This surprising toy can help you problem solve at work

Once you master the rubber ducky exercise and learn how to think and take action in ways you haven’t before, you’ll be in great shape to power past problems that tripped you up before (and maybe eventually not even need the duck itself). Here are three scenarios to try it out.

1. Tackle a technical problem. Dr. Bruening admits that technical problems stress her out, sharing that she feels like she’s “about to explode” when she can’t complete simple, routine tasks that are usually easy to check off her list. “I can’t stand it when I’ve tried everything and wasted a lot of time. My husband usually hears my groans and tries to help, but he knows nothing about the tools I use, and I end up feeling desperate as I try to explain. I’ve learned that, seemingly miraculously, as soon as I tell him the problem, I see my mistake and know how to fix it. I couldn’t understand how this happens until I heard about the rubber ducky debugging method. Now that I’ve learned it and understand, I ask my husband to act like my rubber ducky. Sometimes I serve as his rubber ducky too.”

2. Work out your feelings. Did you recently suffer a breakup? Or maybe you’re having a tough time with a friend, or feeling frustrated after a meeting that didn’t go as you hoped. “We all know how painful some situations can be,” Dr. Bruening acknowledges. “In these instances, you might feel tempted to call friends and tell them the story. But this can go wrong, because your friends might either agree with you to seem supportive or see the problem incorrectly through the lens of their own life experiences. When this happens, you might feel more stressed and have an even more complex problem to deal with.” Talking to your rubber ducky instead, Dr. Bruening promises, can help you see the right solution on your own. “You won’t feel obligated to honor anyone’s opinion that you’ve asked for if you disagree or to manage frustrating feelings if someone doesn’t understand. Instead, you can zero in on what brings you peace.”

3. Make an important decision. “Imagine that you have to make a difficult decision at work or at home — you feel stuck, so you ask a few people for opinions,” offers Dr. Bruening. “But what can you do if their opinions seem off-base or misguided to you? I used to end up with a let-down feeling, until I realized that I was disappointed with other insights because I already believed in my own insights. The reality is that other people never know the problem as well as you do because they don’t have all the facts.” Nowadays, Dr. Bruening tells us she talks to her rubber ducky instead, because it helps her establish new neural pathways. “Old pathways motivate us to seek support from others, but we don’t always like their input when we get it.” Use yours to hear your own voice loud and clear — it’s often the best one to help you make a decision anyway.

This article originally appeared on Brit and Co.

---

You might also enjoy…

• New neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happy
• Strangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds
• 10 lessons from Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule that will double your productivity
• The worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs
• 10 habits of mentally strong people