Marek Blotny's Blog

In this post I would like to share with you quite cool logic puzzle. Real purpose of this puzzle is to reveal mental habit which is common for majority of people. I know, it’s very vague but that’s because I don’t want to spoil the fun

The puzzle

Preparation – You will need a pen and a piece of paper. Take the piece of paper and put on it nine dots in a way showed on the image below.

Rules – Your task is to draw four straight lines in way that all dots will be covered. To make it a bit more difficult, all lines have to be connected, end point of first line is a starting point for the second line and end point of second line is a starting point for third line…

Here is an example:

My lines are not exactly straight, but there are clearly four lines.

And that’s it really – now go and try to solve it on your own. There are not that many combinations to check so it should be doable within a few minutes.

Solution

Here you can download the correct way to cover all dots. I hope you have managed to figure it out on your own. If not then don’t worry – solution to this puzzle is far from obvious for majority of people. When I was trying to solve it, only one person of twenty five in a group has done it right. And that’s because that person had seen this puzzle before.

Key thing to notice here, to get it solved, is that you are not limited to area with dots. You can also use space around dots. People tend to make assumptions because “things usually work this way”. Usually in puzzles like that, there are lines representing boundaries, so it’s clear how big the game area is. In this case however boundaries are not defined. That’s something which completely doesn’t fit to scenarios familiar to our mind. And that’s exactly why we have made the assumption – there must be some boundaries, there always are! The easiest thing was to assume that outer dots are closing available space.

Of course that was just a game. Incorrect assumption was made and that’s all! No one got hurt, right? But imagine for a second, what are the consequences of incorrect assumptions made in the beginning of a project? Usually tremendous! Tell me from your own experience – are projects with incorrect assumptions made somewhere in early stages that uncommon?

I work with content management systems all the time. For me customization of CMS to client needs is a business as usual. I have done it many times. We, as a Cognifide, know how to do it and we are good at it. Risk here however is called - routine. With time people tend to stop thinking about basic things and take them for granted. We do make assumptions even without thinking about it. On the other side, our clients, in the same time also make some assumptions – about us, as a service providers, about a project or about a cost. They expect to get some things and this is not always communicated. Why? Maybe because we don’t like to waste time on talking about things which are obvious, right?

This puzzle showed to me that I’m not free from this mental habit; I do make lots of assumptions. It helped me to be much more aware of that. Also I’m aware that our clients are most likely doing exactly the same thing and it’s our job to surface those “obvious” assumptions. That is one of the reasons to keep asking “why?”.

My conclusions

1. Be aware that people simply make assumptions, sometimes even without thinking about it
2. Try to understand client’s intentions and goals to have better chances with discovering hidden assumptions
3. Be conscious and transparent with assumptions which you make. How? The simplest way is to write them down and make them available to everyone.
4. And finally – try to get distance from time to time and challenge your assumptions – try to verify correctness of them. Rule which was correct in past may not apply any more or may not apply to some specific project. It’s worth checking our habits from time to time and adapt if necessary. Seth Godin wrote once that decision before the decision is the box. Try to look on things from outside of the box – challenge your assumptions.

Final words … I’m sure that this game has some name; I have heard about it from a few different sources, it seems to be popular element of different trainings for marketers, sales people or managers. If anyone knows the official name – please leave a comment!
Moreover, if my post has inspired some thoughts in your head and you have enough time to share – please leave a comment!

Every day we are facing some deadlines. There might be a need to finish a report, answer important emails, estimate something, fix some bugs or test next release. Those are all urgent and usually important things. We have to deal with them as a matter of priority.

This is obvious part; big question which I have is what next? What will you do next when all urgent things are done, the pressure is gone and you still have a bit of time?

Basically you have two options. First one is easy; you can switch to things which are not so challenging to relax and rest a bit. Problem however is that those not-so-challenging tasks are most likely almost completely not important. I can tell you without further ado that this is not the way to go.

Alternatively, you can focus on things which can have significant impact on your effectiveness and work quality. First step on that way will be to stop for a while and ask a question: what can I do to make my work more effective? Try to come up with at least one change that will have a significant impact.

If you start thinking in such categories you may be able to identify things like:

• tools which are not as good and useful as they should be – you can replace them with better ones,
• scarcities in your development process – you can work to eliminate them, visible problem is a killable problem,
• manual tasks which can be automated

You can also spend that time on personal development, and for instance:

• master tools which you use every day – learn some advanced features or new keyboard shortcuts,
• do some research,
• learn new design pattern, framework or programming language

Trick is to minimize time which you spend on urgent things. Urgent problems usually have some underlying cause. When you are close to a deadline there is no time for fixing the core issue. Typically it takes too much time so the only viable option is to find a workaround. However without fixing the core issue you can be sure that sooner or later that problem will come back and again it will be something urgent. That’s why it makes sense to spend your time on identifying and fixing core problems. That will reduce number of things which can go wrong and make you more effective. As a consequence it will also allow you to spend even more time on important things like personal development.

Effective people know how to distinguish tasks which are important and really matter, they know how to “put first things first”. They are proactively looking for opportunities to to get better. Are you one of them? What are your ways to have more time for important things?