Thinking training in life: Use cases around you to develop analytical skills!

Analytical ability is one of the important abilities needed in life and work. This article starts with the ability to discover and analyze problems, and further shares how to transform the analytical ability gained from life into work. At the end of the article, a question is raised. You may wish to try to answer it after reading this article.

Friends often ask me, as a student who wants to do analytical work, how can I practice this skill in my daily life? I tell them to pay more attention to the things around you. For example, if you see something strange, you have to ask yourself: "What's going on?" Ask more "whys", dig deeper, and trace the root cause to find the answer . Over time, you will naturally have analytical eyes.

However, some students still have trouble figuring out how to apply this method in their daily lives.

Well, let me give you an example today to show you how to hone your analytical skills through small everyday things.

01 Ability to discover problems

Analytical ability is not only about solving problems, but more importantly, it is about discovering problems .

When everyone thinks it's no big deal, if you can find potential problems, it means you are ahead of others.

There are actually many small things around us that we take for granted. Once we think deeply about them, we will find that they are not as simple as they seem. What we think is common sense may actually hide unknown reasons.

Take the number of floors for example. Have you noticed that the buildings around you always seem to have 6 floors, 11 floors, 18 floors, 26 floors, and 33 floors, while 7 floors, 19 floors, and 37 floors are relatively rare.

Is this a coincidence, or is there some pattern?

If you have discovered this phenomenon before, it means that you are quite sensitive to data . Being sensitive to numbers is one of your analytical talents.

There must be some kind of pattern behind the numbers that appear frequently. What is this pattern? Are you interested in exploring it?

If you are curious about this, then your passion for seeking the truth is a powerful driving force for improving your analytical skills.

02 Analyze the problem

So what do these common floor numbers represent?

This situation does not seem to be unique to a certain place, but is spread all over the country, so it is likely related to national policies.

Of course this is just our guess, and we still need evidence to prove it.

Most of you may not be in the construction industry and are not familiar with the industry's regulations and clauses. But would you, out of curiosity, seek further evidence to answer this question?

If you are willing to dig deeper, it means that you are a really inquisitive person and are really suitable for analytical work.

The answer is actually not far away. Just search it on Baidu and you will know.

The logic behind these floor numbers is all about cost.

According to the Housing Design Code, if the height from the floor to the ground exceeds 16 meters for buildings above 7 floors, an elevator must be installed. The general floor height is 3 meters, and the 6-story building is 15 meters, so there is no need to install an elevator. But the 7th floor is more than 16 meters, and installing an elevator means increased costs and reduced room utilization, so people would rather stop at the 6th floor.

Why don't we see 12-story buildings? Because above 11 floors, you have to install fire elevators, and the fire doors must be Class B, which naturally costs a lot. Therefore, people usually choose 11 floors as the upper limit.

What about 19 floors? If there are more than 18 floors, the fire stairs must be divided into two independent areas. Not only that, the elevators must be dedicated to firefighting, and there must be at least two of them, and the stairwell must also be enclosed.

The principles are similar for the floors above, and each has corresponding restrictions.

There are more stringent requirements above a certain height, resulting in costs increasing in leaps and bounds rather than linearly.

So while the number of floors may seem arbitrary, there are actually a few specific floors where the cost is relatively low. It is not as cost-effective to build a building with 4 or 5 floors as it is to build a building with 6 floors. If it is more than 6 floors, it is better to build a building with 11 floors.

This is the secret of the number of floors.

03 Learn from one example and apply it to other cases

At this point, the problem seems to be clear.

However, this answer doesn't seem to be of much use to us, does it?

After all, most of us are not practitioners in the construction industry. Knowing this, at most we can show off our knowledge in small talk. It seems to have no practical value.

Indeed, if it is just a pure knowledge point, it may not have much connection with our lives. But this does not mean that we cannot learn something from it. On the contrary, we can use this phenomenon to practice our way of thinking.

Imagine that behind this policy, there is actually a basic principle in economics : as long as the trading rules are set, people involved in the transaction will naturally tend to prefer the option with the lowest cost.

So how can we learn from this in our work?

In fact, there are many such examples. For example, if I want customers to buy more goods, I can't force them to buy three items instead of two, but I can make a rule, such as 15% off for buying three or more items. In this way, customers who originally planned to buy only two items may consider buying one more.

This approach and the rule of the number of floors are actually the same economic principle. After thinking in this way, you can apply the economic principle more deeply.

We can also extend this to management .

Occam's razor principle tells us: " Do not add entities unless necessary ."

If you manage too much and set rules for everything, then what space do people have for independent thinking? For example, if policies are overly restrictive, such as stipulating how high the floors must be and how high each floor must be, then the market's innovative vitality will be limited.

Therefore, when formulating policies, we must focus on the core and only set the most critical items . For the rest, developers will adjust and innovate on their own.

If you are in charge of management, you also need to find that balance point - not intervening too much, allowing subordinates to have their own judgment space, but also ensuring that they do not lose control. The key is to find out what must be focused on, set the general direction and boundaries of the work, and leave the rest to the team members.

You see, even a small example that seems unrelated to us actually connects many things behind it . As long as we are willing to dig deeper, we can find the connection points. When your knowledge forms a close network, you will understand it more deeply and apply it more easily.

summary

I give this example today to help you learn how to think about the things around you and continuously improve your abilities through this kind of thinking training.

Maybe you can also think about some other "weird questions".

For example, why do many people choose to change jobs after three years of working in a company?

Author: Jason

Source: WeChat public account "Sanyuan Variance (ID: sanyuanfangcha)"