Narrating Your Thoughts Out Loud Makes You a Better Problem Solver
Chain of Thought for Humans
While interviewing candidates, the author asked them to think aloud, then tried the same trick on himself while playing the puzzle game The Witness. Speaking his reasoning aloud felt ridiculous but made him noticeably better at solving puzzles. The gain comes from the same mechanism as rubber duck debugging: forcing unstated assumptions into the open, naming formal rules, and flagging arbitrary choices. A meta-study of 6,000 participants backs up the moderate benefit.
I look like a bit of a loon, but I tell myself I'm just a streamer with an audience of one.
- mceachen
In almost every interview I gave at the last several companies I worked for, I'd start with "This may feel a bit odd, but with this coding problem, I'd appreciate if you spoke through your problem solving. If it helps, pretend like I am your intern. Good ideas, bad ideas, pros and cons of whatever you're considering, it's all valuable information for me to learn a bit about how you approach problems."
I feel like being explicit like this put candidates at a bit more ease than having them try to suss out what the interviewer is expecting from them implicitly (and I know there are many interviewers that will auto-veto any candidate with the audacity to suggest a possibly imperfect approach).
- xorvoid
I basically "chain of thought" to myself in my own notes when working through a hard task. Mayne we can call it "live tweeting in private".
Aometimes it feels like a super power because it takes away the "starting anxiety" and makes everything a trivial sequence of "following simple steps"
- sinuhe69
In some cases, it certainly can help. But it doesn't help for deep thoughts or when innovative, creative ideas are needed.
I found out speaking the steps out loud helps especially in new confusing working steps, for example: tying a complex node, or follow the steps/work of other people without explicit instructions. In such situations, speaking out loud help me remember the steps much faster (simply repetition through many pathways), and also help to detect/correct spatial/sequential mistakes. It also helps enormously if one needs to work with/teach someone else.
- Waterluvian
Witnessing a candidate’s thought process is probably the most valuable part of the interview process for me. Nothing else comes close. Just let me listen/watch you solve problems.
- florkbork
This is basically https://www.christopherroosen.com/blog/2020/4/20/how-the-rit...