[MD] indefensible yet enlightening

[Mary]

Hi Craig,

No, I'm talking more about solving problems.  I think everybody must do this, but I don't know how to explain it very well, since, of course, we're talking about thinking in pictures.

I'm in tech support, let's say, and I get a severity 1 issue.  A production system is down and the clock is ticking.  I get the client on the phone and they are always in an emotional state.  The stakes are high.  They start telling me about the problem.  Symptoms, error messages, behaviors their user base observes, etc.  I encourage them to keep talking because that gives me more time to do a search for any error codes they got in the database, and more time to think.  

If they're not the talkative type, not volunteering much, I ask a lot of questions.  What have they already tried to fix it?  What happened when they did?  One ear is listening for clues from them while at the same time I'm scanning a search engine for answers and thinking up possible solutions.  I mentally categorize these into the possible vs. the unlikely.  Were any system changes made recently?  New customizations installed?  When did this start happening?  What were people doing?  Etc.  All this is happening pretty much simultaneously.   Sometimes I'm lucky and it's pretty obvious what's wrong, sometimes not. 

There's really no time to put any of this into words.  It seems to me what's going on in my head is a visualization of the system, like a flow chart, but that's not it either.  It's very amorphous.  I think it comes from having a lot of experience with the product.  I know this because I know it doesn't happen when I take issues for products I don't know much about.  This is a clue.

What it's like is driving on a road.  The road is the journey through the problem and somewhere out there is the solution.  There are a lot of places to turn off and I'm driving really fast and have to make the decision whether to turn down one road or go on to the next almost instantly.  My mental 'car' doesn't have brakes or need to slow down to make a turn, but I know that I must choose wisely because if I pick the wrong road, then I will have to stop and turn around and drive all the way back to the main road to start again.  Those are the rules of my road.  A road with tributaries is EXACTLY what I see in my head.  There's more.  Part of the decision is knowing in advance how long and twisty some of the tributary roads are.  I don't want to pick those unless all the easy little short roads get mentally discarded first. 

The process of how I choose a new road is what I'm talking about.  Processing a bunch of inputs at once.  What the guy is telling me, what I find in the database - or more often don't find - what I already know about how this program works.  Weighing and discarding choices.  This all happens so fast I don't have time to put any of it into words.

Is this like a mechanic listening to the broken motorcycle or just ADHD or maybe what they mean about seeing your life flash before your eyes before you die - an adrenalin rush.

Mary

- The most important thing you will ever make is a realization.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org [mailto:moq_discuss-
> bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of craigerb at comcast.net
> Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2010 11:01 PM
> To: moq discuss
> Subject: [MD] indefensible yet enlightening
> 
> 
> 
> [Mary]
> > Have you ever been at a loss for words?  Try to catch yourself at
> this sometime.
> >  I've tried and the best analogy I can come up with is "pictures".
> 
> I'm trying to "picture" the case you're suggesting.
> Suppose you saw an awesome sunset last evening & are now trying to
> communicate
> the experience to someone else, but are at a loss for words.  Then the
> picture of that
> sunset comes  to mind.  Is this an example of what you mean by
> "thinking in pictures"?
> Or would you have to go on & try to descibe the picture?
> 
> Or maybe an awesome picture of the Grand Canyon comes to mind.  Would
> this
> count for you as thinking in pictures.
> Craig
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