Learning & thinking · a life skill
Deliberate Analogy Building
two cases, one rule
A single example sticks as a story: a band, a venue, a deal about tickets. You'll remember the story and miss the next time the same move would help, because the next time won't involve a band. Put two cases from different settings side by side and the details that differ fall away. What's left is the rule, and the rule is what you'll recognise.
- Moderate to start
- High impact
- Learn it in 2-4 weeks
- Fifteen minutes a pair
A gig and a bakery have nothing in common on the surface. Written in the same three slots, they make the same move, and the rule names that move without either setting.
The next idea you want to keep
Try it now.
Start from something that worked: a fix at work, a trick a friend used, an example in a book. Then go looking for a second case that made the same move somewhere else.
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Find two cases from different settings
Different enough that nobody would file them together: a kitchen and a meeting, a gig and a shop sale.
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Write both in the same slots
Who was involved, what they were stuck on, what they did. The same three headings for each, in the same order.
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Pair the slots across
Read them side by side, row by row. Where a row doesn't match, one of the cases is the wrong case.
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Write the rule in neither case's words
One sentence, with none of the nouns that belong to one case only. If "ticket" or "bakery" is in it, it's still a story.
"Both worked out well" isn't a rule. Say what move they made. -
Try it on a third case
Name somewhere else the rule should apply. If you can't find one, the rule is still too close to its cases.
Reading a book? When the author gives one example of an idea, find a second from your own life before you move on. The pair is what you'll remember.
Compare two cases
Line them up.
Two things that worked, from two different settings. Fill the same three slots for each, then write the rule they share. The page flags a rule that borrows a word from only one case, or one too general to use.
- Who was involved
- Stuck on
- What they did
The rule they share goes here.
Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere. Copy it into your notes before you close the page.
Why compare
The same two cases, read side by side, carried over twice as often.
Dedre Gentner, Jeffrey Loewenstein and Leigh Thompson tried this on 124 management consultants on a negotiation course. Everyone read the same two cases. Both showed a contingent deal: an agreement whose terms depend on what happens later, like the gig and the bakery in the figure.
Half of them wrote about each case on its own: what is going on in this negotiation? The other half were asked what the two cases had in common. Then pairs sat down to negotiate a new case face to face.
59% of the pairs who had compared the cases struck a contingent deal, against 33% of the pairs who had read them one at a time. Fewer than one in five of the separate readers had linked the two cases at all, though they read them one after the other.
The honest limit: one firm, one kind of deal, measured straight after the course. The researchers had found the same pattern in their earlier studies, but nobody checked what these consultants did a month later.
Pairs who struck a contingent deal in the new negotiation
- 59%compared the two cases
- 33%read each case on its own
The idea
Why it works.
One case comes with its details glued on, and memory files it under those details: a story about a gig. Next time you need the move, you're at a property viewing, not a gig, and nothing reminds you of it.
Lining up a second case forces the question "what's the same here?" The answer can't be the band or the bakery, so it has to be the move itself. Written down in plain words, that move can be recalled by any situation that needs it.
Keep it sharp
Habits that help.
- Far apart beats close together. Two cases from one field share too many details to see past.
- Same slots every time. Who, stuck on, what they did. The rows do the comparing for you.
- Strip the nouns. A rule with a case's nouns in it is still that case.
- Keep a page of rules. Each with its two cases underneath. Reread it before a hard decision.
Keep this going in the app.
HourLife turns these ideas into a daily system — goals, habits, focus, and reflection in one private place.
