When I feel stuck, the problem is most probably framing. A couple of questions I find useful are:
I should define the real constraint (Ala Hume, Popper, Musk, Andy Grove)
No generics: “I need more features.”
More specifics: “users can’t get the value within 2 minutes.”
Fix that.
I should kill sacred assumptions (Ala Hume, Popper, Musk, Christensen)
“We must do it this way.”
“Enterprise buyers expect this.”
“The UI has to look like similar to X because that’s what people know.”
Most of these are inherited, not proven.
I should rebuild a clean version (Ala Hume, Popper, Christensen)
“If we started today, with today’s tools, what would we do?”
As a concrete alternative I can sketch in an hour.
I should keep risk small (Ala Nassim Taleb)
Can I run a small test within 2h? or 2 days?
I most probably can.
A thin slice e2e.
A measurable experiment I can act on, NOW.
A tangible thing I can learn from, NOW.
I should tinker (Ala Nassim Taleb)
Stay aware of new tools and play with them. I can’t know which one will work. And that’s OK.
That’s it.
Books around this I actually like
- Elon Musk, Ashlee Vance
- The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen
- “Back to The Drawing Board”, Seth Godin
- The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper
- Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile. All by Nassim Taleb