Know When to Walk Away

I've spent all week at work refactoring a process that I've inherited in a stack I'm unfamiliar with. It's been a tiring few days.

There have a been plenty of WTF moments, and plenty of times where I thought the fix that I was applying was going to finish the job, only to discover yet another thing that needed to be dealt with downstream.

This is your first-hand reminder that a frustrated mind is not an effective debugging mind. When you feel your inquisitive nature start to fade and your adversarial nature start to rise, it's time to take a walk. Give yourself permission to step away and clear your head. Come back when you ready.

It sounds like soft, hand-wavey advice, but it's really true. Your subconscious mind is great at making sense of things and drawing connections when you're occupied by something else. When your conscious mind is blocked, give your subconscious some space to do its thing.

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