Thinking tool: Do the obvious things

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4 September 20264 September 2026

When you have a problem, it's easy to dive into doing the first thing that comes into your mind to solve it.

A flowchart with only two steps: '1. List the obvious things to do' then '2. Do them', ending at 'solved (usually)'

But stopping to think through what "obvious" things a reasonable person would do with this task can help a lot. Checklists, formal decision-making frameworks like PIOSEE, and asking other people (and AI assistants like Claude) for obvious advice can also help with this.

See Nate Soares' "Obvious advice" for more.

(This is a stub; at some point I might expand it to have some concrete examples! But honestly Nate's post is excellent and I highly recommend it!)

This is part of my thinking tools series. Also consider:

Meet with advisors in your head: "what would I tell someone else in this position?" is a fast generator of obvious advice
Refuse the idiot plot: the social version - the obvious question, actually asked

Thinking tool: Do the obvious things

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