Your structured thinking may be pseudo-logical

This article carefully interprets the three classification methods of structured thinking to help you organize information and solve problems in a more organized way. Whether it is work or daily life, mastering structured thinking can improve your efficiency and decision-making ability.

Many people have read the book "The Pyramid Principle". This book can be said to be a must-read for those who want to get started in the workplace. It mainly talks about structured thinking. Even if you haven't read this book, you must have heard of structured thinking.

Simply put, structured thinking is to classify and group things, changing the original divergent thinking into an organized 123.

This knowledge is so popular, why do I still want to share it today?

This is mainly because most people have a relatively superficial understanding of structured thinking. The summarized content sounds like three points, but it is pseudo-logic.

Let’s talk briefly today about how to better understand structured thinking.

Using structured thinking to classify and group, it seems that there are many classification methods, but if you combine similar items, there are actually only three, which are:

1. By time
2. By structure
3. By importance

They are introduced one by one below.

1. By time

The first is to split by time , which is a method of analyzing problems based on time sequence. This method is very common and easy to understand. Common time sequences include:

• Past, present, future
• Preparation, execution, and closing
• Morning, afternoon, evening

When analyzing the effects of changes to Internet products, it is common to distinguish data changes before and after the new version is launched and draw conclusions. This method is to distinguish data based on time.

When giving an impromptu speech, chronological order is the easiest way to quickly construct ideas. Even if most people have not been trained in structured thinking, it is easy for them to organize the order of their speeches through structured thinking, which is often called a diary.

2. By structure

The second splitting logic is to split according to structural relationships . According to the structural relationship, the problem is split into different parts from the whole for better understanding and analysis. The following are some common structural orders:

• Divided by region: South China, North China, Central China, East China, Northeast China, Northwest China, Southwest China, etc.
• Split by channels: paid channels, free channels, etc.
• Split by group: new users, old users, etc.

In addition to the above splitting methods, there are many other ways to choose according to specific needs. By splitting according to structural relationships, it is like cutting a cake into different parts, so that we can better analyze and study in daily multi-dimensional analysis.

3. By importance

The last logic is to sort by importance . This logic is relatively complicated, so I will explain it in detail.

If you go to the supermarket to buy a lot of goods, you can classify them into groups. The results of classification may be vegetables, fruits and daily necessities. For example:

• Fruits: apples, bananas, watermelon
• Vegetables: cabbage, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers
• Daily necessities: toothpaste, soap

So how should we classify them according to importance?

To classify according to importance, we must first figure out the purpose of purchasing, that is, why do we go to the supermarket to purchase?

After asking your mother, you found out the reason: there are guests coming to your house in the afternoon, so you need to prepare some fruits and vegetables to entertain them. The other things you need to buy are just for you to bring along.

So entertaining guests is the first goal of shopping. Then I asked you to bring some other vegetables for the food for today and tomorrow. There is still some soap and toothpaste left at home, which can probably be used for half a month, so I asked you to buy some as well.

According to this logic, goods needed to entertain guests have the highest priority, ingredients are secondary, and daily necessities have the lowest priority.

In order of importance, they can be classified as follows:

• To entertain guests: watermelon, tomato, onion
• Recent food: apples, bananas, cabbage, cucumbers
• Daily necessities storage: toothpaste, soap

Classification by importance may produce results very similar to those of other classifications. If you only need to buy fruit to entertain guests in the afternoon, then the results obtained by importance logic may be almost the same as those obtained by structure classification.

Classification by structure:

• Fruits: apples, bananas, watermelon
• Vegetables: cabbage, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers
• Daily necessities: toothpaste, soap

This classification looks the same as the previous classification by structure, but it is not actually.

The method of classifying by time or structure does not require you to have a deep understanding of the problem itself, and you can apply some methods based on common sense. The results after classification are in no order, but in a parallel relationship.

Categorizing by importance requires you to have a deeper understanding of the background of the problem, and then decide how to prioritize different things after understanding the background of the problem. After classification, there is a clear priority order, which can help you prioritize more important issues and solve problems more efficiently.

IV. Summary

You may not have noticed that structured thinking has so many twists and turns. In fact, this does not even mention the MECE principle, top-down consistency and other principles. Structured thinking is much more difficult than you think.

It just so happens that I am a little short of writing topics, and I think I can do a structured sorting of some common things later and train your structured thinking together with you.

Author: Jason

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