Interesting concept! Come to think of it, I’ve found myself doing something similar to this, for pretty much the same reasons you decribed: I’ll think of a solution, and then say “okay, cool solution—now drop it from your mind, think about the problem again, and then come up with a different solution.” Repeat a few times, then judge the solutions you’ve come up with. Here’s how it might work for Simon, looking for examples for his calculus textbook:
Simon thinks of engineering, then agriculture, then irrigation, then comes up with a cool example involving marginal increases in crop yield from money spent on irrigation. He makes a note of it, then carefully stops thinking about it.
Simon thinks of something not engineering. Whenever he starts thinking of engineering, he stops thinking of engineering and instead thinks of something else. Specifically, he thinks of biology, then evolution, then comes up with an example involving peppered moths and changing allele frequencies caused by changing probabilities of being eaten by a predator before reproducing, coming from changes in the soot concentration in England during the Industrial Revolution.
Simon mentally blacklists engineering and biology, and decides to derive some basic equations for the motion of an object under continuous acceleration, like a perfectly spherical cow shot out of a cannon. Everybody loves those examples, right? I know I did.
In other words, as an alternative to doing breadth-first or simple depth-first search, you can do depth-first search while marking recently-explored areas of the idea space as off-limits since you’ve thought about them recently. (This sounds similar to Tabu search, if you enjoy over-stretching metaphors as much as I do.)
The thing I like most about this method is that it’s really easy to remember to do—I just need a reflex that says “now clear your head and think of a different solution” to make my saving roll against tunnel vision. I’m not sure I would have the willpower to start listing possible areas in idea-space before exploring any of them, at least not on a regular basis.
(By the way, whatever method ends up working best, avoiding tunnel vision is a really important skill. Using the method I just described, I managed to save myself several days of work about a week ago. That’s pretty high payoff for such a simple habit of thought!)
That approach definitely does seem neater as a habit to adopt. The only problem is that it seems more mentally challenging—it may be harder to tell your brain to avoid an area and come up with a new one after it’s already focused on it (this may be true for some problems more than others).
Interesting concept! Come to think of it, I’ve found myself doing something similar to this, for pretty much the same reasons you decribed: I’ll think of a solution, and then say “okay, cool solution—now drop it from your mind, think about the problem again, and then come up with a different solution.” Repeat a few times, then judge the solutions you’ve come up with. Here’s how it might work for Simon, looking for examples for his calculus textbook:
Simon thinks of engineering, then agriculture, then irrigation, then comes up with a cool example involving marginal increases in crop yield from money spent on irrigation. He makes a note of it, then carefully stops thinking about it.
Simon thinks of something not engineering. Whenever he starts thinking of engineering, he stops thinking of engineering and instead thinks of something else. Specifically, he thinks of biology, then evolution, then comes up with an example involving peppered moths and changing allele frequencies caused by changing probabilities of being eaten by a predator before reproducing, coming from changes in the soot concentration in England during the Industrial Revolution.
Simon mentally blacklists engineering and biology, and decides to derive some basic equations for the motion of an object under continuous acceleration, like a perfectly spherical cow shot out of a cannon. Everybody loves those examples, right? I know I did.
In other words, as an alternative to doing breadth-first or simple depth-first search, you can do depth-first search while marking recently-explored areas of the idea space as off-limits since you’ve thought about them recently. (This sounds similar to Tabu search, if you enjoy over-stretching metaphors as much as I do.)
The thing I like most about this method is that it’s really easy to remember to do—I just need a reflex that says “now clear your head and think of a different solution” to make my saving roll against tunnel vision. I’m not sure I would have the willpower to start listing possible areas in idea-space before exploring any of them, at least not on a regular basis.
(By the way, whatever method ends up working best, avoiding tunnel vision is a really important skill. Using the method I just described, I managed to save myself several days of work about a week ago. That’s pretty high payoff for such a simple habit of thought!)
That approach definitely does seem neater as a habit to adopt. The only problem is that it seems more mentally challenging—it may be harder to tell your brain to avoid an area and come up with a new one after it’s already focused on it (this may be true for some problems more than others).