Ducks – Meet your new problem solving team
Each morning, you wake up, not with the Sun or in time to hit your 9am punchcard, but at the exact moment that your body becomes perfectly rested, whether that means 7am or 11am (or 2pm on Mondays). You roll out of bed, do a few yoga stretches, maybe a pushup or two for good measure, then stroll down the hall to put on a pot of your favorite coffee (or tea if you’re so inclined). You head to your office, the corner of the bedroom that hasn’t yet been usurped by the dirty laundry, and clear back the jungle of chinese takeout boxes, utility bills, and post-it notes to reveal a desk. On that desk sits a purring little machine – you give it a little pat, open it up, and instantly become plugged into the rest of the world.
Congratulations, you are one of the chosen ones – the tele-worker. You have somehow managed to turn plaid pajamas into professional attire. You can blare your Michael Buble Christmas album as loud as you want without fear of persecution by your coworkers. At this very moment, there are millions of commuters all over the world cursing your good fortune. Yet, you have a problem. It may not be apparent in the early days of freedom, but once past the honeymoon phase of tele-working, it will slowly start creeping in, not unlike the accompanying arc of disinterest in your personal hygiene.
The problem is that beyond the general process of slipping into cabin fever (solved in part by mid-day runs, lunches with friends, time spent at coffee shops, etc.), you slowly realize that problem solving tasks have become more time-consuming and arduous than in your pre-tele-worker days.
It’s not that the retreat into our homes has somehow diminished our inherent problem solving abilities, but rather that we tend to forget or undervalue the ability to quickly bounce an idea off of someone else in a shared working space. For the tele-worker, a typical problem solving process goes like this:
- Search the internet for the kindred soul who’s stumbled across your same problem
- Spend an hour banging head against table
- Take advil for resulting headache
- IM a co-worker – spend 20 minutes explaining the context, before agreeing to:
- Get on the phone and talk it through
Talking to a rubber duck
Yes, talking out loud to a plastic toy. Put the rubber duck next to your monitor, walk it through the problem you’re solving, and be amazed when the solution comes to you almost immediately. I’m sure we’ve all had this phenomenon occur when explaining a problem to a fellow human – well, a duck does the job just as well, without any of the judgement that can often accompany human responses.
This technique is used sometimes in the programming world and called “rubber duck debugging“, however, I’ve found it to be useful in all sorts of problem solving and brainstorming tasks. It also seems to be more useful than simply talking out loud about the problem because the duck forces you to actually explain the situation step by step.
Without further ado, meet my problem solving team (put together my HR Director/lovely wife Liz):
**WARNING** – While working late at night and/or after a few bottles of beer, your good natured ducks may turn on you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
