Generalise
State the pattern as a rule an instance could break; stop when you can name the case that would break it.
Turn an example into a rule.
Seen in Christopher Alexander and others, A Pattern Language, 1977
Try it on your work
Watch one small thing happen five separate times (how a door gets opened, how a package gets unwrapped) and write the rule that all five obeyed. If a sixth breaks the rule, that's a better finding than the rule.
Take five scattered remarks people have made about your project and write the single sentence all five were saying. If one remark refuses, it was about something else; set it apart.
Take three problems you've solved separately and write the one procedure that would have solved all three. The next problem gets the procedure first, as a test.
How it has been used
Move from the instance to the principle: the naturalist's specimens becoming a taxonomy, the three complaints becoming a pattern, the case becoming a rule. The move forces you to state the principle so it can fail: a generalisation that no new instance could break is a mood, not a rule.
Where it leads
Grouped under Help me name what matters