Primary source
How I solve complex tasks
Personal post on shifting from in-head decisions to a systematic writing culture.
Primary source
How I solve complex tasks
Personal post on shifting from in-head decisions to a systematic writing culture.
#SelfDevelopment
Complex tasks are rarely solved by intelligence in isolation. They are solved through externalized thinking: write the reasoning, show constraints, compare alternatives, and make logic available to other people.
What chess trained
Position evaluation and strategy
A habit to evaluate the board, constraints, and tempo first, then choose the move.
Variation calculation
Exploring multiple lines and preparing responses to likely counter-moves.
Opponent perspective
Reasoning from the other side: what can block the plan and where the solution is fragile.
How the approach evolved
Childhood and school
Early wins and the "everything in my head" habit
Math, physics, and geometry tasks were often solved by writing the final answer only, with no intermediate reasoning.
Grades 10-11
The ZFTSH at MIPT turning point
Hard problems could not be solved consistently without written steps. Writing became mandatory practice.
University and work
Writing as an operating system
Lectures, seminars, and work tasks reinforced the pattern: complex reasoning must be externalized, not kept in memory.
Leadership stage
Not just to write, but to be understood
At team scale, you need reproducible written culture: RFCs, ADRs, strategy docs, instructions, and shared knowledge base.
Writing artifacts as a system
RFC
Capture candidate solution, alternatives, trade-offs, and success criteria before implementation.
ADR
Preserve architecture decisions and context so teams do not lose causality over time.
Evolution plans
Link strategy to phases and measurable outcomes instead of keeping plans as ideas only.
Instructions and wiki
Reduce bus factor and speed up onboarding: knowledge belongs to the system, not one person.
Macro-reports and automations
Create a recurring feedback loop and reduce manual status synchronization overhead.
Common anti-patterns
Assuming that "I understand it" automatically means "I can explain it to the team".
Skipping intermediate reasoning in difficult decisions and keeping only final conclusions.
Keeping critical context in personal chats and personal memory.
Treating documents as ceremony without explicit decisions, owners, and success criteria.
Practices that scale
Break down the problem in writing: context, constraints, options, risks, decision, next step.
Explicitly document why the chosen option is better than alternatives in current conditions.
Review text for understandability: a colleague should reconstruct the logic without oral narration.
Build an artifact library: RFC/ADR templates, strong examples, and review checklists.
Maintain a steady rhythm of written updates for strategy and operational changes.
Mini-loop for complex decisions
- State the problem in one sentence: what exactly should change and why.
- Document constraints: time, resources, dependencies, risks, and success criteria.
- List 2-3 alternatives with comparable level of detail.
- Write counter-arguments from the opponent perspective: why this may fail.
- Choose an option and document why it wins now.
- Assign owners, milestones, and review date.
- After execution, update the document: what was validated and what should change.
P.S. Advice to my younger self
Stop assuming you are the smartest person in the room and write your thoughts down while solving problems. Writing does not slow thinking down. It scales it across time and across teams.