my biggest issue is I want to jump into the iterative process asap. there is almost like a fear that I'm missing out when not directly engaging the problem. (I suspect many people have something similar - some kind of work FOMO)
the best thinking never happens while sitting in front of a screen. But this make it even harder to document properly. (I have Remarkable so try to do it this way)
constraints: this is the ground principle. I can see why you take Baba is You as a learning example (great game!!!). Btw I think there is a close connection to the MECE principle that McKinsey and the likes deploy when solving ambiguous and complex problems. They apparently hammer this into their analysts as one of the first building blocks. I would apply the MECE even to the constraints: what is the interplay between them, are they exhaustive? [example: you list all sorts of intellectual constraints when dealing with a problem, yet you forget to list that you don't have enough time to deal with the problem. Later you are surprised by such an obvious miss...]
learning is best when you have a clear task to complete (that's why Baba is great). When I have a clear task (limited objective) I'm more efficient. Sometimes I need to learn more on a meta level - this is where I struggle. So thinking about tasks next week and in the future helps here a lot.
your point about relaxing the problem is something I deal with quite a lot. So one of the most important principles I derived from this article is that. But I would like to hear more about how to hammer this into my habits without thinking.
Raemon, I really appreciate this!
A couple of comments and insights: