Problem Solving

Problem-Solving Skills

A collection of techniques for breaking through stuck points and finding elegant solutions.

Available Sub-Skills

When Stuck (Dispatch)

Location: when-stuck/SKILL.md

Start here when stuck. Matches your stuck-type to the right technique. Quick dispatch table for routing to the appropriate sub-skill.

Collision-Zone Thinking

Location: collision-zone-thinking/SKILL.md

Force unrelated concepts together to discover emergent properties. "What if we treated X like Y?" Revolutionary insights come from deliberate metaphor-mixing.

Inversion Exercise

Location: inversion-exercise/SKILL.md

Flip every assumption and see what still works. "What if the opposite were true?" Exposes hidden constraints and alternative approaches.

Meta-Pattern Recognition

Location: meta-pattern-recognition/SKILL.md

Spot patterns appearing in 3+ domains to find universal principles. Extract abstract forms that apply across domains.

Scale Game

Location: scale-game/SKILL.md

Test at extremes (1000x bigger/smaller) to expose fundamental truths. What breaks? What survives? Extremes reveal what normal scales hide.

Simplification Cascades

Location: simplification-cascades/SKILL.md

Find one insight that eliminates multiple components. "If this is true, we don't need X, Y, or Z." Look for unifying principles.

When to Use

| How You're Stuck | Use This |

|------------------|----------|

| Don't know which technique | when-stuck |

| Need breakthrough innovation | collision-zone-thinking |

| Forced by assumptions | inversion-exercise |

| Same issue in different places | meta-pattern-recognition |

| Unsure about production scale | scale-game |

| Complexity spiraling | simplification-cascades |

Quick Reference

Conventional solutions inadequate?  → collision-zone-thinking
"This must be done this way"?       → inversion-exercise
Same pattern 3+ places?             → meta-pattern-recognition
Will it work at scale?              → scale-game
Same thing implemented 5+ ways?     → simplification-cascades

Core Philosophy

> "One powerful abstraction > ten clever hacks"

These techniques help you find the elegant solution that makes complexity unnecessary, rather than managing complexity through brute force.