Boost your problem-solving by talking

I use a powerful technique I want to share with you. I use it to get unstuck whenever I hit a roadblock, this can be with projects, writing, or any area of my life.
It'll accelerate your problem-solving and increase your effectiveness.

It's a simple method you already use daily but with a little twist.
It’s a way to overcome your blockers and evolve your thinking on a subject.

Let's dive in!

This simple technique is... 🥁 Drumroll... Talking.
Shocking. I know.

What makes talking so effective at problem-solving are things we usually see as disadvantages

1. The short distance from the brain to the world. AKA Talking without thinking. AKA blurting out shit that gets you in trouble.
2. Speed. You can go through a big number of ideas quickly by talking.

When facing a roadblock people immediately seek assistance from Google, friends, colleagues, or ChatGPT. While collaboration and support are valuable, there's a more effective approach.
Instead of reaching out for help right away, and perhaps distracting your college,  give yourself a chance to understand the problem independently first.
Look at it from different angles.

No one likes the guy that keeps asking for help all the time without even thinking about the problem first.

A low-effort way to examine the problem and “spend time” with it is to talk it through.

"There’s writer’s block, there's (almost) no such thing as speaker's block”

Our brain is wonderfully capable to generate thoughts, that our mouth is great at blurting out, 99% of the time we censor it, rightly so… But when we want to get unblocked, and create an abundance of ideas to work with. Create a safe environment to get those thoughts out, and the floodgates will open. You'll have plenty of ideas.
After all the quite often this is already happening in your mind. You talk with yourself all the time, it's called thinking. It's the ever going conversation going on in your head.

Instead of asking a friend to quickly “run by him something”, or if “hey can take a “quick look”
Open a Google Doc, or any other app that supports audio transcription such as otter.ai, or audiopen.ai, and start talking.
100% stream of thoughts about the issue at hand.

Things like:

1. Description of the problem.
2. What’s the context?
3. What are you trying to accomplish?
4. What’s a bad solution? Why is it a bad solution?
5. What are similar situations?
6. etc.

(To enable dictation on Google Docs shortcut CMD + Shift + S on Mac OR Ctrl + Shift + S on Windows.)

In less than 5 minutes (probably closer to 3), you’ll flush out quite a few ideas and thoughts, and you’ll have them in writing so you don’t have to worry about remembering anything you say.

Now go back to the page and pick out the most promising ones and start expanding them.

Bonus tip: Leave yourself voice markers when something resonates. Say “Nice nice nice” OR “mark mark mark” OR “Idea idea idea”, it’ll make it easy to find them in the text.

Recap:

• Getting unstuck is essential for progress in any endeavor.
• You have the power to supercharge your problem-solving skills.
• By talking you can go through many ideas FAST and get unstuck.
• Using transcription makes it easy to work on your thoughts afterward.

So, the next time you find yourself stuck, remember that you have the ability to break free from the barriers. Open the transcription app and start talking.

It’s fun, I promise.

p.s. I did a quick recording as an example, and a cool idea came out of it, that I ended up using in the post.

Here's the recording and here's the idea that came out of it as a table.

I compared the strengths and weaknesses of 3 communication methods