rather than a blank page. That would allow you to do some editing passes, trim out some rough edges, maybe do some reordering, conform the text to the formatting required, and then click submit and you're done! Editing is oh so much less work than generating from scratch.
Now thinking back one more step. You're tasked with having a rough draft dealing with a particular subject for next week, “what would be the thing that I would have wanted most to have right now?” A proposed answer by the author, Ahrens, is a repository of notes that you would have already written, each tagged with bibliographical references. That would allow you to search through your notes, make connections and copy some of their contents to make up your first rough draft.
This same approach of tackling problems, namely, thinking in reverse or “with the end in mind”, applies to many areas other than non-fiction writing.
Imagine you've just arrived at a supermarket and you want to get the groceries for the week. “What would I want to have then?” Well, most likely a list of groceries that you'd need to replenish and buy for the week ahead. “How can I most reliably have this list built?” Well, right at the moment that you've noticed something has run out, you have the habit of putting it into the “grocery list” entry in your phone. If you do that consistently, you won't even need to remember what's missing from your home: the list you've diligently built at each moment things have run out is, by construction, the complete list!
Now imagine you've made a medical appointment for say 3 months from now. “What would I want to have then?” Well, you would like your phone to remind you about it that week (or the previous day), rather than the alternative of you having to remind yourself every day for 3 months straight until the day arrives. “How can I achieve that?” Well, you can put it into the first-party calendar app as an all-day event, with a notification set to be fired on the previous day.
Speaking even more generally, that applies for anything at all you'd need to remember at a known date in time in the future. You can even remind yourself of things that happen with some recurrence -- such as every year, every month, every week, or every two weeks -- by configuring the repetition of the calendar events.
The more general approach to problem solving -- thinking backwards and with the end in mind -- is immensely powerful. One reason it works so well is because it is able to decompose the final goal into steps or phases that can each be tackled and resolved independently.
The problem is no longer a monolith of “write a paper from scratch and submit it”, but instead i) “study and collect notes from the subject matter”; ii) “assemble my notes into a rough draft”; and iii) “edit my draft into a polished piece”.
Likewise, the problem is no longer “when I arrive at the supermarket, I need to remember really well what things have run out or are close to running out at home”; it is “every time I notice something is running out or has run out, I need to put it into the list”. The latter of which is a habit much more manageable to build than an impeccable memory.
Finally, to finish the parallel, the challenge becomes no longer “I need to remind myself of everything that's important this week or tomorrow”, but instead “I need to remember to put any commitment as I'm making that commitment”. If you you can trust your calendar to have everything you need to remember for the upcoming days, then a simple glance will do the trick.