The Hundred Trades Method
Updated 2026-08-22
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A method that borrows the perspective of unrelated crafts and professions to reframe a problem, on the assumption that each trade carries a distinct set of heuristics. The core proposition is that domain-specific thinking becomes rigid, and that importing an alien discipline's method breaks the fixation. The qualification is that the borrowed method must be translated rather than copied, since a heuristic that works in one craft may not transfer without adaptation. Its institutional form is professional division of labor.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Perspective rotation: restate your problem as the question a different trade would ask about it. - Heuristic import: borrow the specific method that trade uses and adapt it to your context. - Fixation break: use an unrelated domain to escape a framing your own field keeps reproducing.
Anchor fast decisions
Each discipline develops methods that encode solutions to the problems it repeatedly faces, so importing a method from another trade supplies a solution pattern your own field may never have generated. The translation step is what makes it work, since the method has to be mapped onto your constraints rather than applied literally.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- zh.wikipedia.orghttps://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%80%83%E5%B7%A5%E8%AE%B0verified
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