A student of mine recently got 'scolded' by me. She was trying to solve a physics problem but she had no idea how to do it. I had a glimpse of her thinking when I asked her to think out loud. She said after doing this and that, she had no idea what to do. Then I realised that she is trying to figure out entirely the solution of the problem in her head before she even attempt it on paper. I told her severely that perhaps in simpler problems, the entire steps of the solution can be visualised before attempting it. That would be the ideal case, wouldn't it? You would have the confidence to go through the entire process of writing down the solution since you already had in mind what you are going to do next.
However, I told her, that as problems get increasingly complex, it's ......