Preventing cognitive inertia in support

Troubleshooting in Technical Support is about solving problems, and it’s also about managing your rhythm while doing it. Some issues are deep and complex, while others are simple and easy to address. But which is which is not always clear, questions arrive mixed, and it is hard to anticipate what the solution will be.

Within the same ticket, there might be multiple issues all mixed up in the first question, or appearing through different iterations. You will naturally try to put some “order” in the chaos by addressing one each time, sequentially, and this is a challenge because not all issues have the same level of complexity:

Easy -> Hard -> Easy -> Crazy -> Super Basic

The Problem?

If you’re not careful, you can easily carry over the depth from one issue into the next because your brain stays in “advanced mode”. You’ve been logging, checking code, doing advanced reasoning, testing hypotheses, maybe you just discovered an edge case, and when a new symptom appears, it has-to-be-related!

Instead of starting fresh, you continue with the same intensity. That’s cognitive inertia at work. But what if the new one it’s something simple?

It helps to pause and reset between continued issues. Look at the new problem as if it’s the first one of the day. Support has a rhythm, and part of the job is knowing when to slow down and go superficial, and when to go deep. You don’t want to underthink the hard ones, nor overthink the easy ones!

Some tips for managing varying complexity

• Start simple. Apply Occam’s Razor before moving into advanced territory.
• Go back to your “troubleshooting checklists“. Rituals can help reset your brain to “basic mode” and detect simplicity when needed.
• Stay aware of your mental state. Are you in deep-dive mode? Or shallow-scan mode? Do you recognize yourself in cognitive-inertia mode?
• Rest between issues. Take some minutes after solving a problem and try to mentally reboot.
• Break issue-continuity loops. Treat each issue as new. Just because the first issue was hard doesn’t mean the second is too.
• Breathe. really, pausing and breathing can help shift your mindset.

Bonus: it goes both sides!

The opposite also applies: If something started simple doesn’t mean it will stay simple and easy, but you probably already knew that!