When people find themselves in situations when nothing seems to make it possible to get the expected result. Some quit and some others force themselves to find a solution. It may be due to deadlines. And it may also be what happens, when something is turned into a Fashion contest.
I feel it’s very wrong to be imposing deadlines for such tasks. These tasks are mostly of creative type. It’s very difficult to come up with an optimal solution under pressure. It may seem to work at first. But when I do it for a long time, I risk losing focus. I might be staring at that very solution and not realize it. I’ve lost the motivation to dig deeper, because I am not going to be shipping that cool idea anytime soon, because of the hurdle. My brain isn’t like a tree, which I can ax as much as possible to fall it. It needs sufficient rest.
I’ve recently been trying a new method which seems to work - waiting. When I’m stuck, I take a good rest and come back the next day. And if that fails, I take off more time, to work on something else that’s useful. One fine day, the solution just magically shows itself when you aren’t even thinking too much. I understand that this isn’t possible when working against deadlines. But there’s always sometime that you can spare to give your brain a rest. Maybe it just needs some Starbucks or even writing some always-to-be-obscure Node.js framework.
Give it time. There’s no need for solution marathons.
