Coaching practices for Solve by Subtraction
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Solve by Subtraction, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Whenever something isn’t working my instinct is always to add
- I keep trying to answer one giant fuzzy question
- What I’ve built has gotten so complicated that it keeps breaking in new places, and I suspect half the moving parts are doing work something else could absorb
- Somewhere in this I stopped seeing a problem we both have and started seeing the other person AS the problem
- I keep treating one piece of this as a given
Practices that may help
- Solve by subtraction
Ask what to remove before asking what to add.
Inversion: Solve Problems Backward - Decompose the target attribute into components before judging
Break a hard question into its component parts and answer each one directly, rather than letting a heuristic answer the whole.
Attribute Substitution: When Your Brain Answers a Different Question - Trim components to find what you can remove
Systematically ask which components in your current solution could be removed if another component took over their function.
TRIZ: Systematic Invention and the Logic of Contradictions - Separate the person from the problem
Treat the conflict as a problem you face together, not a contest you fight each other.
The Third Alternative, Made Practical - Substitute
Ask: what component, material, person, process, or rule could be swapped for something different?
SCAMPER: A Systematic Creativity Technique - Treat judgment difficulty as a signal to slow down
When a question feels easy to answer, that ease may mean your brain swapped it for a simpler one.
Attribute Substitution: When Your Brain Answers a Different Question - Name the question your brain is actually answering
When you reach a quick judgment, ask: "What question did I actually just answer?"
Attribute Substitution: When Your Brain Answers a Different Question - Accompany your final offer with a small non-monetary concession
Adding a low-cost non-monetary item to your final offer signals genuine limit while giving the counterpart a win.
The Ackerman Method, Made Practical - Inversion: Solve Problems Backward
Inversion is the mental model — popularized by Charlie Munger via the mathematician Carl Jacobi’s "invert, always invert" — of approaching a problem from its opposite end: instead of asking how to succeed, ask what would guarantee failure, then systematically avoid it. It is a reasoning heuristic, not a studied intervention, but it reliably surfaces risks and assumptions that forward thinking misses. - Decompose complex questions into sub-questions
Break a hard forecasting question into smaller, estimable pieces and aggregate them.
Superforecasting
Related concerns
- Attribute Substitution Practice
Attribute substitution is Daniel Kahneman’s explanation for how heuristics work: when a question is hard to answer directly, System 1 automatically substitutes a related but easier question and answers that instead. The substitution is usually invisible, so the answer feels like a response to the original hard question when it isn’t. Recognizing the substitution is the only way to correct it.
- Attribute Substitution When Your Brain Answers A Different Question After A Setback
Attribute substitution is Daniel Kahneman’s explanation for how heuristics work: when a question is hard to answer directly, System 1 automatically substitutes a related but easier question and answers that instead. The substitution is usually invisible, so the answer feels like a response to the original hard question when it isn’t. Recognizing the substitution is the only way to correct it.
- Attribute Substitution When Your Brain Answers A Different Question At Work
Attribute substitution is Daniel Kahneman’s explanation for how heuristics work: when a question is hard to answer directly, System 1 automatically substitutes a related but easier question and answers that instead. The substitution is usually invisible, so the answer feels like a response to the original hard question when it isn’t. Recognizing the substitution is the only way to correct it.
- Attribute Substitution When Your Brain Answers A Different Question During A Big Change
Attribute substitution is Daniel Kahneman’s explanation for how heuristics work: when a question is hard to answer directly, System 1 automatically substitutes a related but easier question and answers that instead. The substitution is usually invisible, so the answer feels like a response to the original hard question when it isn’t. Recognizing the substitution is the only way to correct it.
- Attribute Substitution When Your Brain Answers A Different Question With My Partner
Attribute substitution is Daniel Kahneman’s explanation for how heuristics work: when a question is hard to answer directly, System 1 automatically substitutes a related but easier question and answers that instead. The substitution is usually invisible, so the answer feels like a response to the original hard question when it isn’t. Recognizing the substitution is the only way to correct it.
- Prototype Substitution
Ask: what component, material, person, process, or rule could be swapped for something different?
Substitute
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