#WHP1: exploring a thinking tool

#WHP1 is Want, Have, Possibilities, 1st step. It can be a mindmap or a set of lists or a conversation. It's a thinking tool because it helps you focus on one aspect at a time, yet build a fuller picture. It's a loop if you make it so; I do.

(It's an action tool too. Not that neurons are different for thinking and acting. It's just that some neurons are connected to muscles. But I disgress. Anyway.)

Say our current focus/center is "a better room". Wants is experience, function, purpose: a place to hide, work, talk, cook, give to ourselves, or whatever. Haves is square meters, windows, existing furniture; but also some money, friends to ask advice from, and any other resources we can muster. Possibilities include making, buying, giving away, repositioning, and maybe even swapping rooms. First step is you select what you can do in 2-5 minutes, one afternoon, or a week. Give the whole round 3-10 minutes, or a few days. Then you go back to Wants, and see how it's now enriched.

Try it on a few examples, maybe working together with other people, or first round alone and then ask and listen. You now own the tool. It can stay in your toolbox, unused. Yours.

I've used #OODA, John Boyd's Observe, Orient, Decide, Act loop, which is good for objective, complex, extra-personal situations. I used it together with SCIM (Vinay Gupta's Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps) for severe pandemic influenza, because SCIM is great for "orientation" around Needs and Provision. It's linked from http://ResilienceMaps.org and, frankly, may we never ever need it. (But I'm glad I did my homework.)

OODA is different from WHP1. I wonder if parallel teams, sharing output, would give us some interesting insights. But in my experience any tool is often better than no tool... Even if, or particularly when, you find the tool doesn't cover the thinking you feel is needed for that particular situation. As in "hey, #WHP1 doesn't let me look at this-and-that".

That's probably why I wrote the "I'm not my phone" song, over at http://imacan.bandcamp.com/album/evolution, and the Acceptable Fairies Observation elsewhere in this blog. Because we stay limited in our thinking, no matter what we do: small photographic cameras, huge-moving-smelly landscape. But you already knew.

Anyway, I hope this helps somewhat. :shrug: :-)