Loading
Back to all posts

Rule of 7

Today’s tip is a little less techy, and can actually be applied to many things in life, but is particularly handy when planning a new solution. When you’re planning your code (at the whiteboard), instead of coming up with just one solution to your problem, try to come up with 7! Yes I said 7! It seems like a lot I know, but let me explain.
When thinking of multiple solutions to a problem, the first 2 or 3 will be the obvious ones, the ones that don’t take too much over thinking. It’s when you start trying to think of the 4th or 5th solution that it gets a bit harder. More radical ideas will come out, solutions that you know are definitely not the right way of doing it. That’s fine! Keep going!
More often than not, the best solutions to a problem come out around solution 6 or 7 (don’t just stop at 7, if you have more, keep going!). After coming up with the bonkers solutions you change the way you think about the problem, and will start to come up with solutions that combine previous ideas, sometimes incorporating parts of the more “out there” solutions you came up with.
This is one of the techniques the developers at Mayden use and we practise it in Mayden Academy. Sometimes we come up with 14 or 15 different solutions to a problem before coming to the best one! Just remember, even if you think it is a terrible way of doing it, add it to the list, because you never know how that might prompt your next idea which is the best of them all.