This is my ADHD super power. When I have a problem I take a shower, a walk, play a video game, just to let it stew in the background, sometimes for days. Get intoxicated. You'll eventually get that eureka! effect. It has never failed me.
It's often suggested that one needs to work hard to crack a hairy problem. Nonsense. You've got a subconscious system always processing some idea, integrating external unrelated stimuli while you're doing something else: what is commonly called thinking outside the box. The hairier the problem, the least effective pointed focus is to crack it. You can't think outside the box if you're putting all your effort on the box. Go do something else.
Conscious thought and focus is but a very small part of our intelligence. Learn to delegate some tasks to your background process.
>It's often suggested that one needs to work hard to crack a hairy problem. Nonsense. You've got a subconscious system always processing some idea, integrating external unrelated stimuli while you're doing something else: what is commonly called thinking outside the box. The hairier the problem, the least effective pointed focus is to crack it. You can't think outside the box if you're putting all your effort on the box. Go do something else.
Doing both is quite possible, and helps ...
>Conscious thought and focus is but a very small part of our intelligence. Learn to delegate some tasks to your background process.
I'll just leave these here:
Tech Video: Rich Hickey: Hammock-Driven Development
This is why I’ll never work in an office again. Why would I want to get stuck on a problem and be actively working against solving it because I’m stuck at work with nothing else to do?
Same here. My focused problem solving is powered by my legs: if stuck, I need to pace around with a notepad. Can't do that in an office without weird looks.
When I was a smoker, I took a smoke+coffee break with a notepad to problem solve, that is more accepted in corporate life but I've dropped the habit.
I was a cigarette smoker too. I was doing the same thing and it worked wonderfully but I had to stop the nasty smelling habit. However, those vice forced brakes every 1-2 hours or so made me a lot more productive overall. Current office culture is very much desk bound, walking around, is not encouraged at all, and if I squint I could sort of see it in the product itself
Same, the legwork of "working hard" on a problem for me these days is just making sure I have all the information I need to stew over. I write up a factfinding doc of points in the codebase that I think are relevant, any context that's relevant, and symptoms of the bug. I never used to write it down but I work across a bunch of projects now so I can sometimes have the bug de-prioritised in my brain.
I have used this to solve leetcode problems. Initially, I read and understand the problem; and then I try to solve it for ten minutes. If fail to find a solution, I move on to the next problem; I do that for 3–4 problems on a single go. When I visit those problems the next day, I find myself hitting the solution way more than I would be if I had sat there for hours with hard focus to solve those problems.
However, I feel that I cheated because you are expected to solve those problems in limited time.
It's also something quite difficult to talk about in practice because claiming that a problem was solved via dreamily staring at clouds, or some similar activity very far from normal perceptions of 'work', sounds like boasting.
It's often suggested that one needs to work hard to crack a hairy problem. Nonsense. You've got a subconscious system always processing some idea, integrating external unrelated stimuli while you're doing something else: what is commonly called thinking outside the box. The hairier the problem, the least effective pointed focus is to crack it. You can't think outside the box if you're putting all your effort on the box. Go do something else.
Conscious thought and focus is but a very small part of our intelligence. Learn to delegate some tasks to your background process.