Portable Thinking
How is it that some people respond to an onslaught of challenges with agility and grace, while others get mired in each new problem as it arises? There isn't a simple answer, of course.
But one reason some people excel in this kind of environment is what we might call “portable thinking."
In her book on academic writing, Make Your Manuscript Work, Laura Portwood-Stacer advises scholars to make the arguments in their books “portable.” I’ll admit that seemed like an odd word to apply to a thesis. But what it means is that the argument one puts forth about topic A should be able to inform someone else’s thinking about topic B.
The method or model of thought stretches beyond the bounds of a particular historical period or scientific breakthrough or sociological analysis. A portable argument provides the basis for discovery or innovation in other contexts and even entirely different fields—that’s where portable thinking comes in. Instead of being the one making the portable argument, the portable thinker is the one who uses that argument to inform their own area of interest or expertise.
Of course, you don’t have to be a scholar to do this.
Portable thinking leads to agile action. Instead of seeing a new problem as unique, one sees its connections to other problems that have already been solved. (“Problem” here is a catch-all term that can include any challenge, goal, or opportunity that needs to be understood and acted on.) Applying the method or model of thought that led to a solution in a past context can quickly yield a solution to the current challenge. If, instead of seeing problems as discrete situations, one sees recurring patterns and similar relationships, it takes less time and effort to evaluate various ways forward.
Portable Thinking In Practice
For example, let's say my work is feeling a little sluggish, less free-flowing than I'm used to. I want to get back to a quick, creative pace. How do I do it?
As a runner, I know that increasing my weekly mileage too quickly tends to cause a flare-up of plantar fasciitis—a common and often extremely painful condition in the tendon that runs along the bottom of the foot. Overtraining injuries like this are quite different from acute injuries like spraining an ankle or breaking a toe. I don’t accidentally end up with plantar fasciitis the way I might accidentally twist my ankle on a tree root. Overtraining injuries are predictable, which means I can reduce their likelihood through a smart training program.
To fend off a flare-up, I increase mileage very slowly, say, one mile per week. Every four or five weeks, I back way off and reduce my mileage by 25-50%. That’s the training program. By doing that, I can increase my weekly mileage from 15 miles to 30 miles in about 5 months.
Now, what if I view my work problem through the lens of my running experience (i.e., engage in some portable thinking)? The sluggish, less free-flowing quality of my work is sort of like a flare-up. Well, maybe something is causing emotional, mental, or strategic stress that’s persistent rather than acute. So I ask myself, ‘What would a smart training program look like in this context?’ Perhaps my resources are stretched too thin, and I need to focus on one or two projects before adding anything else to the mix.
That may or may not solve the issue. Porting a solution from one context to another isn’t a sure thing. But it does allow me to identify something to try—some explanation for what I’m experiencing, some sense of familiarity and ease with the issue—much more efficiently than if I treated every new challenge as something I’d never seen before.
Step one in using portability as a problem-solving strategy is to assume that a method or model already exists for addressing the issue. That can be hard to do when the issue is urgent or involves some new technology. We’re easily convinced that an issue is far more novel than it really is. The preexisting method or model might be in a completely different context or involve a completely different set of circumstances. But the underlying pattern is similar enough to port an approach from one scenario to another.
Typically, we are wary of assumptions. We learn to disregard preconceptions so that we can see a situation more clearly. Rightfully so. But that shouldn’t prevent us from noticing how one problem rhymes with another, how a challenge feels like one we’ve faced in the past.
So, assuming that whatever issue is in front of us has an analog, the next step is to determine what analog might help us think through the situation. We might ask:
When have I felt like this before?
What does this scenario remind me of?
What lessons have I learned in the past that might be helpful here?
How do the mechanics of this situation mimic the mechanics of a different situation?
Once we've identified a useful analog, we can port our thinking from that scenario into the new one. We apply the pattern, the lesson, the constraints, or the mechanics of what we know about the already-solved problem to the new unsolved problem. It's not always easy, nor is it often straightforward.
But it's a heckuva lot better than starting from scratch.
