I think thinking is a basic skill. The older I get, the more I realize it isn’t.
Early in my military career, I learned to stop chasing symptoms and start looking for root causes. A single fault could be produced by several different systems. Before we ever reached for a tool, we had to ask ourselves, What are all the possible causes?
That lesson stayed with me.
One of the biggest mistakes experienced technicians make is allowing experience to become certainty. We become convinced we’ve seen this problem before and dismiss other possibilities. Sometimes the newest technician, with a completely different perspective, sees what everyone else overlooked.
I’ve found that people aren’t much different.
Many things present as one thing but are actually another. The first explanation isn’t always the best one, and the loudest answer isn’t always the right one. Learning to ask better questions has made me slower to judge and quicker to listen.
Perhaps that’s the real skill.
Not having all the answers, but having the humility to consider there may be more than one.
Memoirs of Madness 