However, the weird part was the result of the “Sensing or Intuition” scale. You’d think that someone who spent a good chunk of his life troubleshooting tech problems would have at least some leaning towards sensing. After all, technology and science are data driven. In my case, though, I scored 100% on the intuitive side. The psychologist who gave the test was equally surprised.
What does that mean in a practical sense? I’ve discovered over the years that I often don’t have much to contribute to any cogent analysis or discussion when I’m in that first 80% of the learning curve on a topic. Instead, I’m absorbing what’s thrown at me. I think somewhere in my deep brain, a lot of sorting and pattern recognition is occurring, but I certainly don’t think about it in any conscious way.
At some point, things click, and I suddenly make sense of all the patterns. I can’t point at any set of data to back it up, which can be frustrating when trying to explain my reasoning to people. But I’ve come to trust those nagging feelings when I get them. Here’s where the issue of intuition versus working through a set of logical problem shooting steps comes into play.
After cogitating on the problem for a bit, I shoved the case onto my bench, ripped out the Intel motherboards and installed an Asus Rampage II X58 board. I was under tremendous deadline pressure, but since I’d hit a dead end with the Intel board, swapping it out seemed like the right thing to do. However, it also meant reinstalling Windows 7 and all my benchmarks.
I’m very happy that Windows 7 installs much faster than Vista or even XP.
I ran a couple of benchmarks, keeping my fingers crossed. Sure enough, the results came back almost 50% higher than I’d been getting with the Intel board. I double-checked to make sure processor and memory clocks were running at stock speeds – they were – and moved on to finish testing.
There are upsides and downsides to this kind of approach. The downsides:
- It takes some time to come up to speed, and during that time, you’re often not contributing much or participating. That can be frustrating if you’re in a team environment.
- Sometimes when that flash of insight happens, it can happen late in a cycle. That’s what happened to me with the graphic card testing. At a certain point, I knew that swapping out the motherboard was the right thing – but that was pretty late into my testing cycle, with deadlines looming.
- You often don’t know if you’re wrong until you’ve gone far down into a rathole. Intuition can be a tricky business.
That last point is always something to keep in mind if you’re an intuitive problem solver. Sometimes, the data isn’t wrong, even if your gut tells you it is. So you really need to have a strong grounding in data from the past. The only reason I had confidence in my gut feeling was the tremendous amounts of data I’d collected in thousands of benchmarks over the years. Couple that vast amount of data with some understanding of the underlying hardware architectures involved meant that my intuitive sense was grounded in a lot of data.
The other reason I had some confidence is because I’d been right much more often than I’d been wrong over the years. Again, there’s that whole “data” thing – I could trust my instincts, because my instincts had proven me right in the past.
One last point: being great at troubleshooting and understanding one aspect of technology doesn’t make me an instant expert in some other field. I think this is where intuitive thinkers trip themselves up. Their very success at being right based on what their intuitive sense tells them, in an area in which they’re expert, can make them overconfident.
But that’s a topic for another article.
So are you an intuitive or logical problem solver? And if you’re one type, does it frustrate you to work with the other type? Just how do you go about solving technical problems? I’d like to hear more on this.
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10 comments
Steve says:
September 16, 2009 at 12:36 pm (UTC -7 )
I too am a INTP. I love working with logically minded people in a team environment. Their logic gets me started. Like you, it take me longer for things to “click,” but when they do I become very proficient at it. The easy way to keep from being overconfident is to tell yourself and others that you have no idea about certain subjects that have not “clicked” for you yet.
when I set out solving technical problems by myself, I usually start with what I have learned in the past. If that does not work, there is always Google.
Andrew says:
September 16, 2009 at 12:42 pm (UTC -7 )
Any ideas on why the Intel motherboard showed no improvements?
Loyd Case says:
September 16, 2009 at 1:03 pm (UTC -7 )
No idea what’s going on with the Intel board — but I’m reinstalling it into another case and will dig into the issue later.
Jason Cross says:
September 16, 2009 at 2:39 pm (UTC -7 )
I’m not sure if I’m INTP or not, but I’m guessing I probably am. Or something similar. I’m certainly more the stoic analytic type than the social and “feeling” type.
I too am curious about the Intel board. Expecially since I have a DX58SO myself, and am looking forward to installing one of those graphics cards you can’t talk about.
Michael says:
September 16, 2009 at 3:53 pm (UTC -7 )
I’m one of the logical thinkers. I can frustrate myself at times. Just think about having the answer to some problem but not being able to stop working on it until you work out how to properly solve the problem. I’ve had PC build problems and then spent days working out why I had the problem after it went away. The value in this is that I am better able to solve problems in the future due to the “logic” tree in my head. Its just frustrating at the time.
Alfredo says:
September 16, 2009 at 10:27 pm (UTC -7 )
The description of a INTP person seems to fit me fairly well, so I’m guessing I’m in that camp, but I’ve been trained to work as a logical thinker. As Steve pointed, I work well with logical thinkers since their approach gives me data to sustain or discard my ‘gut’ feelings. In the beginning, I used to approach the problems from a logical structure because it made it easier to explain and chart my route to a solution for peers. Now, as time has gone by, I still do, but more to keep me in check and avoid making big leaps that might fail, especially in new areas. I tend to be less structured on old paths that I’ve walked many times and my peers are more receptive to ‘leaps of intuition’ there since they have come to accept that they do work most of the time. What frustrates me most is a problem where I get no gut feeling at all. In those cases, I go to the old ‘break it in smaller parts’ until I get a sense of direction or ‘gut feeling’ to follow to the solution, which can take some time or none at all ocassionally.
Hans Brauer says:
September 16, 2009 at 11:56 pm (UTC -7 )
I’m have the exact sentiment about the confidence part. Always do a reality check before opening your mouth. The biggest problem I have is to explain how I got the answer from seemingly random data. (It’s not random but just a lot of experience in most cases)
Tim Verry says:
September 17, 2009 at 2:46 am (UTC -7 )
I’m agreed with Alfredo. You pretty much summed up what I was going to say lol.
Jeffrey Obney says:
October 3, 2009 at 12:49 am (UTC -7 )
Was it the ATI 5870?
Loyd Case says:
October 3, 2009 at 8:15 am (UTC -7 )
Yes; my review is at Maximum PC. It will also be in the print mag.