Distillation Framework to Find What Is Essential

A quick doc on Distillation/Distill mental model. This mental model is largely related to Invent & Simplify helping with most aspects of this Leadership Principle.

Illustrated use case

To start off communication is not easy. Especially when dealing with abstract concepts.

Hence to communicate we often attach extra stuff to explain something.

What is essential not only gets surrounded during communication.

But our own thinking attaches extra stuff to what is essential. So we end up with the following:

Essential thing that we really need, surrounded by a whole lot of extra stuff. This extra stuff often comes in the form of an approach we have made up or something that we decided is necessary without thorough questioning.

Now the issue with all this extra stuff arises when we need to create solutions to encompass all of it. To be able to hold the essential and the extra stuff: we often have to pick a [harder approach/heavier weight solution]. Also our mind gets

distracted from essential by the extra stuff while building the solution.

This heavier weight approach takes longer to build and even at times becomes inferior to simpler solutions due to complexity of operation, and the fact that extra stuff took away focus from essential.

Operation example: If you all you really needed is a shovel but you built a bobcat now you need to hire a bobcat certified operator and a mechanic.

Distillation

Now comes the mental model of Distillation: the process of distilling and leaving all the extra stuff behind. Distillation Definitions:

1. The action of purifying a liquid by a process of heating and cooling.
2. The extract of the essential meaning or most important aspects of something.

Imagine a bunsen burner and the essential piece of information is the part that is getting distilled leaving all the impurities, all the extra stuff behind:

By distilling to only keep the essential, the key pieces that really matter we get to have many simpler solutions for holding the key piece:

The simpler solution will be faster to build and often will allow more focus on essential piece of the problem. Leading to objectively better solutions.

How do we get the most distilled/essential parts of the problem? We ask questions that reveal the most essential pieces of the puzzle. Ask these questions to your interlocutor and even more importantly ask the distillations questions to yourself. Questions such as:

• What is the most concise/distilled problem description [We are/I am] trying to solve?
• Is this essential to the problem being solved? Or is it extra stuff? What is another approach to distilled problem?

Infusion

Once the most essential pieces are identified. We can carefully and scrupulously infuse.

Sometimes parts of “extra stuff” will be put back in. However, those parts will be put back through a scrupulous filter. From the position “prove/justify that it is needed” rather than “assume that it is needed”.

And ideally by being scrupulous about what we add into the mix we get room for other things that would have not have fit before:

---

Backlinks

• Avoid Momentum Bias Dont Dig against a Rock When Well Digging
• Time Box