BLACK-BOX APPROACH: Tweak Inputs, Watch Outputs

It is a resource-saving approach that treats any system as a black box with understandable, possibly measurable inputs and outputs yet opaque regarding its inner processes.

While not interested in or unable to know the internal processes, we can still affect the system’s output by analyzing and affecting its inputs. Also, we can make decisions regarding our behavior with the system. For instance, if you do not get along well with a particular person and have a choice not to work with him, then the black-box approach will advise you to stop working with the person without spending much time understanding why the chemistry is not good.

Similarly, the maxim “people do weird things for weird reasons” suggests avoiding finding reasons for somebody’s behavior unless you genuinely care about that person.

This approach is not the black-box thinking approach developed in Matthew Syed’s eponymous book, which suggests confronting our mistakes to learn from them.

{COMMON SENSE, CONSTRAINTS OF A SYSTEM, CRAPPY JOINT, ADEQUACY, PRIORITIZATION, GUESSWORK}