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Libby is a not-great mechanic.

She uses the "parts cannon" method. This is a jokey term for mechanics who fire new parts at a broken car in the hope it will fix the problem, but without proper diagnosis.

There are parallels to this approach in many fields, including in self-management.

Mary, on the other hand, is a master diagnostician. She loves to solve puzzles. Her fixes are targeted and high quality. She uses expert troubleshooting methods, which you can learn too and apply in your life and work.

This article is about troubleshooting anything. I'm going to use examples from car troubleshooting, but other professionals like software engineers and medical doctors follow similar principles.

Since we're here at Psychology Today, I'll give examples throughout that illustrate how the principles apply to troubleshooting ourselves.

Principles of Expert Troubleshooting

1. Diagnosis Before Treatment

This is the core principle of good troubleshooting that the rest of this post flows from.

In the self-management realm, a lot of the fixes we try to apply to our lives skip the diagnosis step. If a self-management tip you adopt could apply to anyone, that's a clue it follows more of the parts cannon approach and skips diagnosis.

2. Erratic Patterns in Complex Systems Often Result From Foundational Layers

If a complex system on a car is behaving erratically (for example, throwing lots of error codes all at once), the problem often comes from a fundamental layer of the system, like a voltage issue.

When complex,........

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