Thinking Tactics

The "Tackling Hard Thinking" workshop has been re- organized and re-titled as "Thinking Tactics." It now consists of two 3-hour sections, "Part 1: Concentration," and "Part 2: Efficiency."

I met Jean Moroney two years ago at a conference when we sat together at the same table for breakfast, and, when I learned that she was a professional coach in improved thinking techniques, naturally I asked her for some advice. She gave me one idea, a process she called "thinking on paper," and I tried it out for the next six months and noticed a considerable improvement in my ability to get my mind around some tricky problems.

When Jean offered to give a free, short workshop to my team at Microsoft, I invited her in and the results were positive: a month later, many of the participants were still using the techniques (a key measure, in my mind, of whether a class has delivered actual value!). Since then, Jean has returned several times to teach larger classes at Microsoft, including two days of training for the Windows Mentoring Ring. Attendee feedback has been broadly positive, with many reporting that the class – unlike any other classes they had taken – gave them a systematic method for sustained, efficient thinking on complex problems.

Sketch of Mendeleev's original Periodic Table of the Elements

Sketch of Mendeleev's original Periodic Table of the Elements