How to Develop Impactful Mental Shortcuts

Most people, especially busy professionals such as project managers working on complex endeavors, absorb a tremendous amount of information throughout the day. Since the conscious mind can only be focused on one major task at a time, our brain is constantly looking for ways to expedite the decision-making process.

Imagine our brain is unable to apply mental shortcuts, also known as heuristics; we would have to stop, think, and make every decision consciously through thoughtful deliberation. Our productivity would greatly suffer as we may not be able to get out of bed in the morning. Once these mental shortcuts are proven useful, we adopt them over time into our unconscious minds, and they become a part of how we operate.

But heuristics are not infallible, as there can be errors in the subconscious program if you will. Shortcuts can sometimes cause us to overlook relevant information, and when problematic shortcuts merge with our implicit preferences or biases, they can lead to poor decisions. Therefore, it is vitally important for project managers to develop and strengthen the right heuristics and recognize biases as they offer these key advantages:

Efficient Decision-Making: Experienced project managers can make quicker decisions by narrowing down choices and quickly focusing on the heart of the matter.

Problem-Solving Ability: Project managers are constantly solving problems. For example, knowing that the most pressing constraint on a project is its schedule, project managers can quickly prioritize and choose the option that optimizes time.

Stress Reduction: Decisions and analysis can be stressful. By applying rules of thumb that worked well before, especially in lower-stakes situations, heuristics can reduce the cognitive load and stress associated with deliberate problem-solving.

Adaptability: Similarly, heuristics such as good rules of thumb can be quite versatile, and they can be adapted to new situations. For example, my favorite model for prioritization is the “MoSCoW” method.

By dropping the vowels, you are left with “M,” “S,” “C,” and “W,” where M is a must-have, S should have, C could have, and W would not want to have. Even though this was originally developed for project requirement prioritization, I reapplied it to prioritize projects in a large portfolio and even what to bring on my next vacation.

Improved Productivity: Ultimately, heuristics is about achieving faster and more streamlined decision-making, thereby increasing overall productivity.

For these reasons, developing heuristics is a valuable skill for all professionals as it helps us navigate the complexity of the work much more effectively. Here are the six activities for project managers to build more effective heuristics to enhance their experiences and productivity.

1. Analyze Past Projects. Project managers can reflect on their past projects or projects of colleagues to identify what strategies led to greater performance and what pitfalls to avoid. In an age of artificial intelligence (AI), this can especially be useful in constructing models for smart project management (Rane, 2023). This is one reason lessons learned, or post-action evaluation, are one of the most important best practices in project management.

2. Networking and Mentorship. Project managers should network with others to learn from their experiences. Wherever possible, seek more senior mentors and learn from their experiences.

3. Learning Through Feedback. An excellent way to improve is to apply structured feedback mechanisms within the projects or with peers and with a bias towards learning and continuous improvement. Project managers can seek feedback from their team members.

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In my past life, with multiple project managers reporting to me in a project management office (PMO), I established a process in which the project managers informally and constructively audit each other’s work in the spirit of improvement.

4. Examine Our Biases in High Stake Situations. Biases themselves are neutral (Grawitch, 2020), as they can be a great aid in decision-making. But biases can be wrong; thus, it is vitally important to pause and critically assess our intuitive preference, especially in high-stakes situations.

5. Simulation and Scenario Analysis. On complex or high-stakes projects, project managers working with a core team can simulate different project scenarios to evaluate risks, analyze costs, assess resources, and determine the likelihood of project success.

6. Continuous Learning. Project professionals should stay updated with industry trends, project management methods and tools, and the latest practical research studies and practices. It may also make sense to learn across industries to discover innovative heuristics.

Through regularly refreshing and learning new concepts, project managers can form new and improved heuristics.